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CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE AND THE EXEMPLARY SCHOLAR: THE LIVES OF SAHNUN B. SAʿ ID (D. 854)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2011

Jonathan Brockopp
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Abstract

When writing biographies of historical figures, narrative convention requires that concision and clarity be wrested from sources that are multiple and often confusing. In this article, I argue that multiple accounts of a person's life may be more than an accident arising from the way that information was compiled. Rather, such multiplicity renders exemplary figures adaptable to a wide variety of circumstances, making them even more useful as a focus of devotion and emulation. Examining multiple accounts of early Maliki scholar Sahnun b. Saʿ id (d. 854), including those of his travels in search of knowledge and of his suffering under the miḥna (trial) in Kairouan, I find that close attention to apparently contradictory evidence may not get us any closer to understanding the man himself, but it does offer us much information about the ways in which he was considered an exemplary individual.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 115 - 132
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I am grateful to the editors of IJMES and especially to the anonymous readers for their helpful and critical comments. I presented a very different draft of this paper at a conference in honor of Bernard Weiss in Alta, Utah, in 2008 and again at Tübingen University in 2009 and benefited greatly from the ensuing discussions with colleagues.

1 See, for example, de Busbecq, Oghier Ghiselin, Les lettres turques (Paris: Champion, 2010)Google Scholar; and Kunt, Metin and Woodhead, Christine, Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (London: Longman, 1995)Google Scholar. My thanks to Tijana Krstic for pointing me to these references.

2 Moosa, Ebrahim, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 3Google Scholar. For different views on al-Ghazali, see Macdonald, D. B., “The Life of al-Ghazzālī,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 20 (1899): 71–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Margaret, Al-Ghazālī the Mystic (London: Luzac and Company, 1944)Google Scholar; Watt, W. Montgomery, Muslim Intellectual (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; and Griffel, Frank, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 To date, most work on biographical texts has focused on periods for which we have much more information (e.g., the later Abbasid period, Mamluk Egypt, and the early modern empires), allowing for easier identification of these patterns and tropes. For an analytical summary of much of this work, see Humphreys, R. Stephen, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry, rev. ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 187–207Google Scholar; more recently, Reynolds, Dwight and several others have written an important book that, despite its title, has much to say about how one reads biographies: Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 Mahmood, Saba, “Women's Agency within Feminist Historiography,” The Journal of Religion 84 (October 2004): 573–79, at 576–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this article she refers to Chakrabarty's, DipeshProvincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar and explains that Chakrabarty's double task “allows an academic historian to . . . both . . . engage the hegemonic terms of the discipline of secular history constructively and to expose the violence this narrative commits against lifeworlds and imaginaries that are not encompassable within a secular framework.”

5 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 21–22.

6 Oakes, Len, Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997)Google Scholar. Oakes notes the “unpredictability” and paradoxes of the charismatic personality on pp. 15–16 and 168–69; he discusses the mirroring effect throughout the book, but see esp. pp. 128–29.

7 Rubin, Uri, “Muḥammad's Message in Mecca: Warnings, Signs, and Miracles,” in The Cambridge Companion to Muḥammad, ed. Jonathan Brockopp (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 39–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Miyahara, Kojiro, “Charisma: From Weber to Contemporary Sociology,” Sociological Inquiry 53 (1983): 368–88, at 383CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 The theatrical imagery was put forward by Jacob Neusner in his groundbreaking study of rabbis in the Talmud, Eliezer Ben Hyrcanus: The Tradition and the Man, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), and picked up approvingly by Calder, Norman in Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 1Google Scholar. sharply, Miklos Muranyicriticized Calder's theories for ignoring the evidence of early manuscripts in “Die frühe Rechtsliteratur zwischen Quellenanalyse und Fiktion,” Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997): 224–41Google Scholar. A more balanced view is found in the excellent article by Cooperson, Michael, “Ibn Ḥanbal and Bishr al-Ḥāfī: A Case Study in Biographical Traditions,” Studia Islamica 86 (1997): 71–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which nonetheless is more concerned with the reception of Ibn Hanbal's actions than with the man himself. A similar treatment is found in Gleave's, Rob useful study, “Biography and Hagiography in Tunukabuni's Qisas al-Ulama,” in Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies. Part 2: Mediaeval and Modern Persian Studies, ed. Melville, Charles (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999), 237–55Google Scholar; my thanks to the anonymous reviewer who brought this article to my attention.

