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opinions on sneezing, 58 eating, 59 drinking, 60 laughing, 61 and honor
(murūʾa), 62 some of which allegedly portray al-Shāfiʿī’s personal
behavior. 63 While the purpose of including these legal views is not
immediately apparent, it may reflect the author’s own interest in the
topic of proper social manners as he himself composed a work on the
etiquette of judges (adab al-qāḍī). 64 Perhaps, the author meant to give
the impression that the founder of the school was a well-mannered
person of high moral standing.
Taking a stand among contradictory doctrines
When looking at al-ʿAbbādī’s work as a whole, it becomes clear that he
considers the members of the school and their doctrines a coherent
madhhab. They represent what the school stands for and they perpetuate
the teachings of the founding father(s). Al-ʿAbbādī’s double role as
compiler of extant information and active participant in shaping the
identity of the school comes to the fore when Shāfiʿī jurists depart from
the master’s teachings or when they hold contradictory views. In most
cases he does not simply document these doctrinal disputes, but employs
a number of authorial devices to point the reader to the ‘correct’ Shāfiʿī
position.
One such way al-ʿAbbādī deals with contradictory views held by
Shāfiʿī jurists is to present them without further comment, leaving it for
the reader to decide which to follow. In general, al-ʿAbbādī only does
this when the jurists involved do not belong to the circle of the founding
fathers, and when no continuous link to al-Shāfiʿī or his direct disciples
can be established. For example, he states under the entry of Abū
Marwān Ismāʿīl b. Marwān, a jurist of the third generation whose
teachers remain unnamed, a disagreement among Shāfiʿīs over whether it
is permissible to specify an obvious meaning by means of analogy
(takhṣīṣ al-ẓāhir bi-l-qiyās), that is to say, limiting the applicability of an
obvious textual ruling by one arrived at in analogy to a textual statement.
58 Al-ʿAbbādī, Kitāb Ṭabaqāt, 37 and 43.
59 Ibid., 36.
60 Ibid., 43.
61 Ibid., 61.
62 Ibid., 49 and 56–7.
63 Ibid., 49, 56–7, and 60.
64 Ibid., English pagination 8; Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen
Litteratur, zweite, den Supplementbänden angepasste Auflage (Leiden: Brill,
1937ff), vol. 1, 389; Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, vol. 4, 214.
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