Notes and Brief Communications Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016): 139-144 A Man for All Seasons: Ibn ʿUqda and Crossing Sectarian Boundaries in the 4th/10th Century Jonathan Brown Georgetown University (brownj2@georgetown.edu) It is well known that the sectarian boundaries of classical Islam had not formed in the first, second or even third centuries AH – it was not until the dawn of the fourth century that we can say that the major boundary markers had been set. By the early 300/900’s, Ibn Ḥanbal and his cohort had established the central tenets of the Ahl al-sunna wa al-jamāʿa,1 with 1. The earliest datable mention of the phrase ahl al-sunna wa’l-jamāʿa that I have found is in the writing of Ḍirār b. ʿAmr (d. 200/815), who uses the phrase “ṣāḥib sunna wa jamāʿa” dismissively to refer to what seems like early Sunnis, and he writes of the sultan supposedly thanking him for saving him from the “ahl al-sunna wa’l-jamāʿa”; Ḍirār b. ʿAmr, Kitāb al-Taḥrīsh, ed. Hüseyin Hansu and Mehmet Keskin (Istanbul: Sharikat Dār al-Irshād; Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2014), 104, 130. The earliest datable usage by someone identifying with the term comes from al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892), Jāmiʿ scholars such as Abū al-al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935-6) beginning to integrate rationalism and speculative theology into the expanding Sunni tent. Between 260/874 and 329/941 the final occultation of the twelfth Imam transpired, providing the defining element of Imami Shiism. During the first two centuries of Islam, it was therefore not at all unusual for scholarly interactions and influences to occur that would seem impossible in the sectarian milieu of later classical Islam. Early scholars and ḥadīth transmitters l a t e r s e e n a s p i l l a r s o f S u n n i I s l a m could be seen receiving ḥadīths from or studying with Shiite or Kharijite teachers, for example. Sometimes such common al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-zakāt, bāb mā jā’a fī faḍl al-ṣadaqa. Editor’s Note A previous version of this article was published in al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 20/2 (2008), 55-58. For unknown reasons, however, the published text was a draft version of the article that contained errors. Prof. Jonathan Brown offers here a revised and slightly expanded version of his article. 140 • Jonathan BRoWn Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016) ground was explained through necessity. The second/eighth century Kufan ḥadīth scholar Jābir al-Juʿfī (d. 128/745-6) was so deeply ensconced in the often-extremist moil of early Shiite thought that even later Imāmī Shiites preferred to keep their distance from him.2 But he appears in major Sunni hadith collections, such as the Sunans of Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah. As the prominent second/eighth- century Sunni scholar Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ (d. 197/812) said, “If not for Jābir al-Juʿfī, the people of Kufa would be without ḥadīths.”3 Other times Sunni scholars believed that a Shiite’s sectarian leanings did not affect his overall probity and reliability – Ibn Maʿīn (d. 233/848) says of one ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Sāliḥ: he may be a Shiite, but “he would rather fall from the sky than lie about half a word.”4 Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn ʿUqda, the subject of this article, is a fascinating case. A native of Kufa who died in 332/944, we need not attempt to determine his actual character or trace his life story. Suffice it to say that he was widely esteemed by all for his colossal memory (being in command of a corpus of at least 500,000 narrations) and his astounding library (600 camel loads).5 Most importantly for 2. Hussein Modaressi, Tradition and Survival: A Bibliographical Survey of Early Shīʿite Literature Vol. 1 (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003), 92. 3. Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-ṣalāt, bāb mā jāʾa fī faḍl al-adhān. As the later Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn Rajab pointed out, this is patently not true. Kufa enjoyed a slew of major ḥadīth transmitters in that era, such as al-Aʿmash and Abū Isḥāq al-Sabīʿī; Ibn Rajab, Sharḥ ʿIlal al-Tirmidhī, ed. Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr, 2 vols. (n.p.: n.p., 1398/1978), 1:69-70. 4. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh al-Baghdād, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, 14 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1417/1997), 10:260. 5. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Lisān al-mīzān (Beirut: us, Ibn ʿUqda represents a vestigial tract of common ground after the Islamic sectarian boundaries had reified. The Sunni, Imami Shiite and Zaydi Shiite traditions all accorded him great respect as a transmitter of revealed knowledge and as an architect of formalized Muslim scholarship; this despite their recognition of his strong sectarian leanings. Sunni scholars and ḥadīth critics of the fourth/tenth century onwards leveled serious but not uncommon critiques at Ibn ʿUqda: he was a Shiite who narrated ḥadīths insulting the Companions in d i c t a t i o n s e s s i o n s , w i t h o n e ʿ A b d ā n al-Ahwāzī saying that “Ibn ʿUqda exited the boundaries of the Ahl al-ḥadīth, and he should not be mentioned as one of them.” Another accusation was that he brought ḥ a d ī t h n o t e b o o k s o f h i g h l y d u b i o u s authenticity into Kufa and attributed them to Kufan teachers.6 T h e s e a r e n o t e w o r t h y c r i t i c i s m s , but other Sunnis before and after Ibn ʿUqda (such as al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, d. 405/1014) were tarnished with comparably barbed accusations, and they remained none the worse for wear. What is salient about Ibn ʿUqda is that the criticisms about him were not limited to such clichéd and abstract accusations. They were tangible and highly objectionable. Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201) blames Ibn ʿUqda by name f o r c i r c u l a t i n g t h e f o r g e d h a d i t h o f the sun’s reversing itself miraculously so that ʿAlī could make up a prayer.7 Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 1:264. 6. Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-mīzān, 1:265. 7. Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Mawḍūʿāt, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad ʿUthmān, 3 vols. (Medina: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1386-88/1966-68), 1:356-7. Aside from isnād criticisms, Ibn al-Jawzī and others pointed to the supposed ḥadīth contradicting Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016) A Man for All Seasons • 141 another Prophetic saying that the sun was only ever reversed for Joshua (lam turadd al-shams illā ʿalā Yushaʿ b. Nūn). For versions of the ḥadīth of the sun being reversed for ʿAlī, narrated through Asmāʾ bt. ʿUmays and al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī (kāna rasūl Allāh fī ḥujr ʿAlī wa huwa yūḥā ilayhi fa-lammā surriya ʿanhu qāla yā ʿAlī ṣallayta al-ʿaṣr? fa-qāla lā, fa-qāla Allahumma innaka taʿlamu annahu kāna fī ḥājatika wa ḥājat rasūlika fa-rudd ʿalayhi al-shams fa-raddahā ʿalayhi fa-ṣallā wa ghābat al-shams / annahu ʿalayhi al-ṣalāt), see Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Dūlābī (d. 310/923, of Rayy then of Egypt), al-Dhurriyya al-ṭāhira al-nabawiyya (Kuwait: al-Dār al-Salafiyya, 1407/1986), 91-2. Another version of the ḥadīth comes through Jābir from the Prophet (anna al-Nabī amara al-shams fa-taʾakhkharat sāʿatan min nahār); Abū al-Qāsim Sulaymān al-Ṭabarānī, al-Muʿjam al-awsaṭ, ed. Ṭāriq b. ʿAwaḍ Allāh al-Ḥusaynī, 10 vols. (Cairo: Dar al-Ḥaramayn, 1415/1995), 4:224. The best amalgamation of these narrations was made by Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/932), Sharḥ mushkil al-āthār, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ, 16 vols. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1994), 3:92-104. Ibn al-Jawzī relied for parts of his criticism on al-ʿUqaylī (d. 323/934); Abū Jaʿfar al-ʿUqaylī, Kitāb al-Ḍuʿafāʾ al-kabīr, ed. ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī Amīn Qalʿajī, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1404/1984), 3:337. For other scholars who considered this ḥadīth to be forged, see Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), Mīzān al-iʿtidāl fī naqd al-rijāl, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Bijāwī, 4 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, [n.d.], reprint of 1963-4 Cairo ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī edition), 3:170; Mullā ʿAlī al-Qārī (d. 1014/1606), al-Asrār al-marfūʿa, ed. Muḥammad Luṭfī Ṣabbāgh (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1986), 213, 397-8 (though he notes that al-Ṭabarānī and others included this ḥadīth via a ḥasan isnād); Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (d. 1999 CE), Silsilat al-aḥādīth al-ḍaʿīfa wa’l- mawḍūʿa (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1400/2000), 2:395-402 (an extensive discussion of the isnād ad/ transmitters in the book, he would otherwise have left such an esteemed s c h o l a r a s I b n ʿ U q d a o u t . A b ū Y a ʿ l ā al-Khalīlī (d. 446/1054) calls Ibn ʿUqda “one of the ḥadīth masters (min8 al-ḥuffāẓ and matn flaws of the narrations). Many scholars, however, have considered this ḥadīth to be ṣaḥīḥ, for example al-Ṭaḥāwī (op. cit.), Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149), Kitāb al-Shifā (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2002), 177 (it is thābit); Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), al-Laʾālīʾ al-maṣnūʿa fī al-aḥādīth al-mawḍūʿa, ed. Ṣāliḥ Muhammad ʿUwayda, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1416/1996), 1:308-13 (he argues that, since no prophet was given a miracle without Muḥammad being given its like or better, and the sun was reversed for Joshua, then Muḥammad must have produced the same miracle); idem, al-Khaṣāʾiṣ al-kubrā, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, reprint of 1320/1902-3 Hyderabad edition), 2:82 (here al-Suyūṭī claims some of the isnāds for this ḥadīth meet the criteria of ṣaḥīḥ); Ismāʿīl al-ʿAjlūnī (d. 1748-9 CE), Kashf al-khafā, ed. Aḥmad Qalāsh (Cairo: Dār al-Turāth, n.d.), 1:255-6, 516 (following al-Suyūṭī’s reasoning). Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1791 CE) considered the ḥadīth to be reliable and offered rebuttals of Ibn al-Jawzī’s criticism. He notes how one of Ibn al-Jawzī’s objections is that once the prayer time ends the prayer is not admissible anymore even if sun returns. Al-Zabīdī presents scholarly opinions that, if the sun returns, then the time returns and performing the prayer becomes valid; Muḥammad Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, Itḥāf al-sāda al-muttaqīn sharḥ Iḥyā’ ʿulūm al-dīn, 10 vols. (Beirut: Mu’assasat al-Tārīkh al-ʿArabī, 1414/1994), 7:191-2. Abdallāh al-Ghumārī (d. 1993) says the ḥadīth is ṣaḥīḥ; al-Ghumārī, Afḍal maqūl fī manāqib afḍal rasūl (Cairo: Makatabat al-Qāhira, 2005), 24. 8. Al-Khaṭīb, Tārīkh Baghdād, 12:160. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 463/1071) notes that one severe Shiite (al-ʿAbbās b. ʿUmar al-Kalūdhānī, d. 414/1023) took u n a c c e p t a b l e ḥ a d ī t h s o n t h e v i r t u e s (faḍā’il) of early Shiites narrated by Ibn ʿUqda and attributed them to the widely a d m i r e d S u n n i c h i e f j u d g e o f K u f a , al-Maḥāmilī (d. 330/941).8 Yet Sunnis heaped praise on Ibn ʿUqda as well. In his dictionary of criticized ḥadīth transmitters, Ibn ʿAdī (d. 365/976-7) calls him “a master of knowledge and memory, at the forefront of this science (ṣāḥib maʿrifa wa ḥifẓ wa muqaddam fī hādhihi al-ṣanʿa).” He adds that, if not for his commitment to mentioning all impugned 142 • Jonathan BRoWn Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016) al-kibār),” adding, “and he is the shaykh of the Shiites.” Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), no lover of Shiites, calls Ibn ʿUqda “the ḥadīth master of his age and the oceanic ḥadīth scholar (ḥāfiẓ al-ʿaṣr wa al-muḥaddith al-baḥr).” Al-Dhahabī says he even devoted a small book to just his bio.9 In his biographical dictionary of the Shāfiʿī school of law, Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī (d. 771/1370) lists Ibn ʿUqda as one of “the ḥadīth masters of the Shariah,”10 noting that vaunted Sunni ḥadīth scholars like al-Dāraquṭnī (d. 385/995), Ibn al-Jiʿābī (d. 355/966) and al-Ḥākim all said, “I’ve never seen anyone with more mastery of ḥadīth than Ibn ʿUqda.” 11 Al-Ḥākim used Ibn ʿUqda as a transmitter in his Mustadrak, a collection of ḥadīths he claimed met the lofty standards of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, and al-Dāraquṭnī used him in his Sunan. In addition, other Sunni ḥadīth collectors such as al-Ṭabarānī (d. 360/971) and al-Silafī (d. 576/1180) also included ḥadīths transmitted by Ibn ʿUqda in their works. One story in particular seems to epitomize the grudging respect that Sunnis paid Ibn ʿUqda for his expertise in ḥadīth. In his Tārīkh, Aḥmad b. Aḥmad al-Ḥāfiẓ tells that one Ibn Ṣāʿid narrated a ḥadīth the isnād of which Ibn ʿUqda rejected. Ibn Ṣāʿid, however, had powerful connections, and Ibn ʿUqda was dragged before the vizier to be interrogated about his insulting criticism. The vizier wanted to know who 9. Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, Tadhkirat al-ḥuffāẓ, ed. Zakariyyāʾ ʿUmayrāt, 4 vols. in 2 (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1419/1998), 3:40-42. 10. Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥulw, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Hujr, 1413/1992), 1:314-6. 11. Al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt, 10:222. could settle the matter, and no less a vaunted expert than Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 327/938) was called in to consult. He sided with Ibn ʿUqda.12 Furthermore, not only did leading Sunnis approve of Ibn ʿUqda as a ḥadīth transmitter, they accepted him as a ḥadīth critic. In other words, they accepted his opinions on the worthiness of other ḥadīth transmitters. Both al-Dhahabī and Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī (d. 897/1402) list him as one of the authoritative ḥadīth transmitter critics,13 although al-Sakhāwī notes how he is an example of a critic whose opinions need to be considered in the light of his ideological/sectarian stances.14 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449) uses him as a critical source in at least three biographies in his Tahdhīb al-tahdhīb. The earliest surviving evaluation of the Ṣaḥīḥayn of al-Bukhārī and Muslim comes from Ibn ʿUqda, and, in fact, he composed the earliest known mustakhraj on the basis of al-Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ.15 Ibn ʿUqda is even used as an exemplar, and his scholarly works and opinions are cited as compelling precedent by later Sunnis. In his foundational work on the ḥadīth sciences, the Jamiʿ, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī employs Ibn ʿUqda as an 12. Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-mīzān, 1: 266. 13. Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī, “al-Mutakallimūn fī al-rijāl,” in Arbaʿ rasā’il fī ʿulūm al-ḥadīth, ed. ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda, 6th ed. (Beirut: Maktab al-Maṭbūʿāt al-Islāmiyya, 1419/1999), 111; al-Dhahabī, “Dhikr man yuʿtamadu qawluhu fī al-jarḥ wa’l-taʿdīl,” Arbaʿ rasā’il, 207. 14. Al-Sakhāwī, Fatḥ al-mughīth bi-sharḥ Alfiyyat al-ḥadīth, ed. ʿAlī Ḥusayn ʿAlī, 5 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Sunna, 1424/2003), 4:363. 15. Al-Khaṭīb, Tārīkh Baghdād, 14:454; Jonathan Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 127. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016) A Man for All Seasons • 143 e x a m p l e o f h o w i t i s a c c e p t a b l e f o r cont emporaries t o narrat e from one another. In the anecdote provided by al-Khaṭīb, Ibn ʿUqda’s Shiism is prominent. A scholar from Isfahan meets Ibn ʿUqda in Kufa and asks to hear ḥadīths from him. When Ibn ʿUqda discovered that the man was from Isfahan, he began railing against the city for being antagonistic to the Family of the Prophet and housing their enemies. To this the man replies that there are in Isfahan plenty of Shiites who love ʿAlī. Then Ibn ʿUqda examined in him on whom he had studied with in Isfahan, responding angrily when the man admitted that he had not heard from people that Ibn ʿUqda thought were superb. He was also upset that the man had not heard the Musnad of Abū Dāwūd al-Ṭayālisī (d. 204/820), since “its well spring is from Isfahan.”16 In his seminal work on the ḥadīth sciences, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (d. 643/1245) uses Ibn ʿUqba’s allowing the narration by ijāza as proof of its acceptability (along with other examples like al-Khaṭīb and Dāraquṭnī).17 When Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿIrāqī (d. 806/1404) rendered Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ’s book in poetic form, Ibn ʿUqda’s name even graces a verse. In the Zaydi Shiite ḥadīth tradition, Ibn ʿUqda is seen as a founding figure (he seems to have espoused the Jārūdī Zaydi view). His book listing and identifying those people who transmitted ḥadīths from Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (some 4,000 in all) is seen by Zaydi scholars like Ṣārim al-Dīn al-Wazīrī (d. 915/1508) as the starting point of Zaydi 16. Al-Khaṭīb, al-Jamiʿ li-ikhtilāf al-rāwī wa ādāb al-sāmiʿ, ed. Muḥammad Ra’fat Saʿīd, 2 vols. (Mansoura, Egypt: Dār al-Wafā’, 1422/2002), 2:242. 17. Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, Muqaddimat Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ, ed. ʿĀʾisha ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1411/1990), 343. ḥadīth scholarship.18 Al-Wazīrī also notes that Ibn ʿUqda wrote a book on the ḥadīth of Ghadīr Khumm, in which Muḥammad commands his followers to take ʿAlī as their master, mentioning a total of 105 chains of transmission for the report.19 Moving further away from Sunnism, Imami Shiites also held Ibn ʿUqda in high esteem, this on the basis of his book on the students of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq as well as his commitment to preserving and transmitting the uṣūl, or the ḥadīth c o l l e c t i o n s c o p i e d f r o m t h e v a r i o u s I m a m s . 2 0 E t a n K o h l b e r g n o t e s t h a t Imami Shiites respected him despite his Jārūdī Zaydi leaning. In fact, he was so prominent a transmitter in the four Shiite canonical ḥadīth collections that he was indispensable.21 Conclusion I t i s n o t u n u s u a l t o c o m e a c r o s s a major Sunni ḥadīth transmitter or prominent ḥadīth critic whose reputation was tarnished by accusations such as Shiism. But what is interesting about Ibn ʿUqda is that he actually was Shiite -no one ever debated that. This would have been acceptable two hundred or even one hundred years earlier, before the 18. He was a main source for later Zaydi scholars; ʿAbdallāh Ḥamūd al-ʿIzzī, ʿUlum al-ḥadīth ʿind al-zaydiyya wa al-muḥaddithīn (Ṣaʿda: Muʾassasat al-Imām Zayd b. ʿAlī, 1421/2001), 225. 19. Ṣārim al-Dīn Ibrāhīm al-Wazīrī, al-Falak al-dawwār fī ʿulūm al-ḥadīth wa al-fiqh wa al-āthār, ed. Muḥammad Yaḥyā ʿAzzān (Ṣaʿda: Maktabat al-Turāth al-Islāmī and Dār al-Turāth al-Yamanī, 1415/1994), 105. 20. Etan Kohlbergh, “Al-Uṣūl al-arbaʿumiʾa,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987): 130-1. 21. Kohlberg, “Al-Uṣūl al-arbaʿumiʾa,” 130, 135. 144 • Jonathan BRoWn Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 24 (2016) categories of Sunni and Shiite had gelled. In the early to mid fourth/ninth century, however, Ibn ʿUqda’s case is unique. That he became and remained a respected fi g u r e t o t h r e e c o m p e t i n g s e c t a r i a n traditions (Sunnism, Zaydism and Imami Shiism), suggests that Muslim scholarly society had criteria for expertise that could transcend sectarianism. It is not unusual to come across a ḥadīth transmitter in major Sunni ḥadīth collections who was accused of Shiism but was nonetheless accepted. But Ibn ʿUqda, uniquely as far as I know, was accepted as a ḥadīth critic. It is interesting that we have no record that Ibn ʿUqda ever contested charges that he was a Jārūdī Shiite – he was indeed a man for all seasons.