10 al-ʿArab, Abu, Kitab Tabaqat ʿUlamaʾ Ifriqiya, ed. Cheneb, Mohammed ben (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Lubnani, n.d.), 101–104Google Scholar. Following the convention of his manuscript sources, Mohammed ben Cheneb published Abu al-ʿArab's text together with two other works: the continuation by his student Muhammad b. al-Harith b. Asad al-Khushani (d. 371/981), also called Kitab Tabaqat ʿUlamaʾ Ifriqiya (reference to Sahnun on p. 236); and a second work by Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab Tabaqat ʿUlamaʾ Tunis. The first book runs from pp. 1 to 125, the second from pp. 127 to 241, and the third from pp. 243 to 256. Hereafter, I cite all three simply as Cheneb, Ben, Tabaqat. To Abu al-ʿArab is attributed another interesting book, Kitab al-Mihan, ed. al-Jabburi, Yahya Wahib (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1983)Google Scholar; the entry on Sahnun is found from pages 449 to 452. As I will discuss, I am not entirely convinced that this text is correctly attributed to Abu al-ʿArab.

11 Qadi ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 8 vols., ed. ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Sahrawi et al. (Rabat: Wizarat al-Awqaf, 1982), 4:45–88; see also Talbi's, Mohamedpartial edition, Tarajim Aghlabiyya (Biographies Aghlabides) (Tunis: University of Tunis, 1968), 86–136Google Scholar.

12 I am borrowing these key terms from Bernard Weiss, who writes about the role of individuals—qadis, caliphs and jurists—as mediators of Islamic law: “in the burgeoning Islamic society, authority was fast becoming linked to personal piety and religious knowledge, not to power.” The Spirit of Islamic Law (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 7.

13 This fragment is located in the collection of the Raqqada Center for Islamic Arts, Tunisia; I express my gratitude to Miklos Muranyi for telling me of its existence and to Mourad Rammah, director of the center, for facilitating my research. I discuss this fragment at length in “Saḥnūn's Mudawwana and the Piety of the ‘Shariah-minded,’” in Alta Essays in Honor of Bernard Weiss, ed. Kevin Reinhart and Ruud Peters (Leiden: E. J. Brill, forthcoming).

14 Work on the manuscript remains of Sahnun's writings was pioneered by Shabbuh, Ibrahim, “Sijill Qadīm li-Maktabat Jāmiʿ al-Qayrawān,” in Revue de l'Institut des Manuscrits Arabes 2 (1956)Google Scholar; Schacht, Joseph, “Sur quelques manuscrits de la bibliothèque de la mosquée d'al-Qarawiyyīn à Fès,” in Études d'Orientalisme, 2 vols. (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1962), 1:271–84Google Scholar; idem, “On Some Manuscripts in the Libraries of Kairouan and Tunis,” Arabica 14 (1967): 225–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sezgin, Fuat, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 1:468 ffGoogle Scholar; and Forneas, J. M., “Datos para un estudio de la Mudawwana de Saḥnūn en al-Andalus,” in Actas del IV Coloquio Hispano-Tunecino (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1983), 93 ffGoogle Scholar. Much of this research is now superseded by the work of Muranyi, Miklos, particularly Die Rechtsbücher des Qairawāners Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd: Entstehungsgeschichte und Werküberlieferung (Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner, 1999)Google Scholar; Muranyi discusses the role of al-Qabisi throughout, but see esp. pp. 16–17.

