4 Genealogies of Dissent and the Politics of Knowledge

The great reformers of the eighteenth century were fully aware of the radical nature of their intellectual projects. Whether as facilitators of change, or mere interpreters of some perennial truth, these reformers projected an image of themselves as vehicles of change and fashioned their social personas in accordance with this self-perception. In the midst of a sea of change, what was significant was not only the events that shaped the world around these reformers but also how, as actors, they felt about and related themselves to these events.

Eighteenth-century reform, like any intellectual undertaking, involved intensive intellectual activities and could have easily degenerated into elitism. Significantly, the reformers of the eighteenth century were cognizant of this risk and tried hard to remain socially connected and to relate their intellectual projects to their societies. Nevertheless, the most enduring legacies of eighteenth-century reform were first and foremost intellectual and not social; they involved a direct engagement with and a recasting of religious thought and culture, not just social reform movements. And yet, the social and political import of these intellectual reforms was always direct and transparent.

Eighteenth-century reformers were politicized in the sense that they were either directly involved in politics or concerned with political issues, just as they were concerned with other intellectual issues. The one exception was Muḥammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, whose ideas were manipulated toward political ends, while he himself exhibited little interest in either politics or the social well-being of fellow Muslims. In contrast, other reformers were keenly concerned with social and political change. This political and social commitment was founded on their specific perceptions of the nature of the political, social, and intellectual crisis of the time. Direct expressions of the political commitment of eighteenth-century reformers can to be traced in their numerous expressed stands on current political and social issues. The political dimensions of the careers of ʿUthmān Ibn Fūdī and Muḥammad Bin ʿAlī al-Sanūsī, careers that included seizing power and/or state building, as well as formulating the ideologies of these political actions, are obvious and need not be reiterated here. Instead, I will focus on the less apparent cases in which political outlooks are not immediately discernible through direct political actions but are imbedded in the larger intellectual projects of the concerned reformers.¹Close

The intense critique of exclusionist takfīr, the rereading of ijtihād in a way that empowered larger masses of Muslims and increased societal participation, and the rejection of intermediary authorities are the principal intellectual stands that both underscored the social and political commitment of the eighteenth-century reformers and subverted, and often radically undermined, the established structures of power. In turning now to the multiple connections of eighteenth-century reformers to power we will explore the twin manifestations of this subversive relationship to politics and hegemonic cultural formations.

The paradigms for political action shaped by Ibn Fūdī and al-Sanūsī were transparently subversive and revolutionary. Ibn Fūdī started an insurrection that culminated in a complete change in the social and political organization of society. As we have seen earlier, he denied the intellectual authority of scholars who lived under un-Islamic social and political order and condemned such scholars as political kuffār. Subsequently, this antiestablishment focus of Ibn Fūdī’s movement functioned to create and alternative Islamic authority. Although very different from Ibn Fūdī’s model, the idealist Sanūsī state also had an adversarial relationship with established authority. In order to establish his new social order, al-Sanūsī moved into physical spaces free from the hegemonic control of both the Ottoman state (and other local powers) and the official organs of Islam that functioned in the shadow of this state. In practice and in theory, both Ibn Fūdī and al-Sanūsī were radical dissenters who sought to remodel and restructure the world of Muslims on a regional level.

In contrast to the political subversiveness of Ibn Fūdī and al-Sanūsī, the interventions of other reformers of the eighteenth century were primarily in the intellectual realm. As chief judge under three successive imams, Muḥammad Ibn ʿAlī al-Shawkānī served the state as the head of the highest intellectual office in Yemen. Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī, upon failing to forge alliances with various political powers, attempted to affect social change through intellectual reform. In both cases, the lack of direct hostility between these reformers and the prevailing political authorities of the time was offset by grand intellectual agendas that, in effect, subverted the dominant power structures, both political and intellectual. To be sure, al-Shawkānī and Walī Allāh conceived of the role of intellectuals in society in diverse ways. Yet irrespective of the role they aspired to play, the cultural capital of eighteenth-century intellectuals, and by extension their recognized merits, social status, and authority, derived from their intellectual achievements and not from their connection to power. The question then is how such authority related to power. Put differently, if indeed eighteenth-century thinkers sought through a reinterpretation of ijtihādto empower Muslim societies, the first question that needs to be addressed is the nature of the connection of these reformers to political authorities. One obvious aspect of the renewed calls for ijtihād, and the meanings grafted upon it, is the role it plays in undermining madhhab affiliations. As such, these calls for ijtihād engender the construction of new intellectual identities. The thorny questions of intellectual identity not only vexed such great scholars as Walī Allāh and al-Shawkānī but were hotly debated among their less accomplished contemporaries, and they continue to inspire spirited debates in contemporary Muslim societies and among historians of these societies. Quite deliberately, eighteenth-century thinkers often crossed the recognized madhhab boundaries only to be classified back into one of these compartments by modern observers.²Close

At a basic level, eighteenth-century reformers criticized the rampant injustice and disorder in their societies, as expressed in such acts as the extraction of illegal taxes by corrupt rulers, or the state’s inability to provide security and defend Muslim territory. Early in his career, Walī Allāh devoted much energy to the restoration of the power of the Muslim state, before he finally gave up on his attempts to reform the state. However, his later focus on intellectual reform represented not an abandonment of his earlier goals but simply an attempt to achieve these goals through intellectual means. Unlike Walī Allāh, Muḥammad Ibn Ismāʿīl al-Ṣanʿānī entertained little ambition of working with the state; instead, he conceived of himself as an oppositional voice relentlessly critical of all social and political ills. Even his most doctrinal criticisms of contemporary religious practices and beliefs were wedded to social and political criticisms. Such, for example, was his criticism of the practice of shrine worship. Rather than focusing exclusively on the beliefs of individuals, he attributed this innovation to blind imitation and the resulting sectarianism that follows from it. In a typical manner, al-Ṣanʿānī says,

Know that these matters about whose censure we continue to argue, and whose structures we seek to undermine, come from the commoners whose religion is the imitation of their forefathers’ [beliefs] without evidence, and they follow it without distinction between low and high. Thus as one of them [the commoners] is growing up, and while still a child … the people of his village or town instruct him to call upon the name of whomever they believe in, and he sees them making vows to him, glorifying him, and traveling to visit his tomb. They rub him [the growing child] with soil [from his shrine] and make him circumambulate his tomb; he thus grows up with a conviction settled in his heart that the most glorious thing to him is the one they believe in. The young and the old would thus grow up with such beliefs without being reproached by anyone. On the contrary, those who adopt the titles of knowledge and claim to have virtue and take on the responsibility of judging, the issuing of fatwas, and teaching; those who claim sainthood and gnosis; and those who assume governorship and state positions, also venerate what they [the commoners] venerate; in fact, they confiscate the monetary gifts, and eat the offerings sacrificed at the tombs. [A Muslim growing up under these conditions] would think this to be the true religion of Islam. … However, it is not a secret to anyone who is qualified to think, or who has the slightest knowledge of the sciences of the Book and the Sunna, that the silence of a scholar, or even the whole world, when a reprehensible act occurs is not a proof of its permissibility.³Close

In the same breath as his critique of the hold of shrine worship over commoners and officials, al-Ṣanʿānī shifts the discussion to taxation:

Let me give you an example of such [reprehensible acts], namely, these taxes called majābī: it is common knowledge that the prohibition of these taxes is established in religion, and yet they are widespread. … In fact, the hands of tax collectors have extended to the noblest of all places, Mecca. … They extort [taxes] from those who go to Mecca to perform the religious obligation of Islam. … These [pilgrims] encounter in the sacred city all kinds of unlawfulness. … Scholars and rulers, in contrast, refrain from renouncing [these acts]. … Would their silence then justify the extraction of [these taxes]? Surely, anyone with the slightest discernment would not make such a claim. In fact, I will give you another example: this is the sanctuary of God that is the best location in the world. … Some of the ignorant and misguided Circassian rulers have established four sites [of worship for each of the four schools] … thereby treating Muslims as if they belonged to different religions. Indeed, this is an innovation that pleases the eyes of Satan and makes Muslims the laughingstock of devils. And yet, scholars have been silent in regard to it. … So is this silence evidence of the permissibility [of establishing the four sites of worship]? If you say the logical consequence of this [argument] is that, by neglecting to condemn this grave stupidity, the community would have had agreed [ajmaʿat] on a misdeed, I say, true consensus is the agreement of the mujtahids [independent scholars] of the umma of Muhammad (peace be upon him) on a matter after his time; and the scholars of the four schools argue that ijtihād after the four [imams of the schools] is impossible. Now, although this argument is invalid, from this perspective [of the scholars of the four schools] there is no consensus [ijmāʿ] after the four imams. This means that the question [of ijmāʿ on an error] does not even arise, because these innovations and the tomb heresy did not exist at the time of the imams of the four schools. Our certain opinion, however, is that the occurrence of ijmāʿ is impossible, since the umma of Muhammad has filled the horizons, and is now in every territory and under every star; therefore, its [the community’s] established scholars are innumerable, and it is not feasible that anyone would be able to know their whereabouts. So one who claims that there is consensus after the expansion of the religion [of Islam], and despite the profusion of the Muslim scholars, would be making a false claim. … Moreover, even if we assume that these [scholars] knew of the reprehensible act and did not condemn it, and instead remained silent, their silence does not prove its permissibility … [because the instrument of denunciation (inkār) could be either the hand, the tongue, or the heart]. … So if one notes that a scholar refrains from voicing his condemnation [of a reprehensible act], and at the same time notes what a tyrant is capable of doing, one ought to assume that this [scholar] was not able to denounce through actions or words, and that he denounced in his heart. Indeed, it is obligatory to think well of fellow Muslims.⁴Close

The above quotations clearly illustrate the correlation, in al-Ṣanʿānī’s thought, between the cult of saint worship, political corruption, illegal taxes, and the blind partisanship that divides Muslims and undermines their unity. What is notably absent here is an individualized approach to these innovations, in which they are construed as abstract religious and doctrinal violations for which individual Muslims are to be blamed. In fact, in his ʿUdda, al-Ṣanʿānī argues, based on a sound hadith, that it is lawful to pray at tombs, since the Prophet did so once and did not state that this is an act which only he can perform, while other Muslims could not. Al-Ṣanʿānī then makes a similar connection between the widespread innovation of building high, ornate domes over mausoleums and political corruption, and says that these are the doings of the kings and despots who unlawfully devour the wealth of people (mulūk al-dunyā wa asāṭīn al-ẓulm alladhīna yaʾkulūna amwāl al-nās bil-bāṭil).⁵Close Doctrine and politics are thus closely intertwined in al-Ṣanʿānī’s thought, and the political order, or lack thereof, bears the largest responsibility for the moral and social ills of Muslim societies.

The history of the hadith-oriented Yemeni scholars is full of other examples of opposition to rulers and of political and intellectual stands that undermine the authority of these rulers. For example, Ṣāliḥ Ibn Mahdī al-Maqbalī (d. 1108/1696) accused Imam al-Mahdī Muḥammad (Ṣāhib al-Mawāhib, r. 1686–1718) of imposing illegal taxes not sanctioned in Islamic law.⁶Close Al-Ṣanʿānī, in contrast, took sides in a struggle over the imamate and supported a rival (who was eventually defeated), al-Nāṣir Muḥammad Ibn Isḥāq Ibn al-Mahdī Aḥmad Ibn al-Ḥasan (d. 1167/1754), against Imam al-Manṣūr bi-Allāh al-Ḥusayn Ibn al-Mutawakkil (r. 1727–48).⁷Close The father of this last imam offered al-Ṣanʿānī the governorship of Mocha as well as the office of chief judge, but al-Ṣanʿānī turned down both offers and supported al-Nāṣir, a more qualified candidate by Zaydi standards.⁸Close Most eighteenth-century reformers were formally disengaged from the state. However, of all the reformers considered in this book, al-Shawkānī, as chief judge under three consecutive imams, seems to offer the least definitive example of opposition to political authority. Yet, as it will become apparent, al-Shawkānī’s reform project, and many of his actual practices and positions, in effect undermined the status quo and subverted the authority of the prevailing political order.

Formally, al-Shawkānī was part of the power structure of the imamic state in Yemen.⁹Close As chief judge, he was in charge of overseeing the implementation of the law; furthermore, he was closely connected to the imams: he was in charge of their official correspondence with internal and external political powers; represented them on many official occasions and missions; and played a key role in confirming and assuring their legitimacy and that of their state. For example, upon the death of Imam al-Mutawakkil, al-Shawkānī secured the transition of authority to Mutawakkil’s son al-Mahdī and “received on his behalf the oath of all the commanders of Sanaa and its governors and all the members of the family of the imam.”¹⁰Close In addition to his official functions, al-Shawkānī expressed his views on political matters in many of his writings and promoted them through multiple strategies and means. Moreover, he elaborated in great detail his views regarding the appropriate relationship between intellectuals and political authorities. A close reading of al-Shawkānī’s views and his actual positions vis-à-vis political authority shows, above all, that al-Shawkānī’s affiliation with the state did not translate into blind loyalty. While he was usually a pillar in the power of the state, he often undermined it and subverted its exclusive claims to authority through his many critiques of state practices, including taxation policies, unwarranted calls for jihad, and tribal alliances. What made his critiques meaningful was that al-Shawkānī’s own claim to authority, and hence of power, depended not exclusively on the state but, above all, on his intellectual achievement and integrity, and his ability to use his official position to wield power independent of the state. Moreover, al-Shawkānī was conscious of the pitfalls of engaging with the state and therefore articulated a theory that favored both an active engagement in politics and a regulated relationship with the state based on codes that would fortify scholars and prevent their co-optation.

Many examples of al-Shawkānī’s complex relationship with the state can be gleaned from his biographies of various contemporaries that he compiled in his Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ. One such biography is of a certain Sharaf al-Dīn, a descendant of the house of the Prophet, the head of a family that had autonomous control over Kawkabān, one of the major cities of Yemen, and a rival to the imamate of Sanaa. Al-Shawkānī refers to the virtues of this man as a governor but also indicates that he interferes in scholarly matters of which he knows nothing, resulting in personal tension between the two men. Despite this, however, when the imam of Sanaa, al-Mutawakkil, invaded Kawkabān in 1228 and brought al-Shawkānī with him in the campaign, al-Shawkānī tried to dissuade him from using force and to convince him that there was no legal cause that justified taking such action. Needless to say, al-Mutawakkil did not agree, so al-Shawkānī tried to convince him not to take the imam of Kawkabān, Sharaf al-Dīn, and his family back to Sanaa and place them under house arrest, as al-Mutawakkil had intended to do. Al-Shawkānī also tried to convince the imam not to appoint in Kawkabān a weak figurehead from the people of the city under the effective control of a governor from Sanaa; this too was to no avail. Sharaf al-Dīn was placed under house arrest in Sanaa for a little over a year, during which time al-Shawkānī kept urging al-Mutawakkil to set him free, until the imam finally agreed and restored Sharaf al-Dīn to the governorship of Kawkabān. Al-Shawkānī claims credit for this action and even justifies his position further by asserting that during his stay in Sanaa, he got to know Sharaf al-Dīn better and saw numerous virtues in him, including good character, justice, and piety. Another incident led al-Mutawakkil to lay another siege to Kawkabān, but this time al-Shawkānī brokered a treaty between the imam and Sharaf al-Dīn.¹¹Close

This account, like many others, is significant because it captures al-Shawkānī’s thinking and perceptions in the course of these practical political engagements. His official position notwithstanding, al-Shawkānī is neither co-opted by the state to the extent of blindly justifying its actions, nor does he resort to outright defiance or rebellion in response to actions of which he does not approve. Rather, al-Shawkānī advocates active involvement in state institutions but provides a corrective to state policies by advocating interests other than those of the state. Al-Shawkānī no doubt retains a real interest in the preservation of the state, but he remains considerably independent of it. Another significant implication of this episode is that al-Shawkānī advocates a form of decentralization that recognizes a multiplicity of legitimate, quasi-independent powers within the political sphere. Al-Shawkānī seems to have grown weary of in-fighting among Muslims, and he used his office to promote compromises among antagonistic factions. As a result, the imams of Sanaa often asked him to negotiate the peaceful resolution of conflicts with internal or external opponents. It is all the more interesting to note that al-Shawkānī had unfriendly relations with Sharaf al-Dīn and in particular did not approve of the latter’s views on religious and legal matters; nonetheless, al-Shawkānī insisted on defending the Sharaf al-Dīn’s political rights before his commander, the imam. Al-Shawkānī thus clearly distinguishes between political claims and claims to religious authority that were not at stake in this specific case. Moreover, in al-Shawkānī’s assessment, the legitimacy of the political claims to authority by the imam are of the same order as those of the local contender; as such, the optimal solution to the conflict between the two does not entail a restoration of exclusive power to the imam for symbolic or ideological reasons; rather, al-Shawkānī gives priority to the prevention of bloodshed among Muslims, and to an arrangement that perpetuates optimal conditions of stability and order.

Al-Shawkānī was also involved in internal disputes at the highest level of state power. On one occasion, a dispute broke out between the highest-ranking wazīr (vizier), Ḥasan al-ʿAlfī, and Aḥmad, the eldest son of the imam and the leader of the army. The former, according to al-Shawkānī, was abusing his considerable power by slighting the relatives and friends of the imam, and in 1223 AH was antagonizing the army by failing to pay the salaries of the soldiers. This, of course, created a potentially dangerous situation, but more serious still was the failure to pay the tribute to the tribes of highland Yemen, in retaliation for which the tribes blocked the roads surrounding Sanaa, attacking travelers, stealing money, and shedding blood. This situation continued for an extended period of time and posed a serious threat to the livelihood of the people of Sanaa. Al-Shawkānī offered the wazīr his advice, but the latter, because of his closeness to the imam, did not heed it. Finally, Aḥmad, the imam’s son, summoned the wazīr, and when the wazīr refused to answer had him arrested along with his family members. This enraged the imam, who demanded that his wazīr be released; but instead of releasing him, Aḥmad laid siege to his father’s palace, which had in it another son of the imam with some of his own followers. Fighting broke out between the two parties. At this point, Aḥmad, whom al-Shawkānī refers to as the caliph, asked al-Shawkānī to mediate between him and his father, and al-Shawkānī managed to convince the imam to accept an arrangement by which his son Aḥmad became the administrator of the country and the wazīr to his father, while the old wazīr remained in custody. In effect, therefore, al-Shawkānī was involved in brokering a mini coup d’état that transferred effective power to the son while retaining the father as a figurehead. A year later the father died, and al-Shawkānī was the first to pledge his allegiance to Aḥmad. He then hastened to secure for Aḥmad the allegiance of key officials and members of the ruling family.¹²Close

Rather than being a passive employee of the state, al-Shawkānī managed to alter the course of internal events in significant ways at the levels of regional politics, the central bureaucratic apparatus of the state, and the office of the imam. Moreover, al-Shawkānī left his imprint on the state’s foreign policy. As chief judge, he was in charge of diplomatic correspondence between the imam and foreign powers. His most notable exchanges were with Ottoman officials and their local representatives in the Hejaz, as well as the representatives of the Wahhabi movement that, for a period of time, posed a threat to the imams’ northern realm. His political interventions largely centered on two events: the French invasion of Egypt and the possible threat and response to this invasion, and the Wahhabi threat and the regional reorganization in the aftermath of the Ottoman recapture of the Hejaz. In both cases, al-Shawkānī composed the texts of the letters on behalf of the imams and also authored the foreign policies advocated in these exchanges. Again, the contexts of these exchanges, and the extent of al-Shawkānī’s involvement in authoring the policies articulated in them, are often explained in various accounts that appear sporadically in al-Shawkānī’s historical writings. One such account is provided in the biography of the leader of the Turkish army who recaptured the border area between the Hejaz and Yemen.¹³Close This area, known as al-Bilād al-ʿArīshiyya, which includes the regions of al-Laḥya, al-Ḥudayda, Zabīd, Bayt al-Faqīh, and al-Zaydiyya, had previously fallen under the control of the Wahhabis and their local agent, Sharif Ḥammūd. Al-Shawkānī reports that before they were captured by the Turks, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muḥammad ʿAlī Pāsha, sent a letter to the imam of Sanaa promising to return these lands to him. Al-Shawkānī then describes how indeed these lands were returned after some negotiations conducted in accordance with a policy that al-Shawkānī himself engineered. The Turks, according to al-Shawkānī, had no reason, aside from goodwill, to return these lands, and could have easily annexed them. Quite naturally, al-Shawkānī maintains, Yemeni officials were convinced that the Ottomans were bluffing, and that they intended to keep the Yemeni lands in their possession, especially since they were militarily superior and could overwhelm the Yemeni armies and the tribes of Yemen on whom the imam depended in times of war.¹⁴Close In fact, the Najdi (Wahhabi) forces were superior to the Yemeni forces and, according to al-Shawkānī, they were easily subdued by the Egyptian/Ottoman armies. From all over Yemen, people wrote to al-Shawkānī advising him that the arrangement he brokered with the Turks could not be trusted. In response, al-Shawkānī argued that the Turks “have initiated the offer of peace and truce, and we cannot turn down what they have been offering all along.” Al-Shawkānī then contends that those tribes feigning to take up the struggle against the Turks would not raise a finger in the face of the Turkish armies should the Ottomans decide to march on Yemen; these tribes were “spiritless, indolent, and panicked, and all they cared about was their lives and families.”¹⁵Close Al-Shawkānī thus dismisses those who opposed negotiations with the Turks and defends his strategy as one that is both realistic and effective in restoring imamic control over hitherto lost territory. But there is more than political expediency in al-Shawkānī’s stand. To start with, al-Shawkānī’s conception of who constitutes an enemy is tempered by his inclusive identification with Muslims of all ethnicities and confessional affiliations. Moreover, he seems more willing to trust the disciplined Turkish enemy than his unruly tribal allies. Above all, however, al-Shawkānī’s stand is dictated by his strict interpretation of Islamic law, whereby peaceful relationships among Muslims are given priority, irrespective of their ideological inclinations or claims. In other words, given the offer of peace, al-Shawkānī had no legal justification to fight the Turks, whose political order was as legitimate as that of the state he served, or the satellite states on the borders of Yemen.

This principled stand, inspired by al-Shawkānī’s reading of Islamic law and its dictates, permeates all of al-Shawkānī’s attitudes toward political issues. One of al-Shawkānī’s great heroes was the fifteenth-century scholar Muḥammad Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Wazīr, considered the father of the ahl al-ḥadīth school among the Zaydis of Yemen. Ibn al-Wazīr challenged many accepted Zaydi views and provided a model of the independent legal scholarship to which al-Shawkānī adhered. Among his many contributions, Ibn al-Wazīr articulated a systematic argument for using the standard compilations of Sunni hadith and for accepting the report of an innovator he would otherwise condemn as a heretic.¹⁶Close One of Ibn al-Wazīr’s radical moves was to assert, much to the dislike of fellow Zaydis, that the traditions reported on the authority of Muʿāwiya should be accepted, since they are neutral and do not further his heretical cause.¹⁷Close Al-Shawkānī had great admiration for these foundational efforts by Ibn al-Wazīr, but he did not refrain from disagreeing with him on several important issues, some of which had immediate political import. For example, in his Nayl al-Awṭār, al-Shawkānī reports an opinion by Ibn al-Wazīr in which he maintains that the Banū Hāshim (the clan to which the Prophet Muhammad belonged) can be beneficiaries of certain kinds of alms taxes. In response, al-Shawkānī insists that the prohibition against paying any alms to Banū Hāshim is final and definitive: “In summary, the prohibition against paying alms tax [zakat] to the Hāshim clan is well known and there is no distinction in it between whether the one paying the zakāt is himself from the Hāshim clan or not. No exception for this known prohibition is accepted; only that which has truly been sanctioned by God [is accepted], and not the baseless and useless excuses fabricated by those who are caught in this fix; neither are the unsound traditions reported on the particularization [of this general injunction] acceptable.”¹⁸Close

Al-Shawkānī then swiftly proceeds to discuss the prevalent situation in Yemen; indeed, the fervor in al-Shawkānī’s tone was a result not of his academic disagreement with Ibn al-Wazīr but mainly of the pertinence of the issue in question to the contemporary situation in Yemen. Thus, al-Shawkānī asserts that many members of the Banū Hāshim who are in positions of political authority illegally appropriate tax money and find scholars who justify their acts for them. “Because of the abundance of usurpers of zakāt among the clan of Hāshim in the country of Yemen in particular, especially those among them who are in positions of power, some scholars have attempted to defend them and to make lawful what God has forbidden them.” Al-Shawkānī notes that some have gone as far as asserting that the land of Yemen is a kharāj land.¹⁹Close He vehemently attacks these assertions as “lies” used to perpetuate injustice against Muslims.²⁰Close Of all the Yemeni independent thinkers since the fifteenth century, al-Shawkānī, as chief judge, had the closest affiliation to the official political establishment and was most closely identified with the interests of the regime he served. Since he wielded considerable power in this official position, al-Shawkānī’s stand on the illegality of allocating this tax to the extended ruling family could not have been a random legal opinion of little practical ramifications. It is also significant that he would be more critical than his predecessors of this common Zaydi practice.

