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INTRODUCTION

Al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfah al-Nuʿmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥayyūn al-Tamīmī was a prominent judge, jurist, and author of the Fatimid Empire (296–567/909–1171), in many ways the young Fatimid state’s chief ideologue for nearly half a century. He, more than any other scholar, founded Ismaʿili law as a discipline, in addition to writing extensively on history, theology, law, legal theory, Prophetic reports, and commentary on the Qurʾan. His legal writings remained the main references in this field throughout the Fatimid period and after; they are still widely recognized as authoritative by both the Bohra and Nizari Ismaʿili communities.¹ The present work is a translation of one of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s most important legal works, Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, a title which may be literally rendered “The Islamic Legal Schools’ Conflicting Principles of Interpretation.” The work ranks among the most important extant discussions of Islamic legal theory from the fourth/tenth century.

Since the early twentieth century, a small number of scholars have investigated al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s life, establishing the main outlines of his career and his bibliography.² Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s father Muḥammad, who was born in 259/872–73 and died in Rajab 351/August–September 962, had been a jurist in the Sunni Mālikī legal tradition, living in Qayrawān. Poonawala argues that the father converted to Ismaʿili Shiʿism before the establishment of the Fatimid state in 296/909 and suggests that al-Nuʿmān was raised as an Ismaʿili. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s birthdate is not known but has been estimated to be in the last decade of the ninth century. He was certainly an Ismaʿili when he entered the service of the Fatimids at a relatively young age in 313/925, serving for nine years during the reign of the first Fatimid caliph, al-Mahdī (296–322/909–34).

One premodern author, the Egyptian historian Ibn Taghrībirdī (d. 815/1412), reports that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān had been a Ḥanafī jurist before he converted to Ismaʿili Islam. He reports, erroneously, that the Ḥanafī legal school (madhhab, pl. madhāhib) had been dominant in North Africa until the Zirid ruler al-Muʿizz ibn Bādīs (1016–62) imposed the Mālikī legal school.³ The Ḥanafī legal school was certainly represented in Tunisia, but the main population had been Mālikī from early on in the third/ninth century. Ḥanafī influence came from the Abbasid capital, Baghdad, partly through the patronage of the local dynasty, the Aghlabids (184–296/800–909). Ibn Taghrībirdī appears to have his facts wrong, and the suggestion is usually dismissed as unfounded.⁴

However, modern scholars overlook an important piece of evidence that may have been behind Ibn Taghrībirdī’s assertion but which he assumed was too obvious to mention: the fact that the judge’s name, Abū Ḥanīfah al-Nuʿmān, matches exactly that of the famous eponym of the Ḥanafī madhhab. The name is relatively rare, and the fact that his father chose this name for him suggests that the father—and not the son—may have “converted” to the Ḥanafī madhhab prior to his conversion to Ismaʿilism. This interpretation derives some support from evidence that the Ḥanafīs and the Shiʿah were in a sense allies against the Mālikīs in debates over Islamic law and theology and that the Ismaʿilis had more luck attracting Ḥanafīs than Mālikīs.⁵

Al-Nuʿmān served as a secretary or official of some type under the first Fatimid ruler, al-Mahdī (r. 296–322/909–34), for nine years, that is, from ca. 313/925, and throughout the reign of the second caliph, al-Qāʾim (r. 322–34/934–46). Shortly after coming to power, the third caliph, al-Manṣūr (r. 334–41/946–53), appointed al-Nuʿmān to the judgeship of Tripoli, in what is now Libya. In 337/948, the caliph moved the capital to al-Manṣūriyyah and made al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān supreme judge, serving as judge of the new capital as well as of the earlier capitals al-Mahdiyyah and Qayrawān, with the right to appoint other judges in Fatimid territory. Al-Manṣūr also authorized him to deliver the addresses of “the Sessions of Knowledge” (majālis al-ḥikmah), which were held in the palace every week after Friday prayer and intended to edify the congregation in Ismaʿili doctrine and the religious sciences. After al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh (r. 341–65/953–75), the fourth Fatimid caliph, acceded to the caliphate, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was confirmed in his position of supreme judge in Fatimid territory. In a decree in 343/954 which al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān presents verbatim in Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, the caliph granted him additional duties, charging him with overseeing the grievance court and hearing appeals from throughout the Empire, and he served in this capacity for several decades. The reign of al-Muʿizz was the apogee of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s career. After the Fatimid conquest of Egypt in 358/969 and the construction of a new capital city at Cairo, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān accompanied al-Muʿizz to Egypt in 362/973. He died in Cairo the next year, in Jumada II 363/March 974.⁶ His sons and their descendants went on to serve al-Muʿizz and subsequent Fatimid caliphs as prominent judges and in other official capacities until the mid-eleventh century.

AL-QĀḌĪ AL-NUʿMĀN’S WORKS ON LAW AND LEGAL THEORY

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān devoted a great deal of energy to the composition of legal works. His earliest such work was entitled Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ; al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān compiled it while working under al-Mahdī, that is, between 313/925 and 323/934. Containing 3,000 folios, it was a comprehensive collection of oral reports attributed to the Imams, arranged by legal topic, that drew on Zaydi and Imami Shiʿi sources. The extant section of this work, a substantial fragment from the chapter on ritual prayer, was examined by Wilferd Madelung, who discussed the sources on which al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān drew, identifying over twenty works devoted to Shiʿi law and to reports from the Imams and other ʿAlids. Most of these works were compiled in Kufa in southern Iraq in the third/ninth century, by authors who belonged to the Zaydi, Imami, and similar subsects of Shiʿism and who related material mainly from Kufan transmitters. It thus contrasts with the canonical collections of the Twelver Shiʿah such as al-Kāfī by Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī (d. 329/941) and Man lā yaḥḍuruhu al-faqīh by Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī (d. 381/991), which rely heavily on transmitters from Qum instead. Overall, the material that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān used in compiling this work suggests that it represents a compromise between the Zaydi and Imami traditions of Shiʿism. One may generalize this characterization to Ismaʿili law in general.⁷ The extant fragment of Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ has recently been published.⁸ This work was designed to serve as a comprehensive source of oral reports for use in determining the rulings on the points of law, parallel to the six books of the Sunnis: the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870), the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim (d. 261/851), the Sunan of Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī (d. 275/889), the Sunan of Ibn Mājah (d. 273/886), al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ of al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892), and the Sunan of al-Nasāʾī (d. 303/915). It was a fundamental part of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s project to establish the foundations of Ismaʿili law and to put it on a par with Sunni Islamic law. It was exactly contemporary with the first main canonical collection of oral reports of the Twelver Shiʿi, al-Kāfī by Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī (d. 329/941), which served a similar purpose.

