JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

20
Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011)
unbelievers and that those who shoot at them do not sin nor do they have
to atone for it (lā ithma ʿalayhim wa-lā kaffārata). 79 Interestingly, in the
way al-ʿAbbādī presents the matter, he accepts al-Shāfiʿī’s ruling that is
based on a report which is not further identified over his earlier view that
is explicitly said to be supported by a prophetic saying. One may surmise
that al-Shāfiʿī (as well as al-ʿAbbādī) was less the champion of
adherence to prophetic ḥadīth than frequently portrayed. 80
The negative attitude toward al-Shāfiʿī’s Iraqi teaching comes out
most clearly in a quote by the latter’s close companion and disciple al-
Buwayṭī (d. 231/845), about whom al-ʿAbbādī said that he succeeded the
master after his death. 81 In the entry of Abū Ismāʿīl al-Tirmidhī (d.
280/893), al-Buwayṭī is quoting al-Shāfiʿī who proclaimed that he does
not permit transmitting from him what he wrote in Iraq. 82 Here and
elsewhere, al-ʿAbbādī emphasizes that the school’s doctrines circulating
in the Eastern part of the Islamic world, that is to say, where he himself
studied, are based on al-Shāfiʿī’s Egyptian works which Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm
al-Ḥanẓalī, who met al-Shāfiʿī in Egypt, had copied and taken back with
him to the East. 83
Although the Iraqi doctrine was delegitimized by the eponym himself,
his command was not heeded by later generations, as the documented
persistence of Iraqi doctrines show. Even al-ʿAbbādī, who displays a
strong preference for al-Shāfiʿī’s Egyptian teaching, occasionally makes
an exception, as in a dispute between al-Muzanī and al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī
al-Karābīsī (d. 245 or 248/859 or 862). Al-Karābīsī is presented as one
of the eminent jurists of Iraq and an important transmitter of Shāfiʿī
teaching. When al-Muzanī remarks that he does not know the doctrine
al-Karābīsī holds on authority of al-Shāfiʿī regarding a sale transaction
involving wheat, al-ʿAbbādī defends al-Karābīsī’s ruling saying that the
reason is because al-Muzanī did not hear the old Iraqi doctrines of al-
Shāfiʿī. 84 Moreover, al-Muzanī does not provide an alternative ruling.
One is left with the impression that in this case it is al-Muzanī’s
shortcoming not to know al-Karābīsī’s report of al-Shāfiʿī’s Iraqi
79 Al-ʿAbbādī, Kitāb Ṭabaqāt, 43.
80 Cf. Joseph Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1950), 150.
81 Al-ʿAbbādī, Kitāb Ṭabaqāt, 7.
82 Ibid., 57.
83 Ibid., 38 and 57.
84 Ibid., 24.