The independence of al-Shawkānī’s political stands was not accidental or unintentional. Rather, al-Shawkānī addressed in many of his writings the question of dealing with presumably corrupt political authorities, and he offered numerous theoretical reflections on this sensitive issue. One of al-Shawkānī’s books fully devoted to the treatment of this subject is Al-Ittiṣāl bil-Ṣalāṭīn (On dealing with sultans/authorities). Following the model of the Companions of the Prophet, al-Shawkānī argues that it is legitimate to make a living by occupying public office and offering services to rulers.²¹Close It is in fact necessary, he adds, to have a group of people cooperate with the political authorities in the execution of divine laws by occupying positions of judges, muftis, governors, commanders of armies, and so on; otherwise, sharia would be rendered inoperative, Islamic rules would be replaced by jāhilī rules, and the emblems of Islam would be eradicated.²²Close This is all the more needed, al-Shawkānī insists, because without the participation of such knowledgeable and committed scholars in the public arena, rulers, their servants, and their officials would have free rein, disregard religion completely, and violate the wealth, honor, and sanctity of all; they would do all of this and absolve themselves of responsibility under the pretext that they do not know the law and have no one willing to teach it to them, having been abandoned by “those who know the religion.”²³Close Al-Shawkānī thus argues that the traditional advocacy, in the writings of many Muslim scholars, of the withdrawal of scholars from the public sphere and their avoidance of any form of contact with political authorities²⁴Close actually serves the interests of these authorities by creating a scholarly vacuum, which is detrimental to Islam. In contrast, if scholars are part of the power base of the regime, then it is likely that the political authorities will accommodate at least some of the demands of these scholars. Furthermore, al-Shawkānī distinguishes between those scholars who work in the service of rulers and simply aid them in their oppression, and those who engage in legitimate contact with rulers to take advantage of their might and esteem for the purposes of putting the law into practice, enjoining the good, and forbidding the evil. Al-Shawkānī thus believes that a scholar’s legitimate contact with rulers is not just to reprimand and warn them but especially to harness their power to the cause of the public interest.

Al-Shawkānī also maintains that assuming the office of a judge in particular is an unavoidable “affliction” that inevitably brings some harm to the person who accepts it. This, however, is less risky than the greater harm of not accepting such a position. He illustrates his point by recounting the story of a public official who was able to convince the ruler he served to mitigate the penalty imposed against an innocent person; the ruler agreed to reduce the penalty from a death sentence to a number of lashes with a cane on the condition that the official himself would execute the punishment. An uninformed observer might think that the official was an accomplice in the perpetuation of injustice while, in fact, he saved the life of an innocent person.²⁵Close Despite this official’s general responsibility in denouncing injustice, his participation in this case does not constitute a reprehensible act. Al-Shawkānī therefore concludes that “actions which at times may seem to contradict the law, as well as circumstances which appear to be contradictory, may in fact be contrary to what they appear to be, and may be among the greatest possible acts of worship and best acts of kindness.”²⁶Close Scholars who choose to withdraw from the public sphere, in contrast, may have good intentions and may appear morally superior because of their withdrawal; in reality, however, most of those who choose to withdraw either do so because they have no other options, in which case their attacks on public scholars are merely out of jealousy, or because they are incompetent scholars and, more important, inept in the advocacy of scholarship.²⁷Close

Unlike many of his Yemeni predecessors, whose social and moral critiques were seldom applied or adhered to, al-Shawkānī was not forced to withdraw into a utopian dream of meaningless radicalism. It was indeed his ability to shape reality that led him to elaborate this pragmatic view of active engagement in the public sphere. However, al-Shawkānī clearly conceived of two realms of authority, the political and the intellectual, and recognized that the very nature of their relationship involves a compromise, or what he called an unavoidable “affliction,” that should be judged finally on the basis of its outcome. Such a compromise should be assessed based on the extent to which it helps a scholar morally deter rulers’ abuse of power, serve the interests of Muslims and defend them against injustice, and oversee the execution of Islamic law. Al-Shawkānī, therefore, was not simply justifying collaboration with rulers because he was one such collaborator. Rather, he was keenly aware of the risky nature of such contact, and he set strict standards for regulating it. Al-Shawkānī admits that some scholars are accomplices in the crimes of corrupt rulers but adds that he is talking only about those who do not fall into this category.²⁸Close In any event, a scholar dealing with an oppressive ruler should do his utmost to alleviate injustice and in no way help perpetuate and legitimate it or reassure the ruler in his injustice.

If you say that among kings there may exist those who are unjust and tyrannical, I say yes, but the one who deals with them does not do it to help them in their injustice and tyranny but to enforce God’s law among people, issue a ruling on the basis of this law, collect from the subjects what has been obligated by God, or fight against one whom it is lawful to fight and to be the enemy of one who deserves enmity. If this is the case, then if the ruler has reached the highest degree of injustice, those who establish contacts with him [for the above reasons] bear nothing [of the responsibility] for his injustice. In fact, if one has a way of reducing this injustice, even by a very small amount, then he would be deserving of the highest reward on top of [what he gets from] his official office. … He should exert himself as much as he can to ward off [injustice], without aiding him [the ruler] in his injustice, or justifying or encouraging his state, or even suggesting that [his injustice] may be permissible. If he entangles himself in any of these things, then he would count among the unjust and in the camp of the tyrants, and among the traitors [of religion].²⁹Close

Al-Shawkānī thus concedes to numerous risks stemming from engagement in the public sphere, not least of which is the corrupting temptation of power. And yet, the obligation of enjoining what is good and prohibiting what is reprehensible is a public act and, according to al-Shawkānī, one of the most fundamental duties of Islam. Therefore, the choice to withdraw, assuming good intentions, is a selfish choice through which a scholar protects himself but fails to fulfill his responsibility toward the larger Muslim community.³⁰Close Despite all the real risks of associating with authorities, al-Shawkānī makes a plea against isolation and withdrawal in favor of the engagement of scholars and the fulfillment of their practical role in society:

I do not advocate that those who are possessed of scholarship and know its secrets should refrain from taking up religious offices. How could I say that, knowing that if these positions are not secured by them they are lost; if they are abandoned by good people they will be passed on to evil ones; if scholars do not attend to them, ignorant people will; if pious people turn away from them, oppressors will come along [and fill them]. How could I say this when scholars are religiously obliged to adjudicate among people with truth, justice, and equity, and in accordance with what God has revealed … [they are commanded] to deliver [God’s] rules and remind people of His commands. … The people who deliver judgments and legal consultations … have the largest share of these responsibilities. … I do say, however, that the seeker of knowledge ought to seek it in the proper way, and to learn it as God wants him to, believing that it is the highest of religious and worldly matters, and hoping to benefit God’s worshippers with it. … One such benefit obtains when kings and worldly authorities need him to assume a certain office and ask him to do this and insist that he accept, while recognizing the rights of scholarship and [the necessity of] abiding by the obligations of religion … assuming that he [the scholar] has achieved a level of knowledge that would qualify him for such a position … in this situation, it is not permissible for a scholar to refrain from responding or to refuse to accept, for should he, he would have abandoned what God has required … and the upholding of Islamic law would be impeded.³¹Close

Al-Shawkānī had little tolerance for the pious ideal of withdrawal and isolation.³²Close On one occasion he quotes a dictum of the famous Sufi al-Qushayrī that one does not draw closer to God unless he moves away from humans. This, al-Shawkānī asserts, is true for someone who can be of no use to other human beings. However, for “one who can benefit them either by his knowledge, preaching, struggle, or by forbidding what is prohibited or enforcing what God has commanded his fellow [humans] to do, then such a person’s closeness to humans draws him closer to the truth. This is the station of the prophets and the scholars to whom God has entrusted the guidance of people.”³³Close

Al-Shawkānī’s detailed exposition is not limited to the scholar’s end of the relationship; he also outlines the key aspects of a ruler’s duties that merit the aid of scholars, as well as the main offenses that a ruler often commits. The duties of the ruler include providing security on highways and roads, protecting the weak from the transgressions of the powerful, waging holy war against unbelievers, enforcing the law, establishing the emblems of Islam, appointing judges, arbitrating disputes, appointing public supervisors, building and preparing armies, building schools, and standing up to villains and corrupters.³⁴Close The list of offenses includes anger and lust, shedding blood, illegal appropriation of wealth, collective punishment, and so on.³⁵Close In sum, therefore, it is permissible to maintain active contacts with rulers if this serves the public interest; and such a contact is, in fact, obligatory if this public interest is not achievable without it. However, this service may be forbidden if there is no religious benefit from it, or if it leads to corruption and the infliction of harm on the community.³⁶Close

While Al-Ittiṣāl bi-l-Salāṭīn is largely an apologetic work, in that it justifies public engagement despite recognized moral risks, other works of al-Shawkānī focus more on the risks involved in taking a moral stand in the public sphere. In his Adab al-Ṭalab, al-Shawkānī talks about the vice of concealing the truth or intentionally opposing it, not only in the hope of worldly gain but also in deference to the mob and other people in power. Significantly, however, al-Shawkānī focuses more on the possibility of persecution that may result from the public exposure of scholars who tell the truth and stand for it.³⁷Close Some may argue, he says, that a person who publicly advocates the truth in a land of innovation would only bring harm to himself. However, al-Shawkānī responds by invoking the history of scholars who did not shy away from political confrontation. Most such scholars, al-Shawkānī maintains, did not perish as a result of criticizing power and were ultimately protected from harm by God. Yet even to perish would be justified:

Suppose what you have guessed is true … and that you will be afflicted and harm will befall you. Are you the same as the whole world and all the people [in it]? And do you think that you will last forever in this world? And what if you act in accordance with what you know is true and walk in the path that God commands you to follow? The most that can happen to you and inflict you is to be killed for the sake of truth and become a martyr in [the cause of] knowledge; you would thus win eternal happiness, become an exemplar for scholars to the end of time, a disgrace to innovators, and a burden that breaks their backs … and you will shame them [the innovators] as long as they embrace their transgression. … Many a worshipper of God have preceded you on this course and achieved this high status, and you have in them an example and a model.³⁸Close

While describing the worst that could happen to a scholar who lives up to his public responsibilities, al-Shawkānī believes such worst-case scenarios are unlikely to occur. He insists that, unlike a warrior on the frontier who takes much more serious risks, the danger to a scholar on account of his preaching God’s commands to fellow Muslims is minimal, and it usually does not go beyond some limited bodily harm or loss of wealth or, more often, some verbal abuse and defamation. In contrast, it is most likely that the steadfast struggle of scholars would eventually bear fruit. Thus, based on his reading of the historical record, al-Shawkānī outlines what he considers a more realistic view of the risks of public engagement and the possibilities of making a difference as a result of this engagement. Al-Shawkānī’s historical ideal includes, among other things, the chain of Yemeni scholars in the school of ahl al-ḥadīth. All of these scholars were subjected to some kind of persecution and abuse including, in the most extreme cases, imprisonment and exile. They were nonetheless able to write and promote their views, and they managed to cultivate a strong following in Yemen. Moreover, the culmination of this tradition is al-Shawkānī himself, an illustration (at least in his own mind) of the claim that intellectual integrity will finally prevail.

Underlying his advocacy of public engagement is the need, in al-Shawkānī’s view, for political order, a prerequisite for the performance of religious obligations, securing public interest, and protecting the community from harm.³⁹Close Historically, al-Shawkānī maintains, there has been no consensus on the perfect justice of any Muslim ruler, with the exception of the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar Ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Yet although all known Muslim rulers may have committed some sort of injustice, there can be no doubt that the presence of a ruler is an absolute necessity for the maintenance of law and order. It follows, then, that it is necessary to obey the ruler if this does not entail disobeying God. After giving evidence from the Qurʾān and the Sunna for this view, al-Shawkānī adds that it is also necessary to be patient in dealing with the injustice of rulers, since if a ruler is unjust, he will suffer the burden of the responsibility for it, and if he is just then the reward will belong to him and to his subjects. He points out also that the community has a collective duty to advise its rulers. Unlike Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, however, al-Shawkānī takes this notion of advice seriously and acts upon it. He also defines injustice and delineates the various kinds of violations to wealth and honor that constitute social and economic forms of injustice. He then reiterates that it is obligatory for Muslims to struggle against injustice through acts, words, or in their hearts, if the first two are beyond their capacity.

In these discussions, al-Shawkānī develops the idea that public order maintained through the state and its powers provides the medium that enables the law to function, but it is never in itself identical with the law. Politics, therefore, is clearly a mundane necessity not a religious one, and the realm of politics is not part of the sacred order of Muslims. Still, Muslims must get involved in politics and public life, since isolation and rejection can only contribute to social and moral decline and decadence. Unlike al-Ṣanʿānī, al-Shawkānī does not glorify isolation and withdrawal, nor does he promote formulas for individual salvation. In contrast to isolationists, as well as the many scholars who collaborated with authorities without addressing the pitfalls of such engagement, al-Shawkānī theorized a different mode of association with authority that is at once legitimate and subject to set rules that would regulate this association and preserve the integrity of the scholars involved in it.⁴⁰Close

The theoretical model of an engaged but independent and critical intellectual outlined in Al-Ittiṣāl biʿl-Salāṭīn and Adab al-Ṭalab is illustrated and to a great extent balanced by the profiles of dissenting scholars assembled in Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ. While the two theoretical expositions encourage scholars to participate in the public sphere in a principled manner, the primary virtue celebrated in Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ is dissent. The book, al-Shawkānī’s main historical work, was written with the professed purpose of celebrating the virtues of post-seventh-century Muslims.⁴¹Close These virtues include piety, literary talent, erudition, and so on. Some people are listed on account of the favors and status they received within the state.⁴²Close The most celebrated virtues, however, are originality and independence, as well as intellectual integrity and political courage. Many of the scholars celebrated in al-Shawkānī’s collection are listed because they did such things as shunning worldly positions, refusing to assume the position of judge, assuming a critical stand vis-à-vis the state, standing up to rulers and refusing to condone their injustice, and not hesitating to condemn unlawful actions.⁴³Close One individual actually chided al-Shawkānī for his own seeming docility regarding matters of the state.⁴⁴Close The merits of another person include his asking to assume several public offices but he accepted only what would not compromise his religion (qabila minhā mā fīhi al-salāma li-dīnihī).⁴⁵Close Elsewhere, al-Shawkānī indicates that the decision of whether to accept public office is a function of specific historical factors: what may be acceptable under some conditions may not be acceptable under others. Thus an eighth-century scholar was offered the office of judge more than once but refused to accept it, arguing that for this position one would need not just wide-ranging knowledge but specific technical knowledge that he lacked.⁴⁶Close In this case, the scholar’s rejection was a function of not the nature of the position itself but his awareness of his own limitations, which would have prevented him from performing his duties properly.

To his credit, al-Shawkānī does not limit his ideal model to a description that fits his personal experience or his view of himself. For example, in the biography of one his teachers, al-Ḥasan Ibn Ismāʿīl Ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Muḥammad al-Maghribī (after Maghārib Sanaa) (d. 1208), al-Shawkānī describes his teacher as a learned scholar who was also pious, modest, righteous, austere, did not refer to himself as a scholar, and had no sense of entitlement in relation to his students or others.⁴⁷Close He did his domestic chores himself and had no other interests besides pursuing and spreading scholarship and attending to the bare necessities of making a living. While still young, he was offered the position of judge, but he turned it down and did so again on several occasions.⁴⁸Close In short, al-Shawkānī maintains, the sight of this man who modeled everything in his life on the example of the early pious generations of Muslims made a person mindful of God. This man, al-Shawkānī reports, “is naturally modest, even though there are about ten mujtahids among the students studying with him. … He remained in this beautiful state, only becoming more modest. … Let anyone who desires to reach the fruit of knowledge and to attain its rewards in the hereafter, follow his example.” And yet, al-Shawkānī, who accepted appointment to the office of chief judge and was anything but modest, did not follow the model of his teacher.

Al-Shawkānī offers a positive assessment of intellectuals who have experiences similar to his; he even uses entries on such individuals as occasions to offer information on his own career and credentials, and to highlight what he considers to be his own virtues. In a biography of a contemporary and associate of his, Ismāʿīl Ibn ʿAlī … Ibn Ḥamīd al-Dīn Ibn Muṭahhar Ibn al-Imām Sharaf al-Dīn (d. 1215), al-Shawkānī describes the ideal intellectual. This scholar who studied under al-Ṣanʿānī, among others, was frequently invited, with al-Shawkānī, by Imam al-Manṣūr for consultation. “He has a way of nobility of purpose and pride which only one like him is capable of in such situations where the essence of true men becomes visible. For I have never heard from him, throughout the time when I encountered him there [in the audience of the imam], a word that implies submission to worldly desire, either explicitly or implicitly. Rather, he inserts in his speech stories and accounts which include exhortations that have great effect on the hearts [of listeners] aiming in that to gain reward in the hereafter.”⁴⁹Close

In a number of the biographies of his acquaintances, al-Shawkānī talks at length about his own experiences. Of particular interest are accounts in which al-Shawkānī situates himself in relation to his intellectual predecessors. In a biography of one Ismāʿīl Ibn Yaḥyā Ibn Ḥasan al-Ṣaʿdī then al-Dhamārī then al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 1209), al-Shawkānī tells of a private meeting between him and this caring older colleague six month before his death.⁵⁰Close At the time, al-Shawkānī says, he had been slandered by a group of people who objected to his independent reasoning and determination to follow legal indicants rather than imitate. “Inferior minds,” al-Shawkānī adds, are always hostile to those who follow proofs. Out of genuine concern, the older scholar advised al-Shawkānī that displaying this tendency to exercise independent judgment by following legal indicants would lead to strife. To illustrate, the older scholar mentioned the example of al-Ṣanʿānī, who was verbally and physically attacked despite the support he enjoyed from several powerful officials. In contrast, al-Shawkānī, according to this account, isolated himself from people in power and devoted himself solely to scholarship. Moreover, in contrast to al-Ṣanʿānī, who started on this confrontational path toward the end of his life, al-Shawkānī started on it at an early age, and was thus more likely to elicit the wrath and resentment of the authorities. Al-Shawkānī, of course, has the story reversed, for in reality it was he who enjoyed secure state support and protection, and al-Ṣanʿānī who did not; moreover, al-Ṣanʿānī was subjected to much harsher pressure than al-Shawkānī ever had to endure. This reversal of roles in al-Shawkānī’s account provides a narrative of origins that serves to justify his ultimate choices. According to this narrative, al-Shawkānī started out as a radical intellectual, even more so than someone like al-Ṣanʿānī; later, he tempered his position on the advice of wise contemporaries following the example of earlier reformers. Moreover, the purpose of this moderation was not self-preservation but the desire to be more effective in championing his righteous cause.

In the various models he outlines, al-Shawkānī celebrates the intellectual integrity that compelled many of his predecessors to dissociate themselves from worldly power; at the same time, he strongly defends his choice of public engagement and association with power and provides a theoretical justification for this choice. Clearly, therefore, al-Shawkānī thought that it was possible for him to have a connection to power in which he would be strong enough to maintain a balanced and equal relationship with rulers without compromising the authority that his scholarly expertise had earned him. But was this self-confidence warranted? To answer this question we must examine both the sociopolitical context in which al-Shawkānī operated and the extent to which he was actually able to exercise power and influence the course of events.

Al-Shawkānī served as chief judge under three Zaydi imams. Zaydi Islam entered Yemen at an early date, with the first Zaydi political community in Yemen founded by al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq Ibn al-Ḥusayn (d. 298/911). Zaydism quickly became a permanent feature of Yemen’s political and religious landscape. The imamic dynasty under which al-Shawkānī served was founded toward the end of the sixteenth century by al-Manṣūr al-Qāsim Ibn Muḥammad (d. 1620). In 1636, al-Qāsim’s son and successor, al-Muʿayyad Muḥammad (r. 1620–44), drove the Ottomans out of Yemen and extended the control of the imamate over all of Yemen. The highest point of this Qāsimī imamic dynasty was under the third ruler, al-Mutawakkil Ismāʿīl (r. 1644–76). In this period, the imamate also ruled over the Shāfiʿī population of lower Yemen, and Shāfiʿīs subsequently constituted a significant portion of the subjects of the imamate.⁵¹Close As is usually the case with dynastic powers, the Qāsimī imamate lost some of its rigor and strength with the passage of time, and its effective domain of influence gradually shrank. By the time of al-Shawkānī, the imamate’s control over the southern parts of the state was reduced, and it lost many of its northern territories to the Wahhabis and other Hijazi powers. Yet despite these changes, the imamate retained its essential characteristics, namely, that it was decidedly a Zaydi state, in both its power base and official state ideology. I highlight the emphasis on the Zaydi character of the state here in order to avoid a possible misreading of al-Shawkānī and his context. At first glance, it is possible to assume that the incorporation of large numbers of Sunni subjects into the domain of the imamate had effectively changed the face of the state; consequently, it may also be argued, al-Shawkānī’s appointment as chief judge, given his presumed affinity to Sunnism, is a reflection of this change in the overall population makeup of the Yemeni state. Additionally, one may also argue that the dilution of the Zaydi ideological hold over power was reflected in the makeup of the state and its institutions, and that al-Shawkānī’s appointment provided ideological justification for the new structure of the imamic state.⁵²Close In what follows I will argue that, despite the seeming logic of these assumptions, a close reading of both the historical record and al-Shawkānī’s writings suggests otherwise. To start with, al-Shawkānī cannot be characterized as a Sunni and hence could not have provided a Sunni justification for the new Zaydi state. Moreover, the eighteenth-century imamic state was, above everything else, a Zaydi dynasty continuing the traditions set in place at the outset of the Qāsimī dynasty in the late sixteenth century.

The early imams of the Qāsimī dynasty were no doubt more charismatic than the later imams. As in other cases of newly instituted ideological regimes, the imamic state became more structured and routinized with the passage of time, and its authority subsequently more institutionalized. Still, from the beginning, rule passed through and within the Qāsimī lineage and, as such, was dynastic and patrimonial. This was equally true of early and late Zaydi successions in Yemen. In fact, an integral part of the Zaydi theory of the imamate is the principle of the authority of the ʿitra, the family or dynasty claiming descent from ʿAlī, the cousin of the Prophet. To be sure, in addition to descent, the classical Zaydi theory of the imamate stipulates other conditions that qualify a member of the ʿitra for the imamate, such as piety, justice, power, and the ability to exercise ijtihād. In theory, the rightful Zaydi imam is the member of the ʿitra who is best qualified based on these standards. In practice, however, there were always several contenders for the position of the imam, and the imamate effectively went to the one who was able to exercise the most power, even if he was not the most knowledgeable or just member of the family. This practical compromise was also incorporated into Zaydi legal theory, long before the establishment of the Qāsimī imamate. This was also true of the Hādawī branch of Zaydism, the interpretative school of legal thought that prevailed in the Qāsimī imamate. The Hādawī school was the official school of thought to which the state and a majority of its officials and bureaucrats adhered. In fact, even al-Shawkānī, the one state official who did not adhere to this school, continued to engage the Hādawī tradition in his writings and practices. And although the Hādawīs lost their exclusive hold on power with the appointment of al-Shawkānī to the office of chief judge, a majority of the state officials, and a large portion of the judiciary, came from their ranks. The imams, in contrast, aspired to the same status and authority as their predecessors; they were, however, considerably less resourceful than the early imams and often failed to consolidate their power effectively throughout their domains. As such, the erosion of the power of the Hādawī Zaydis was itself a symptom of the erosion of the imams’ power, not a deliberate move by the latter to undermine the threatening ideological power of traditional Zaydism.⁵³Close

In contrast to the personal and charismatic character of the early Qāsimī imams, the later imams were more predictable and in some sense more constrained by the structure of their state. And although al-Shawkānī promoted the arrogation of significant functions of the imamic power to jurists like himself, this was not inspired by Sunni inclinations; rather, despite a romantic characterization of Zaydi political theory by modern scholars,⁵⁴Close the classical formulations of this theory had already allowed for such sharing of power and thus had departed from the ideal of the imam as the ultimate, unrivaled intellectual and political authority.⁵⁵Close In any event, the survival of early as well as late Qāsimī states depended primarily on the ability of the imams to wield power, and not on their piety, charisma, or idealized qualifications. This power rested on a number of intertwined elements including a legitimizing state ideology, an army of bureaucrats and officials loyal to this ideology, a reliable and controllable source of revenue, and a strong military capable of ensuring the state’s continuing hold on power. Zaydi Islam, irrespective of its mutations and compromises, was the source of the state ideology. Revenue was derived mainly from taxation of agricultural lands and trade. Occasionally, military campaigns would generate some income but, more often than not, they were a drain on the state resources. The ability to extract taxes was obviously tied to the ability to exercise coercive power through the actual or projected military might of the state. This might depended on a small army of slave soldiers and a large body of recruits. The latter, accounting for the real power of the army in large-scale battles against internal as well as external enemies, were drawn from the Zaydi tribes of highland Yemen, the primary power base of the Zaydi state.