Also during this period al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān completed two abridgements of Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ, entitled Kitāb al-Akhbār [or perhaps al-Ikhbār], which contained 300 folios and omitted the chains of transmission attached to Prophetic reports, and Mukhtaṣar al-Īḍāḥ. The Kitāb al-Akhbār has been dated tentatively to 320–32/932–34. During the reign of al-Qāʾim (322–34/934–46), he wrote Kitāb al-Iqtiṣār, a short legal manual which is extant and has been published.⁹ We know that this work was used as a teaching text. During this period he also wrote al-Muntakhabah, or al-Urjūzah al-muntakhabah, another short work treating the law in rajaz verse, intended for memorization by students. This work is extant in manuscript but has not been published. It was intended to form a pair with al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s other didactic work in rajaz verse, on the Imamate, entitled al-Urjūzah al-mukhtārah, which has been edited and published.¹⁰ Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān authored yet another short compenium of law during the reign of al-Manṣūr, entitled al-Yanbūʿ.¹¹

During the reign of al-Muʿizz in the mid-tenth century, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān wrote what are arguably his two greatest legal works, Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib (Disagreements of the Jurists) and Daʿāʾim al-islām (The Pillars of Islam), the first a refutation of Sunni theories of legal interpretation and the second a manual of Ismaʿili law. Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib is not dated in a colophon, but al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān includes in it the decree al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh wrote to appoint him as chief judge that is dated 28 Rabiʿ al-Awwal 343/1 August 954. It is likely that he composed the Ikhtilāf soon after that date. He probably wrote it before compiling Daʿāʾim al-islām, which he finished around 349/960.¹² He also wrote another work of oral reports, entitled Mukhtaṣar al-āthār or Kitāb al-Ikhtiṣār li-ṣaḥīḥ al-āthār ʿan al-aʾimmah al-aṭhār, which is extant but not published. Poonawala estimates that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān completed this work about a year before Daʿāʾim al-Islām, in 348/959.¹³

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān wrote a number of other treatises, several of which are not extant but whose titles show his engagement with Sunni Islamic legal theory and which may have been connected with his research and preparation for writing Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib. His Kitāb al-ittifāq wa-l-iftirāq was presumably a work on the disputed points of the law (khilāf), including both Sunni and Ismaʿili law. He abridged this work as Kitāb al-muqtaṣar.

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān authored a number of polemical works related to law and legal theory. One of these, his Risālah dhāt al-bayān fī al-radd ʿalā Ibn Qutaybah (An Expository Treatise in Refutation of Ibn Qutaybah), is extant and has been published.¹⁴ This short work, written in response to a question posed to him by the tutor of the Fatimid princes, refutes legal doctrines discussed in the famous manual and anthology for secretaries Adab al-kātib by Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276/885). Avraham Hakim, the editor, dates the treatise to some point during the reign of al-Muʿizz after 343/954, because it mentions Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib in one passage, and the Ikhtilāf dates to after 343/954. Two mentions in the treatise of the book al-Ikhtilāf wa-l-iftirāq suggest that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was planning to write the book while he completed the refutation of Ibn Qutaybah or that he was writing the two works simultaneously.¹⁵ Risālah dhāt al-bayān presumably predates Daʿāʾim al-Islām, which is not mentioned in the work.

Certainly related to the law and legal theory was al-Risālah al-miṣriyyah fī al-radd ʿalā al-Shāfiʿī (The Egyptian Treatise, A Refutation of al-Shāfiʿī), which reportedly consisted of two large fascicles. Poonawala suggests that this must have been composed shortly after or just before the Fatimid conquest of Egypt, apparently on account of the reference to Egypt in the title and the relative unimportance of Shāfiʿīs in Tunisia as opposed to their significant presence in Egypt. It appears likely, and this is suggested by the use of the term Risālah in the title, that this was a refutation of the theory of legal interpretation Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) had presented in his Risālah.¹⁶ Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān may have singled out al-Shāfiʿī on account of the leading role he played in the development of the science of legal hermeneutics. It is likely that this work included arguments similar to those found in Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, which at several points addresses arguments found in al-Shāfiʿī’s Risālah and in his other works.

Also likely devoted to matters of legal theory was al-Radd ʿalā Aḥmad Ibn Surayj al-Baghdādī, which critiqued the leading Shāfiʿī jurist of Baghdad in the late ninth and early tenth century, Aḥmad ibn ʿUmar Ibn Surayj (d. 306/918). This, too, was likely a refutation of a work on jurisprudence or legal theory rather than a work on positive law. It is likely that some of the opinions that are mentioned in Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib but are attributed to unidentified authors or to “a certain Baghdadi,” are those of Ibn Surayj.

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān also wrote a refutation of a work by a Mālikī jurist whose name is not entirely clear in the title as reported in biographical and bibliographical sources: Dāmigh al-mūjaz fī al-radd ʿalā al-ʿUtbī or al-ʿUtaqī. If the first reading is correct, it refers to Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-ʿUtbī (d. 255/869), compiler of al-ʿUtbiyyah. If the second reading is correct, it is a refutation of the Mālikī scholar Ibn al-Qāsim (Abū ʿAbd Allāh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿUtaqī, d. 191/806), a prominent disciple of Mālik ibn Anas and the compiler of al-Mudawwanah. The work was likely devoted to positive law.

