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Making the Best of Limited Resources: Akhbār al-Āḥād and the Moral System of God’s Ḥikma
Abstract
Approaches to gaining knowledge through the reports of others – known as testimony – offer a useful lens onto the epistemology and moral framework underlying the discipline of Islamic legal theory. Akhbār al-āḥād (non-recurrent reports) pose a challenge to legal theorists because they comprise the majority of practical manifestations of testimony for the Muslim community in the form of the ḥadīth, which inform everyday behavior, pietistic concerns, and legal decisions. Current scholarship in the field has argued that tradition - religious and legal - had more of an effect than rationally-derived morality on the treatment of these reports. This paper examines the work of Ḥanafī scholars of the post-formative era in mā warāʾ al-nahr (Transoxania) – specifically, Fakhr al-Islām al-Bazdawī (d. 482/1088), Shams al-Aʾimma al-Sarakhsī (d. 490/1096), and Abū ʾl-Thanāʾ al-Lāmishī (d. after 539/1144) – to elucidate how these legal theorists conceived of using akhbār al-āḥād as a legal and/or moral obligation. These treatments of akhbār al-āḥād open a window onto deeper concerns regarding the process of accepting a report as true or false, questions of belief and action based on a report, and the role of theology in shaping legal theory. In this paper, I contend that at a time of political turmoil among rival Turkic rulers in Transoxania, the Ḥanafī scholars’ approach to akhbār al-āḥād represents a unique consolidation of legal and moral concerns in the history of Islamic legal theory, in which human reason (ʿaql) is held not only to be an epistemic source working hand-in-hand with revelation (samʿ), but also to be part of God’s wisdom (ḥikma) as a form of God’s evidence (ḥujaj Allāh). This Transoxanian understanding in legal theory of a moral system informed by their theology maintains that the concept of ḥikma relies on the human mind to make moral and legal decisions about the utility and quality of akhbār al-āḥād. The human mind is the principal instrument for evaluating what preponderates of truth over falsehood in these reports. Furthermore, these Ḥanafī scholars assert that it is morally and legally obligatory to act on the akhbār al-āḥād to obtain knowledge of how to avoid harm and to gain benefit. I argue, therefore, that the Ḥanafīs’ commitment to and method of evaluating akhbār al-āḥād reveals the theological principle of ḥikma at the root of this legal theoretical concern, and the construction of a moral system that appreciated reason and will.
Discipline
Law
Geographic Area
Central Asia
Islamic World
Sub Area
Islamic Thought