As noted above, the Qāsimī imamate gradually expanded to include a significant portion of Shāfiʿī subjects from southern Yemen. Moreover, these Shāfiʿīs accounted for a large section of the tax base of the Zaydi state. It is thus likely that the status of Sunna-oriented scholars such as al-Shawkānī was enhanced as a result of the expansion and the resulting contacts between Zaydis and Shāfiʿīs. Still, it is important to note that the tendency among some Zaydi scholars to positively engage Sunni scholarship and to create hybrid intellectual identities that cut across traditional sectarian lines started long before al-Shawkānī or the expansion of the Qāsimī state into southern Yemen. The founding father of this tradition among the Zaydis was the fifteenth-century scholar Muḥammad Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Wazīr (d. 1436).⁵⁶Close Ibn al-Wazīr was the first to systematically use the Sunni collections of hadith and provide a theoretical argument in support of this use. Earlier Zaydi scholars also drew upon Sunni hadith collections, but this earlier use was neither systematic nor theoretically grounded.⁵⁷Close Therefore, the rise of this scholarly tradition to which al-Shawkānī belonged cannot be explained in terms of the state’s need to accommodate its Shāfiʿī subjects. It is also noteworthy that al-Shawkānī does not accord a higher status to Shāfiʿī scholars than members of other schools. In fact, with the exception of the fifteenth-century Shāfiʿī polymath Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, al-Shawkānī’s list of Sunni heroes includes mostly eccentric Ḥanbalīs and Ẓāhirīs; moreover, al-Shawkānī’s views on ijtihād and other legal matters seems to have an affinity with the Ḥanbalī and Ẓāhirī schools. Thus, Shāfiʿī material or intellectual influence must be ruled out as a cogent explanation for the emergence of the Sunna-oriented scholars or al-Shawkānī’s prominence and position in the state.

If al-Shawkānī’s rise to power cannot be explained in terms of the need of the Zaydi state to accommodate its Sunni/Shāfiʿī subjects, it also cannot be explained as a result of the erosion of the imams’ Zaydi credentials. It may be argued that the later imams of Sanaa themselves no longer fulfilled the rigorous requirements of traditional Zaydi political theory, and thus they may have turned to the less demanding and supposedly ruler-friendly Sunni political theories to legitimate their authority. Were this the case, however, the appointment of al-Shawkānī to the office of chief judge would have provided ideological underpinning for the dynastic claims of the later imamate, at a time when it could no longer rely on the Hādawīs to sustain claims to legitimacy based on the standards of traditional Zaydi political theory.⁵⁸Close However, the actual historical record and the writings of al-Shawkānī rule out this possibility. To start with, this scenario idealizes Hādawī political theory that, as stated above, had long allowed for compromises both in practice and in theory. Moreover, al-Shawkānī and all the Sunna-inclined scholars of Zaydi Yemen were not politically subservient, and they were as spirited and exacting as any scholar could be, short of resorting to outright insurrection. Of course, none of al-Shawkānī’s predecessors was appointed to office, and hence none could have served to legitimate the state directly or through association with it. All along, these Sunna-oriented scholars had their own agendas that in many instances undermined the state’s authority rather than reinforced it. In contrast, many of al-Shawkānī’s Hādawī contemporaries were affiliated with the state and were more than willing to legitimate its authority on Zaydi grounds. Al-Shawkānī relates that, in reaction to one of his works, Irshād al-Ghabī, in which he takes a balanced stand on the question of the status of the Companions and the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt), more than twenty responses were written, and all were unfailingly negative.⁵⁹Close The real motive for these responses, al-Shawkānī contends, was to please the commoners (ʿāmma) and state officials in positions of power (man lahu ṣawla wa dawla). He adds that even those scholars who may have harbored support for al-Shawkānī would not reveal their views for fear of persecution. No doubt al-Shawkānī, like his predecessors, was promoting ideas deemed unacceptable by the Zaydi official establishment. As such, these are oppositional views advanced despite, and not in collusion with, the established power base of the imamic state.

Both in his practices and in the views he promoted, al-Shawkānī proved to be independent and capable of assuming a critical stand toward the state. As mentioned earlier, al-Shawkānī became involved in a coup staged by al-Mutawakkil Aḥmad against his father, Imam al-Manṣūr ʿAlī. On a practical level, al-Shawkānī’s role involved negotiating, apparently on behalf of the son, a deal with the father whereby effective power was passed to the son while the father retained the title. A year after this transfer, when the father died, al-Shawkānī rallied support for the son and rapidly secured his confirmation to the office of the imam in apparent anticipation of opposition from other quarters of the ruling dynasty, including al-Mutawakkil’s brother. In his writings, al-Shawkānī provides theoretical justifications for both junctures of this episode: he presents the transfer of effective power during the father’s lifetime as a natural transfer given al-Manṣūr’s preoccupation and isolation, which impeded his ability to perform his duties properly and subsequently led to the loss of order, security, and justice.⁶⁰Close Al-Shawkānī justifies al-Mutawakkil’s takeover as a corrective to the corruption that prevailed when his father delegated authority to his dishonest wazīr al-Faqīh Ḥasan Bin Ḥasan ʿUthmān al-ʿAlfī.⁶¹Close It should be noted here that, in effect, al-Shawkānī justifies an act of rebellion against the current imam in the name of restoring justice and public order, even though he did not and would not use the term rebellion to describe these events.

On a more fundamental level, al-Shawkānī subverted the state by opposing the extraction of illegal taxes despite the long tradition of levying these taxes as a main source of state income. Al-Shawkānī used the occasion of the loss of Tihāma (the Red Sea coastal plain of Arabia) to compose a book, Al-Dawāʾ al-ʿĀjil fī Dafʿ al-ʿAduw al-Ṣāʾil, in which he offers his own diagnosis of the ills that weakened the hold of the imamic state over its territories. In this book, al-Shawkānī reports that after the loss of Tihāma, he convinced the imam to issue the Manṣūrī edict, which he considered a blueprint for restoring imamic power and authority. An important prerequisite for the restoration of imamic authority, according to al-Shawkānī, is the alleviation of injustice. The principal advice of the edict is to refrain from the collection of illegal taxes (maks, pl. mukūs) because these antagonize the population; as such, the edict was composed to check arbitrary power by introducing rules that even the ijtihād of the imam could not override. Indeed, al-Shawkānī argues, no ijtihād could justify the introduction of extralegal taxes not stipulated in Islamic law. In the Manṣūrī edict, al-Shawkānī envisions a network of judges that has final say in running the affairs of the state at the local level. By relegating the power to administer the state to this network of scholars, the edict effectively undermines the power of the imam and his officers. In a similar vein, al-Shawkānī also asserts that the most effective measures a ruler can take to fortify his rule are to alleviate injustice and end the extortion of illegal taxes.⁶²Close Al-Shawkānī also advised that these measures be publicized and the population made aware of them, to dissuade them from welcoming the armies of rival polities. To be sure, the political establishment resisted al-Shawkānī’s directive by rightly identifying it as something that weakens the state. Yet al-Shawkānī suggests that his critique was motivated by his desire to preserve the territorial integrity of the imamate, and this he proposed to do by limiting the arbitrariness of its power. This bid to limit and regulate the power of the state, in the name of justice, does not fit an assumed model of Sunni quietism and subservience to political authority, and therefore it cannot be explained in terms of al-Shawkānī’s Sunni or Zaydi affiliations. Moreover, his ability to maintain a critical distance from the interests of the state that employed him must have owed much to his independence and intellectual integrity.⁶³Close

Al-Shawkānī’s theoretical stand on the subject of political authority reflects his intellectual independence. In his discussions of the conditions of the imamate, al-Shawkānī treads the middle ground that diverges from both the traditional Zaydi and Sunni models. It should be noted, however, that these theoretical views might have in fact been inspired by real historical paradigms in which the Zaydi and Sunni models of governance were not as divergent as a purely theoretical consideration suggests. In one clear departure from traditional Zaydi political theory, al-Shawkānī suggests that the imam need not be a mujtahid, and he gives priority to the ruler’s power and ability to rule with justice.⁶⁴Close In a description of the reign of al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh Ismāʿīl Ibn al-Imām al-Qāsim Ibn Muḥammad (d. 1087), the son of the founder of the Qāsimī dynasty, al-Shawkānī provides a blueprint for what he considers an ideal rule. Al-Shawkānī reports that al-Mutawakkil was not intimidated by his brother’s claim to the imamate, since the brother was not a mujtahid. Still, the traits that al-Shawkānī celebrates in al-Mutawakkil are his ability to provide security and prosperity for his subjects, his application of justice, which prevented him from the arbitrary use of his power, and the awe he inspired, which deterred people under his rule from committing illegal acts.⁶⁵Close

In one of many examples, al-Shawkānī further delineates his notion of what legitimates political authority in the biography of Tankar (d. 741 AH), the governor of Syria under the Mamlūk Sultan al-Nāṣir.⁶⁶Close Tankar’s justice, according to al-Shawkānī, was evidenced by the fact that, rather than wasting his energy on food, drinking, clothing, and sex, he devoted himself to “guaranteeing the security of the subjects: the roads became safe during his days; prices went down; and, during his reign, no one was abused, not even the unbelievers.”⁶⁷Close In addition, Tankar did not accept bribes and never appointed anyone to public office, such as an amir, deputy, judge, wazīr, secretary, or any other major or minor official, in return for gifts or bribes; in fact, he would return such gifts and hold a grudge against those who offered them. People in his days felt safe in all respects; he upheld the law without compromise and treated scholars with great respect.⁶⁸Close One of his achievements was reviewing the status of the waqf endowments dedicated to schools, mosques, khāniqas, and zāwiyas. He also made the payment of salaries to the supervisors of these endowments conditional on their restoration and upkeep of the endowed properties. He reduced epidemics by cleaning the sewage systems; he also worked on water supply systems, and trade flourished under him.⁶⁹Close Al-Shawkānī quotes the negative assessment of Tankar by the historian al-Dhahabī, who describes Tankar as a man who is “reckless, and lacks good sense and cunning.”⁷⁰Close The real reason for al-Dhahabī’s negative opinion of Tankar, al-Shawkānī adds, is that Tankar used to criticize Ibn Taymiyya, while al-Dhahabī was biased toward the Ḥanbalīs, although he himself was appointed to teach in the schools of hadith under Tankar without paying a bribe or without differential treatment on account of his connections. This long entry for Tankar in Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ, dedicated to a Mamlūk governor from the distant Islamic past with whom al-Shawkānī had no political or religious affinity, explicates al-Shawkānī’s views on the ideals of governorship. Tankar’s mistreatment of Ibn Taymiyya,⁷¹Close one of al-Shawkānī’s few heroes, suggests that a ruler’s stand on religious matters is not of primary importance to al-Shawkānī, so long as these views do not translate into systematic religious persecution, and so long as the ruler provides security, upholds the law rather than abuses it, maintains social order, enhances public services, and recognizes and respects scholarly talent. This is a purely functional notion of political legitimacy that does not idealize the ruler on religious grounds. For al-Shawkānī, a clean sewage system, and not the treatment of Ibn Taymiyya, is the gauge for this legitimacy.

As suggested earlier, despite this departure from traditional Zaydi political theory, al-Shawkānī’s emphasis on justice, as well as his opposition to the imam’s extraction of illegal taxes, conforms with the image of the early Zaydi rulers, and as such reflects a Zaydi ideal. Al-Shawkānī’s stand on the illegality of taxation could be seen as a denial of the imam’s right to use his ijtihād to justify injustice. Yet in traditional Zaydi theory, the justice of the imam takes priority over his lineage and the sacredness and presumed infallibility of his knowledge. In a sense, therefore, al-Shawkānī plays one Zaydi principle against another.⁷²Close What is important here is that the imam need not be a mujtahid because, in al-Shawkānī’s view, ijtihād and the authority that derives from it are not restricted to the ʿitra, the descendants of the Prophet, but instead reside in a much larger sector of society. Hence al-Shawkānī’s notion that the imam need not be a mujtahid did indeed diverge from traditional Zaydi legal theory in one main respect: his theory advocated significantly reducing the imam’s power and provided for a wider diffusion of political and religious authority.⁷³Close Elsewhere, al-Shawkānī opposes rebellion (khurūj) against the imam, but he qualifies his theoretical opposition to rebellion on several occasions and seems to condone it under certain conditions, as in his above-mentioned involvement in the small-scale rebellion against al-Manṣūr.⁷⁴Close

Al-Shawkānī was always willing to assign the responsibility for corruption and Yemen’s social and political crises to all levels of the state political hierarchy. Unlike other scholars who might blame state officials but refrain from implicating the head of the state, al-Shawkānī held the imam responsible for appointing corrupt individuals. Although assigning responsibility in this fashion is but a step away from legitimizing action against the state, al-Shawkānī tackled the question of rebellion head on in his writings. In Nayl al-Awṭār, he sides with the standard legal view that Muslim rebels should not be pursued if they are retreating, and that the permission to kill them is an exception contingent on their initiation of battle and may be granted only for the duration of the fighting. Whenever they stop fighting, the initial rule is restored, namely, their blood is sanctified and their persons are inviolable.⁷⁵Close This relative lenience toward renegades and rebels is perhaps a remnant of traditional Zaydi sympathy with rebels who stand up to tyrannical rulers; in fact, standing up to tyranny is one of the conditions of the legitimate Zaydi imam. However, immediately after he expresses these sympathies al-Shawkānī espouses different traditions that counsel patience in dealing with unjust rulers (aʾimmat al-jūr).⁷⁶Close Al-Shawkānī maintains that it is not lawful to rise against such rulers so long as there is any room for justifying their actions, and as long as they do not publicly exhibit clear and unambiguous unbelief and do not force Muslims to sin. Al-Shawkānī adds, however, that this should not be taken to mean that contemporary Muslims should feel free to criticize earlier generations of Muslims that rebelled against tyrannical regimes, whether they be members of the ʿitra or other Muslims; that is, whether Shiʿis or Sunnis. These rebels, he contends, resorted to rebellion on the basis of “their ijtihād, and they were more fearful of God and more obedient to the tradition of His Prophet than many of the scholars who came after them.”⁷⁷Close Elsewhere, al-Shawkānī lists the duties of rulers in return for which they can demand the tolerance and obedience of their subjects.⁷⁸Close Clearly then, although he does not openly call for it, al-Shawkānī’s stand allows for rebellion under extreme cases of injustice and in the name of ijtihād. This is, no doubt, a far cry from a docile view that idealizes obedience to rulers under all conditions. This is not to say that al-Shawkānī’s views on rebellion are Zaydi or that they are at odds with Sunni views but rather to note that a linear and simplistic explanation of al-Shawkānī’s stand on this matter fails to capture the historical context of his position as well as the nuances of his scholarship and practice.

There can be no doubt that the imamic state at the time of al-Shawkānī was weaker than in earlier periods, and that it was more accommodating of its Shāfiʿī subjects. Yet this imamate continued to be a Zaydi state in terms of both its power base and its official ideology. Although the Shāfiʿī population was not a small minority, it certainly remained in the minority as far as the real makeup of the power base of the Zaydi state was concerned. Equally important was the makeup of the imamate’s armies. From its very inception, the imamic state’s military might, its ability to project its power within Yemen, and its power to deter its outside enemies, depended, above all, on the alliance between the imamic dynasty and the Zaydi tribes of highland Yemen. These tribes, who made up the bulk of the army, cared little about the ideal qualifications of the imam, but they were decidedly committed to the Zaydi identity of the state and the prevalence of the Zaydi madhhab in Yemen.⁷⁹Close The army was further supplemented by a core force of slave soldiers, most of whom, like the wazīrs and other bureaucrats, were also staunchly loyal to the Zaydi state. In contrast, the Shāfiʿī subjects were not recruited to this army and thus had no leverage over this aspect of power in the imamic state.

Therefore, to situate al-Shawkānī in the complex web of power relations that existed in Yemen, it is imperative to distinguish between his interests and those of the state he served. Al-Shawkānī was no longer a Zaydi in the traditional understanding of the word, neither in the way he was perceived by his contemporaries and rivals, nor in the way he thought of himself. However, al-Shawkānī did not become a Sunni, although some of his contemporaries accused him of that. But what was al-Shawkānī?

In the eighteenth century, ethnic and even protonational identities, no matter how strong an echo they had in the consciousness of individuals or collectivities, remained void of intellectual content and did not inspire the articulation of a collective consciousness or political and social norms that had a bearing on the regulation of social relations. In contrast, the newly defined intellectual identities had significant social implications. To a great extent, eighteenth-century reform ushered the emergence of new intellectual identities at the expense of older affiliations. By all accounts, al-Shawkānī represents the culmination of a trend among several generations of Zaydi reformers who were open to Sunni thought and were strong advocates of the discipline of hadith and its study. The attitude of these scholars toward different sects and schools of law has been a subject of frequent commentary. Contemporary scholarship often tries to determine whether these reformers were Zaydi or Sunni.⁸⁰Close In particular, the attempt to resolve the question of the legal and sectarian affiliations of al-Shawkānī, and al-Ṣanʿānī before him, has generated much debate and speculation among contemporary historians of Yemen. This quest is not without justification, for it seems to have been an issue with which the Yemeni scholars themselves struggled. Moreover, the resolution of this question is no doubt important for understanding the political as well as intellectual connections of both al-Ṣanʿānī and al-Shawkānī. However, some of the current interest in this question is a by-product of contemporary political agendas and sheds little light on the political and intellectual careers of these reformers. In the case of al-Shawkānī, in particular, perhaps no other aspect of his career has received more attention than his relationship to the Zaydi and Sunni schools, and the impact of this relationship on his stand vis-à-vis the political authorities. Although al-Shawkānī’s whole career defies narrow categorization, modern scholars and politicians alike consistently elevate the question of whether he was a Zaydi or a Sunni above all other aspects of his complex and rich career. This section will address the vexed question of intellectual identity. Again, the primary focus here will be on al-Shawkānī, since his case presents a more complex model than previous reformers of the same trend.

Al-Shawkānī was born to a Zaydi family in the little town of Shawkān, north of Sanaa.⁸¹Close While still young, al-Shawkānī’s father moved to Sanaa, where he served for forty years as a local judge in the Zaydi tradition. Al-Shawkānī received all of his education in Sanaa, although some of his teachers had traveled in pursuit of knowledge. At a young age, al-Shawkānī was appointed as the imamate’s chief judge, thus occupying both the highest position in the judiciary, and one of the highest positions under the imamate. Al-Shawkānī, therefore, was part of the power apparatus of the Zaydi state and, at least to some extent, furthered the interests of this state. Al-Shawkānī took pride in his ancestry, the fact that his ancestors were staunch supporters of the Qāsimī imams and played a prominent role in driving the Ottomans out of Yemen.⁸²Close In a telling example, al-Shawkānī relates an anecdote about Ibn al-Wazīr, who went to Mecca to study hadith; at one point, his teacher entreated him to affiliate himself with the schools of either Imam Shāfiʿī or Abū Ḥanīfa, but this only angered Ibn al-Wazīr, who said, “If I were in need of such imitation and affiliation I would choose only Imam Qāsim Ibn Ibrāhīm or his grandson al-Hādī.”⁸³Close An almost identical story is reported about an encounter between al-Maqbalī, one of the Sunna-inclined Yemeni scholars, and a Shāfiʿī scholar in Mecca. Al-Maqbalī resided in Mecca for a long time in a kind of self-imposed exile, which he resorted to under pressure from Zaydi zealots who did not approve of his independent views. As a result of the great impression that al-Maqbalī left on the scholars of the Ḥaramayn, the Shāfiʿī mufti of Mecca intimated to him that he wished al-Maqbalī would become a Shāfiʿī. Al-Maqbalī’s response, which al-Shawkānī reports with great approval, was that if he were to be affiliated with any single madhhab, he would certainly choose the great school of his Zaydi ancestors.⁸⁴Close Such, then, was Ibn al-Wazīr’s, al-Maqbalī’s, and al-Shawkānī’s pride in their background. On the one hand, they all had a basic loyalty to the Zaydi tradition but strove to stand outside it as well, and they did not view themselves as narrowly bound by it. On the other hand, they were not bound by any of the other Sunni schools, and they unequivocally refused to be partisans of any madhhab.

In a biography of Aḥmad Ibn Ṣāliḥ Ibn Abī al-Rijāl (d. 1092), the author of Maṭlaʿ al-Budūr wa Majmaʿ al-Buḥūr, al-Shawkānī praises him for compiling this book of biographies of Zaydi notables.⁸⁵Close Such books, al-Shawkānī maintains, are especially needed because the Zaydis, who have numerous distinguished traits and can boast of individuals from all generations who are talented in all possible areas of excellence, are nonetheless experts at obscuring the excellence of their notables and hiding their achievements. They do not pay attention to what they compose either in prose or verse, although they are fond of tracing the achievements of other groups and learning all about the conditions of other sects. As a result, al-Shawkānī adds, Zaydi scholars, notables, and poets, among others, have been neglected by the compilers of histories as well as in the biographies of people from a particular century or generation. In the unlikely event that anything is mentioned about any of the distinguished Zaydis of Yemen, the biographical entry is usually without substance and “devoid of even a fraction of what the person deserves.” This is so because knowledge about individuals derives primarily from their own contemporaries, acquaintances, and fellow countrymen. If these people neglect to report such knowledge, then other, more removed authors will do the same. Al-Shawkānī himself confesses that he too is often at a loss when it comes to the biographies of early Zaydis. Al-Shawkānī thus recognizes the regional character of accumulated biographical knowledge, and the role that each region plays in producing its own local historical knowledge. He further laments the tendency among Zaydi historians to efface the good deeds of their noteworthy scholars, including the most eminent among them.