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s last and most famous legal work is his Kitāb Daʿāʾim al-Islām. Poonawala argues convincingly that he wrote this work later than Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib on the grounds that he had changed some of his views concerning legal theory between the composition of the two works. For the Daʿāʾim, he suggests a date of composition of 349/960, coinciding with a series of major reforms instituted by Caliph al-Muʿizz.¹⁷ This would confirm the supposition that he had completed Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib some years earlier, in 343/954 or shortly thereafter. The Daʿāʾim is a two-volume work treating the standard chapters of Islamic law, prefaced by a section devoted to walāyah or “allegiance to the Imam.” It draws on al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s earlier legal works and presents a version of Islamic law that has been described as a compromise between Twelver and Zaydi Shiʿi law, rejecting, for example, the Twelvers’ position on mutʿah or temporary marriage and arguing against it on the basis of Zaydi sources. Daʿāʾim al-Islām has been published a number of times and translated into English as well. The recent translation by Ismail Poonawala has revised an earlier translation by Asaf A. A. Fyzee.¹⁸

Along with Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s massive collection of oral reports on legal topics, the two works Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, which propounds a theory of jurisprudence or legal hermeneutics, and Daʿāʾim al-islām, a compendium of rulings for the whole gamut of Islamic legal topics, provided the main basis for Ismaʿili law. Although the theories of religious authority and legal hermeneutics on which the law was based differed radically from those found in the other legal madhhabs of the time, these two works made Ismaʿili law conform formally to some of the main standards evident in other legal traditions. By the early tenth century, it had become necessary for all legal traditions to have a manual of uṣūl al-fiqh, or legal hermeneutics, in addition to recognized textbooks or compendia of the points of substantive law in order to be recognized as legitimate. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān single-handedly provided that basis, and his works remained the standard reference works for Ismaʿili law from that time until the present day.

It is probably on account of the fame of Daʿāʾim al-Islām that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān has long been claimed by the Twelver Shiʿah as one of their own. Poonawala reports that the first Twelver biographical work to include him was Maʿālim al-ʿulamāʾ by Ibn Shahrāshūb (d. 588/1192). In that work, however, Ibn Shahrāshūb made it clear that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was not a Twelver: laysa bi-imāmī, though he immediately remarks “but his books are excellent.”¹⁹ Most subsequent Twelver biographical dictionaries not only include al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān but report or at least imply that he was a Twelver, including Majālis al-muʾminīn by al-Qāḍī Nūr Allāh al-Shushtarī (d. 1019/1610), Manhaj al-maqāl fī taḥqīq aḥwāl al-rijāl by Mīrzā Muḥammad al-Astarābādī (d. 1029/1619), Amal al-āmil by Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1104/1692), Rijāl al-Sayyid Baḥr al-ʿUlum by Muḥammad al-Mahdī Baḥr al-ʿUlūm (d. 1212/1797), Rawḍāt al-jannāt by Muḥammad Bāqir al-Khwānsārī (d. 1313/1895), and Mustadrak al-wasāʾil by Mīrzā Ḥusayn al-Nūrī (d. 1330/1912).²⁰ Muḥsin al-Amīn (d. 1952) also devoted a notice to al-Qāḍī al-Numʿān in his major biographical work Aʿyān al-shīʿah.²¹ The main source of this idea was the biographical dictionary Wafayāt al-aʿyān of Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282), who states that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was originally a Mālikī and then converted (taḥawwala) to Imami Shiʿism. Ibn Khallikān cannot have derived this information from Ibn Shahrāshūb’s Maʿālim al-ʿulamāʾ, which states explicitly that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was not an Imami, but it seems unlikely that he would have invented such a statement. Madelung and Poonawala have both noted that the eleventh-century Twelver Shiʿi scholar Abū al-Fatḥ al-Karājikī (d. 449/1057) wrote an abridgement of Daʿāʾim al-Islām and Sharḥ al-akhbār fī faḍāʾil al-aʾimmah al-aṭhār; this may be the source of the idea that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was actually a Twelver Shiʿi.²² Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s arguments about the authority of the Imams and the historical wrongs they suffered at the hands of the Companions of the Prophet and later Sunni authorities clearly have resonated well with Twelver audiences and convinced many scholars over the centuries that he was indeed a Twelver. Any evidence to the contrary could be explained away as the result of dissimulation.

THE CONTENT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF IKHTILĀF UṢŪL AL-MADHĀHIB

In 1955, Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee provided a concise outline of the content of the Ikhtilāf in a collected volume on law in the Middle East.²³ In 1969, he expressed the hope someone would undertake the study and publication of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s work Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib.²⁴ In the early 1970s this call was answered, and two editions of the work were published, in 1972 and 1973. The 1972 edition was that of Shamoon Tayyib Lokhandwalla, a scholar who had completed a dissertation on the early history of Ismaʿili law at Oxford.²⁵ His edition included an extensive introductory essay discussing the work and its place in the history of Islamic jurisprudence. Since then, little scholarship has focused on the work. Soumaya Hamdani discussed the work briefly in her study of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s role in the transformation of the Ismaʿili movement into an imperial state.²⁶ Agostino Cilardo discusses the work briefly as well in his introduction to the edition of Minhāj al-farāʾiḍ, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s treatise on inheritance law.²⁷

The theory of jurisprudence that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān proposes in Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib has distinct Shiʿi elements but at the same time intensely engages with contemporary Sunni legal theory. One might describe this theory as recognizing three sources of law: the Qurʾan, the Sunnah, and the pronouncements of the rightful Imams.²⁸ He assumes the authoritative status of the Book, as he terms the Qurʾan in this context in keeping with Sunni practice, and the Sunnah. He does not argue for their authoritative status, and while one might not expect this with regard to the Qurʾan because this was a matter of self-evident agreement and therefore not in need of such argument, one might expect it with regard to the Sunnah, for its exact role in the formation of the sacred law was hotly debated during the ninth and tenth centuries. Al-Shāfiʿi had famously justified the authority of the Sunnah in his Risālah by linking it with the term ḥikmah used in the Qurʾan in tandem with the term kitāb, and he also limited its definition to oral reports, and exclusively to oral reports concerning the Prophet.²⁹ Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān provides no such justification, which suggests that in his view, all Muslim jurists, or at least all whose opinions count, already agree on these two sources.