15 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:87; this is just one of several visions of Sahnun in heaven. For the importance of the Prophet as the ultimate exemplary figure, see Cooperson, “Ibn Ḥanbal,” 71; and Brockopp, Jonathan, “Theorizing Charismatic Authority in Early Islamic Law,” Comparative Islamic Studies 1 (2005): 129–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See, for example, the short entry in al-Dhahabi, Taʾrikh al-Islam wa-Wafayat al-Mashahir wa-l-Aʿlam, 37 vols., ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salim Tadmuri (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1994), a.h. 231–40, pp. 247–49. While the actual entry on Sahnun is not terribly interesting, the editor includes an extensive list of entries in the most important Arabic sources. This list does not include the sources mentioned in n.12, however.

17 al-Baladhuri, Ahmad b. Yahya, Futuh al-Buldan (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-ʿUlum, 1987), 323–24Google Scholar. Note that this seems to continue a policy initiated by Abu al-Muhajir in the 670s; see Talbi, Mohamed, “al-Ḳayrawān,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), 4:826Google Scholar.

18 Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 20–21.

19 With ʿAbd Allah b. Ghanim (d. 805) and al-Buhlul b. Rashid (d. 799) in Kairouan and with ʿAli b. Ziyad (d. 799) in Tunis. Ibn Ziyad's transmission of Malik's Muwattaʾ seems to have been the best known version of Malik's book in North Africa at the time, though comparison of Ibn Ziyad's transmission with Sahnun's citations of him in the Mudawwana does not demonstrate a clear connection between these two texts.

20 Al-Baladhuri, Futuh, 327.

21 Ibid., 370.

22 This is Mohamed Talbi's interpretation in L'Emirat Aghlabide (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1966), 105.

23 al-ʿUsh, Muhammad Abu al-Faraj, Monnaies aġlabides étudiées en relation avec l'histoire des Aġlabides (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1982), 18Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., 15–16.

25 Marçais, Georges, Manuel d'art musulman (Paris: Picard, 1926), 9Google Scholar. For more recent work on Kairouan's architecture, including a fascinating survey of its graveyards, see Hantati, Nejmeddine, ed., Dirasat fi Taʾrikh al-Qayrawan (Kairouan, Tunisia: Centre d’Études Islamiques/Unité de Recherche de l'Histoire, 2009)Google Scholar.

26 Al-Baladhuri, Futuh, 371.

27 Ibid.

28 See Al-ʿUsh, Monnaies aġlabides, 20, where he shows that this prosperity came from local wealth as well as an active commerce with Europe, central Africa, and the East. See also Laroui, Abdullah, The History of the Maghrib, trans. Mannheim, Ralph (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 117–19Google Scholar.

29 I give a full account of Sahnun's best known students in “Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd and the Mudawwana,” in A Compendium of Muslim Jurists, ed. Oussama Arabi, David Powers, and Susan Spectorsky (Leiden: E. J. Brill, forthcoming).

30 Ibid., where I translate and analyze this story in detail.

31 Modern accounts include Krenkow, Fritz, “Saḥnūn,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1934), 4:64–65Google Scholar; Talbi, L'Emirat Aghlabide, 227–39; idem, “Saḥnūn,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 8:843–45Google Scholar; Muhammad ʿAzb, Muhammad Zaynuhum, al-Imam Sahnun (Cairo: Dar al-Farjani, 1992)Google Scholar; and Brockopp, “Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd and the Mudawwana.”

32 Sezgin, Geschichte, 1:468; ʿAzb, al-Imam Sahnun, 65. ʿAzb does not give his source, but it is presumably a late one. Ramadan, of course, is an appropriate month for the appearance of a great jurist, and very many jurists are born, or die, in Ramadan.

33 Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 104.

34 Ibid., 102.

35 The interlocutors are not always identified, leaving the door open to skeptics, such as Calder, who regard this as a composite text. The text usually reads, “I asked . . . He replied,” with Sahnun's name appearing only a few times in the entire printed edition. Ibn al-Qasim's name appears more regularly, usually at the beginning of sections. An initial comparison with the earliest manuscript fragments suggests that some of these identifications are glosses by scribes and not part of the archetype. See my edition of a partial fragment in “Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd and the Mudawwana.” Much more work needs to be done on the numerous manuscript witnesses before we can state anything certain about the authorship of this text.

