Revival and Reform in Islam: the Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani.

• Author: Rippin, Andrew
• Position: Book review

Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani. By BERNARD HAYKEL. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilisation. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003. Pp. xv + 265, illus. $26.99 (paper).

Born in the village of Hijrat Shawkan, southeast of Sanaa in the Yemen, on July 12, 1760, Muhammad al-Shawkani was a Sunni jurist living in a Zaydi environment. Issuing fatwas by the age of twenty, he declared himself a mujtahid mutlaq, an unrestricted religious authority, before turning thirty. He wrote about 250 books and taught Qur'anic exegesis, jurisprudence, rhetoric, grammar, and law. He became qadi al-qudat in Sanaa in 1795 and held the position until his death in 1834. Shawkani was a significant intellectual figure of the eighteenth century, and this detailed and fascinating intellectual biography and analysis of his thought is particularly welcome, all the more so because it tackles some critical questions about both Islam in the eighteenth century and the relationship between Zaydi and Sunni Islam that have until now received little attention.

A dynasty starting in 1598, the Zaydi Qasimi imamate achieved significant political power in the Yemen, especially after the Ottomans were driven out of the region in 1635. Until that time, the Zaydis had primarily been an oppositional force in the Yemen. The export of coffee was a significant factor in the success of the dynasty, providing financing for the essential task of recruiting troops from the northern tribes (the traditional base of support for the Zaydi Imams) as well as from Abyssinia in order to control the territory to the south which was now under the Qasimi imamate. It is in this situation, then, that Shawkani found his role as a Sunni traditionalist jurist supporting a Zaydi government. Shawkani was a staunch traditionalist, firmly against the doctrines of the Zaydis: he held to the absolute authority of the body of Sunni hadith which he firmly believed was far more reliable for any Muslim than the views of the Imam or of the rationalist theologians and law school jurists. Thus not only did he reject Zaydi law but also many aspects of its theology, which was strongly Mu'tazilite in flavor. Ijtihad, understood as the ability of a jurist to return to the sources for legal opinions, was supported by a long-standing school of traditionalist thinking in Yemen which co-existed with the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence in the area; Shawkani fervently identified with and worked...