Al-Shawkānī sets out to change this tradition and he states that one of the objectives of his own biographical collection is to highlight the achievements of fellow Zaydis, preserve their memory, celebrate and promote their scholarship and literary contributions, and give them their due recognition and praise. Furthermore, al-Shawkānī does not restrict the preservation of this legacy to his historical writings but also seeks to preserve the scholarship produced within this tradition. Thus, in his Itḥāf al-Akābir bi Isnād al-Dafātir, al-Shawkānī indicates that he collected in this treatise all the works he had studied and taught, as well as the continuous chains of transmission of these works from their source up until al-Shawkānī himself. These works, al-Shawkānī adds, cover all disciplines of learning and include the “books of the family of the Prophet, may God be pleased with them, and the books of other [scholars] who belong to various schools of law, may God have mercy on them.”⁸⁶Close Al-Shawkānī thus became engaged in the preservation of Zaydi scholarship and memory, and the abundance of the chains of transmission through Zaydi imams illustrates the seriousness with which he dealt with this tradition. Once again, al-Shawkānī was not just proud of his Zaydi background but played an active role in preserving the collective memory of the Zaydi tradition. In other words, one of al-Shawkānī’s main objectives in his historical writings, and in other intellectual works, was to usher the Zaydis into mainstream Islamic history by highlighting their personal and intellectual merit, and their contribution to Islamic knowledge in general.⁸⁷Close

To be sure, al-Shawkānī’s motivation for constructing this kind of history derived, at least partly, from his desire to dispel the impression that Zaydis were zealous extremists who made no contribution to the larger world of Islamic knowledge. In reference to the ridiculously short entries for Ibn al-Wazīr in the classical biographical dictionaries of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī al-Sakhāwī, al-Shawkānī maintains that there is no doubt that scholars belonging to various schools do not pay much attention to the people of Yemen, because they blindly repeat information generated by earlier writers who knew nothing of the conditions of Yemen and its people.⁸⁸Close In contrast to the impression one gets from these classical biographical dictionaries and histories, al-Shawkānī asserts that

the lands of the Zaydis have innumerable scholars of the Book and the Sunna; they adhere to the textual indicants [adilla] and depend on what has been established as sound in the classical compilations of hadith. … They do not resort to imitation in any way or form, and their religion is not tainted with the innovations from which the people of the different schools are never totally free. The Zaydis follow the example of the first generation of pious Muslims in acting in accordance with what is indicated in the Book of God and in the Sunna of the Messenger of God. … Suffice it for them to have this special characteristic of adherence to the texts of the Book and the Sunna, and abandoning imitation, since this is a characteristic with which God privileged the people of these [Yemeni] lands in these late times, and it is rarely found in anyone else. There is no doubt that in the Egyptian or Syrian lands there are great scholars whose status is hardly matched by most of the people of our lands; they, however, do not forsake imitation, which is the habit of those who do not understand the proofs of God and His Messenger; the scholarship of one who does not forsake imitation is not of great benefit. Those who act in accordance with indicants and who forsake imitation are a rare minority, such as Ibn Taymiyya and his like.⁸⁹Close

Although al-Shawkānī does not strictly idealize Zaydis, he nonetheless argues that the ranks of the Zaydi school have provided more independent scholars than any other school of law, and, as such, there is much to be proud of in the regional Zaydi tradition. What is also clear is that al-Shawkānī equates the Yemeni regional tradition with the Zaydi one, and uses the two terms, Yemeni and Zaydi, interchangeably. It is also important to note at the outset that al-Shawkānī does not exonerate Yemen by arguing that it has Sunni scholars; rather, better than that, Yemen has independent scholars and mujtahids who have abandoned imitation and recognized the superior authority of hadith.

Pride aside, al-Shawkānī’s praise for Yemeni Zaydi contributions to Islam was in no way uncritical. In fact, aside from the Qurʾān and the Prophet Muhammad, one would be hard pressed to find a single person, work, or tradition that al-Shawkānī praised without some critical qualification. In the case of Zaydi legal thought, a subject close to al-Shawkānī’s heart, the critique was often devastating. In one typical example, al-Shawkānī marvels at the “stupidity” of Yemeni imitators. He maintains that although he has prohibited imitation, most Yemenis persist in imitating al-Imām al-Hādī Yaḥyā Ibn al-Ḥusayn (end of the thirteenth century AD)—after whom the dominant Hādawiyya branch of Zaydi law is named. These Yemenis then contend that “they imitate him, even though he does not consider it lawful to do so, in agreement with the opinion of some later scholars that it is permissible to imitate al-Imām al-Hādī even though he prohibits taqlīd.”⁹⁰Close Thus, according to al-Shawkānī, most Yemeni Zaydis imitate al-Hādī on all but his views on the question of imitation, which he prohibits. In all cases, these imitators do not make any logical inferences of their own but instead justify their opinions on the basis of someone else’s opinion. Again, al-Shawkānī tries here to maintain a delicate balance between his criticism of extreme Hādawī Zaydis, as well as some errors in the legal formulations of the Hādawī school,⁹¹Close and his simultaneous claim to represent the correct understanding of this tradition.

Aside from imitation, a fault shared by Muslim masses and elites alike, irrespective of their schools, al-Shawkānī criticizes Zaydism harshly when it degenerates into rafḍ (extreme Shiism, rejectionism). Al-Shawkānī’s references to Shiʿis and Shiism are distinct from his references to Zaydism. Of Twelver Shiism, al-Shawkānī displayed little knowledge. On the whole, he is indifferent to Twelver Shiʿis, although not without an occasional positive reference to an individual or even to a Twelver legal opinion.⁹²Close For example, in one instance he adopts the Twelver view on the best sequence of rituals to be performed in the pilgrimage, which he also attributes to Mālik and Ibn Ḥanbal, but not to their followers.⁹³Close However, this example notwithstanding, al-Shawkānī seems to have known little about Twelver Shiism, and he seldom quotes Twelver Shiʿi legal views. Rather, he tends to ignore them, and his references to Shiism are usually to the Ismāʿīlīs, whom he refers to as Rāfiḍa (rejectionists), and whom he cites as examples of abominable heresy. This, of course, owes much to his firsthand encounter with the large Ismāʿīlī communities in Yemen, whereas there was no such Twelver Shiʿi presence. On multiple occasions, al-Shawkānī expresses concern about the adoption of extreme Shiʿi dogmas by common Zaydis, especially the slandering of the Companions of the Prophet.⁹⁴Close

There are, according to al-Shawkānī, exceptions to this general tendency, namely, the independent scholars who “act in accordance with the indicants [of the law], do not adhere to any one school, and do not zealously defend any one individual.”⁹⁵Close In fact, al-Shawkānī asserts, it is rare to find in any Muslim city as many independent scholars as one finds in Sanaa; the scholars of Sanaa do not rely on speculation and imitation of school doctrines; they accept only what is definitively attributable to the Lawgiver. With very rare exceptions in other Muslim cities, this is a virtue unique to Yemen. Elsewhere, even when such scholars exist, they often hide their knowledge and disagreement with the doctrines of the prevailing madhhab for fear of persecution by zealous followers of this madhhab.⁹⁶Close Thus, while al-Shawkānī is very critical of the tendency toward imitation and rejection of the Sunna and argues that it is tantamount to rafḍ, he exonerates independent Yemeni scholarship and scholars who are free of sectarian zeal, and argues that in this respect Zaydi Yemen is no doubt superior to other Sunni lands.

A strong sense of regional identity and loyalty to the Zaydi tradition is thus evident in al-Shawkānī’s work. Even his numerous critiques of Zaydi views are offered in the name of the original founders of the Zaydi madhhab and its leading imams. At one level, therefore, his critical stance of many trends in Zaydism can be read as an attempt to doctrinally disengage Zaydism from rafḍ and to limit the political sphere of influence of the Ismāʿīlī Shiʿis in the domain of the imamate.⁹⁷Close

On account of its prevalence in Imami Yemen, al-Shawkānī was intensely engaged in a critical evaluation of the Hādawī Zaydi tradition. Like all the Sunna-oriented Zaydi scholars before him, al-Shawkānī wrote extensive commentaries on classical works of Zaydi law. On one level, his engagement reflects the seriousness with which al-Shawkānī treated this tradition. Although his writings on Zaydi law were full of criticisms, he did not write polemics against Zaydism, as an outsider to this tradition would have done. Thus, when al-Shawkānī writes commentaries on, and not polemics against, the Hādawī legal doctrine, no matter how critical he may be, he starts from a premise of recognition and not rejection. This is also true of al-Shawkānī’s commentaries on Sunni legal doctrines in which the fundamental legitimacy of these doctrines is recognized, although he was just as critical of countless details in the Sunni works he commented on, as he was in his treatment of Zaydi works. In principle, therefore, for al-Shawkānī, the four Sunni schools of law were as legitimate as the Zaydi one, and none of them was immune to his sharp criticism.⁹⁸Close Neither did one school hold a necessary edge over the others, although at times al-Shawkānī exhibits a desire to defend the Zaydi views, if at all possible, according to his rigorous and systematic criteria of legal reasoning.⁹⁹Close

The critical views that al-Shawkānī expresses on Zaydi law appear perhaps more frequently in his writings than those on Sunni law. This is understandable given that he was educated in the Zaydi tradition; moreover, Zaydi law was the law of the land, and hence, in his capacity as the head of the judiciary, it was of a more immediate practical concern to al-Shawkānī. Still, he was no less critical of Sunni law, and more important, his critique of madhhab zeal was directed equally at Sunnis and Zaydis. In fact, since, according to al-Shawkānī, madhhab zeal is primarily a by-product of imitation and the suspension of ijtihād, and since the practice of ijtihād was commonly advocated in the Zaydi school, at least at the level of the elite, the Sunni schools seem to bear a larger share of the responsibility for the sectarian tendencies among Muslims. It is in Sunni scholarship that one encounters the argument that, after the death of the founding fathers of the four schools of law and after the elaboration of the doctrines of these schools, ijtihād was no longer possible. Al-Shawkānī maintains that this claim supposes that the nature of human understanding has changed since the establishment of these schools and serves to impose “the innovation of taqlīd upon all Muslims, as if the divine law … has been abrogated.”¹⁰⁰Close People who make this argument, al-Shawkānī contends, “recognize no divine law other than that which has been established in the schools.” The implication of the alleged closure (insidād) of the gates of ijtihād, al-Shawkānī adds, is that there is no living Muslim who can understand the Book and the Sunna; if this were true, Muslims would no longer have the ability to access these texts and understand them. Making this argument is tantamount to fabricating lies about God by claiming that “He is incapable of creating humans who can understand what He legislated for them, and what He required them to observe, as if what He legislated for them is not an absolute Law but a limited, interim code that was to last until these schools were established.” Al-Shawkānī thus concludes that even if they deny the charges, people who make this argument in effect “legislate a new law and create a new religion for this community [of Muslims].”¹⁰¹Close

In his characteristic style, al-Shawkānī invariably makes sure that his criticism of one group is not understood as advocacy of another. After criticizing the presumably Sunni adherence to madhhabs, he adds that the Zaydis of Yemen have a parallel “detestable” and “satanic” predilection, namely, accusing someone who applies and teaches the classical books of hadith of departing from the school of the family of the Prophet, simply because the compilers of these books were not Shiʿis. Thus, those Zaydis “use this damned contention to reject all of the purified Sunna, since one can find the Sunna that comes from the Messenger of God only in these compilations, and there is no Sunna aside from what one finds in them.”¹⁰²Close Unlike these Zaydis, the Sunni imitators and deniers of ijtihād still revere the books in which the Sunna is compiled and concede the excellence of these books. More important, they recognize that, taken together, these compilations are the “records of Islam and the sources and compendiums of hadith on which scholars of all times have relied.” The essence of al-Shawkānī’s advocacy of the Sunna is the centrality of the canonical collections of the Sunna of the Prophet both to Islam in general, and to the exercise of ijtihād in particular. The virtue of the Sunnis is not in their adherence to their respective madhhabs but in their use of hadith. In al-Shawkānī’s view, the use of hadith, despite Zaydi beliefs to the contrary, does not amount to a rejection of the school of the family of the Prophet (madhhab ahl al-bayt). Al-Shawkānī thus makes a very conscious distinction between the use of Sunna and being a Sunni. And although his hadith methodology is closer to the traditional Sunni methodology, he also diverges from this methodology in significant, and at times radical, ways.¹⁰³Close On the other hand, he treats the Zaydi legal tradition as a legitimate tradition just as worthy of examination and engagement as the other Sunni madhhabs, clearly a position that is not in agreement with traditional Sunni views.

Al-Shawkānī, therefore, was a traditionalist, but of an unconventional brand of traditionalism peculiar to Zaydi Yemen. In fact, al-Shawkānī consciously presents himself as continuing this peculiar Yemeni trend, which starts with Ibn al-Wazīr (d. 840/1436) and includes al-Ḥasan al-Jalāl (d. 1084/1673), al-Maqbalī (d. 1108/1696), and al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 1182/1769). In varying degrees, each of these five scholars placed hadith above school affiliation. Moreover, all of these scholars identified with eccentric, unconventional Sunnis, such as Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Ḥazm al-Ẓāhirī, and not with mainstream Sunnism. It is, therefore, decidedly inaccurate to view al-Shawkānī, on account of his traditionalism, as a Zaydi turned Sunni, or to try to place him within either tradition. There are, no doubt, numerous influences that shaped al-Shawkānī’s thought, but his intellectual profile is not reducible to its ancestries. His rejection of Zaydi zeal is part of his larger rejection of madhhab partisanship of all kinds. Furthermore, al-Shawkānī’s highly complex and intricate system of thought cannot be exclusively understood in terms of his relationship with political authority. In fact, despite changing political conditions, the continuities in the Yemeni reformative intellectual tradition since the ninth/fifteenth century attest to the relative autonomy of this intellectual heritage and the need to examine its internal logic on its own merits.¹⁰⁴Close

One example that illustrates the peculiarity of this Yemeni intellectual tradition is the attitude toward kalām (Islamic theology). In contrast to Sunnis who largely adopted Ashʿarī theology, the Zaydis of Yemen continued to advocate Muʿtazilī theology even after its general demise in the Muslim world. Starting with Ibn al-Wazīr, however, one of the hallmarks of the Yemeni reform tradition, in addition to the study and use of hadith, was the critique of Muʿtazilī theology. And yet, this ostensible Sunni influence had distinct characteristics that were peculiar to Yemen. To start with, the reformers of Yemen rejected Muʿtazilī and Ashʿarī theology, both of which, they argued, were not needed for the proper understanding and practice of Islam.¹⁰⁵Close Moreover, al-Shawkānī in particular veered away from the traditional Ashʿarī notion that God’s creation and law are not necessarily bound by any purpose; instead, he maintained, there is definite wisdom in God’s creation and law. Unlike the Muʿtazilīs, however, he added that human understanding may not always perceive this wisdom, and human action is not conditional on understanding the wisdom behind God’s commands. Al-Shawkānī also advocated the Muʿtazilī concept that, in theory, goodness and badness (ḥusn and qubḥ) are so on rational grounds (ʿaqlī), although, once again, human understanding may not always be able to identify in practice what can be identified in theory.¹⁰⁶Close

Theology was more of an issue for the early reformers of Zaydi Yemen, and by the time of al-Shawkānī it was no longer one of the pressing intellectual issues, thus he dealt with it only in passing. However, for al-Shawkānī and his predecessors, just as urgent were other items on this reform agenda: the use of the canonical compilations of hadith and what that entailed with regard to the attitude toward the Companions of the Prophet and the history of the formative period of Islam. The problem that continued to engage all of the Yemeni reformers who advocated the use of the canonical works of hadith was that many of these traditions were transmitted on the authority of Companions and followers who were in the anti-Shiʿi camp. The question posed was how the use of hadith related to the relative evaluation of the Companions and the ideologically laden construction of an image for the history of the formative period of Islam.¹⁰⁷Close Al-Shawkānī invoked the systematic argument articulated by Ibn al-Wazīr, and incrementally refined ever since by all the other Sunna-inclined Yemeni reformers, to justify the acceptance of traditions transmitted on the authority of sinners or even innovators who professed Islam but were considered apostates by other Muslims. One transmitter of hadith, Muʿāwiya, could not be easily reconciled with even the most moderate Zaydi groups. In fact, the justification for accepting the traditions transmitted by Muʿāwiya was all the more reason why al-Shawkānī and al-Ṣanʿānī before him were pressed to take a stand on the religious judgment regarding Muʿāwiya and the conflict between him and ʿAlī. A similar assessment was articulated regarding the civil wars of the formative period of Islamic history.

Not surprisingly, al-Shawkānī, often blunt in expressing his views on all kinds of religious and political issues, was very careful when it came to the thorny question of the relative merits of the Companions of the Prophet. His stand on this subject could easily undermine the very project of reconciliation that defined his intellectual career. To be sure, the Zaydi tradition produced diverse opinions regarding the attitude toward the first three caliphs and the other Companions of the Prophet who fought ʿAlī and undermined his authority. The range of Zaydi opinions spanned a wide spectrum, from accusing these Companions of apostasy, to the lesser accusation of sin, to charging them with error but not sin, to deferring judgment on them. Of course, distinctions were made among the various Companions, and whereas many Zaydis maintained a positive assessment of the first two caliphs, Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, it was unlikely that such a judgment could be passed on ʿUthmān or Muʿāwiya. An alternative debate among the Zaydis was on the symbolic value attached to acceptable formulas that could be used in reference to these individuals; thus it was debated whether one should use the formula of taraḍḍī (that is, saying raḍiya Allāhu ʿanhu [may God be pleased with him]) upon mentioning the names of the first two caliphs, for example, or whether one should curse them or simply refrain from saying anything.¹⁰⁸Close The founder of the Qāsimī dynasty in Yemen, Al-Qāsim Ibn Muḥammad (d. 1620), advocated the position of tawaqquf (withholding the curses) with regards to the first two caliphs, but not Muʿāwiya who, al-Qāsim argued, ought to be cursed.¹⁰⁹Close Another example of an even more moderate statement, attributed to a Zaydi group known as al-Batriyya, is the official view of Imam al-Muʿayyad Yaḥyā Ibn Ḥamza (d. 749/1348) in his Al-Risāla al-Wāziʿa lil-Muʿtadīn ʿan Sabb Ṣaḥābat Sayyid al-Mursalīn. In this work, Yaḥyā Ibn Ḥamza rejects takfīr (accusation of unbelief) or tafsīq (accusation of sin) of the Companions and advocates association with them (muwālātuhum) and using the formula of taraḍḍī upon invoking their names or memories. He also argues that they committed a simple error of judgment when they did not recognize ʿAlī’s right to be the first caliph.¹¹⁰Close To varying degrees, the reformers of Zaydi Yemen went even further than this position, although, of course, they still differed from the standard Sunni views on this matter.

Al-Shawkānī shared these moderate sentiments, and in many of his works, he insisted on the collective exoneration of the Companions. Although the content of al-Shawkānī’s arguments did not derive from traditional Zaydi thought, he still made an effort to situate his defense within the larger Zaydi tradition by invoking earlier Zaydi views in support of his own. Throughout his defense of the integrity of the Companions and the prohibition against cursing them, al-Shawkānī insists that this is in fact the position of the Hādawīs, who do not curse or condemn the Companions as the Rāfiḍīs do. In his Irshād al-Ghabī ʿilā Madhhab Ahl al-Bayt fī Ṣaḥb al-Nabī (Guiding the fool to the view of the family of the Prophet regarding the [question of cursing] the Companions of the Prophet), al-Shawkānī maintains that the prohibition against cursing the Companions, or accusing them of sin or unbelief, is in fact the position of ahl al-bayt, and that the only ones excepted from this prohibition are those who are famous for their opposition to religion.¹¹¹Close Al-Shawkānī maintains that this prohibition is not on account of the infallibility of the Companions, but simply a consequence of the consensus of the ahl al-bayt. He also asserts that there is agreement among ahl al-bayt and other scholars that those who curse the Companions, for example the Rāfiḍa, are misguided and are innovators; some say that they are sinners whereas others say that they are unbelievers.¹¹²Close Al-Shawkānī adds, however, that the final stand on this matter should be determined on the basis of one’s own ijtihād. In other words, imitation is not permissible in taking a stand on the question of cursing, and determination of whether the curser is an unbeliever or a sinner should be the result of the exercise of ijtihād.¹¹³Close Al-Shawkānī argues his case in a way that dispels the impression that his views were a total departure from Zaydism.¹¹⁴Close In fact, al-Shawkānī had good reason to worry about the reception of his views, since, as he reports, more than twenty works were written in response to his book Irshād al-Ghabī, simply because he defends the Companions and insists on the religious obligation to venerate them.¹¹⁵Close

In the interest of a unified Muslim community, which he championed throughout his career, al-Shawkānī argued that there is no benefit, much less need, to rank the Companions or dwell on their conflicts in an attempt to assign responsibility for these conflicts. Discussion of these matters, al-Shawkānī argued, leads only to further disagreement, and is thus detrimental to Muslims. Al-Shawkānī therefore says that he is in favor of refraining from discussion (imsāk al-khawḍ) of these historical questions, since these futile debates are no longer relevant to the current interests of Muslims.¹¹⁶Close He asserts that this discussion is tantamount to gossiping about fellow Muslims, while religion encourages the cultivation of good faith toward Muslims and prohibits ghayba against them (maligning them behind their back).¹¹⁷Close

To be sure, al-Shawkānī himself did not refrain from discussing these early events, but he opted for interpretations that would minimize the polarization of Muslims into opposing camps. Moreover, his reluctance to carry on long debates on the subject does not translate into withholding judgment, subtle as this judgment may have been. Thus, for example, after saying that there is no point in contemporary Muslims’ discussing these early conflicts, he adds that it is sufficient to say that “those who rebelled against ʿAlī and persisted in fighting him without repenting are renegades [bughāt]; he was right and they were wrong.”¹¹⁸Close Such, therefore, was al-Shawkānī’s way of vindicating ʿAlī and asserting his superior stature, while at the same time allowing for the possibility that most of the Companions who fought him actually repented, and can thus be venerated as well. Elsewhere, after discussing and rejecting as unauthentic a version of a hadith anticipating the death of the Companion ʿAmmār Ibn Yāsir, who died fighting on ʿAlī’s side, al-Shawkānī reminds his readers that “another hadith, ‘The oppressive party kills ʿAmmār,’ is sound and is (included) in Ṣaḥīḥ Bukhārī.”¹¹⁹Close In other words, much as he wished to avoid divisive discussions, he still insisted that ʿAlī and those fighting on his side were right and that their enemies were wrong.

Of the reformers of Zaydi Yemen, al-Shawkānī was the most subtle in expressing his view on ʿAlī’s stature. As late as al-Ṣanʿānī, this issue, more than any other, demarcates the ultimate identity and loyalty of these reformers. For example, in a treatise titled Al-Rawḍa al-Nadiyya fī Sharḥ al-Tuḥfa al-ʿAlawiyya, al-Ṣanʿānī asserts the authenticity of the hadith of Ghadīr Khumm, in which the Prophet Muhammad is said to have declared that whoever accepted his leadership should accept ʿAlī’s leadership (man kuntu mawlāhu fa hādhā ʿAlīyun mawlāhu).¹²⁰Close Al-Ṣanʿānī maintains that ʿAlī was the righteous party in the armed conflicts that broke out during his reign.¹²¹Close Al-Ṣanʿānī also argues that the reference in the Qurʾān (Al-Aḥzāb 33: 33) to the purification of the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt) is to ʿAlī, Fāṭima, Ḥasan, and Ḥusayn, and not to the wives of the Prophet as is commonly assumed in Sunni interpretations of this verse.¹²²Close In laying out the scheme of his manuscript, al-Ṣanʿānī indicates that he “relies on reports in the books of the Sunnis, so that the reader would know that they (the Sunnis) recognize the virtues of this imam (ʿAlī) and his family.”¹²³Close From these and other references it is clear that al-Ṣanʿānī treats the Sunnis as others, whose otherness is tempered by their recognition of ʿAlī’s virtues. Al-Ṣanʿānī’s book, therefore, identifies the common denominator shared with the Sunnis regarding the attitude toward ʿAlī; it also recognizes the authenticity of the Sunni sources and the legitimacy of using these sources. Nevertheless, Sunnis are treated in this work as rivals who recognize a truth that is best expressed in what al-Ṣanʿānī often calls the school of the family of the Prophet (madhhab ahl al-bayt).¹²⁴Close

ʿAmmār’s status comes up again in a discussion of a tradition attributed to the Prophet in relation to infighting between Muslims which states that “both the killer and the one who is killed are doomed to hell.” In reference to the Muslims who died in the battle of Ṣiffīn, al-Shawkānī quotes the exegetical work of al-Qurṭubī, who maintains that “this tradition shows that if the fighting is due to ignorant worldly pursuit or following one’s whims, then this is when both the killer and the killed are doomed to hell. … Consequently, those who withdrew from fighting in the [battles of] the Camel and Ṣiffīn are less in number than those who fought, and all of them are interpreters and, God willing, all will be rewarded. This is in contrast to those who came after them and fought in pursuit of worldly gain.”¹²⁵Close

After a long quote from al-Qurṭubī, al-Shawkānī comments that this judgment would be valid if the intentions of all of those who fought in the battles of Camel and Ṣiffīn were to defend religion and the well-being of Muslims, and not the pursuit of worldly gain and the desire to seize power for its own sake. This, al-Shawkānī adds, is very unlikely, especially in light of the sound tradition that anticipates the death of ʿAmmār at the hands of the renegade, oppressive party (al-fiʿa al-bāghiya).¹²⁶Close Al-Shawkānī then adds that any fair person could see that fighting against the camp of ʿAmmār was an act of obstinacy and more than just a minor misdeed. According to al-Shawkānī, therefore, most of those who fought against ʿAlī are doomed to hell. Right after making this point, however, al-Shawkānī reverts to his conciliatory stance and reminds his readers that he has no desire to open the gates to slandering the Companions of the Prophet; that he has constantly preached against those who slander the Companions; and that he composed a treatise on this subject that brought him much abuse by the Rāfiḍīs.¹²⁷Close

In comparison to those of his predecessors, al-Shawkānī’s views on the early history of the conflict were the most elusive. And yet, as we have seen, despite all his tact and deliberate attempts at moderation, he retained his basic loyalty to the memory of ahl al-bayt. Al-Shawkānī sought to avoid positions that would undermine his claim to be an independent mujtahid who does not adhere to any one madhhab. As such, it is all the more significant that he repeatedly betrays his general preference for ʿAlī over his rivals.¹²⁸Close Equally telling is his notion that those who curse the Companions on the basis of their interpretation of the historical facts are not total unbelievers.¹²⁹Close

On several other occasions, al-Shawkānī expresses views on the early formative period of Islamic history that, although not typically Zaydi, are in no way Sunni. In his Baḥth fī al-Kalām ʿalā Umnāʾ al-Sharīʿa, al-Shawkānī expresses his disagreement with a view he attributes to Abū Bakr. The latter is said to have argued that since governors and officials need to have authority to maintain law and order, and since people by nature are inclined to hold grudges against anyone in power, he (Abū Bakr) would not limit the authority of his governors and would not question their decisions and subject them to scrutiny by the people under their jurisdiction. Al-Shawkānī adds that it was because of this attitude by Abū Bakr that the situation deteriorated and reached its unacceptable state under ʿUthmān.¹³⁰Close The interesting thing about this account is that it conforms to the Zaydi view that the reign of ʿUthmān witnessed a considerable erosion of Islamic norms, but it also blames Abū Bakr’s strategies for this erosion. However, the faults attributed to both Abū Bakr and ʿUthmān are seen as ones of judgment and not deliberate violations of Islamic norms and political values, and thus do not represent a sin or transgression by either man.