The question arises whether by Sunnah al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān intends reports that go back to the Prophet exclusively or whether he means to include reports that go back to the Imams as well. It is clear from his usage in Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib that he intends by the term Sunnah the Practice of the Prophet as embodied in oral reports that go back to him. However, this may have resulted in part from the polemical nature of the work; he may be using the term as his opponents use it so as not to provoke an automatic rejection or argument on that particular issue. From the extant fragment of Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ it is evident that many of the akhbār or oral reports that are cited as evidence for particular legal positions are attributed to earlier Imams, especially Muḥammad al-Bāqir (d. 114/732) and Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), and not to the Prophet. In the Ikhtilāf as well, reports going back to the early Imams are cited as evidence, though he does not use the term Sunnah to describe them. There is arguably some conflation of the two categories, on the understanding that the Imams are in many cases reporting material that has been passed down from the Prophet through their forefathers, his descendants. In al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s work as a whole, one would evidently draw the line between Sunnah and pronouncements of the Imams after Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq: pronouncements from the Prophet and the Imams up through Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, which are available through Shiʿi compilations of law and ḥadīth, especially as compiled in Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ, and the pronouncements of the Fatimid caliph-imams, especially of the current Imam, which are available in other sources or directly from the Imam himself.

The pronouncements of the current Imam represent the third source, and al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān makes a significant effort to justify the Imams’ authority, this being understood as that of the Fatimid caliphs. His references to the current caliph, al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh, as well as to the previous caliphs, and his pointed mention of the lifting of dissimulation (taqiyyah) in his time make this clear. In al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s view, this source is not an extraneous source divorced from the other two but is in fact intrinsic to the Qurʾan and the Sunnah. This is because both the Qurʾan and the Sunnah include unambiguous statements referring to the Imams’ authority. On the whole, this argument resembles al-Shāfiʿī’s argument for the authority of the Sunnah: It is not separate from the Qurʾan because the Qurʾan contains its explicit justification. The chief Qurʾanic prooftexts al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān cites are Q Nisāʾ 4:59 and Naḥl 16:43, both of which had become well-known authority verses among both Sunni and Shiʿi scholars by his time. The first includes the statement: aṭīʿū llāha wa-aṭīʿū r-rasūla wa-ulī l-amri minkum «Obey God and obey the Messenger and the Ones in Authority among you.» Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān interprets ulū al-amr “the Ones in Authority” in this verse as an unequivocal reference to the Shiʿi Imams. The second verse includes the phrase, fa-sʾalū ahla dhdhikri in kuntum lā taʿlamūn «So ask the People of Knowledge if you do not know.» Again, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān interprets the phrase ahl al-dhikr “the People of Knowledge” as an unambiguous reference to the Imams. He devotes some effort to justifying this view, arguing against various interpretations proposed by Sunni scholars that identify these phrases as references to the authority of military commanders, rulers, religious scholars, or jurists. Throughout the Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān uses these two labels, “the Ones in Authority” and “the People of Knowledge” as technical terms referring to the Imams as the sole legitimate Islamic religious authorities. While he cites a number of other verses as justification for the Imams’ religious authority, these two are decidedly dominant in his discussion.³⁰

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān also cites oral reports from the Prophet as justification for the Imams’ religious authority. Chief among these is ḥadīth al-thaqalayn “the Report of the Two Weighty Matters,” one of the chief oral reports cited in this fashion in Shiʿi tradition. This text mentions the Book—the Qurʾan—and ahl al-bayt “members of the Prophet’s family” as twin objects to which the believers must cleave after the demise of the Prophet in order to gain salvation. Again, for al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, the term ahl al-bayt in the report is an unambiguous reference to the Imams. Therefore, just as the religious authority of the Imams is part and parcel of the Qurʾan, so too is it part and parcel of the Prophetic Sunnah.

With regard to oral reports, however, there are significant omissions. It is surprising, from the point of view of Sunni-Shiʿi polemics in this period, that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān does not cite the report of Ghadīr Khumm or what is called ḥadīth al-manzilah “the Report of the Status,” two of the best known and most widely cited justifications of the authority of the Shiʿi Imams. According to the first report, the Prophet stopped at the pond of Ghadīr Khumm and addressed the Muslims who were returning with him to Medina after the Farewell Pilgrimage in the final year of his life. In his speech, he stated man kuntu mawlāhu fa-ʿAliyyun mawlāhu “Whoever I am the master of, ʿAlī is his master.” According to the Shiʿi interpretation, the Prophet intended by this the explicit designation of ʿAlī as his successor. In the second report, the Prophet is supposed to have said to ʿAlī that your position with regard to me is like that of Aaron with respect to Moses. Both reports were extremely influential for Twelver Shiʿah and for the Ismaʿilis in particular. They featured prominently in polemics between Sunnis and Shiʿah. On the basis of that first report, both the Fatimids and the Buwayhids instituted a Shiʿi holiday, ʿĪd al-Ghadīr, to be celebrated on the 18th of Dhu l-Hijjah, to mark the Prophet’s explicit designation (naṣṣ) of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor.

It is not clear why the report of Ghadīr Khumm does not appear in Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, but there must be a specific reason, since it is so well known and such a major justification of the Imams’ religious authority. Perhaps al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān saw that citing the Ghadīr Khumm report would lead directly into disputes about the Imamate in particular, which for this work would be a digression from the main topic. In contrast, in Daʿāʾim al-islām, he discusses Ghadīr Khumm in detail as a justification for allegiance to the Imams and to the Fatimids in particular in the introductory section on walāyah.³¹ It appears that he must have been writing that already while composing Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, or at least planning to write it, and these omissions are likely relegating detailed debate over the Imamate per se to Daʿāʾim al-Islām and other works.

Along with a presentation of the Ismaʿilī doctrine of religious authority, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān criticizes Sunni views of religious authority, which he sees as having deviated from the truth in two important ways. First, as he describes it, the caliphs of the Sunnis proved their illegitimacy by turning away from religion and focusing single-mindedly on worldly wealth and power. They did not fulfill their duties as Imams of the Muslim community, which include the provision of comprehensive guidance for the believers. Second, Sunni jurists claimed religious authority for which they had no warrant. They arrogated to themselves the right to interpret Islamic law and doctrine and to impose their views on the common people, claiming a superior status. Furthermore, the two phenomena are related. As al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān puts it, the Umayyad caliphs (661–750) but more significantly the Abbasid caliphs (750–1258), the Fatimids’ chief ideological rivals, made a pact with the jurists according to which the caliphs would give the jurists free reign to control the religion as long as they gave the caliphs free reign to rule as they wished, both flouting Islamic legal restrictions for themselves and treating the populace tyrannically. They thus violated the sacred trust that God placed in them by appointing them to their position of leadership of the community.

