Origins of Muḥammadan jurisprudence
Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence
Publisher
Oxford At The Clarendon Press
Publication Year
1950 AH
THE TRADITIONISTS 257
The one traditionist of whom texts of any length are easily available at present is Ibn Qutaiba, and we have used his Kitāb Taʾwīl Mukhtalif al-Ḥadīth repeatedly in order to ascertain the doctrine of the traditionists on various points of legal theory.¹ Ibn Qutaiba is, however, influenced by Shāfiʿī and by the ancient schools of law:² he considers himself one of the Medinese, and at the same time looks back to the great scholars of the past — Iraqians, Medinese, Syrians, and traditionists — with the same kind of respect; on points of detail, he is definitely eclectic, but his opinions mostly coincide with the Mālikī doctrine.³ This attitude must not be projected back into the second century A.H. Ibn Qutaiba was a highly cultured man of letters; all the more significant is the defective character of his own legal reasoning which we are entitled, on account of Shāfiʿī's remarks to the same effect, to attribute to the traditionists. Whenever we find good legal reasoning and credible interpretations in Ibn Qutaiba, they have almost invariably been anticipated by Shāfiʿī. Ibn Qutaiba’s own interpretation of traditions is arbitrary and forced, and his own legal reasoning confused and bad.⁴
1 See above, p. 16, n. 1, on traditions from the Prophet explaining the Koran; ibid., n. 3, on the Prophet being inspired; p. 47. n. 1, on the repeal of the Koran by the sunna; p. 77, n. 3 on the identification of sunna with traditions from the Prophet; p. 94, n. 3, on the concept of consensus; p. 128 f. on the rejection of ra'y.
2 See above, pp. 69, n. 2, 132. 3 See, e.g., Ibn Qutaiba, 238 f.
4 See, e.g., Ibn Qutaiba, 112 f., 114 f., 332 f. - Ibid. 67 (compare with Tr. VIII, 12), 251, 444.
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