Elsewhere, al-Shawkānī provides a tactful but unconventional evaluation of Fāṭima, the daughter of the Prophet, in reference to the dispute between Fāṭima and Abū Bakr over the inheritance of the land of Fadak. Al-Shawkānī contends that Abū Bakr was simply telling the truth, which Fāṭima did not like; he further quotes Imam Yaḥyā Ibn Ḥamza in support of this view and then concludes that if Fāṭima “got angry, then it is the truth that made her angry.”¹³¹Close As if to make sure that he leaves no side unoffended by his views, al-Shawkānī provides a similarly disapproving assessment of one of ʿAlī’s legal judgments. In ʿUqūd al-Zabarjad, he responds to several questions solicited by a scholar from Ḍamad.¹³²Close One of the questions is whether it is permissible to impose financial penalties in lieu of other legal penalties, or in instances when prohibition is specified but the penalty for violating the prohibition is not. The questioner gives the example of ʿAlī’s burning of illegally hoarded food or his burning of the houses of people who were selling wine. In response to this question al-Shawkānī says, “The deeds of Companions are not sufficient to particularize the indicants of the Book and the Sunna, and do not constitute valid authoritative evidence in matters of dispute.”¹³³Close The first thing to note here is that al-Shawkānī refers to ʿAlī as one of the Companions and does not grant him a special stature as far as legal judgment is concerned. Moreover, this and other actions and judgments by ʿAlī are not necessarily binding on other Muslims. This sort of argument is no doubt unacceptable in a Zaydi environment, where the common view is that ʿAlī and some of his descendants are infallible. Al-Shawkānī admits that many (Shiʿis) argue that ʿAlī is infallible, whereas the majority of Muslims as well as some of the scholars of ahl al-bayt maintain that only the prophets are infallible, and they alone have unqualified authority.¹³⁴Close Al-Shawkānī reports both sides of the argument but also notes that the traditions invoked to prove the infallibility of ʿAlī have parallels that apply to many or even all of the Companions, something no one else maintains.¹³⁵Close It is clear, therefore, that al-Shawkānī does not believe in the infallibility of ʿAlī, although he does indicate that one need not assert such infallibility to prove that ʿAlī resides in paradise.

Al-Shawkānī’s references to contested historical narratives are scattered throughout his huge corpus and can be misleading if read singly. In his many works on hadith he frequently rejects the authenticity of traditions that seem to support either a Sunni stand or a Zaydi one. However, his criteria for doing so are always formal (the strength of the isnād) and have nothing to do with his approval or rejection of the content of the traditions in question. For example, he examines the hadith “Abū Bakr is my minister. … ʿUmar is my beloved. … I am from ʿUthmān and he is from me … and ʿAlī is my brother and the carrier of my banner.” This hadith vindicates the four caliphs, and conforms to the Sunni order of preference, which al-Shawkānī accepted as well. And yet, al-Shawkānī argues on purely formal grounds that this hadith is not authentic.¹³⁶Close On the other side of the sectarian spectrum, al-Shawkānī questions the authenticity of the hadith anā madinat al-ʿilm wa Alī bābuha [I (Muhammad) am the city of knowledge and ʿAlī is its gate].¹³⁷Close However, in his later work on fabricated traditions, he lists numerous fabricated traditions in praise of ʿAlī.¹³⁸Close Al-Shawkānī concludes, after examining the various versions of the hadith that refers to ʿAlī as the gate to the city of knowledge, that this hadith is “good [ḥasan] and that neither of its versions reaches the rank of soundness [ṣiḥḥa)] or falls to the rank of falsehood [kadhib)].”¹³⁹Close Later, al-Shawkānī undermines the authenticity of a similar hadith in which the Prophet allegedly commands that all open gates in a mosque be closed except that of ʿAlī, but al-Shawkānī proceeds to say that the general sense of the hadith “is established and it is not permissible for a Muslim to declare it invalid.”¹⁴⁰Close In a similar vein, he rejects a version of the tradition that says ʿAlī is to Muhammad like Aaron is to Moses, only to conclude that the original version of this tradition is authentic.¹⁴¹Close Therefore, his seeming rejection of many exaggerated traditions attributing special stature to ʿAlī does not stop him from accepting the general sense indicated by these traditions, namely, the uniqueness of ʿAlī’s connection to the Prophet, and his numerous virtues and merits. An even more telling example is al-Shawkānī’s rejection as fabricated of the hadith “Cursing my Companions is an unforgivable sin,” although he himself wrote extensively on the prohibition against cursing the Companions and the great sin of doing so.¹⁴²Close

Al-Shawkānī’s reluctance to delve into the history of the old conflict, and his attempts to walk a thin line between the extreme Shiʿi and Sunni views of this history, are countered by his unrestrained emphasis on the authority of the present and his relentless efforts to construct and promote a coherent history of Islamic dissent. Al-Shawkānī’s historical perspective was shaped, to a large extent, by his experience and conception of sectarianism and communal strife among Muslims. Furthermore, his drive for intellectual revitalization was itself intertwined with his perceptions regarding the crisis of partisanship (tamadhhub). For example, in Adab al-Ṭalab, a book on acquisition of knowledge, he asserts, “Know that just as partisanship results in the effacement of the blessings of knowledge, the dissipation of its splendor, and the loss of the reward that derives from it, so too does it cause strife that leads to the shedding of blood, violation of sanctities, vilification of honors, and making violable that which is protected by the Divine Law.”¹⁴³Close At some level, therefore, al-Shawkānī’s whole intellectual output was his vision for a way out of the dual problem of intellectual sterility and divisive and destructive partisanship. This drive informed all of al-Shawkānī’s writings, whether on law, hadith, ijtihād, or history. To be sure, these genres were often intertwined, and one finds, for example, many references to normative history in al-Shawkānī’s legal writings. Still, al-Shawkānī wrote a separate work on history, which, like many of his other works, is quite original in form and content. In this book, Al-Badr al-Tāliʿ fī Maḥāsin man baʿd al-Qarn al-Sābiʿ (The rising/shining moon on the virtues of those [who lived] after the seventh century], al-Shawkānī makes no apologies for his intention to write a history whose primary concern was not to establish facts or to give full accounts of historical episodes, including, as was common in traditional historical accounts, dates of birth and death and the like. Rather, al-Shawkānī’s Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ was deliberately structured to communicate meaning and to construct an image of history that illustrates this meaning. Moreover, this book was an optimistic statement on the possibility of carrying out al-Shawkānī’s own scheme for revival. As such, this book can be viewed as yet another expression of al-Shawkānī’s conception of the historical connection between intellectual and political authority, and as a rationale for intellectual intervention in lived political history. For this reason, we will now examine Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ in some detail.

Al-Badr al-Tāliʿ is a book of biographies. Al-Shawkānī started compiling it in the year 1213 AH, but he later revised and expanded it.¹⁴⁴Close The book is arranged alphabetically, rather than according to generation, chronological time, region, or city. Al-Shawkānī also does not limit the biographies to any one professional group. His declared objective, as the title indicates, is to highlight the virtues of Muslims who lived after the seventh century AH/thirteenth century CE and to illustrate their intellectual achievements in various fields of knowledge. In his statement of purpose, al-Shawkānī says that his objective is to document the achievements of latter-day Muslims and enumerate their good deeds. Al-Shawkānī recognizes that his accounts may be provincial, and he leaves the door open for withdrawing his endorsement of certain individuals should the accounts he received of them turn out to be inaccurate.¹⁴⁵Close Al-Shawkānī also states that he is not interested in documenting the bad traits of people. This is not to say that the people he writes about were perfect, but they need not be so to illustrate his point. In fact, for al-Shawkānī, virtue, whether collective or individual, could only be partial. Moreover, the record of such partial virtues, and hence partial histories, was all that al-Shawkānī needed to prove the vitality of post-seventh-century Islamic history and the possibility of progress, as opposed to dissolution and decline.

Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ served another important purpose: to construct an image of the ideal, dissenting intellectual and to argue for the centrality of the role of such intellectuals in Islamic history. In contrast to his relatively brief attempts to discern some normative unity in the early turbulent events of Islamic history, his biographical work is replete with examples of critical and eccentric scholars who dared to oppose the mainstream, did not compromise their intellectual integrity under pressure from political authority, and did not conform to the oppressive dictates of the established and entrenched schools and madhhabs. From Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ, we can discern what constitutes virtue to al-Shawkānī, as well as who his intellectual heroes were and how he viewed their impact on history.

The achievements al-Shawkānī celebrates in these biographies cover a wide variety of activities, practical as well as intellectual, in many spheres of action and fields of knowledge. In all of these fields, the present carries as much if not more authority than the past. Al-Shawkānī is even willing to recognize excellence in Sufi practice and mystical thought, despite his general dislike of Sufism.¹⁴⁶Close His concept of intellectual virtue is remarkably open and is not limited to religious knowledge to the exclusion of other forms of literary achievement. One such field, dear to al-Shawkānī’s heart, was poetry.¹⁴⁷Close In his many entries on poets, both male and female,¹⁴⁸Close al-Shawkānī discusses such matters as their writing styles, linguistic excellence, mastery of the language, poetic skill, artistic creativity, use of images and similes, the themes of their poetry as well as its emotional effect and sincerity of intent. Many of the celebrated poets have no claim to fame other than their poetry.¹⁴⁹Close Sometimes, al-Shawkānī’s biographies focus on the religious scholarship of individuals who also happen to be poets.¹⁵⁰Close In both cases, however, the evaluation of poetry is not subjugated to other categories and is discussed at length and in its own right in what amounts to a celebration of poetic ijtihād.¹⁵¹Close Al-Shawkānī also provides occasional assessments of the literary pieces he quotes, as in the reference to a poem punctuated with sections of rhymed prose, which al-Shawkānī praises for its “harmony, simplicity, and lack of verbosity and artificiality,” while the inserted prose includes allusions to basic instructions in the various linguistic and religious disciplines.¹⁵²Close This poetic excellence, to al-Shawkānī, is no less an illustration of historical progress than any other field of knowledge. Thus, for example, in a biography of a contemporary with whom he exchanged poetry, al-Shawkānī quotes long parts of a poem; he then apologizes for drifting in his praise but adds that, by quoting this beautiful and expressive poetry, he wanted to provide “one of the most definitive proofs that these latter times are not devoid of people who attend to the preservation of the standards of literature.”¹⁵³Close

Al-Shawkānī also includes biographies of scientists who wrote on such fields as logic, mathematics, and inheritance computation (farāʿiḍ).¹⁵⁴Close Again, some biographies are for individuals who excelled in a combination of fields such as jurisprudence, language, one of the exact scientific disciplines, and zuhd (asceticism) and karāmāt (saintly miracles).¹⁵⁵Close Al-Shawkānī relates that he himself studied the exact sciences, composed a treatise on astronomy for beginners, and even taught metaphysics (ʿilm al-ḥikma al-ilāhiyya) to the physician and Ḥanafī jurist Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Sindī al-Anṣārī.¹⁵⁶Close Here too, al-Shawkānī often has some comments to make, as in the entry on the polymath Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (al-Shāfiʿī) (d. 710), whom al-Shawkānī praises for knowledge as well as piety and religion. Al-Shawkānī objects, however, to the exaggeration of al-Shirāzī’s students and followers in reserving the title of ʿallāma (great, well-rounded scholar) exclusively for their master, thus implying that he alone has combined a mastery of religious and exact science. Al-Shawkānī explains that both among his contemporaries and in following generations, one will find many other scholars even more accomplished than al-Shīrāzī in their acquisition of encyclopedic knowledge.¹⁵⁷Close

The celebration of such traits as poetic excellence, scientific exactitude, saintly devotion, and independence in legal scholarship is intricately intertwined in al-Shawkānī’s historical narratives with intellectual integrity. There is hardly a page in his book where he does not write about scholars who shunned worldly power, turned down appointments as judges or other officials, and were not afraid of criticizing the state. Al-Shawkānī’s exemplars also include many scholars of little note, scholars not considered exceptional but who nonetheless did not adhere to any one school or imitate in legal matters and who followed what is entailed by the indicants of the law (al-ʿamal bimā yaqtaḍīh al-dalīl) and practiced ijtihād without imitating anyone (ʿāmilun bi-ijtihādi nafsihi lā uqallidu aḥadan).¹⁵⁸Close Al-Shawkānī also celebrates Zaydis involved in the study and teaching of the classics of hadith.¹⁵⁹Close Yet it is in a few biographies of truly distinguished scholars that al-Shawkānī fully spells out his model of intellectual integrity and dissent.

In Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ, al-Shawkānī praises the deeds and achievements of individuals but never idealizes them. In a handful of cases, however, he comes close to such idealization. To be sure, in keeping with his independent thinking, al-Shawkānī inevitably expresses disagreement with each of his biographical subjects.¹⁶⁰Close Without exception, however, his praise of these select individuals is inspired by their dissent and the price they paid for it. Despite all of the afflictions they suffer, al-Shawkānī maintains, “those who uphold the truth and who transmit it as God commands … attain more praise and far-reaching reputation than anyone else can ever achieve.”¹⁶¹Close Such scholars who suffered during their lifetime but achieved renown and great reputation afterward include Mālik Ibn Anas, Ibn Ḥanbal, al-Bukhārī, Ibn Ḥazm, and Ibn Taymiyya. In Yemen, they include Ibn al-Wazīr, al-Jalāl, al-Maqbalī, and al-Ṣanʿānī.¹⁶²Close Since he was primarily interested in latter-day Muslims, and since the likes of Mālik, Ibn Ḥanbal, and al-Bukhārī had already been idealized, al-Shawkānī devoted his attention to the remaining scholars on this list.

“After Ibn Ḥazm, I do not know of any other person of the caliber of Ibn Taymiyya, and I do not think that the period between the generations of the two men allowed for someone like or even close to them.”¹⁶³Close In these words al-Shawkānī describes two “unrivaled” scholars of medieval Islam. The appeal of the first, Ibn Ḥazm, is that he belonged to the Ẓāhirī school, which no longer existed, and hence served as an example of scholarship that was not bound by madhhab affiliation. Moreover, the Ẓāhirīs were textual “fanatics” and adhered strictly to the letter of the law, which was also a trait that al-Shawkānī appreciated. Rather than a collective legal doctrine, this trait is what al-Shawkānī extracted from the model of Ibn Ḥazm.

The literalist school [madhhab al-ẓāhir] is the source of thinking and the goal of action for anyone who is endowed with fairness, and whose basic nature has not been diverted from its original state by some accidental effect. It is not just the school of Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī and his followers; rather, it is the school of the leading scholars who have adhered to the scripture from the time of the Companions till this day. Dāwūd is only one of them. He is reputed for being rigid in matters where he persisted in the literal meaning when he should not have done so, and where he neglected certain kinds of analogy that a fair person ought not neglect. In general, [to adhere to] the school of Ẓāhir is to abide, in all legal indicants, by the apparent meaning of the pure Book and the Sunna and to forsake reliance on mere opinions that cannot be used to provide any kind of evidence. … The appellation Ẓāhirī means one who adheres to the apparent meaning of the law, and this, not Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, is the origin of the attribution.¹⁶⁴Close

In yet another reference, al-Shawkānī explicitly states that there is an affinity between the Ẓāhirīs and hadith. Thus, in a biography of a certain scholar who was raised as a Ḥanafī and then turned Shāfiʿī, al-Shawkānī relates that this scholar devoted himself to the study of hadith to the point that he was accused of belonging to the school of Ibn Ḥazm.¹⁶⁵Close Therefore, according to al-Shawkānī, the main appeal of the Ẓāhirīs is that their methodologies undermined madhhab practices and gave priority to the authority of the scripture.

Ibn Taymiyya, in contrast, did belong to a living school, but even by these Ḥanbalī standards, his knowledge was so encompassing and his thought so original and independent that even his many enemies could not help but be impressed by his intellectual courage and depth. Perhaps more important to al-Shawkānī, however, was Ibn Taymiyya’s political struggle. Al-Shawkānī reports that Ibn Taymiyya suffered from the intrigues of his contemporaries and was

afflicted time and again during his life. There were several conflicts in which people were divided into two groups regarding him: some gave him less than he deserved, and even accused him of serious misdeeds, and others were zealous in defending him, just as the first group was zealous against him. A general rule regarding every scholar who becomes deeply versed in scholarly knowledge and surpasses his contemporaries, and who adheres to the Book and the Sunna, is that such a scholar is invariably denounced by inferior people. … Eventually, his reputation gains ascendency and his views prevail. Due to this turmoil he gains a reputation of truthfulness among other people. … This is exactly true of this imam, for after his death people recognized his value and tongues converged in praising him, except for a few who do not count, and his writings and views gained wide reputation.¹⁶⁶Close

In a rare expression of outrage, al-Shawkānī writes about the zealous Mālikī jurist Ibn Makhlūf, whom he refers to as “one of their devils” for issuing death sentences against Muslims based on misinterpretation of their words.¹⁶⁷Close As an example of the outrageous practices of Ibn Makhlūf, al-Shawkānī cites his claim to have established the unbelief of Ibn Taymiyya and to have determined that he deserved the death penalty; for al-Shawkānī, this is where Ibn Makhlūf demonstrates that he “is not even worth a single hair of his [Ibn Taymiyya], nay, he is not even fit to be the sole of his shoe.” The Mālikī jurists of Cairo, in particular, seem to have earned al-Shawkānī’s enmity: “God has afflicted the people of these lands with jurists of the Mālikī school who dare shed the blood [of Muslims] over matters where even the slightest castigation [taʿdhīr] is not lawful. They shed the blood of some scholars out of ignorance, misguidedness, and insolence toward God, and in contradiction of the law of the Messenger of God and distortion of his religion. All of this they do on the basis of mere juristic texts and inferences of applied law that do not have the slightest trace of knowledge in them.”¹⁶⁸Close

Such was the passion of al-Shawkānī for Ibn Taymiyya, and his anger at the Mālikī jurists who abused him. Of course, Ibn Taymiyya had enemies from other schools as well. Of particular significance is a biography of a Shāfiʿī jurist for whom al-Shawkānī has limited praise, but who had the misfortune of having been involved in the official campaign of abuse against Ibn Taymiyya. This jurist, al-Shawkānī reports, was delegated to lead a disputation against Ibn Taymiyya and would not have accepted to do so had he any idea of the scholar’s true value. For Ibn Taymiyya was an imam deeply versed in all possible areas of knowledge, and the Shāfiʿī jurist could not be even remotely compared to him. This jurist was qualified only to discuss Shāfiʿī law with Ibn Taymiyya, and it was indeed a sign of ignorance on his part that he could contemplate a debate in any other branch of knowledge. And even in Shāfiʿī law, there is no way an imitator could match a mujtahid. The ultimate responsibility for this outrage, al-Shawkānī concludes, must fall on the shoulders of the political authorities who meddled in matters they had no business dealing with.¹⁶⁹Close Al-Shawkānī, therefore, was resolutely biased in favor of Ibn Taymiyya; and yet al-Shawkānī did not celebrate his hero because he followed him or agreed with all or even most of his views. Rather, he celebrated Ibn Taymiyya’s erudition, his courageous stand before the political and intellectual authorities, and the price he was willing to pay for his intellectual integrity and independence.

It is thus not just knowledge that al-Shawkānī idealized, but the way knowledge was deployed in practice. He measured scholars not only by what they knew but also by how they used their knowledge, and how they acted in the course of using it. Al-Shawkānī describes such aspects of Ibn Taymiyya’s legacy in great detail. For example, he describes Ibn Taymiyya’s conduct under interrogation: when his interrogators held him accountable for certain things he said, Ibn Taymiyya would invoke possible but improbable interpretations of his statements. Because of their own inadequacies, Ibn Taymiyya’s interrogators would not accept the truth, so Ibn Taymiyya offered these alternative meanings to avoid strife. This, al-Shawkānī asserts, “is exactly what a consummate scholar should do: say the truth as he must, then avert discord to the extent he can.”¹⁷⁰Close The ideal scholar would thus say the truth for the record, and then, without compromising this basic truth, take note of practical issues and try to minimize the damage that may result from a blunt statement of this truth. Al-Shawkānī refers to this practice as warding off the harmful effects of strife (dafʿ mafsadat al-fitna), which should be one of the priorities of the scholar, but never at the expense of the truth.

Of similar integrity, but with some potentially problematic traits, was Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751 AH): Ibn Taymiyya’s student and ardent defender and follower. Al-Shawkānī quotes a negative account by the historian al-Dhahabī of Ibn al-Qayyim, and then responds to this account.¹⁷¹Close Al-Dhahabī maintains that at the beginning of his career, Ibn al-Qayyim persisted in attacking the practice of pilgrimage to the shrine of Ibrahim al-Khalīl (the friend of God), and that later he devoted himself to scholarship and the spreading of knowledge. Still, al-Dhahabī asserts, Ibn al-Qayyim was audacious in certain matters, conceited, and thought too highly of his own opinions. To be sure, al-Shawkānī had his own reservations regarding Ibn al-Qayyim, ones that he did not fail to express, although in gentler terms than usual. According to al-Shawkānī, Ibn al-Qayyim was “overtaken by his love for Ibn Taymiyya to the extent that he would not depart from any of his views, and would defend every single one of them.”¹⁷²Close This, of course, is a kind of imitation that al-Shawkānī disapproved of. However, he did not let this flaw obscure the main traits of Ibn al-Qayyim’s scholarship and career, his intellectual integrity and unrelenting fighting spirit. Thus, in response to al-Dhahabī’s criticism, al-Shawkānī asserts that Ibn al-Qayyim “adhered to sound indicants, prized acting in accordance to these indicants, and did not rely on opinion. He said the truth out loud without deference to anyone, and what a wonderful audacity this was.”¹⁷³Close

While his narratives regarding early, eccentric scholars like Ibn Ḥazm and Ibn Taymiyya provided the raw materials from which al-Shawkānī could then extract his norms for ideal scholarly excellence, his biographies of the reformers of Zaydi Yemen served the added purpose of constructing a regional genealogy of dissent. Needless to say, this narrative of origins augmented al-Shawkānī’s own local claims to moral and intellectual authority. And yet again, as with all of his other writings, which were produced under local conditions but drew on transregional knowledge, the significance of al-Shawkānī’s genealogy of dissent was not just as an ideological tool of legitimation but also as a heuristic tool through which intellectual history was understood and made to inform al-Shawkānī’s own illustrious intellectual career. More than anything else, al-Shawkānī’s reading of this particular history was the prism through which he viewed and constructed an image for the ideal intellectual, an image that he then strove to emulate.