In his view, then, the history of Sunni Islam witnessed the derailment of the proper relationship between jurists and the caliphs. Jurists, including judges, serve as authorities and sources of guidance and reference for the common people, but their authority must remain closely tied to and dependent on the authority of the Imams. The introductory section on walāyah in Daʿāʾim al-islām serves, among other functions, to anchor the law as a whole to the authority of the Imams. It is not a body of rules produced by the collective work of legal scholars in a separate field of human inquiry. Rather, it is a body of rules that derives from the Imams’ interpretations of God’s revealed law. For this reason al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān cites so prominently in Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib his letter of appointment to the judgeship issued by the Caliph al-Muʿizz li-Dīn Allāh and continually refers to consultation of the Imam on difficult matters. It must be made clear that his authority is subordinate to and dependent on that of the Imam; jurists have no independent authority. This is the proper state of affairs, and under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates it became corrupted.

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s portrayal may be a gross oversimplification of Islamic religious history from the early Abbasid period up until al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s time, but it contains elements of truth. The Abbasid caliphs never categorically gave up their religious authority, but it is undeniable that they lost much of that authority over time.³² It is also true that the jurists’ authority increased during the same period, and in many arenas became predominant. It is also true that the caliphs and the jurists reached a compromise of sorts over religious authority: the jurists were recognized as having authority over devotional and private law, transactions between individuals, and the caliphs—and then Muslim rulers in general—were recognized as having authority over public law, including taxation, defense, criminal justice, the penal system, and in general relations between individuals and the state. This compromise came to characterize most Sunni societies from the tenth century until the present.³³

It is telling that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān does not recognize other groups as claimants to religious authority along with the caliphs or Imams and the jurists. Certainly, theologians, hadith specialists, mystics, and philosophers were other important claimants to religious authority who were active during his day, and so could have figured more prominently in his portrayal of the historical or current ideological state of the Islamic world. He does refer to questions of theology, and he refers to hadith reports certainly, but he does not single out theologians or ḥadīth specialists for particular mention. It is also worth noting that while he mentions Abū Ḥanīfah, Mālik ibn Anas, and al-Shāfiʿī prominently in his work, he does not mention Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, which must be construed as an intentional slight, one that may be seen in other Shiʿi works that cast aspersion on Ibn Ḥanbal by omission: He simply is not important enough to merit discussion, and his followers are associated with violent anti-Shiʿism or naṣb “hatred of the Prophet’s descendants.”³⁴

THE DOMINANCE OF SUNNI LEGAL INSTITUTIONS

George Makdisi, Christopher Melchert, and others have traced the jurists’ increasing dominance over Islamic religious discourse in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. Makdisi pointed out certain milestones in this development, in which the jurists were able to assert their authority over and against those of the theologians and the caliphs. In his view, the jurists’ success in asserting their authority was a triumph of traditionalism over rationalism. One milestone was the publication of the Risālah by Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), which Makdisi describes as presenting a juridical, traditionalist theology designed to compete with that of the rationalist theology of the Muʿtazilah. The next was the failure of the Miḥnah, or Inquisition of 218–33/833–48, during which the Abbasid caliphs, supported by the Muʿtazilī theologians, endeavored to impose the Muʿtazilī doctrine that the Qurʾan was created. The next was the defection of the theologian al-Ashʿārī (d. ca. 324/935) to the traditionalist camp toward the end of his life. The next was the promulgation of the Qādirī Creed in 409/1018 and repeatedly in later years by the Caliph al-Qādir (r. 381–422/991–1031) and his son and successor al-Qāʾim (r. 422–67/1031–75). The jurists’ teaching occurred first in masjid-khān complexes, in the tenth century, and then in madrasahs or colleges of law, beginning in the late eleventh century.

Makdisi argued that the jurists were able to exert their authority by founding and promoting the institution of the madhhab, which he termed the “guild” of law. Over the course of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, this institution gained prominence in society and began to exert hegemonic effects. In order to become a recognized legal authority, one had to receive one’s legal training from a recognized master in the previous generation. A standard legal curriculum was devised, which included training in madhhab, that is, the collected legal rulings accepted within a particular tradition of legal study, khilāf, that is, disputed legal rulings, and dialectic. There were recognized levels of legal study, which Makdisi likened to undergraduate and graduate education. Upon finishing the major stages of his legal education, the student would complete a taʿlīqah or report based on the lectures of his master. The master would recognize his student’s completion of legal education and his attainment of the status of a fully qualified jurist by granting him ijāzat al-iftāʾ wa-l-tadrīs “the license to grant legal opinions and to teach law.”

In a seminal and informative work, Christopher Melchert charted the historical rise of the legal madhhab, the classical school of law. He established several criteria for identifying the existence of this institution: recognition of a raʾīs or chief scholar in a given location, the production of commentaries (taʿlīqahs) on standard legal epitomes (mukhtaṣars), and recognition that students of Islamic law had completed their legal education under a specific prominent jurist. According to these criteria, he dated the consolidation of the three main legal schools in Baghdad and the Islamic East—the Shāfiʿī, Ḥanbalī, and Ḥanafī madhhabs—to the late ninth and early tenth centuries. Melchert identifies the Shāfiʿī jurist Ibn Surayj (d. 306/918), the Ḥanbalī jurist al-Khallāl (d. 311/923), and the Ḥanafī jurist Abū al-Ḥasan al-Karkhī (d. 340/952) as the virtual founders of their respective schools. In his view, the Mālikī, Ẓāhirī, and Jarīrī schools never functioned as coherent organizations in Baghdad and the East, dying out there by the early eleventh century. The Mālikīs in the West subsequently incorporated the innovations that had taken place in the East. In his view, the adherents of the Ẓāhirī school—followers of Dāwūd ibn ʿAlī (d. 270/884)—and the Jarīrī school—followers of Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923)—did not produce the regular commentaries that signal the existence of an institutional madhhab.