36 Krenkow, “Saḥnūn,” 4:64.

37 Talbi, “Saḥnūn,” 8:843. He does not consider 801 in this article.

38 Muranyi argues for 794 as the beginning of the riḥla in Ein altes Fragment medinensischer Jurisprudenz aus Qairawān (Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner, 1985), 12–13; cf. idem, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ḥadīth- und Rechtsgelehrsamkeit der Mālikiyya in Nordafrika bis zum 5. Jh. d.H. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 34Google Scholar, where he considers all the data and seems to argue for the entire period from 794 to 806 as the best dates.

39 al-Shirazi, Abu Ishaq, Tabaqat al-Fuqahaʾ, ed. ʿAbbas, Ihsan (Beirut: Dar al-Raʾid al-ʿArabi, 1981), 156Google Scholar.

40 Ibid. As Muranyi has pointed out (Beiträge, 42–43), al-Shirazi (d. 1083) was a Shafiʿi scholar, and his text is the first witness to this story. Thereafter it became quite popular in Maliki texts. See, for example, al-Maliki, Abu Bakr, Kitab Riyad al-Nufus, ed. al-Bakkushi, Bashir and al-Mutawwi, Muhammad al-ʿArusi, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1981–84), 1:261–63Google Scholar. This late text seems to have been Sezgin's main source for his life of Sahnun.

41 Brockopp, , “Asad b. al-Furāt,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008), 1:169–71Google Scholar.

42 Sezgin simply states that the Mudawwana was first worked over by Asad (Geschichte, 1:469). Norman Calder claimed the story as a prime example of the way tall tales grew around problems in textual criticism (Studies, 1). See also Muranyi, Beiträge, 42–43.

43 First recorded by ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:46 and repeated in later Maliki texts.

44 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:46. It is not clear whether Ibn al-Qasim was supposedly writing to Malik about Sahnun's questions; at any rate, I have not found evidence of this in the Mudawwana. In contrast, Ibn al-Qasim often states, “I did not hear anything from Malik on this matter,” suggesting that the dialogue is happening after Malik's death. Muhammad ʿAzb appears to gloss this statement from ʿ Iyad when he writes, “Ibn al-Qasim was the one with whom Imam Malik b. Anas would correspond regarding questions of jurisprudence which he sent to him.” Al-Imam Sahnun, 67.

45 Even Muhammad ʿAzb (ibid.) expresses skepticism toward stories that attempt to connect Sahnun to Malik, suggesting that students put them into circulation to enhance the reputation of their master.

46 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:46.

47 Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 102.

48 For example, ʿ Iyad includes another account where Sahnun says, “I went to Ibn al-Qasim when 25 and entered Ifriqiya when 30 years old.” ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:47; if Sahnun was born in 776, this would mean arrival in Egypt about 801 and return to Kairouan in 805 or 806.

49 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:46; see also ʿAzb, al-Imam Sahnun, 68, where he makes a similar suggestion without crediting ʿ Iyad or using ʿ Iyad's sophisticated arguments.

50 See al-Dabbagh, ʿAbd al-Rahman (d. 1297), Maʿalim al-Iman fi Maʿrifat Ahl al-Qayrawan, ed. Shabbuh, Ibrahim (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khaniji, 1968) 2:79Google Scholar, where Shabbuh points out in a note that that Ibn Nafiʿ died in a.h. 208, according to al-Bukhari and Ibn Saʿd.

51 Al-Dhahabi, Taʾrikh, a.h. 191–200, pp. 112–13.

52 See the extensive discussion of Sahnun's teachers in Brockopp, “Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd and the Mudawwana.”

53 I use “books” in a restricted sense to refer to texts produced by a single redactional effort (following Calder, Studies, 87) in an institutional setting that allowed for authorial control.

54 Calder (Studies, 1 and 20) points out that narrative accounts and transmission records can be self-reinforcing, with each used to prove the truth of the other in a circle of reasoning. Also, on occasion, the voice in the Mudawwana shifts, with Sahnun moving from first person (qultu) to third (qāla Saḥnūn). See, for example, Sahnun b. Saʿid, al-Mudawwana al-Kubra (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Saʿada, a.h. 1323 [1905 c.e.]; reprint in 6 vols.: Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d.) 1:174.