Nonconformists always suffer, but their memories ultimately prevail. Such was the moral of the story of each of the Yemeni reformers al-Shawkānī celebrated in Al-Badr al-Ṭāliʿ and elsewhere. All of these scholars adhered to the textual indicants (dalīl, pl. adilla/dalāʾil) and rejected imitation and narrow madhhab partisanship; as a result, during their lifetime, they suffered various kinds of hardships and intrigues, and yet they all attained a glorious reputation, in addition to the promised rewards they no doubt attained in the hereafter.¹⁷⁴Close The father of this Yemeni phenomenon, according to al-Shawkānī, was Ibn al-Wazīr, whose book Al-ʿAwāṣim wal-Qawāṣim, “the like of which has not been composed in these Yemeni lands,” inaugurated the Yemeni tradition of reform.¹⁷⁵Close In a clear indication of what he valued most in Ibn al-Wazīr, al-Shawkānī incorporated in his biography a mini-treatise on ijtihād and taqlīd.¹⁷⁶Close Al-Shawkānī stresses the nonconformist character of Ibn al-Wazīr’s thought; his views, al-Shawkānī maintains, “do not resemble those of his generation, nor of the following ones; rather, they are akin to the views of Ibn Ḥazm and Ibn Taymiyya. In many of his investigations, he often comes up with insights [fawāʾid] that never occurred to anyone else before him.”¹⁷⁷Close To be sure, Ibn al-Wazīr’s originality is ultimately the deep erudition with which it is informed. “During his time, no one [scholar] could match up to him, because he belonged to a class [of his own], one that did not even include any of his own teachers, let alone opponents. In all likelihood, if all of his teachers were to be gathered in one person, their combined knowledge would not reach the level of his knowledge.”¹⁷⁸Close

The special honors reserved for Ibn al-Wazīr, in comparison to other similar Yemeni reformers, no doubt have much to do with his foundational role and his ability to initiate a compelling program for rethinking the received intellectual traditions. Owing to its intellectual rigor, this program would engage Yemen’s best scholars in the centuries to come. In other words, Ibn al-Wazīr charted a new intellectual agenda that informed the scholarship of subsequent Yemeni reformers through the time of al-Shawkānī. Several other scholars in this tradition also left their marks on it. The next station in this tradition was represented by Al-Ḥasan Ibn Aḥmad al-Jalāl (1014–84). Al-Jalāl, according to al-Shawkānī, was a prolific writer who mastered all the rational and traditional disciplines.¹⁷⁹Close Of his many writings, Ḍawʾ al-Nahār, a commentary on the classic Zaydi work on applied law, Al-Azhār by al-Mahdī,¹⁸⁰Close was particularly worthy of mention by al-Shawkānī. According to al-Shawkānī, al-Jalāl wrote down his own “reasoning in accordance with legal indicants, without paying attention to scholars who agree or disagree with him. It is an unequaled commentary on Al-Azhār; in fact it has no equivalent in the written books of law. It has things that are acceptable and others that are not, as with all humans.”¹⁸¹Close As is clear from this statement by al-Shawkānī, and from many critical remarks in his other works on law, he disagreed with many of al-Jalāl’s individual legal judgments and conclusions. Nevertheless, he qualifies this work by al-Jalāl as an “unequaled commentary on Al-Azhār.” What is “unequaled” in this work, therefore, is not the actual results but the spirit of the undertaking and al-Jalāl’s manifest independence of thought. Thus, al-Shawkānī tries to explain away his disagreement with al-Jalāl’s views on points of detail and to highlight the larger significance of the work as a laudable example of courageous dissent: “I think that the reason for the frequent oversights in this book is that this master [al-Jalāl] is like a resounding sea, and his mind is like a flame of fire; he thus rushes to prohibit what becomes visible to him trusting his manifold knowledge, the scope of his reach and the sharpness of his mind.” In other words, al-Shawkānī’s excuse for al-Jalāl is that he was ahead of himself, and thus he rushed into making some unwarranted legal conclusions without proper validation; this is excusable because, for the most part, al-Jalāl knew what he was talking about: “I have many objections to the [legal] preferences that he compiled in his writings; however, at the same time I continue to recognize his great prominence, the extent of his mastery, and his distinction in all areas of knowledge.” Al-Shawkānī also adds, as a noteworthy trait of distinction, al-Jalāl’s poetic talents.¹⁸²Close

Al-Shawkānī’s sympathy with al-Jalāl was governed by the same criteria that attracted him to Ibn Taymiyya: al-Jalāl was one of those scholars who “give preference to the statements of legal indicants over the opinions of men [al-muʿthirīn li-nuṣūṣ al-adilla ʿalā aqwāl al-rijāl].” Moreover, like the other Yemeni reformers, al-Jalāl was subjected to harassment and abuse by the people of Yemen. The next figure in the chain of Yemeni dissenters is Ṣāliḥ Ibn Mahdī al-Maqbalī (1047–1108) who, like al-Jalāl, warranted al-Shawkānī’s praise not so much for his final conclusions and opinions but for the spirit of his approach to knowledge.¹⁸³Close Again, despite several criticisms and disagreements on legal details, al-Shawkānī hails al-Maqbalī for his “insistence on acting in accordance with what is entailed by legal indicants, and paying no attention to imitation,” and because “once he adheres to an indicant he pays no heed to any person, no matter who it may be.”¹⁸⁴Close Moreover, this attitude of al-Maqbalī antagonized many of the establishment Zaydi scholars of Sanaa, and the resulting mounting pressure on al-Maqbalī drove him to Mecca. In Mecca, the most distinguished scholar of the city at the time, al-Barzanjī, wrote a response to al-Maqbalī’s major work against imitation titled Al-ʿAlam al-Shāmikh fī al-Radd ʿalā al-Ābāʾ wal-Mashāyikh;¹⁸⁵Close Al-Maqbalī then wrote a rejoinder to al-Barzanjī, Al-Arwāḥ al-Nawāfiḥ.¹⁸⁶Close Following this unwavering exchange, the scholars of Mecca teamed up against him and accused him of heresy because of his attacks on taqlīd and because he did not recognize their authority. They wrote to the Ottoman authorities, who sent one of their court scholars to interrogate al-Maqbalī; the official found nothing wrong in al-Maqbalī and exonerated him. In the meanwhile, several students who studied with al-Maqbalī, including some from Dagestan, went back to their countries and built a following for him. During al-Shawkānī’s own time, some of these came all the way from Dagestan because they had a copy of al-Maqbalī’s Al-Manār¹⁸⁷Close but did not have al-Mahdī’s Al-Baḥr al-Zakhkhār¹⁸⁸Close and wanted to acquire a copy so they could better understand al-Maqbalī’s commentary.¹⁸⁹Close

Like the other Yemeni reformers, al-Maqbalī was abused by the established scholarly authorities. He held his ground despite this official intimidation and pressure, and thus he was qualified for inclusion in al-Shawkānī’s genealogy of dissent. To be sure, personal characteristics distinguish al-Shawkānī’s beloved reformers from each other. Al-Maqbalī’s words, according to al-Shawkānī, have such power and charm that, upon reading them carefully, it is no longer possible to remain an imitator.¹⁹⁰Close This captivating style enables al-Maqbalī to tear false opinions to pieces while using the sweetest expressions. Such were his criticisms of the theological arguments of the Muʿtazilīs as well as of the Ashʿarīs, most of the arguments of the Sufis, many views of jurists regarding applied law, and the extremism of traditionalists.

Yet al-Maqbalī also had flaws, including a hot temper (ḥidda).¹⁹¹Close Another was that, despite his wide-ranging knowledge, al-Maqbalī did not have a firm command of the terminology of hadith scholars, and as a result he sometimes could not recognize hidden defects in traditions reported in the classical compilations; he would thus adopt these defective traditions thinking they were sound. Therefore, al-Shawkānī adds, the reader of al-Maqbalī should approach his writings carefully, particularly in this area of hadith, his weak point.¹⁹²Close Thus al-Shawkānī maintains that in Al-Manār¹⁹³Close al-Maqbalī exhibits fairness but, like all humans, also makes mistakes of judgment.¹⁹⁴Close In other words, al-Shawkānī acknowledges the critical approach exhibited throughout Al-Manār, but he does not endorse or reject all the legal views expressed in it. Despite these reservations on the style and content of his scholarship, it is al-Maqbalī’s independent reasoning, his intellectual courage, and the fluidity of his prose, and not his actual detailed opinions on applied law, that won him al-Shawkānī’s respect. The lesson that al-Shawkānī extracted from al-Maqbalī’s example is that he was guided by his direct reading of the textual indicants, which is the trait of a mujtahid who may hit the mark or miss it but is rewarded nonetheless for his intellectual honesty and effort.

The last figure in al-Shawkānī’s list is Muḥammad Ibn Ismāʿīl al-Amīr al-Ṣanʿānī¹⁹⁵Close (1688–1769), “the great imam, the absolute mujtahid, author of numerous books … who became the exclusive head of scholarship in Sanaa, openly practiced ijtihād, acted in accordance with indicants, discouraged people from imitation, and refuted legal opinions which had no proof.”¹⁹⁶Close Al-Ṣanʿānī also suffered from the intrigues of zealous Zaydis, once during the reign of Imam al-Mutawakkil ʿalā Allāh al-Qāsim Ibn al-Ḥusayn, another time during the days of his son al-Manṣūr bi-Allāh al-Ḥusayn Ibn al-Qāsim, and yet again during the days of the latter’s son al-Imām al-Mahdī al-ʿAbbās.¹⁹⁷Close Imam al-Manṣūr appointed him to preach in the mosque of Sanaa, and he continued in this position until the days of his son al-Mahdī, when he was removed from this position. On one occasion a mob tried to kill al-Ṣanʿānī, but “God saved him from their intrigues and treachery, and shielded him from their evil.”¹⁹⁸Close Of particular significance is the context of the mob’s attempt to kill al-Ṣanʿānī and his eventual prevention from preaching at the mosque of Sanaa.¹⁹⁹Close This episode began when al-Ṣanʿānī failed to mention the names of the Zaydi imams in one of his Friday khuṭbas (sermons during the Friday congregational prayer).²⁰⁰Close Several members of the imam’s family of the imam who, according to al-Shawkānī, had no learning, started to intrigue against al-Ṣanʿānī. Together with some members of the mob (ʿawām), they plotted to kill al-Ṣanʿānī the following Friday while he was delivering his khuṭba on the pulpit. Imam al-Mahdī heard of the plot and, to thwart it, he summoned a number of the notables of his family as well as al-Ṣanʿānī himself and imprisoned the whole lot. He also gave his instructions that a certain Sayyid Yūsuf, the main plotter in the planned murder, be driven out of the lands of Yemen. Two months later, after the sedition subsided, al-Ṣanʿānī was released from prison but was not allowed to resume preaching in the mosque of Sanaa. Still, al-Shawkānī maintains, al-Ṣanʿānī continued to spread his knowledge through writing, teaching, and issuing fatwas. He also continued to be the favorite target of the mob, which accused him of hating and of cursing the family of the Prophet (naṣb) on account of his study and adherence to the canonical compilations of hadith.

Al-Ṣanʿānī’s enemies were not just the envious members of the imam’s family and their supporters among the commoners but, perhaps more dangerously, members of the tribes of highland Yemen. Thus, rumors that al-Ṣanʿānī was undermining the Zaydi madhhab spread among the tribes of Mount Barṭ, including the Muḥammad and Ḥusayn clans (Dhawī Muḥammad and Dhawī Ḥusayn). At the time, these were among the most powerful tribes in Yemen, and their influence could not be ignored. The elders of these tribes met, and they decided to amass large armies to march on Sanaa against Imam al-Mahdi himself. They even sent letters to the imam informing him that they were rebelling to defend the Zaydi madhhab against the subversive acts of al-Ṣanʿānī and the support the latter had received from the imam. Scholars who knew the truth tried, to no avail, to dissuade the tribes, and only a sizeable increase in the yearly payment they received from the imam convinced them to return to their territories. Of course, to al-Shawkānī their acceptance of the payment was proof that the real motivation behind this rebellion was extortion and worldly gain.

The memory of al-Ṣanʿānī was still vivid during al-Shawkānī’s time, and the dynamics of power that dominated Yemen’s political landscape during al-Ṣanʿānī’s life were, to some extent, still operative during that of al-Shawkānī. In particular, two pillars of the power of the imamic state—the family of the imam and the tribes, opposed al-Ṣanʿānī and later al-Shawkānī. Thus al-Shawkānī asserts that the commoners (ʿawām) have always accused people who study hadith of naṣb (hating and cursing ahl al-bayt), especially if a person happens to outwardly follow the example of the Prophet, as in raising the hands when saying “Allāhu Akbar” in prayer, or holding the hands together while standing. It is interesting that al-Shawkānī hastens to add that the Zaydi imams themselves never ceased to study and transmit the books of hadith, and some of them, like Zayd Ibn ʿAlī, believed that raising the hands in prayer and holding them together was lawful.²⁰¹Close Quite understandably, the mob invoked these highly symbolic rituals and practices to prove that al-Ṣanʿānī and later al-Shawkānī were undermining the Zaydi school. Al-Shawkānī responded, however, by asserting the conformity of these acts and practices with the basic teachings of the Zaydi school.

Al-Shawkānī also points out with satisfaction that among the commoners and the elites, and even in the ranks of the army, the number of al-Ṣanʿānī’s followers increased despite all the plots against him.²⁰²Close Many more people openly accepted his ijtihād and studied the books of hadith with him. In fact, even the imam was influenced by al-Ṣanʿānī’s teachings, as was his grand wazīr the jurist Aḥmad Ibn ʿAlī al-Nihmī and his chief army commander al-Māsī al-Mahdī. In a way, therefore, al-Ṣanʿānī represents a transitional phase for the Yemeni reformers from a stage of pure intellectual struggle, which did not translate into any real political power, to a stage where they could actually infiltrate the power structure and begin to gain a following within the official institutions of the state.

Although he was better off than the earlier Yemeni reformers, al-Shawkānī projected an image of himself that was modeled after his rebellious predecessors, an image of a scholar who suffered as a result of his intellectual integrity. Thus, despite al-Shawkānī’s favorable fortunes, he continued to claim descent from this line of nonconformist intellectuals, a lineage symbolically bestowed on him in a dream by none other than al-Ṣanʿānī himself. In this dream encounter, al-Ṣanʿānī instructed al-Shawkānī to “be precise in regard to the chains of transmission, and meticulous in the interpretation of the sayings of the Messenger of God,” and he informed him that hadith scholars are destined for paradise. Al-Ṣanʿānī then hugged al-Shawkānī and wept, an act the latter interpreted as a sign that he would suffer tribulations similar to those suffered by al-Ṣanʿānī.²⁰³Close

Al-Shawkānī, the chief judge of Yemen, was no victim, and he wielded considerably more power than any of the earlier Yemeni reformers did. However, as he wrote the history of their dissenting tradition, he also wrote himself into it, and he shaped a good part of his intellectual career in conformity with it. Although al-Shawkānī did not write a separate biography for himself, he took every occasion to include aspects of his past in the larger history. Although he reports some of the basics of his life, he does not give the kind of autobiographical information that one finds in traditional historical narratives.²⁰⁴Close Rather, he selectively traces patterns of experience in his own life and in the lives of earlier reformers and combines the historical narratives of these experiences with legal commentary. In particular, al-Shawkānī is keen to present himself as a target of the hatred and plots of madhhab partisans, including some of his own students and friends.

In one of many similar accounts, al-Shawkānī speaks of a student of his who turned against him. This student, presumably Zaydi, had borrowed one of al-Shawkānī’s books where he had jotted some views on the question of the redeemed group (al-firqa al-nājiya). Al-Shawkānī had written something to the effect that this group was not just one of the many subdivisions of the various Muslim schools and madhhabs but a reference to any of the followers of the various schools who adhered to the indicants of the law and the teachings of the Prophet. Of course, al-Shawkānī was refuting the claim by specific groups that they were the only ones to be redeemed on the Day of Judgment. Upon reading al-Shawkānī’s views, his former student rightly understood them to undermine the exclusive claim of his own madhhab and started maligning al-Shawkānī. The incident was contained, but al-Shawkānī suggests that this student knew very well that his teacher was correct; furthermore, al-Shawkānī sadly notes that this student’s zeal led him to violate the code of proper behavior by a student toward his teacher.²⁰⁵Close

Another story of similar import is included in the biography of al-Ḥusayn Ibn Yaḥyā Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dhamārī (d. 1249 AH), a close friend and colleague of al-Shawkānī who studied hadith with him under a common teacher.²⁰⁶Close Al-Shawkānī reports that, in 1208, when he wrote his Irshād al-Ghabī on the prohibition against cursing the Companions of the Prophet according to the school of ahl al-bayt, his book fell in the hands of a zealous Rāfiḍī (that is, Ismāʿīlī). Upon reading the treatise, this man lost his intellectual bearings and, with the support of some state officials, started inciting others against al-Shawkānī, soliciting more than twenty responses to his treatise. Most of these responses were pure invective with no substance to them, and yet the campaign against al-Shawkānī gained momentum with many people taking sides and offering comments on the subject. The controversy spread all over Yemeni cities, although all the treatise purported to do was defend the honor of the Companions of the Prophet, and although it was exclusively based on the opinions of the imams of ahl al-bayt in order to disprove the claims of those who attributed lies to them and claimed to belong to their school. Al-Shawkānī contends that the silence of many moderate scholars and their fear of saying the truth allowed the extremists to occupy center stage and mobilize such campaigns. Out of fear of the mob, many scholars remained silent to avoid harm and disgrace, and some even said what the mob wanted to hear. It was this silence, al-Shawkānī maintains, that led to the persecution of the scholars of Yemen and to the tyranny of the mob over them. Moreover, concealing the truth obscured the reputation of these scholars and lowered their status. This complicity further emboldened the mobs in their abuse of scholars. In contrast, if the scholars who knew better had united in their defense of the truth, the mob and their accomplices among the ignorant jurists would have been deterred from instigating further strife. To al-Shawkānī’s great surprise and disappointment, his friend al-Dhamārī was one of those good scholars who were drawn into the controversy. Knowing of their close connection, the mob pressured al-Shawkānī’s friend to write a response, which he did. And although the response did not stray from the truth and actually reiterated some of al-Shawkānī’s arguments, it gave the impression that its author disagreed with al-Shawkānī, which, in turn, gave additional impetus to the campaign against him. Al-Dhamārī’s response, al-Shawkānī adds, was the only one that merited consideration. Al-Shawkānī therefore wrote a reply, which, he concedes, was at times harsh.

Al-Shawkānī was particularly careful in discussing his friend’s involvement in this intrigue, as he eventually apologized to al-Shawkānī. In contrast, a former teacher of al-Shawkānī knowingly and deliberately participated in spreading accusations against al-Shawkānī and became the spokesman for the extremists who, in collaboration with a state official, orchestrated this campaign.²⁰⁷Close This and other narratives by al-Shawkānī serve to bolster his subversive credentials. This narrative underscores his assessment of a scholar’s role during times of strife. Al-Shawkānī notes that, on the one hand, his previous teacher was driven by envy; this teacher, identified as ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Ismāʿīl Ibn Ḥasan Ibn Hādī al-Nihmī, was skilled in the grammatical and language sciences as well as logic; however, al-Shawkānī quickly learned all of what this teacher had to give and stopped taking his classes, moving on to other teachers.²⁰⁸Close Clearly, the teacher was offended and held a grudge against al-Shawkānī. On the other hand, the colleague of al-Shawkānī who wrote a modest, although hurtful response was driven by fear of the mob. In reality, this scholar was a righteous scholar who promoted the study of hadith, but he did so in secret.²⁰⁹Close Both examples illustrate the perils of intellectual authority. Lack of intellectual courage and integrity, like professional competition over authority and turf, can lead to polarization and aggravate sectarian strife. In these narratives, therefore, al-Shawkānī submits that although he did not suffer as much as the earlier reformers of Zaydi Yemen, he was no less a target of hatred campaigns by madhhab partisans. Moreover, his ability to weather these campaigns, al-Shawkānī suggests, was in no small measure a result of his steadfastness, courage, and refusal to compromise his principled beliefs under pressure from the mob or the entrenched institutional powers.

To best appreciate the uniqueness of al-Shawkānī’s history it is useful to compare it to the most studied and quoted history of this period, namely, that of the Egyptian historian ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī.²¹⁰Close Much of the modern scholarship on eighteenth-century historical writings has been informed by al-Jabartī’s accounts of the turbulent events preceding and following the French occupation of Egypt. Simply put, al-Jabartī’s history is one of upheavals and disasters, of what seemed to him like a crumbling world, hence the pessimistic and anxious tone of his accounts. In contrast, al-Shawkānī’s account was optimistic and confident of the possibilities of the present. Al-Shawkānī himself was an illustration of the propitious culmination of a history of intellectual dissent and resistance. As a result, al-Shawkānī’s history projects an image of rise and vibrancy, in contrast to al-Jabartī’s history of decline and stagnation. The writings of the other eighteenth-century reformers were full of assessments of historical experience and traditions, which informed every aspect of their reform projects. Some of these I have already discussed, and others we will examine later. For the sake of comparison, I will consider additional examples from the writings of Shāh Walī Allāh.

One of the instances in which Walī Allāh deploys a reading of history to inform and illustrate his reform views is in his attempt to provide a historicist explanation of difference (ikhtilāf) in Islam. As we have seen, Walī Allāh’s project was primarily one of intellectual reconciliation between the various modes of knowledge and within each of these. His recourse to ijtihād was in part a way of mediating differences among jurists. The status of divergent rulings issued by these jurists was the next issue on his agenda of reconciliation. The ijtihād of Walī Allāh was not simply a prescription to include more opinions and hence dissent but a way of coming to terms with differences of opinion and creatively bypassing them in the interest of the community. He believed there were historical reasons for differences among scholars and their approaches to the study of law. Early traditionalists, he argued, did not derive rulings from the hadith, fearing that they may have misunderstood its meanings. Instead, they simply transmitted the traditions as they heard them.²¹¹Close Early jurists were afraid of attributing wrong traditions to the Prophet and thought it less risky to issue new rulings and opinions.²¹²Close Later followers of both groups, the traditionalists and the jurists, attributed to their predecessors exclusive claims they did not make, and the zealotry of these followers is one of the causes of later differences.²¹³Close The situation was aggravated when some scholars compromised their integrity, lured by the prospect of wealth and power.²¹⁴Close Legal disputation was a favorite subject in the courts of rulers, and scholars seeking wealth focused their studies on it in order to gain the rulers’ patronage, thus diverting their attention from the more scholarly pursuits of the first generations of Muslims.²¹⁵Close Legal divergences (ikhtilāfāt) were also caused by structural factors, including conflicting transmitted hadiths and their varying linguistic interpretations. Added causes for ikhtilāf include differences in the methods of applying a general rule to a specific situation or deriving a general ruling from a specific one, and the interpretation of a general rule in a specific context in opposition to the requirement of common sense and simple reasoning.²¹⁶Close

Walī Allāh charts the causes of legal divergences and then suggests ways of dealing with them. Difference, he asserts, is a natural and unavoidable outcome of ijtihād. It is sanctioned in the prophetic tradition, which assigns two rewards to a mujtahid who hits the mark and one reward to one who does not.²¹⁷Close According to Walī Allāh, this does not mean that one of the two opinions in question is wrong, only that one is more correct than the other. The claim that only one of the two opinions corresponds to the ruling intended by God implies that the other is in opposition to God’s ruling, which is a sin and cannot be deserving of God’s reward.²¹⁸Close Therefore, in differences resulting from most kinds of ijtihād, the truth is on both sides of the difference,²¹⁹Close and the choice between different legal opinions, and by extension, different legal schools, is a choice between equally valid options. Based on this argument, Walī Allāh then asserts that it is prohibited to believe in and promote one school of law to the exclusion of others.²²⁰Close These schools have no exclusive claim to truth—there are only four of them because it so happened that their followers were more active than those of other, now extinct schools.²²¹Close Clearly therefore, history and doctrine are intertwined in this analysis. As in the case of al-Shawkānī, the primary purpose of reading history is to inform a specific agenda of intellectual reform. Unlike al-Jabartī, Walī Allāh’s digressions into history do not paint a hopeless picture of the present but draw on the past to optimistically chart ways its resources might be redeployed to revitalize Muslim tradition and society in the present.

