Mistaken Identity: An Investigation into Abu Hanifa's al-Fiqh al-akbar.

• Author: Harvey, Ramon

INTRODUCTION

The jurist and theologian Abu Hanifa al-Nu'man b. Thabit (d. 150/767), from Kufa in Iraq, is one of the most influential scholars in the history of Islam. Though he is most famous as the eponym of one of the four canonical Sunni schools of Islamic law, he also has a theological legacy, which was principally expressed through written records of his teachings that were passed on to his successors. There is a good chance that a Muslim studying today in a Hanafi madrasa will be taught the creed ascribed to him titled al-Fiqh al-akbar, often accompanied by the commentary by Mulla All al-Qarl (d. 1014/1606). This text, like other such primers, covers the core of Islamic belief with a prominent focus on the divine attributes.

Nevertheless, since the 1932 publication of A. J. Wensinck's The Muslim Creed, it is commonly asserted in Western academia that Abu Hanifa did not write this creed. Wensinck argued that the content of the text, which he termed al-Fiqh al-akbar II, does not reflect the prevailing terminology and polemical debates of the mid-second/eighth century, but rather the milieu of al-Ash'ari (d. 324/935f.) in the first part of the fourth/tenth. (1) In fact, this conclusion was anticipated by the early twentieth-century Indian reformer Shibli Nu'manl, who also examined the book's transmission; he remarked both on its apparently anachronistic language and on the light impression that it had made in history, noting that it was only first commented upon in the eighth/fourteenth century. (2) Wensinck's assessment of the dating of al-Fiqh al-akbar II was not challenged by either Josef van Ess or Ulrich Rudolph in their studies of the early development of the Hanafi tradition, although William Montgomery Watt cautiously suggested a late fourth/tenth-century dating. (3) Some contemporary researchers working from within the Islamic theological tradition, such as 'Inayatullah Iblagh, Wahbl Ghawji, Abdur-Rahman (Ibn Yusuf) Mangera, and Rustam Mahdi, have responded to doubts about the text's authorship and upheld its authenticity--though only Mangera, writing in English, mentions Wensinck. They cite early scholars who refer to an al-Fiqh al-akbar by Abu Hanlfa as well as the existence of a reliable chain of narrators (isnad) for the text, which is claimed to have been transmitted by his son Hammad (d. 176/792). (4) They do not take up the charge of anachronism between the creed's content and the second/eighth-century milieu of Abu Hanlfa (see [section]6 below).

In this article I will seek to resolve the provenance and reception of Abu Hanlfa's al-Fiqh al-akbar II within Islamic intellectual history. I will start by discussing the pair of theological texts ascribed by early Muslim authors to Abu Hanlfa, viz., Kitab al-'Alim wa-l-tnuta'allim and al-Fiqh al-akbar, which are central to the reception arguments that follow, and by analyzing the main chains of transmission for all three sources. I will then argue that the historical record undermines the ascription to him of al-Fiqh al-akbar II, as the Hanafi theologians who are said to have transmitted it do not cite it in their works. Moreover, for many centuries references to al-Fiqh al-akbar actually concern the so-called al-Fiqh al-absat, a text that records Abu Hanlfa's teachings on the authority of his student Abu Muti/ al-Balkhi (d. 199/814). (5) This latter creed was the text cited exclusively under the name al-Fiqh al-akbar into the seventh/thirteenth century, when there was a resurgence of interest among Hanafis in revisiting Abu Hanlfa's theological legacy. I will show that al-Fiqh al-akbar II likely first entered the mainstream Hanafi tradition only in the eighth/fourteenth century, through its extensive quotation in the commentary on legal theory Kashf al-asrar by 'Abd al-AzIz al-Bukhari (d. 730/1329), and I will detail the stages of reception that allowed it to replace its namesake, which eventually was retitled al-Fiqh al-absat. Finally, I will make a case for identifying the author of al-Fiqh al-akbar II based on debates on specific theological questions, including the possibility of saintly marvels (karamdt), the fate of the Prophet Muhammad's parents, and the divine attributes. I shall argue that these pieces of evidence together support the claim appearing in classical-era sources that the creed owes its genesis to an obscure scholar of fourth/tenth-century Transoxiana named Abu Hanlfa Muhammad b. Yusuf al-Bukhari.