In addition to the criteria established by Melchert, George Makdisi discussed biographical works on the classes of jurists (ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ) as a standard feature of the legal guild. In his view, they represented a traditionalist mode of argument for the legitimate authority of the legal madhhab. Drawing on a survey of ṭabaqāt works extant or mentioned in the sources, Makdisi argued that the Ḥanbalī madhhab was established by the turn of the tenth century with the Ṭabaqāt aṣḥāb Ibn Ḥanbal of Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Khallāl (d. 311/923), the Mālikī madhhab in the tenth century with the Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt fī man yarwī ʿan Mālik wa-atbāʿihim min ahl al-amṣār of Ibn Abī Dalim (d. 351/962), the Shāfiʿī madhhab with the Kitāb fī ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyyah of Abū al-Ṭayyib Ṭāhir ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṭabarī (d. 450/1058), and the Ḥanafī madhhab much later, with the Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanafiyyah of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad al-Muhandis (d. 769/1367) and al-Jawāhir al-muḍiyyah by Ibn Abī al-Wafāʾ al-Qurashī (d. 775/1373).³⁵ While such works do embody a claim to authority, the formation of a legal madhhab may not necessarily be accompanied by the compilation of such a work by one of its prominent members. I argued that Makdisi overlooked notable ṭabaqāt works, particularly in the Ḥanafī madhhab, while also suggesting that a lost work by al-Ṭabarī, Kitāb Marātib al-ʿulamāʾ, was actually devoted to the classes of jurists and represented a conscious claim to religious authority on behalf of al-Ṭabarī’s own legal school, the Jarīrī madhhab.³⁶ In addition, I have argued that it had become a necessity for legal schools to have a manual of uṣūl al-fiqh, that is, jurisprudence, legal hermeneutics, or legal theory, in order to be recognized as authoritative. By the end of the ninth century, the Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī, Ẓāhirī, and Jarīrī madhhabs all had substantial manuals of uṣūl al-fiqh, most of which are not extant. The Ḥanbalī madhhab, as well as the Imami and Zaydi Shiʿi madhhabs, appears to be a latecomer in this regard.³⁷

The Sunni legal system exerted pressure on outside groups to conform or at least to respond to their increasing control over public and scholarly religious discourse. Makdisi already noted that in reaction to the increasing hegemony of the jurists, theologians “infiltrated” the legal madhhabs.³⁸ Muʿtazilah in general chose affiliation with the Ḥanafī madhhab, and Ashʿarī theologians opted for affiliation with the Shāfiʿī legal madhhab. I have argued that Twelver Shiʿah primarily chose affiliation with the Shāfiʿī legal madhhab.³⁹ In the late ninth and early tenth centuries, the Twelver or Imami Shiʿah affiliated with the Ẓāhirī madhhab as well.⁴⁰ The Zaydis affiliated primarily with the Ḥanafī madhhab early in their history, in Iraq and Iran, and centuries later in Yemen with the Shāfiʿīs. It is likely as well that Khārijī and Ismaʿili Shiʿi jurists affiliated with one or another of the Sunni legal madhhabs in some periods and regions, but this topic has not been investigated.

At the same time, the rise in the hegemony of the jurists of the Sunni legal madhhabs over Islamic legal discourse provoked another sort of reaction among the potentially excluded groups: the effort to establish other legal madhhabs on a par with those of the Sunnis. I have described this process in some detail for the Twelver Shiʿah, who established the Imami madhhab in Baghdad in the tenth and eleventh centuries, particularly through the efforts of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (413/1022), al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044), and al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067).⁴¹ The Zaydis evidently did the same during the same period; a key figure in this regard was the Imam al-Nāṭiq bi-l-Ḥaqq (d. 422/1033).⁴² Less is known about the Khārijī tradition, but at least certain elements in their legal literature show a similar trend. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s overall project was to establish Ismaʿili law on a par with the legal schools of the Sunnis, and Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib must be viewed as part of that effort. Even though his conception of religious authority and the structure of the legal school differed radically from those of the Sunni jurists, he certainly had the Sunni legal schools in mind while he was writing his works.

SHEDDING LIGHT ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF ISLAMIC LEGAL THEORY

Lokhandwalla realized already in 1972 that Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib was a crucial text because it sheds light on the early history of Islamic legal theory in general, and not just on that promoted by the Fatimid state. Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib is arguably one of the most important sources for the early history of the genre of uṣūl al-fiqh (jurisprudence, legal theory, or legal hermeneutics). Its merit lies in the fact that, despite some corruption of the text, it is integral and complete and sets out to provide, in the course of a sustained refutation, a comprehensive survey of Sunni theories of jurisprudence as they existed in the mid-tenth century. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, and the author whose treatise he set out to refute, had access to many other Sunni works of jurisprudence or legal hermeneutics (uṣūl al-fiqh). In the course of the text itself, al-Nuʿmān remarks several times that he is merely summarizing the Sunnis’ arguments so as not to bore the reader, such as, for example, when he presents the arguments for the authority of consensus.⁴³ Altogether, he may be citing scores of Sunni works of uṣūl al-fiqh, either directly or through intermediate sources. This is particularly important because most of the seminal works in this genre from the ninth and tenth centuries have not been preserved. The material they contained is only known from later bibliographies and scattered fragments and quotations. Between the Risālah of al-Shāfiʿī and the Muʿtamad of Abū al-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī (d. 436/1044), composed in the early eleventh century, few works from this genre have survived, the main exceptions being the Fuṣūl of Abū Bakr al-Jaṣṣāṣ al-Rāzī (d. 370/981) and the seventeenth volume of the Mughnī of al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), both of which are missing sections, crucially the introductions, which may have provided important information on the authors’ aims and intentions in writing the work as well as the prior history of the genre. Along with these, one half of another important work from the late tenth century, al-Bāqillānī’s (d. 403/1013) al-Taqrīb wa-lirshād, has survived; it, too, is missing the introduction.