Such, then, was the self-confidence of these reformers and their conceptions of history. But was their optimism a mere illusion? Put differently, was the grand sense of intellectual authority projected by scholars like Walī Allāh and al-Shawkānī warranted and, if so, what was the source of this authority? It is easier to answer these questions for reformers without political leverage than it is for al-Shawkānī, who had claims to both political and intellectual authority. In the case of al-Ṣanʿānī, for example, it is safe to conclude that his political leverage did not amount to much, and that his influence derived largely from his scholarly achievements and his ability to demonstrate his intellectual excellence. Similarly, we know that Walī Allāh tried to solicit political support from several political powers that, he hoped, would come to the rescue of Indian Muslims and restore a measure of social order to their ranks. We also know, however, that all such solicitations failed, at which point Walī Allāh gave up on rulers, turned to scholarship, and proposed his intellectual reforms as an alternative way of reviving Muslim societies. And although Walī Allāh’s efforts may not have succeeded at the social and political levels, his views were so compelling that there is hardly any Muslim scholar in India after Walī Allāh who does not recognize him as the greatest Muslim scholar of the Indian subcontinent, and claim to be the true representative of his thought. In addition to the respect that these scholars cultivated as a result of their scholarly achievements, the distance they maintained vis-à-vis tainted political authorities raised their standing and added to their credibility in the eyes of posterity. In other words, their lack of political power provided these scholars with a moral authority, which in turn had significant social and political implications.

The cases of Ibn Fūdī and al-Sanūsī are slightly more complex since they both introduced new social and political formations. Still, in both cases, political and social reform were inspired and informed by comprehensive programs of intellectual reform. Moreover, both thinkers were prolific in their own right and promoted ideas that were original in their contexts. Al-Sanūsī advocated doctrines similar to those of al-Shawkānī, most notably regarding the use of hadith, the prohibition of taqlīd, and the universal obligation of ijtihād. Ibn Fūdī was perhaps the most notable Muslim scholar and reformer to ever emerge in sub-Saharan Africa; and while he did not attempt to reform the classical Islamic tradition, he systematically drew on it to construct an intellectual edifice that would underpin his program of social and political reform.

Unlike the other reformers of this period, al-Shawkānī held state office. A prolific scholar who wrote on intellectual integrity and advocated steadfastness in the face of political authority, he derived at least some of his influence from his appointment to the office of chief judge by that authority. We will therefore examine this aspect of al-Shawkānī’s complex relationship to power as a way of probing the larger question of the relationship between intellectual and political authority.

Despite wide differences in their connections to various sites of institutional power, the foundation of authority of all the reformers in Zaydi Yemen was primarily intellectual. The various reformers of the eighteenth century had diverse relationships to power; yet, they seem to have thought of themselves as belonging to a general trend or tradition of reform, one that relied on indicants of the law and questioned, if not rejected, the exclusive authority of the schools of law (madhhabs). As we have seen, in the consciousness of al-Shawkānī there was in fact a particular tradition whose genealogy and intellectual traits he set out to construct and delineate. This tradition was to a great extent construed in terms of the role of the intellectual in society and in connection to power. In this way, al-Shawkānī provided a theoretical examination of the foundation on which the legitimacy of the intellectual could be based. And although he was part of the power structure, al-Shawkānī insisted on identifying himself with this oppositional tradition. Put differently, al-Shawkānī thought of himself as an intellectual with a mission, and this mission was defined primarily in the genealogies of dissent that he constructed for his intellectual forerunners as well as for himself. His connection to power was thus subordinate to this larger subjectivity. Again, the main elements of this subjectivity are not just one’s depth of knowledge but also the independence of this knowledge, and the oppositional role it plays vis-à-vis the oppressive tendencies of states and of corporate schools alike. It is only natural, therefore, to question whether al-Shawkānī’s real career corresponded to this projected image.

On the face of it, al-Shawkānī’s relation to power appears complementary. Tracing his career path, however, reveals a competitive relationship with political authority, one in which the absolute authority of the Zaydi imam, an authority idealized in Zaydi doctrine, was undermined in multiple ways by the creation of competing sites of power and norms for the exercise of this power.

Al-Shawkānī’s father was a professional jurist who, early in his life, moved south from the town of Shawkān to the city of Sanaa in search of better career opportunities. There he served as a modest judge and does not seem to have achieved much distinction or prominence. The image presented in al-Shawkānī’s biography written of his father is of a minor and relatively uninfluential judge who did not have significant connections to powerful state officials, did not amass wealth, did not own the house he lived in, and, when he died after forty years of service, left nothing for his family by way of inheritance.²²²Close Al-Shawkānī does not mention any other family member who served, or had connections with, political authorities. Al-Shawkānī, therefore, did not inherit wealth, prominence, or social status from his father or family. What his father provided, however, was the opportunity for him to study in Sanaa with some of the leading scholars of the city and to obtain as diverse an education as the city at that time could provide.²²³Close Al-Shawkānī clearly availed himself of this education and, at a very young age, became a scholar in his own right. Such was his knowledge, al-Shawkānī reports, that he was able to abandon imitation and became a mujtahid before he was thirty years old.²²⁴Close Already at this early age, al-Shawkānī had transmitted over 500 works in all disciplines and had written many of his books.²²⁵Close Al-Shawkānī was also very active in teaching and issued fatwas without charging money. Many of these fatwas circulated among the leading judges of the imamate, who recognized the superiority of his scholarship,²²⁶Close although they did not know al-Shawkānī personally as he then avoided contact not only with state officials but also with scholars who had contacts with the state (arbāb al-dawla kāʾinan man kān).²²⁷Close

Al-Shawkānī was thus recognized as a leading scholar, and by some accounts the leading scholar, of his period already before the imam sought to appoint him chief judge of Zaydi Yemen.²²⁸Close There could be no doubt that al-Shawkānī’s appointment to the office of chief judge reinforced his power and provided him with previously unavailable opportunities. Al-Shawkānī, however, did not become the unrivaled scholar of Yemen on account of this appointment, as is evident by the fact that he had already written some of his most important works. Moreover, based on all available information, there seems to have been no contemporary Zaydi Hādawī scholar of a comparable scholarly stature. Al-Shawkānī’s reputation must have been enhanced by his appointment to office, but it had to be on account of his manifest scholarly superiority that the imam sought to appoint him in the first place.²²⁹Close It is important to note here that al-Shawkānī’s intellectual legacy was recognized beyond his immediate temporal and geographical context: he had a following in India and North Africa and was celebrated as the reviver of his time (mujaddid al-ʿaṣr or al-qarn) in later Islamic historical writings.²³⁰Close

Given the evidence from all available biographical sources, the appointment of al-Shawkānī by the Zaydi imam cannot be attributed to al-Shawkānī’s social status or connections. One possible explanation of al-Shawkānī’s sudden rise to power could be the imam’s desire to employ someone with the requisite erudition but with no social and political connections to draw on; this would have ensured al-Shawkānī’s loyalty to the imamate, since he had none to rival powers within Yemen. This, no doubt, is a common practice even in modern states. Another factor that might have made the appointment of al-Shawkānī more appealing to the imam is the possibility of appeasing Shāfiʿī subjects by appointing a hybrid scholar with scholarly links to and knowledge of their own legal tradition. These explanations, however, are unlikely: with no prior knowledge of and connection to al-Shawkānī, the imam and his staff had no way of ensuring that he would legitimate their rule and serve them with unquestioned loyalty. In fact, al-Shawkānī had multiple loyalties and did not give his full and undivided loyalty to the imams he served. One telling indication of the lack of such subservient loyalty is that al-Shawkānī did not compose a “mirrors of princes” type of work; in this genre, the norms of proper behavior of the ruler are delineated, but the purpose of this advisory exercise is not to correct the ruler’s behavior and undermine his power but to enhance this power and secure the stability of his regime. In contrast, al-Shawkānī composed works that advocate the regulation of the relationship between jurists and rulers, so that the jurist does not simply serve the interests of the regime that employs him but also uses this relationship to further his own practical authority.

The position of al-Qāḍī al-Akbar (grand judge), which later came to be known as Qāḍī al-Quḍāt (chief judge), was first created in the eighteenth century when the imam al-Mutawakkil al-Qāsim bestowed the title on Sayyid Aḥmad Bin ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāmī (d. 1759).²³¹Close The next person appointed to this position was Yaḥyā Bin Ṣāliḥ al-Saḥūlī²³²Close (d. 1795), who served for part of Al-Mahdī ʿAbbās’s reign and was removed from office and then reinstated under al-Manṣūr ʿAlī (r. 1775–1809). Al-Shawkānī, who was appointed next to this position, emphatically asserts that “there has never been any contact between me and him [al-Saḥūlī], nor did I ever meet him,” as if to highlight the fact that his nomination was on account of his scholarly reputation and not personal contacts and connections.²³³Close Both scholars who occupied the position of al-Qāḍī al-Akbar before al-Shawkānī were Zaydi scholars with knowledge of Sunni hadith compendiums. Al-Saḥūlī, for example, had a Zaydi education, distinguished himself in Zaydi applied law (furūʿ) with partial knowledge of other disciplines, had a profound knowledge of the books of the Zaydi imams and the rest of the Zaydi scholars, and worked extensively in this area of scholarship. In addition, a group of Sanaa scholars used to study Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim with him.²³⁴Close Yet despite this knowledge and teaching of Sunni works on hadith, al-Saḥūlī’s affiliation is decidedly different from that of the other reformers of Zaydi Yemen. One of his books was a critical response to a critique by al-Ḥasan al-Jalāl of a book on transmissions within the Zaydi school.²³⁵Close This suggests that al-Saḥūlī did not nominate al-Shawkānī to succeed him on account of their shared intellectual affiliations.

In the biography of Imam al-Manṣūr (r. 1189–1224), al-Shawkānī describes his own appointment as chief judge after the death of the previous judge, al-Saḥūlī, in 1209 AH.²³⁶Close At that time, al-Shawkānī maintains, he was busy teaching the sciences of ijtihād, as well as issuing fatwas and writing on various scholarly subjects. Al-Shawkānī also adds that beyond this sort of public engagement, he had isolated himself from the public, especially from officials with whom he had no contacts whatsoever, and had no desire to do anything aside from scholarship.²³⁷Close Of course, al-Shawkānī’s public engagement before appointment to office was quite substantial; he himself reports that each day he gave about thirteen lessons in tafsīr, uṣūl, language, applied law, and hadith. No doubt, this teaching must have contributed to al-Shawkānī’s reputation, despite his claim that he was surprised when the messengers of the caliph (Imam al-Manṣūr) approached him about a week after the death of al-Saḥūlī. The caliph informed al-Shawkānī that he was chosen to fill the vacant position of chief judge. His first reaction, al-Shawkānī tells us, was to apologize by explaining that he was overstretched and overburdened with teaching. In response, the caliph assured al-Shawkānī that it was possible to continue teaching while in this new position, and that all he needed to do was to arbitrate the disputes that were presented in court during the two days of the week in which the judges met. Al-Shawkānī then requested time for consultation on the matter. His initial hesitation, which lasted a week, was then overcome by the insistence of a majority of scholars in Sanaa that it was his obligation to accept this appointment since if he did not, the responsibility for the judgeship of all of Yemen could go to someone who was not qualified for it, either in knowledge or in piety. Al-Shawkānī quickly discovered, however, that the job could not be done in just two days per week and that he was left with very little time to read or finish his writing projects. Al-Shawkānī also tells of other anxieties during his first days on the job; he was especially concerned because he had no prior knowledge of the conventions of the profession of a judge and had never attended arbitration, not even his father’s sessions. Al-Shawkānī adds, however, that, thanks to the respect and dignity with which the caliph treated the office of the chief judge and al-Shawkānī personally, as well as the caliph’s willingness to apply the rulings of this office to himself and his family, al-Shawkānī was able to overcome the initial hurdles and develop the knowledge and expertise needed to run the office properly.²³⁸Close

Even if somewhat exaggerated, this account clearly illustrates the image that al-Shawkānī wished to project of his own relationship to power. Al-Shawkānī insists that he did not seek to gain favor with political authority and that he never desired to become a member of the official establishment or to be affiliated with the state. Over and over, he reminds us that he agreed to serve reluctantly in order to further his own project of promoting justice, a project that he had articulated, both in his writings and fatwas and in his teaching, before he took office. Al-Shawkānī also maintains that he was not preparing himself for such a position, which is why he did not bother to learn more about the conventions and procedures of the profession. Even though his position as a judge took over most other aspects of his own intellectual career, al-Shawkānī the jurist took pride in the knowledge and skills he had accumulated in the years before his appointment, knowledge and skills he acquired independent of the state and without any aspiration to join its ranks. This knowledge, according to al-Shawkānī, was not developed for the purpose of serving rulers and, by extension, was not cultivated in the hope of allowing him to partake in the power and privileges of the ruling elite.²³⁹Close Indeed, he did not rise through the ranks and was surprised that he was approached to fill this position in the first place. In his account, al-Shawkānī insists that his knowledge was independently cultivated, even though he eventually happened to serve in an official capacity. This independence is further amplified by his hesitation at the time of appointment and his ultimate decision to accept so as to serve his own objectives. Therefore, in contrast to his definite intellectual identification with the dissenting intellectuals of Yemen, al-Shawkānī portrays his service as a provisional compromise that did not imperil his professional independence. Above all, al-Shawkānī tells us that he derived his authority from his scholarly credentials and from the reputation he cultivated through this scholarship and intensive teaching.

Al-Shawkānī was able to create a large network of students and, after appointment to office, planted these students in various official positions. Al-Shawkānī’s compelling intellectual credentials, therefore, were aided by this tangible networking, which gave him a power base of his own. Al-Shawkānī was also conscious of the power implications of such networking. For example, in reference to a certain Zaydi scholar, al-Shawkānī reports that because of the large number of his students, people would not give their oath of allegiance to the imams if this scholar were not present.²⁴⁰Close Al-Shawkānī’s appointment of his students to the offices of local judges, preachers, and other administrative posts can be read as an effort to infiltrate and subvert the institutions of the Zaydi imamate. Yet again, as the above account suggests, the building of a network of students started as an intellectual act before al-Shawkānī became chief judge, and he had already won the intellectual loyalty of his students before he was able to cultivate and draw on their professional loyalties.²⁴¹Close In fact, al-Shawkānī reports that even members of the family of the imams came under the sway of the reformative ideas he advocated. One such case is al-Qāsim, the son of Imam al-Mutawakkil, who studied hadith with Muḥammad ʿĀbid al-Sindī when he came to Yemen, and with al-Shawkānī himself later on.²⁴²Close

Despite his rejection of taqlīd, a stand that inhibited his ability to impose his views on fellow Muslims, both the power that was invested in his office by the state as well as the network of students and followers he was able to build throughout Yemen gave al-Shawkānī’s normative, juristic discourse the power to coerce. Arguably, therefore, al-Shawkānī’s authority was not just moral: the substantial powers at his disposal augmented the hegemonic sway of his ideas. Yet it is important to remember here that many of al-Shawkānī’s ideas were not executionable and thus could not benefit from the coercive powers of his office. Even when he conceived of himself as a guardian of a particular, legitimate method of reasoning, al-Shawkānī was restrained by his conviction that Muslims have the right, indeed duty, to exercise ijtihād and make their own choices. Moreover, many of his views contradicted the official doctrines of the state and, at some level, undermined the prevailing paradigm of the hegemonic culture associated with it. To be sure, al-Shawkānī contributed to the production of this culture, but the domain of cultural production was not the exclusive, or even main, purview of the dominant political authority and its institutions. Numerous other sites of political and cultural authority existed, and al-Shawkānī partook in many of them. Above all, al-Shawkānī’s authority was an intellectual authority derived from his intellectual abilities, achievements, and credentials, and not from the office that he occupied. Scholarly integrity thus comes before political leverage, important as the latter was in al-Shawkānī’s actual career.

Al-Shawkānī’s determined stand on authority does not rule out the possibility of serving the state and collaborating with it. As we have seen, al-Shawkānī suggested that scholars could realistically hope for a balanced relationship with political authorities in which they not only served the state but also promoted their own interests and views. And yet, al-Shawkānī’s willingness to compromise and collaborate with political authorities is countered by his resolve to defend the independence of his scholarship and to fortify scholars against pressures as well as temptations that could undermine their intellectual integrity. The ideal intellectual who is engaged in public service, as conceived of by al-Shawkānī, is one who may compromise his style of interaction but not his basic principles. Moreover, styles of communication differ and are judged by their outcomes, whereas principles are fixed. As examples of such variations, al-Shawkānī cites the case of Nūr al-Dīn al-Maṣrī al-Shāfiʿī (d. 724), who had the courage to criticize the sultan in public. One scholar serving the sultan suggested to his master that al-Maṣrī was on the verge of competing with the sultan for power, at which point the sultan ordered that al-Maṣrī’s tongue be cut out.²⁴³Close Luckily for the latter, however, another scholar (Ṣadr al-Dīn Ibn al-Wakīl) calmed the sultan’s rage by persuading him to consider al-Maṣrī’s piety, despite his crude manners, which were due to the “dryness of his brain.” Al-Maṣrī was thus forgiven.²⁴⁴Close Both the courageous actions of the scholar who criticized the sultan publicly and the diplomatic scholar who rescued his colleague’s tongue are models of commendable scholarly behavior that stand apart from subservient collaboration in which scholarly credentials become a tool for legitimating the oppression of rulers. Of course, al-Shawkānī, aware of the numerous compromises that scholars make in order to justify rulers’ illegal acts, often hastens to condemn such compromises. Thus, for example, in reference to the prohibition against ornamenting mosques, al-Shawkānī maintains that earlier generations of Muslims did not denounce such ornamentation because it is a latter-day innovation that did not exist at their time. This innovation was introduced by tyrants who did not bother to consult scholars on the permissibility of their acts. Mosque ornamentation is not a commendable innovation, even though a majority of scholars may have failed to condemn it. The silence of these scholars, al-Shawkānī contends, can be read as a refusal to condone rather than an approval of this ornamentation. However, al-Shawkānī adds that some scholars’ apologetic attempts to justify such innovations compel them to come up with arguments that even a “dumb beast” would not accept. Scholars, therefore, debase themselves by playing this subservient role.²⁴⁵Close Elsewhere, al-Shawkānī maintains that judges are prohibited from accepting presents of any kind, even from family members. Such presents function as bribes that might affect the judges’ neutrality and bias their judgments. Al-Shawkānī points out that after he became a judge he refused to accept gifts of any sort, no matter where they came from.²⁴⁶Close

A judge, to al-Shawkānī, is the quintessential example of the intellectual who serves the community through public office. Al-Shawkānī’s stipulated requirements for judges are distinguished by his intermingling of standard theoretical considerations with more practical ones, which are clearly informed by his own experience in public service. Of course, to qualify for this position, a scholar must be a mujtahid, fearful of God (mutawarriʿ) in regard to the wealth of people, and not actively seeking appointment with the state.²⁴⁷Close One of the central traits that al-Shawkānī continually refers to is fairness (inṣāf), which he invariably defines in practical terms. A fair person (munṣif) is one who consults with specialists over matters in which he lacks knowledge or expertise. Great scholars, al-Shawkānī notes, are always susceptible to making absurd mistakes in areas outside their specialty; thus, for example, Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Juwaynī and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī quote fabricated traditions in their work because they were not experts on hadith. Despite their great knowledge, they should have consulted the books of hadith to supplement their limited knowledge in this area. What applies to such great scholars, al-Shawkānī adds, no doubt applies to less accomplished ones. Of course, al-Shawkānī’s example is also meant to illustrate the danger of relying uncritically on the legal works of even great scholars like al-Juwaynī and al-Ghazālī, thus underscoring the need to abandon imitation and rely instead on the compilations of hadith.²⁴⁸Close  Inṣāf includes the meaning of modesty, that is, the modesty to recognize one’s own limitations as well as the limitations of the doctrine of one’s school. The lack of such modesty, in al-Shawkānī’s view, amounts to recklessness: the rulings of irresponsible scholars are not forgivable within the limits of ijtihād but are transgressions against God and His law.

Having identified inṣāf as a central trait of the ideal intellectual, and taking into consideration that no scholar lives in an ideal world, al-Shawkānī proceeds to sketch out what it takes to maintain this ideal posture in a less than ideal reality.²⁴⁹Close In particular, al-Shawkānī addresses the problem of maintaining fairness in an intellectual world populated by partisans of different law schools, and especially in a world of scholarship that is produced by these partisans. The challenge is that this scholarship is produced mostly in a sectarian milieu, yet fairness requires the use of this scholarship irrespective of its sectarian origins, and without being prejudiced by its biases. One of the signs of fairness is the willingness to accept verifiable reports irrespective of their transmitter’s doctrinal position. Yet to al-Shawkānī, fairness and transcendence of madhhab partisanship are no less a function of personal character than of knowledge and erudition. Al-Shawkānī’s ideal intellectual thus has certain personal traits that predispose him to live up to the intellectual and practical challenges of his vocation.

Just as al-Shawkānī tried to distinguish himself from the political authorities he served, he also distanced himself from the masses (ʿawām). At a most obvious level, al-Shawkānī displayed opulence in his dress and standard of living. He deliberately exhibited his wealth as a sign of God’s bounty toward him.²⁵⁰Close As with most everything else in his life, his attitudes toward class and social status found theoretical expression in his writings and overall system of thought. According to al-Shawkānī, appearance and social background count. But only virtuous people are truly capable of appreciating virtue, whereas ignorant people are deluded by appearances and wrongly consider them to be signs of scholarly distinction. Rather than focusing on substance and content, these ignorant people pay attention to such appearances as official positions and titles, proximity to rulers, class size, number of fatwas issued, special dress that goes with a position, and size of headgear. The “science of imitation [ʿilm al-taqlīd]” depends on these appearances to delude the ignorant masses, which is why rulers turn to scholars to derive a deceptive aura of legitimacy from their presence and service. This is also the reason why the courage of a mujtahid to deal with such deceptive scholars invariably leads those same scholars to lobby against the sincere mujtahid and either hurt him physically or slander him.²⁵¹Close

Clearly then, aside from rulers, whom al-Shawkānī sees as prone by the nature of their vocation to corruption, there are two culprit groups that can undermine the advocacy of truth and ultimately justice. These are the collaborating scholars and the people who are impressed by their deceptive claims and appearances. In contrast, certain seemingly inherited social aptitudes predispose a person to becoming a mujtahid, not just for one’s own purposes, but also for the purpose of issuing of fatwas in the interest of other people. These aptitudes, al-Shawkānī contends, make a person a suitable receiver of knowledge and learning.²⁵²Close The main factor accounting for such predisposition is what al-Shawkānī calls “nobility of descent [sharaf al-maḥtad].” Hailing from a noble lineage itself “attracts a person by nature to ulterior matters.” Such nobility also deters a person from indulging in vices and inculcates in him the attraction to noble status and meritorious undertakings. Thus, a student with such character would neither be conceited nor exhibit haughtiness in acquiring knowledge. In contrast, however, the dispositions of people of inferior social backgrounds, including those with “such professional skills as tailoring, oil pressing, selling food for sheep, and other similar menial professions and lowly crafts” have no natural aversion to lowliness, humiliation, or injustice.²⁵³Close Thus, when a person of such ignoble background pursues a scholarly profession and attains a share in it, there is a risk that this person will become conceited and overtaken by vanity and pride. This is due to the sudden change in the social status of this person from the “lowest position and meanest rank … to the highest place and noblest status.” And in the place of the company of tailors, blood-letters, butchers, or such lowly tradesmen, this person suddenly finds himself in the company of revered learned scholars. For this reason alone, such a person may exhibit conceit, insolence, and arrogance in his dealings with people, and by so doing bring harm both to the scholarly class and those below him. Al-Shawkānī adds that one rarely finds exceptions to this rule, and these are usually due to some distant noble background of the scholars in question.²⁵⁴Close

In contrast to ignoble scholars, al-Shawkānī asserts that a person who is worthy of knowledge, and who is already noble, “attains through knowledge additional nobility and acquires fine modesty, pure dignity, and superb manners that further elevate his scholarship and glorify his knowledge. … He thus recognizes the rights of knowledge and extols it … and does not muddy it with greed, degrade it by submission to other humans, or darken it by using it to obtain what is in the possession of rich people. Knowledge thus becomes his master not his servant, and his ultimate goal not his instrument.”²⁵⁵Close Al-Shawkānī further explains the motives behind his unreserved criticism of the middle group of tradesmen turned scholars; these people are used to subservience and continue to act in this fashion even after they join the ranks of scholars. Their vanity is only matched by total obedience to the officials who employ them, and they blindly follow their masters’ instructions without questioning the legality of what they are asked to do or defend. As a result, naïve observers associate this model of behavior with scholarship in general and think that all scholars are doomed to corruption the minute they are appointed to office.²⁵⁶Close Outside observers then develop an aversion to scholars and scholarship and pursue worldly careers in order to avoid the humiliation manifest in the behavior of these contemptible men, who bring disrepute and disgrace to themselves and scholars generally.²⁵⁷Close

Al-Shawkānī thus exhibits an aristocratic attitude based not so much on class division as on a kind of cultural determinism.²⁵⁸Close He justifies this haughtiness on the grounds that people of menial backgrounds become pompous as soon as they achieve the status of scholars, and he situates his essentialist discourse in the context of his attempt to rescue scholarship from the double curse of self-conceit and vanity, on the one hand, and abject humility and subservience, on the other. What is at stake, according to al-Shawkānī, is the independence of knowledge, as well as a scholar’s ability to preserve his integrity in a world of corrupting temptations. Al-Shawkānī pleads that one not approach knowledge with the mentality of a merchant or a tradesman who seeks profit or power. In contrast to the sense of inferiority that haunts scholars of ignoble background, noble descent fortifies scholars against the temptations of power and provides them with a sense of pride and self-righteousness in the face of tyranny. Al-Shawkānī, the chief judge, knew too well that his coercive abilities were totally dependent on the state he served. In the absence of alternative sources of physical power, a scholar who serves in public office will perforce run the risk of co-optation and corruption. Thus the need, according to al-Shawkānī, for correctives that preserve the integrity and independence of publicly engaged intellectuals. Above all, this integrity rests on knowledge, and it is further fortified by a sense of moral authority and social dignity, all of which were reflected in al-Shawkānī’s own example and in the examples of the predecessors he celebrated in his historical works.

