Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

110 Ahmed El Shamsy
Ibn al-Jawzı’s teachings reached an ever wider audience, and the
caliph eventually granted him legal powers to pursue heretics. Initially,
Ibn al-Jawzı’s campaign was directed against Shı‘ıs, but soon also non-
H _
anbalite Sunnı scholars began to feel marginalised. Eventually the
persecution touched also the H _
anbalı community, when heretical
philosophical works were discovered in a madrasa ledbyaprominent
H _
anbalı scholar: the latter was relieved of his directorship and the
madrasa was turned over to the direct control of Ibn al-Jawzı. However,
while Ibn al-Jawzı’s career is not unique, his inquisitorial powers represent
an exception that was enabled not by the strength and dominance
of the views he represented, but by the force of his personal charisma.
theology in society
There are few direct sources which shed light on the reception of
theology by ordinary believers in the pre-modern period. Most of what
can be discovered on this subject must be gleaned from the writings of
scholars; these, however, had little interest in popular religion and
generally mention the beliefs of the common people only in the context
of bemoaning ignorance and superstition among the masses. Consequently,
not much is known about how ordinary Muslims received,
understood and contributed to theological orthodoxy, and this section is
thus inevitably little more than a sketch.
What we do know is that the discourse of the hadith folk enjoyed
immense legitimacy and popularity among ordinary people from its very
beginning. The traditionists were perceived as safeguards of the information
through which the model embodied by the life of the Prophet
(sunna) could be accessed. Recitations of prophetic traditions, covering a
wide variety of subjects including theological issues, were often attended
by thousands if not tens of thousands of listeners. In contrast, the public
generally shunned the debates of the early mutakallimun. The latter’s
elitist discourse and their acerbic public exchanges which easily turned
to polemics and sophistry alienated ordinary believers, who, it seems,
often considered such bold speculation regarding the nature of God to
border on the impious and thus viewed the theories of the theologians
with suspicion. 10
With the gradual development of the Sunnı consensus,thepublic
confrontations of the kalam experts died down, and basic Ash‘arı and
Maturıdı doctrines were eventually absorbed into the evolving Sunnism
of the ordinary Muslims. There was, however, a period of transition
as the scholars negotiated the contours of a common ground, and the
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