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān informs us that he wrote Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib in response to an opponent with whom he debated the validity of ijtihād, legal interpretation or the exhaustive independent investigation of a legal question. He claims that he soundly defeated his opponent, but that the opponent subsequently collected a treatise in one fascicle (kurrāsah) reporting the opinions of those who upheld the validity of legal interpretation and presenting their proofs of its validity. He writes that he quoted in his book all the arguments that the opponent had presented in his treatise, and added any other of their arguments which were available to him. Then, he decided to refute all the other hermeneutical principles to which the Sunnis resort in their jurisprudence, and not just legal interpretation (ijtihād): the arbitrary adoption of views on authority (taqlīd), consensus (ijmāʿ), speculative reasoning (naẓar), analogy (qiyās), preference (istiḥsān), and inference (istidlāl), as we see in the completed work.⁴⁴

Moreover, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān had a large number of Sunni uṣūl al-fiqh texts at his direct disposal and often quotes or paraphrases material from these works. The identification of these works is rendered difficult by the fact that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān rarely refers to the books that he is citing or paraphrasing by title, and in most cases refers to the authors in question only obliquely. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān mentions very few works by title in the course of his refutation: Adab al-qāḍī and Ikhtilāf al-Shāfiʿī wa-Mālik by al-Shāfiʿī, al-Mujarrad by al-Ḥasan ibn Ziyād al-Luʾluʾī (d. 204/819–20), a student of Abū Ḥanīfah, and a refutation of ʿĪsā ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḍarīr’s (fl. third/ninth c.) work on legal analogy (qiyās) by Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd (d. 297/910). Comparison of the text of his quotations shows that he also quoted al-Shāfiʿī’s works on legal theory al-Risālah, Jimāʿ al-ʿilm, and Ibṭāl al-istiḥsān. The small number of explicitly designated works does not negate the fact, however, that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān is arguing against a sophisticated system of jurisprudence which had been presented in a highly developed tradition of Sunni works by his time and that he is quoting directly from scores of important works, most of which are no longer extant. In some cases, we can identify particular works, at least tentatively. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān quotes the Baghdadi Muʿtazilī author Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ikhshādh (d. 327/938) without mentioning a particular book title, but the fact that the quoted material focuses on consensus suggests that the quotation must derive from Kitāb al-Ijmāʿ (Book on Consensus), a title attributed to that author in bibliographical sources.⁴⁵ He mentions that a certain Baghdādī holds the opinion that a consensus remains a consensus even when there is dissenting opinion on condition that the number of dissenters be small. While he does not give any name, this must be a reference to Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, for he was a Baghdādī and is known to have voiced this unusual opinion. He must also have used the works of the prominent Shāfiʿī jurist Ibn Surayj. As studies advance, manuscripts are edited and published, and tools for cross-reference improve, it may be possible to identify additional works of uṣūl al-fiqh to which al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān had access, either directly or indirectly. As more early works are published, and as the fragments preserved in later works are studied more closely, the connections between Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib and early uṣūl al-fiqh works will become clearer.

In an earlier publication, I argued that Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib preserves extensive quotations from an early Ẓāhirī work of jurisprudence, al-Wuṣūl ilā maʿrifat al-uṣūl by Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd al-Iṣbahānī (d. 297/910).⁴⁶ I now believe that a number of passages that I had earlier assigned to the chapter refuting analogy contained in that work actually derive from Ibn Dāwūd’s refutation of ʿĪsā ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ḍarīr, which apparently was devoted exclusively to analogy. Nevertheless, an examination of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s quoted material suggests that he drew on al-Wūṣūl ilā maʿrifat al-uṣūl a great deal throughout Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib; it is likely that he drew major arguments from that manual for several chapters of his work, perhaps more than I identified in the above-mentioned study. The main reason for his reliance on the work of Ibn Dāwūd was ideological: both the Ẓāhirīs and the Shiʿah in general, and al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān in particular, adopted a similar approach to legal interpretation. To borrow terms from Aron Zysow’s masterful study of Islamic legal theory, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, like most Shiʿi scholars, was a materialist, that is, a legal interpreter who demands certainty in formulations of the law. In contrast, his Sunni foes are formalists, who demand a correct procedure but not certainty, and who are comfortable dealing in realms of probability rather than certainty.⁴⁷ For al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, probability has no place in the formulation of Islamic law. Since there is a living Imam who may be consulted in difficult cases, in theory he does not have to confront uncertainties in the law. Ibn Dāwūd provided al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān many sophisticated arguments against the same principles of hermeneutics that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān sought to prove invalid, including not only analogy but also taqlīd and istiḥsān. In al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s view, the Ẓāhirīs’ adoption of istidlāl “inference” as a hermeneutic principle is contradictory, for in his view it is just as subjective and subject to human error as analogy and the other methods are. One might go so far as to suggest that the Ikhtilāf is based primarily on al-Wuṣul ilā maʿrifat al-uṣūl not only in much of its content but also in its form.

In al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s presentation on the whole, three topics loom larger than the rest: consensus (ijmāʿ), analogy (qiyās), and legal interpretation (ijtihād). As explained above, he first wrote the work in response to a debate on the issue of ijtihād in particular, and to a treatise devoted exclusively to ijtihād that a Ḥanafī opponent had written to refute his views on the topic. One would therefore expect a focus on this issue in particular in the Ikhtilāf. In addition, however, the emphasis on ijtihād may result from the fact that it represents in a more obvious manner than some of the other hermeneutic methods he cites the subjective element involved in interpreting the law. One could say the same of qiyās. Even more than ijtihād, though, qiyās had long been the subject of intense polemics both within Sunni Islam and between Sunnis and Shiʿah. The Shiʿah had inherited numbers of reports attributed to the Imams, some of which al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān cites, that denounce the use of analogy in the determination of Islamic law. In some of these, the Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq is portrayed as debating Abū Ḥanīfah on the matter. While these debates appear to be anachronistic, it is likely that they date from several generations before al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was writing and had grown out of intense debate on this topic in particular.

