JOURNAL OF ARABIC AND ISLAMIC STUDIES

28
Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 11 (2011)
Muzanī, 118 al-ʿAbbādī says that he stood up against the doctrine of the
created Qurʾān in Egypt and, thereby, ‘rendered the people of the Sunna
victorious’. 119
That al-ʿAbbādī mentions the miḥna and that the early members of the
Shāfiʿī school rejected, despite persecution, the createdness of the
Qurʾān highlights the extent to which the Shāfiʿī school was from its
inception opposed to Muʿtazilī doctrines. This may also be the reason
behind al-Shāfiʿī’s outright rejection of the legal views of the abovementioned
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who is said to have agreed in theology
with Muʿtazilī tenets. Although al-Shāfiʿī did not address the nature of
the Qurʾān in his writings, al-ʿAbbādī documents that his immediate
disciples attest that he opposed the createdness of the Qurʾān doctrine.
More importantly, al-ʿAbbādī’s presentation of the Shāfiʿī doctrine on
the Qurʾān also conveys the message that Ibn Ḥanbal was not the sole
champion of the inquisition, but that prominent Shāfiʿī jurists formed
part of the intellectual heritage that later informed Sunnī orthodoxy. This
is of particular significance as al-ʿAbbādī does not consider Ḥanbalīs a
school of law – as opposed to a school of thought or traditionalist
attitude more generally. 120 His book, thus, documents that among
schools of law it was the Shāfiʿī school that defended the doctrine of the
uncreatedness of the Qurʾān. 121 In contrast, Ḥanafīs are primarily
associated in the historical sources with the Muʿtazilī position and some
Mālikīs are mentioned among the supporters of the miḥna. 122
118 This Yūsuf b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā (see al-ʿAbbādī, Kitāb Ṭabaqāt, 52) may be an
instance of tafrīq with Yūnus b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā, who belonged to the first generation
of Shāfiʿīs (ibid., 18). Al-ʿAbbādī’s comment that Yūsuf b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā was an
associate of al-Muzanī would also better fit Yūnus than a member listed under the
third generation of Shāfiʿīs.
119 Ibid., 52.
120 See above, footnote 40.
121 In revisiting those individuals who were said to have been interrogated
during the miḥna, Nawas emphasizes that the caliph targeted in particular ḥadīth
transmitters as they and their teaching had become a rival force to the authority of
the caliph, see Nawas, ‘The Miḥna of 218 A.H.,’ 702–8. That some Shāfiʿī jurists
were among those questioned (as is confirmed for al-Buwayṭī) means that the circle
of scholars around al-Shāfiʿī was deemed closely associated with the ḥadīthtransmitter
movement.
122 Madelung, ‘Controversy Concerning the Creation of the Koran,’ 509–11;
Hinds, ‘Miḥna,’ EI 2 , vol. 7, 4; Melchert, Formation of Sunni Schools of Law, 8. For