55 Taʾrikh, years 231–40, pp. 247–49; Muranyi argues for direct transmission (Rechtsbücher, 32–33). Ibn Mahdi's death date is relatively late, so this argument has no bearing on the question of when Sahnun was in the East. One might similarly argue that a transmission record on a manuscript does not guarantee that, for example, there was no further intermediary between ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Majishun, Anas b. ʿ Iyad, and Sahnun in the unique manuscript of al-Majishun's lawbook, but I maintain that two different sorts of conventions are at work here. Therefore I am more comfortable suggesting that Sahnun must have been in Medina before Anas b. ʿ Iyad died, though since we are not sure when this was, this still does not resolve the question of which riḥla dates are correct.

56 For researchers interested in pursuing this question further, I believe the place to start is with the many anecdotes about Sahnun in Egypt from the biographical entries of the great Egyptian scholars. Many of these have already been gathered by Qadi ʿ Iyad in his entry on Sahnun, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:45–88.

57 Melchert, Christopher, “The Adversaries of Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal,” Arabica 44 (1997): 234–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hurvitz, Nimrod, “Miḥna as Self-Defense,” Studia Islamica 92 (2001): 93–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 We are very much in need of an analysis of Abu al-ʿArab's works, much as Muranyi has done for Sahnun's writings. For one thing, his Kitab al-Mihan diverges from his Tabaqat in significant ways and appears as a much more polemical text. It may be a pseudopigraphon (falsely attributed work) or merely written for a very difference audience.

59 The amir's response here (naʿam) makes more sense in the parallel account found in Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 451.

60 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:69–70. Al-ʿAkki ruled Ifriqiya before the Aghlabids; al-Buhlul b. Rashid (d. 799) was one of Sahnun's teachers, though he is not quoted in the Mudawwana; he apparently transmitted the books of Sufyan al-Thawri. See Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 52–61; and Muranyi, Beiträge, 10–11.

61 Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 451–52. Although it is missing this phrase, Abu al-ʿArab's account is otherwise more elaborate than the one in Qadi ʿ Iyad's text, providing several details that are apparently superfluous from ʿ Iyad's perspective.

62 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:70; this ending is also found in Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 452.

63 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:70; this story is missing from Abu al-ʿArab.

64 We have, however, few written remains of Hanafi writings and nothing of these Muʿtazilis to know what, precisely, was meant by these epithets.

65 In addition to his own presence at court, one of his sons served Muhammad b. al-Aghlab, the next amir of Ifriqiya.

66 Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 227; this account derives from the text by al-Khushani (d. 981). A somewhat garbled version of this account is preserved by ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:73. Abu al-ʿArab does not include this story in Kitab al-Mihan, another example of the polemical nature of his text.

67 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:71. As with the previous story, a more detailed version of this one is found in Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 451.

68 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:71–72; and Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 451.

69 I address a number of these accounts in my “Theorizing Charismatic Authority,” 145–47.

70 Talbi, “Saḥnūn,” 8:845, points out that Ibn Abi l-Jawad was the nephew of Asad b. al-Furat; cf. Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 227. This is an interesting connection but presumes that the sources are correct in depicting Asad and Sahnun as bitter rivals; other accounts have Sahnun defending Asad as a defender of the uncreated nature of the Qurʾan.

71 Talbi, Mohamed, “ʿIyād b. Mūsā,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd. ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 4:289–90Google Scholar.

72 Talbi, “Saḥnūn,” 8:844–45.

73 Reynolds et al., Interpreting the Self, 41.

74 Qadi ʿ Iyad, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:57; Brockopp, “Theorizing Charismatic Authority,” 147–48.

75 Cooperson, “Ibn Hanbal,” 73.

76 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 21–22. We may also underestimate the degree to which all information on an exemplary individual is polemic. For example, it may be that one of the three dates given for Sahnun's travel to Egypt (178, 185, or 188) is correct, but we need to entertain the possibility that every one of these dates represents a different polemical position and that none of them may reflect the reality of Sahnun's travels.