It is likely that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān focuses on consensus to the extent that he does—it is the longest chapter of his work—because it is the principle most often used to exclude the Shiʿah from the pale of Islam. It was the symbol of Sunni unity, the theological doctrine that implies that the Sunni community, which is envisaged as deriving from the early Islamic community under the Prophet and the rightly guided caliphs, is the saved sect of Islam. In addition, this concept more than any other was used by proponents of the Sunni legal madhhabs as a means to exclude Shiʿi jurists from being considered in the establishment of orthodoxy and in debate over Islamic law and doctrine.⁴⁸ Furthermore, the topic of consensus seems to have occupied a central concern in early works of uṣūl al-fiqh, for it appears to have been placed first in books such as al-Ṭabarī’s al-Bayān ʿan uṣūl al-aḥkām.⁴⁹

Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān devotes significant attention to analogy and other similar concepts because they are gap-filling tactics used to flesh out God’s legislation, and he has no need for such hermeneutic procedures because the living Imam could theoretically resolve all difficult issues immediately. The situation of the Ismaʿilis was thus quite different from that of the Sunnis, and also from that of the contemporary Twelver Shiʿah, whose Imam was in occultation and unavailable for direct consultation.

Overall, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān strives to denounce Sunni hermeneutic techniques for their subjective element. When he states, at several points in the work, that they all amount to the same thing, despite their difference in labels, this is the point he is stressing. Fallible humans have no right to determine what God’s law is of their own accord, and all the probabilistic methods of interpretation that they are employing are tantamount to doing just that. Instead, jurists should determine the law by consulting the Qurʾan and the Practice of the Prophet, and they should be guided in their interpretation by the opinions of the Imams, whose authority is established by the Qurʾan itself. This is a guarantee of certainty, and deviations from this system lead to uncertainty, which is unacceptable in matters of God’s law.

Sustained polemic exchanges often have the unintended effect of making the two sides resemble each other, and Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib, whose purpose is to refute Sunni uṣūl al-fiqh, ends up resembling Sunni manuals of uṣūl al-fiqh to a large extent, at least in formal terms. Like works in that genre, it has chapters on consensus, analogy, preference, legal interpretation (ijtihād), and submission to authority (taqlīd). A major difference between it and standard manuals of uṣūl al-fiqh is the absence of chapters devoted to the linguistic principles of interpretation of scriptural material, particularly chapters on commands and prohibition, texts of general and particular scope, indeterminate and determinate texts, abrogating and abrogated texts, and so on. This suggests that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān is in agreement with much of the grammatical and linguistic interpretations of Sunni jurists, or simply that he does not see a pressing need to address those topics in his polemics.

The chapter on istidlāl (inference) shows the influence of Ẓāhirī jurisprudence in particular on al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s presentation. The chapter on taqlīd (submission to authority) has most in common with the rejecters of taqlīd such as the Ẓāhirīs, al-Ṭabarī, and al-Shāfiʿī’s student al-Muzanī, who wrote Kitāb fasād al-taqlīd. The chapter on naẓar (speculative reasoning) is not included as a chapter in extant works of uṣūl al-fiqh. The topic shows up in the epistemological postulates in the introductions to such works as al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 460/1067) al-ʿUddah, which argue that speculative reasoning can produce certainty in certain circumstances and not just probability. It is clear that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān is referring to Muʿtazilah in particular in this chapter, including Ibn al-Ikhshīd in particular, and he may have had access to manuals of uṣūl al-fiqh written by Muʿtazilī scholars that included chapters devoted to naẓar.

Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib shows the importance of Shiʿi works for shedding light on the historical development of Sunni uṣūl alfiqh. This is not only because seminal works from the tradition have been lost but also because the variety of opinion on many issues in the tradition considerably narrowed over time, and many works and ideas were suppressed, making it more difficult to reconstruct the contours of formative debate in the ninth and tenth centuries over jurisprudence and legal hermeneutics. Shiʿi authors such as al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān may preserve aspects of debate and sources that were later marginalized and may be more ecumenical in their description of Sunni thought than contemporary Sunni writers who represented one party in a large debate. Overall, it appears that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was drawing on manuals of uṣūl al-fiqh not only in the Shāfiʿī, Ḥanafī, and Mālikī traditions of legal study, but also from the Ẓāhirī, Jarīrī, and Muʿtazilī traditions, and of these it appears that Ẓāhirī influence was uppermost, so that, beside Ibn Ḥazm’s work al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām, Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib is the most important witness of Ẓāhirī jurisprudence in existence. Other Shiʿi sources may also provide valuable insights into the development of Sunni uṣūl al-fiqh, such as al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī’s al-ʿUddah, al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s (d. 436/1044) al-Dharīʿah ilā uṣūl al-sharīʿah, and the uṣūl al-fiqh manual of the Zaydi Imam Abū Ṭālib Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Nāṭiq bi-l-Ḥaqq (d. 424/1033), al-Mujzī, and should not be overlooked in future research.

THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION

I have expended a great deal of effort to render al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s prose into intelligible and fluid English, in keeping with the goals of the Library of Arabic Literature (and recognizing that those who would like to consult the original Arabic may do so in the bilingual hardcover edition.)⁵²

This has not been a simple task, for two main reasons. The first is the use of the technical vocabulary of law and legal hermeneutics, which I have endeavored to translate into English terms rather than retaining the Arabic words in transliteration, a procedure often followed in Western studies of Islamic law. Because of the use of the same terms in varying contexts and on occasion with slightly different meanings, it has been necessary to modify the translation of these terms to fit the context while at the same time trying to avoid changing them so much that the continuity would be lost. This is particularly difficult when al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān stresses a certain sense of a word in order to defeat the argument of an opponent who used the word to mean something different.

The second difficulty arises from the dialectical nature of the text. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān often argues in extremely long, drawn-out sentences, presenting an actual or hypothetical objection of an opponent, with several subsidiary parts, and then the appropriate answer to that objection, also with several subsidiary parts, in a single sentence. In translating many passages of this type, I have found it necessary for the reader’s sake to divide the sentence into more manageable pieces, for to do otherwise would have led to confusion. This has resulted in modifying the grammar of the original sentences, but my goal, throughout, has been to render clear the arguments that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān is making rather than to reproduce his syntax.

The pious formulas of blessing that occur after mentions of God and the Prophet are so frequent that they can interfere with the reader’s understanding of the English translation. They often occur a dozen or more times in close proximity, and in many cases it is clear that they were not in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s original work but have been added by later copyists. I have omitted those that follow the name of God and the name of the Prophet in the translation, but I have retained those that occur after the names of other figures such as scholars and Imams, which are much less frequent.