My question is regrading the 9 books that are usually added to al-Umm. Are they considered to
be of the Imam's new school or old school. Also,
what effect did they have in the scholarly circles?
And lastly, who exactly were the arguments in
al-Risala directed towards?
Précis:
1. According to the popular riwaya, the Risala was originally written at
the request of the Iraqi Muhaddith, Ibn Mahdi al-Lu'lu'i (d. 198 H). The
main arguments were directed against the prevailing tendency in Iraq of
some ra'y madhhabs in their use of personal opinion at the expense of naqli
sources of our sacred law, especially as practiced by those in Basra.
2. The various books accompanying al-Umm known by our scholars as the
appendices [Mulhaqat] contain, for the most part, the Qawl Qadim of the
Mujtahid Imam. This is because most of the appendices of al-Umm are, in
fact, works on 'Ilm Khilaf (and not fiqh proper: Furu'), and Shafi'i
scholars are well aware that many of the positions found in the Mujtahid's
khilafiyya works belong to the Qadim; but the Qawl Jadid, as well as the
Qawl Azhar and the Qawl Mashhur have also been found in them. Because of
that, they are to be used with extreme caution. The laborious task of
combing through and sieving them is left to the the Consultants and
Assessors of the school [Ashab al-Fatwa wa'l-Tarjih] like Imams al-Rafi'i
and al-Nawawi and down to the Authorities of the school [Ashab al-Wujuh]
like Imams al-Qaffal and al-Isfara'ini, and of course, the
Independent-but-Affiliated Mujtahids [Mujtahid Mutlaq Muntasib] like Imam
al-Muzani; together they make it known which are reliable. So the effect it
had within the ranks of our fuqaha', especially up until the likes of Imam
al-Nawawi, was to use these appendices as indices (therefore as a tool) or
cross-references, to the main text and NOT as the matn (main reference) of
what is al-Umm.
The 'real' users of these Mulhaqat (meaning those who can be benefited by
them; i.e., those who know how to use these indices and know the context or
connections of each anecdote/mas'ala, for instance, and can recognize the
Mujtahid Imam's nusus and distinguish what is Nass from Mansus) no longer
exist today (and therefore beware of those who use them or even quote
al-Umm proper - unless it is for an academic exercise or used as an
emphasis [tawkid] - in order to sum up a point of law to the exclusion of
later legal judgements, for the former ones are frequently too compact for
clarity). In fact, after the exhaustive mining performed by our Ashab
al-Tarjih, there was no longer any need for later jurists and even
heavyweights from among the Examiners of the school [Ashab al-Nuzzar], such
as Imams al-Ramli and Ibn Hajar, to refer to them.
It may be appropriate here to remind ourselves of the meaning got from the
well-quoted advice of Ibn Khaldun who warned against the dangers of
"accepting knowledge from books for which no key is provided by teachers":
naqlu l-'ilmi mina l-kutubi min ghayri miftAHi l-mu'allimIna.
May this be a cause for Fath and a means to be close to the Keys!
al-faqir in Oxford,
M. Afifi al-Akiti
22 Muharram 1425
14 III 2004