1. TEXTS

   Abu Hanifa's focus in his Kufan circle was jurisprudential teaching (fiqh). His most important students in this field were Abu Yusuf (d. 182/798) and the younger Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Shaybani (d. 189/805), to whom are attributed the first legal texts of the school. But there was another side to his pedagogic activities, one in which he taught what he called al-fiqh al-akbar (the greatest understanding), that is, theological principles for the resolution of disputed questions within the community. (6) Abu al-Yusr al-Bazdawi (or: al-Pazdawi) (d. 493/1099) preserves the memory of Abu Hanifa:

   Abu Hanifa, God have mercy on him, learned this discipline [viz., 'ilm al-kalam] and used to debate it with the Mu'tazila and all of the people of deviance, and initially he used to teach it to his companions. He wrote books about it, some of which have come down to us, yet most of them have been effaced and purged (mahaha wa-ghasalaha) (1) by the people of deviance and misguidance. What has come down to us are Kitab al-'Alim wa-l-muta'allim and Kitdb al-Fiqh al-akbar. He stipulated in Kitab al-'Alim wa-l-muia (() allim that there is no harm in learning this discipline [Him al-kalam].... We follow Abu Hanifa. He is our leader and exemplar in principles and practical applications, and he used to permit teaching, learning, and writing it [kalam]. But at the end of his life he refrained from debating in it, forbade his companions from doing so, and did not teach it publicly to them as he did jurisprudence, which comprises the questions of practical application. (8) Al-BazdawI here mentions the names of two texts that are central to the present study, though crucially neither of them should be identified with al-Fiqh al-akbar II. (9) Both are frequently attributed to Abu Hanifa, but were actually composed by his students from Transoxiana who transmitted his theological views on their return from studying with him in Kufa. (10) Kitab al-'Alim wa-l-muta'allim was written by Abu Muqatil al-Samarqandi (d. 208/823) in the form of a dialogue with his teacher, Abu Hanifa; it became part of the theological canon of Hanafism in Samarqand. (11) In similar fashion, al-Fiqh al-akbar (the text later known as alFiqh al-absat) was written by Abu Muti' al-Balkhl to disseminate Abu Hanifa's theology; it was probably composed in Balkh, where it first gained prominence. (12) Al-Balkhi's al-Fiqh alakbar is a detailed creedal exposition. (13) It is longer than al-Fiqh al-akbar II and emphasizes questions of belief and fate. (14) Although there is a possibility that elements have undergone interpolation, (15) it is a document that can credibly be associated with the era in which it is claimed to have emerged. Moreover, as pointed out by Rudolph, it represents an important development in the Hanafi theological tradition: "Its thematization is much more expansive, and the premises that it offered for later theological explication were certainly more numerous than any text that preceded it." (16)

   Several chains of transmission are associated with each of the three theological texts discussed so far, either charted by scribes in the colophon of manuscript copies or as transmitted by prominent later scholars (see Fig. 1). (17) As the main focus of this article is on the historical reception of these texts, I do not propose to analyze them in detail. But a brief examination is useful for two reasons. First, their chains of transmission mainly consist of well-known Transoxianan Hanafi scholars, including some of the most important theologians and jurists of the classical period. (18) This tells us that they were transmitted as part of the pedagogical and literary activities of these figures and, if the chains are reliable, knowledge of them should be reflected within their own works. Second, the chains are similar for all three texts, and in the case of al-Fiqh al-akbar II and al-Balkhi's al-Fiqh al-akbar, nearly identical. In fact, the eleven transmitters between Nusayr b. Yahya and Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Bukharl are exactly the same. (19) In [section]4, I will argue that the first verified historical reference to al-Fiqh al-akbar II is by 'Abd al-Aziz al-Bukharl, which occurs after this sequence in the chain. This finding leads to the suspicion that the majority of the chain for al-Fiqh al-akbar II has merely been reproduced from the one generated by the genuine transmission of al-Balkhl's al-Fiqh al-akbar within Transoxianan Hanafi scholarship. The following two sections will test this hypothesis by showing that there is no evidence that al-Fiqh al-akbar II was known to the scholars mentioned in the chains or to other authors before this period.

2. RECEPTION

   In this section I will discuss the earliest reception of al-Fiqh al-akbar, in books written in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries (see Fig. 2). This period marks the continuation of the formative period of Hanafi theology, and features representatives of both rationalism and traditionalism, prior to the full emergence of classical Maturidism at the beginning of the sixth/twelfth century. The analysis of primary texts from mainly Hanafi and Ash'ari scholars builds a cumulative case that the title al-Fiqh al-akbar refers exclusively to the creed written by al-Balkhl during this span.

   The earliest reference to al-Fiqh al-akbar is in al-Fihrist of the Imami Shi'i bibliophile Ibn al-Nadlm (d. 380/990) from Baghdad. He lists Kitab al- (() Alim wa-l-muta'allim, Kitab Risalatihi ila al-Batti...