To be sure, knowledge, according to al-Shawkānī, should be innocent of the opportunist scholars who claim its authority. The real bearers of knowledge are those who adhere to the Sunna and endure all kinds of hardship on account of this adherence. In contrast, commoners are not to be blamed for their hostility toward such scholars, since it is not driven by any kind of scientific knowledge but by what they are told by school partisans who have partial and defective knowledge. Mediocrity, rather than simple loyalty to their particular schools, is responsible for the poisonous attitudes of this inferior class of scholars. Thus, although the authors of the books they quote and adhere to reliably emphasize the existence of other legitimate legal views, they consider the slightest deviation from the stated opinions in their legal manuals an unacceptable aberration and accuse a mujtahid who exercises independent legal reasoning of apostasy. This, according to al-Shawkānī, is not the fault of the consulted books but the inferior minds of the readers of these books. All of these claims, al-Shawkānī adds, are tied to worldly gain and are in no case based purely on intellectual concerns. The hope of worldly advancement is often tied to the defined interests of madhhabs. Thus a person who slanders a hadith scholar is considered a defender of the school of ahl al-bayt and claims merit on account of this presumed defense. Again, were the common people to know the truth, they would surely distance themselves from such extremist claims, especially since the real views of the school of the imams encourages ijtihād rather than prohibits it.²⁵⁹Close Imitation and the scholars who promote it are the ultimate sources of this great calamity. In addition to the inevitable opposition between political and intellectual authorities, the ultimate battle lines are drawn within the intellectual sphere, between imitators and mujtahids, between the ardent adherers to madhhabs and those who transcend madhhab affiliation and promote an open and independent attitude to the law.

Al-Shawkānī’s critique of madhhab affiliation permeates his whole intellectual production. Given his own projected self-image as an independent mujtahid who does not belong to any madhhab, it is not surprising that his attitude toward all established schools of law, including the official Zaydi school of Yemen, amounts to neither complete adherence nor categorical rejection. Even as he rejects commonly accepted legal opinions of particular schools, al-Shawkānī often suggests that his rejection is not equivalent to a negation of the school doctrine in its totality, or an adherence to an opposing school of law. One way through which al-Shawkānī maintains his balanced approach to madhhabs is by tackling the main points of contention between schools in the area of applied law. The legal differences between Shiʿis and Sunnis in applied law are no more pronounced than differences among the various Sunni schools. And yet, historically, a handful of differences over matters of applied law have been overcharged with meaning and turned into symbolic embodiments of the larger doctrinal differences between the two groups. The list is short but the topics are immediately recognizable to Shiʿis and Sunnis alike. Rather than avoiding the potentially slippery discussion of these controversial issues, al-Shawkānī discusses almost all of these issues and provides an unconventional view on virtually every one of them.

For example, al-Shawkānī addresses the question of whether it is permissible to wipe off one’s shoes without removing them during ritual ablution.²⁶⁰Close This is one of few highly charged symbolic rituals that have served, historically, to distinguish Sunni and Shiʿi legal practices.²⁶¹Close In opposition to the common Twelver Shiʿi and Zaydi view, al-Shawkānī holds that wiping the shoes is permissible on the basis of a tradition reported by Jarīr, a Companion of the Prophet. This report, al-Shawkānī notes, is dismissed by some on the grounds that its transmitter, Jarīr, is not trustworthy since he broke away (fāraqa) from the camp of ʿAlī. Al-Shawkānī replies that Jarīr did not actually part company with ʿAlī but simply withdrew from the conflict for personal reasons after ʿAlī sent him to Muʿāwiya, presumably to negotiate on his behalf. Even if Jarīr were considered a sinner on account of this action, his report would still be acceptable. Al-Shawkānī invokes Ibn al-Wazīr’s classic argument in support of accepting the reports of a sinner by interpretation (fāsiq al-taʾwīl). Moreover, al-Shawkānī goes beyond Ibn al-Wazīr’s argument and adds that the dismissal of Jarīr’s report could only be justified had there been consensus among the members of the family of the Prophet (ʿitra) on this dismissal; as these members spread all over the world, and since they followed the different schools that prevailed in the regions where they settled, it is impossible to verify that they agreed on anything.²⁶²Close In fact, according to al-Shawkānī, the members of the family of the Prophet were not necessarily Zaydis or even Shiʿis in general, and they belonged to diverse schools of law. The ʿitra, therefore, does not constitute an identifiable entity, and it is therefore not possible to claim an authoritative stand on the basis of such identity.

Other highly charged points of contention between Shiʿis and Zaydis, on the one hand, and Sunnis, on the other, include raising the hands at the beginning of the prayer when saying, “Allāhu Akbar,” or holding the two hands together when standing in prayer. In reference to the first, al-Shawkānī quotes Zaydi authorities that attribute to the Zaydis in general the prohibition against raising the hands at the beginning or any other time during the prayer. This, he adds, “is a false attribution to the Zaydis, since their imam Zayd Ibn ʿAlī mentioned the tradition of raising [the hands] in his book known as Al-Majmūʿ and maintained that it is recommended. The same is true of their other distinguished imams, whether early or late, who stated that it is recommended. The only one who maintained that it should not be done is al-Hādī Yaḥyā Ibn al-Ḥusayn, and a similar view is reported on the authority of his grandfather al-Qāsim Ibn Ibrāhīm, although recommendation is also reported on the authority of the latter.”²⁶³Close

It is significant that the last two figures are among the most important authorities for the Yemeni Zaydis, and they are credited with elaborating the doctrinal and legal principles of the school. By identifying credible Zaydi opinions in opposition to the dominant views of al-Hādī, al-Shawkānī manages to dilute this highly charged issue and allow for a multiplicity of legitimate Zaydi choices. In other words, by citing Zaydi authorities, al-Shawkānī undermines the claim that Zaydis unanimously prohibit this practice. On the question of holding the hands together in prayer, he even goes further, asserting that “the opinion that [holding the hands together] is obligatory is the one [I have] chosen, unless some consensus prevents from it. We, however, do not believe in the authoritativeness of consensus; rather, we deny its possibility and assert that it cannot occur.”²⁶⁴Close Thus al-Shawkānī makes a choice that contradicts the Zaydi opinion on this question, but he clearly indicates that this is a juristic choice that does not polarize Muslims along school lines. More important, al-Shawkānī manages to venerate the scholars of the house of the Prophet without idealizing them collectively as an identifiable school. His meticulous attention to detail enables him to engage the opinions of individual Zaydi imams without committing himself to the standard collective views of the Zaydi school.

Another point of contention between Sunnis and Zaydis relates to the validity of prayer behind an imam who lacks probity (ʿadāla). The Zaydis in particular are keen to define the imam not just in terms of his descent but also in terms of his personal qualifications, first among which is rectitude and justice. This requirement is clear in the case of the imam as the political leader of the community, but it also extends, as al-Shawkānī indicates, to the leader of the congregational prayers. After a long exposition of the various views on the matter, al-Shawkānī affirms, “The result of all of this is that the basic rule is not to stipulate probity [as a condition for the imam, leader of prayer] and that if a person’s prayer is valid for himself, it is equally valid for others. … Those who claim that probity is a condition, as has been attributed to the ʿitra and to Mālik … need [additional] indicants to depart from this basic principle.”²⁶⁵Close After this radical challenge to a highly symbolic Zaydi view, al-Shawkānī tempers his position slightly by maintaining that “the issue being contested is whether the congregational prayer behind a person who lacks probity is valid; there is no disagreement, however, on its being reprehensible.”²⁶⁶Close

On the subject of temporary marriage (more accurately, pleasure marriage [mutʿa]), al-Shawkānī provides evidence for the abrogation of the initial permission, and hence the subsequent prohibition of this kind of marriage.²⁶⁷Close Here, too, in what seems like an attempt to subvert the association of his opinion with Sunni Islam, al-Shawkānī maintains that the basis for prohibition of temporary marriage is a sound hadith, not just the prohibition by Caliph ʿUmar as some may think. He adds, “At any rate we worship according to what we have received from the lawgiver (the Prophet); eternal prohibition has been established for us on his authority. The disagreement of a group of the Companions does not undermine the authoritativeness [of this prohibition], and neither does it provide us with a valid excuse for not complying with it; how so, when the majority of the Companions have established this prohibition, acted according to it, and reported it to us.”²⁶⁸Close Al-Shawkānī thus sides with the prevalent Sunni view on this highly symbolic question, but he makes sure to point out that he is not according a special authority to ʿUmar but simply acting in accordance with the established indicants of the law.

On other occasions, al-Shawkānī expresses willingness to disagree with ʿUmar, as well as mainstream Sunni and Zaydi views. Such is the case, for example, in al-Shawkānī’s discussion on the validity of triple divorce.²⁶⁹Close All schools of law agreed that after three consecutive divorces a woman would have to marry and divorce a second husband before she could remarry the first one. Most schools of law also agreed that the man, who can initiate divorce at will, can in fact initiate all three divorces at once by repeating to his wife, “You are divorced,” or its equivalent, three times. At various points in time, this issue also became a center of charged controversy. Ibn Taymiyya, as well as his student Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, both argued that only one divorce is valid at any one point in time, since a man has to be married to a woman to be able to divorce her, and after the first utterance he would not be married to her. Therefore, according to this view, the second and third divorces are not effective unless the woman and the man remarry and then redivorce. The symbolic importance of this question was such that Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn Qayyim’s views on the matter were held against them and used to justify their subsequent persecution. On one occasion, the latter was placed backward on a donkey and driven through the streets of his hometown to humiliate and punish him for ruling that only one divorce can be effective at any particular time.²⁷⁰Close Like Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Shawkānī bases his opinion on the matter on not just logical arguments but a tradition reported by Ibn ʿAbbās that nullifies triple divorce. Al-Shawkānī maintains that

in summary, the ones who hold the opinion of [the validity of] sequential divorce [tatābuʿ, i.e., three divorces at once] have produced many responses to the tradition reported by Ibn ʿAbbās, yet none of these is free of arbitrariness. The truth is more worthy of being followed. If their defensive stance is in the interest of their schools, then it is too base and inferior to impinge on the purified Sunna. If it is because of ʿUmar Ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, then where does the poor man stand in comparison with the Prophet of God? Moreover, which Muslim prefers, on the basis of his reason and knowledge, to give more weight to the opinion of a Companion than to the statement of the chosen one [the Prophet]?²⁷¹Close

Of course, al-Shawkānī does not condemn ʿUmar, but he also refuses to idealize him and has no qualms about disagreeing with him. It is also significant that in his most critical stand vis-à-vis ʿUmar, al-Shawkānī concurs not with Zaydi views but with unconventional Sunni ones.²⁷²Close

A similar, though perhaps even more significant equivocation is traceable in al-Shawkānī’s discussion of the meaning of the verse li yudhhiba ʿankum al-rijsa Ahla al-Bayti wa yuṭahhirakum taṭhīrā (al-Aḥzāb 33:33, And God only wishes to remove all uncleanness from you, O you members of the family [of the Prophet], and to purify you to utmost purity].²⁷³Close Al-Shawkānī surveys the views on the meaning of ahl al-bayt in this verse and gives the arguments for and against various readings of this meaning, including the wives of the Prophet, his descendants, Banū Hāshim, the latter with Banū al-Muṭṭalib, Fāṭima and ʿAlī and their two sons, or the whole umma. Although he indicates what objections could and have been raised against each of these interpretations, he refrains from making a choice himself. Given that the specific restrictive interpretation of this verse is central to Shiʿi creed, the simple fact that al-Shawkānī does not clearly choose or at least express a preference is itself a significant divergence from traditional Zaydi views.

Perhaps the most sensitive issue that al-Shawkānī dealt with is the question of succession after Muhammad. The standard Shiʿi view that the Prophet designated ʿAlī as a successor is shared by the Zaydis, and al-Shawkānī is no exception. Yet al-Shawkānī is careful to articulate his view in a conciliatory manner that conforms to his other attitudes and beliefs. Al-Shawkānī composed a treatise titled Al-ʿIqd al-Thamīn fī Ithbāt Waṣiyyat Amīr al-Muʿminīn (The precious necklace on confirming the designation of the commander of the faithful [ʿAlī]).²⁷⁴Close In the introduction to this treatise, al-Shawkānī takes up the denial by ʿĀʾisha that any such designation was articulated by the Prophet. Unlike other Shiʿis, al-Shawkānī is not willing to dismiss ʿĀʾisha by slandering her or questioning her integrity, not the least because she is the authority in the transmission of a large number of traditions. Al-Shawkānī therefore approaches his response to ʿĀʾisha formally, treating her as a Companion and transmitter of hadith. At the outset, he provides a series of theoretical rules that have been established in the discipline of principles of jurisprudence including the principles that “the opinion of a Companion is not [in itself] authoritative evidence [ḥujja]; an affirmative statement has priority over a negative one; one who knows has authority over one who does not; and, even if its authority is granted, an interrupted tradition cannot contradict one [whose chain of transmission] is continuous all the way to the Prophet.”²⁷⁵Close Like any other “Companion,” ʿĀʾisha’s opinion is not binding on other Muslims, and what counts is her reporting, not the actual opinion. This assessment does not discredit ʿĀʾisha in any way, since according to al-Shawkānī the same formal rules are applicable to each and every Companion, with no exception. Al-Shawkānī also maintains, in accordance with his stated legal principles, that ʿĀʾisha’s negative assertion simply indicates that she was not aware of the Prophet’s designation, and is not equivalent to a denial of the existence of such a tradition. Other Companions were aware of such a designation, and those who know have authority over those who don’t. Barring outstanding impediments, the reports of Companions are all equally acceptable; as such, ʿĀʾisha’s report of not hearing the Prophet designate a successor is accepted as truthful, but inconsequential because other, equally truthful Companions report that they did hear the Prophet designate ʿAlī. Finally, al-Shawkānī maintains that ʿĀʾisha’s report is maqṭūʿ, meaning that she does not report hearing something from the Prophet; in other words her statement stops with her, whereas other statements confirming ʿAlī’s designation are on the authority of the Prophet himself.²⁷⁶Close

Al-Shawkānī moves on to address some of ʿĀʾisha’s practices. His discussion, however, does not amount to personal invective, as in traditional Shiʿi literature. Rather, al-Shawkānī applies the techniques of personal criticism of transmitters (al-jarḥ wa al-taʿdīl), which he uses systematically elsewhere, to determine ʿĀʾisha’s style of transmission, so as to know how to situate and understand her reports. It is well known, he says, “that, as happens often with mujtahids, the mother of the faithful, may God be pleased with her, was hasty to reject [traditions] that did not agree with her ijtihād [legal reasoning], and used to go to extremes in denouncing their reporters.”²⁷⁷Close Significantly, al-Shawkānī treats ʿĀʾisha not just as a reporter but also as someone who exercises ijtihād, which reflects not just caution but respect in his approach to her. Al-Shawkānī illustrates his point by referring to opposed judgments by ʿĀʾisha and ʿUmar, in reference to an incident when the Prophet is said to have spoken to dead people in their grave. ʿUmar reported that he had questioned the Prophet’s claim of talking to the dead, to which the latter responded by saying, “You are not more capable of hearing than they are.” Al-Shawkānī next notes that ʿĀʾisha, rather abrasively, rejected this report by ʿUmar after he died and invoked instead God’s statement in the Qurʾān, “You cannot make those who are [buried] in graves hear” (Fāṭir 35: 22). Al-Shawkānī then argues that ʿĀʾisha’s assertion does not justify the rejection of the report of a Companion of the caliber of ʿUmar; at most, after acknowledging its truthfulness, she could argue that the Qurʾānic statement is general and the hadith is specific to the people in question. Al-Shawkānī remarks, however, that the particular has priority over the general, and the particularization of the general statements of the Qurʾān by sound, singularly transmitted traditions is accepted by the majority of legal scholars. In contrast to the standard Shiʿi attitude, al-Shawkānī treats ʿĀʾisha with all the respect that is due to a mother of the faithful (umm al-muʿminīn); he does not question her status as one of the major authorities on hadith; he treats her as a legal scholar entitled to ijtihād; and, finally, his disagreement with her on a sensitive question of consequence to Sunni-Shiʿi relations is informed not by partisan views but by the view of ʿUmar, an idealized icon of Sunni Islam.

Al-Shawkānī gives other examples in which the differences between ʿĀʾisha and other Companions are assessed on the basis of legal theory, and then asserts that her denial of the tradition in which ʿAlī is named as a successor falls into the same category.²⁷⁸Close Al-Shawkānī thus manages to dismiss ʿĀʾisha’s rejection of the hadith on succession without dismissing her personally. In a notable concession to non-Shiʿi views, al-Shawkānī maintains that one only has to believe in the designation of ʿAlī in general terms and is not obliged to believe in a specific set of details regarding this designation.²⁷⁹Close He also recognizes that some haters of the Shiʿis treat this tradition as yet another fabricated Shiʿi myth; al-Shawkānī, however, insists that this is not a simple Shiʿi slogan but a much larger legitimate stand supported by the reports of a number of credible Companions.²⁸⁰Close

These eclectic opinions illustrate al-Shawkānī’s hybrid identity, and the fact that this identity cannot be reduced to either Zaydism or Sunnism. Implied in these views as well is a practical rejection of the authority of corporate madhhabs, whether Sunni or Zaydi. On these and many other less controversial legal issues, al-Shawkānī, like the earlier Yemeni reformers before him, translates into actual intellectual practice his theoretical condemnation of taqlīd and advocacy of ijtihād. In turn, this rejection of taqlīd is yet another expression of al-Shawkānī’s subversive relation to established political and intellectual authorities. To be sure, the advocacy of ijtihād and the corollary rejection of taqlīd were staples of Yemeni reform. As we have seen earlier, the theories of ijtihād advocated by these reformers were not mirror images of Zaydi ijtihād, if only because the latter is primarily practiced by the imams whose ijtihād entails, rather than precludes, the taqlīd of other Muslims. The Yemeni reformers, in contrast, considered ijtihād the obligation of every Muslim and prohibited the imitation of any school of law or individual mujtahid, including the Zaydi imams. We have also seen that the theories of ijtihād and taqlīd of the Yemeni reformers were influenced by the views of both the Ẓāhirīs and Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. In addition to this intellectual indebtedness, however, the Yemeni reformers were also informed by a historical understanding of the social significance of their theories and the implications of these theories on hierarchies of power and authority.

In one of many similar instances in which the question of taqlīd is treated as one of power and authority, al-Ṣanʿānī maintains that “the crimes of the imitators against the hadith traditions of the Prophet of God, as well as the imams of their own schools who declared themselves innocent of any opinion that may oppose a prophetic text, have become so grave. Thus, if [a hadith] is reported contrary to what has been stated by the person they imitate, these [imitators] distort the hadith and give it a meaning other than the one intended by the Prophet.”²⁸¹Close The motive behind such distortions, al-Ṣanʿānī adds, is the “preservation of the madhhab.” The discussion of this issue is often academic and involves meticulous examination of various traditions, their transmitters, and their contents. And yet, these discussions invariably conclude on a political note. Thus, after listing eleven arguments by supporters of taqlīd and responding to each of them, al-Ṣanʿānī concludes,

In summary, one who believes in a particular madhhab becomes defensive of it, and as a result he diverts the [Qurʾānic] verses and the [prophetic] traditions away from the meanings that God and His Prophet intended for them. So, for example, one who argues that the food of the People of the Book and their slaughtered animals are forbidden would claim that the verse “And the food of scriptured people is lawful to you and your food is lawful to them” [Al-Māʾida 5:5] applies only to accepting grains like wheat and barley from them. So let the believer who favors truth over [the opinions of] humans be careful of such arguments and also of interpreting the hadith traditions and verses in a manner similar to the interpretation of the bāṭiniyya [extreme Shiʿi] sects.²⁸²Close

Al-Shawkānī is even clearer on the disastrous social and political ramifications of taqlīd. Al-Shawkānī argues that taqlīd is the greatest affliction that befell the Muslim community.²⁸³Close What started with a group of Muslims following the opinions of a single dead scholar, accompanied by their blanket rejection of any other opinion, quickly degenerated into slander and conspiracy against independent scholars who do not follow their school doctrine, and even accusing them of sin and unbelief. Worse still, the followers of each school act as if they were independent religions and treat the scholar they imitate as if he were the prophet of this religion. The followers of the four Sunni schools in particular claim that consensus is restricted to the views of only four scholars of the whole Muslim community, that there is no ijtihād other than theirs, and that all authority is invested in them. It would thus appear, al-Shawkānī adds, as if the whole purified sharia belongs to these four individuals, with no share for anyone else in it, as if God did not grant any of His servants what He has granted these four. Al-Shawkānī had no qualms about asserting that all four imams were erudite and virtuous Muslims with outstanding knowledge and strong belief. His objection was to the exclusive claims made by their followers on their behalf. Al-Shawkānī contends that if these claims were based on knowledge, then who could deny that many of the followers have had more knowledge than the imams they imitate. If these exclusivist claims were based on the priority of previous generations, then the Companions and their followers would be considered far more worthy of such distinguished ranking than the imams of the four schools.²⁸⁴Close

Such was al-Shawkānī’s rejection of taqlīd and madhhab affiliation. He further insists that the view that ijtihād was not possible after the four schools were established and after the imams of these schools perished implies a “judgment that God … is incapable of granting his servants what He directed them to learn and teach.”²⁸⁵Close Al-Shawkānī dismisses the suggestion inherent in the argument against ijtihād that there is no one left in the whole community of Muslims who is capable of understanding the Book of God and the Sunna of the Prophet, that the nature of human understanding has changed, and that humans are no longer capable of understanding sharia. According to al-Shawkānī, the ultimate purpose of this self-serving argument is to make sure that the authority of taqlīd prevails.²⁸⁶Close In fact, al-Shawkānī maintains, the argument in favor of taqlīd effectively implies that sharia was an interim code of law that has been abrogated by the legal doctrines of the various schools. Even if they deny it, these schools effectively created new religions for Muslims, and the ultimate explanation of such aberration is in the desire of corporate schools to assert their intellectual authority over society.

Both in theory and in practice, al-Shawkānī advocated new modes of relating to authority. These new modes were radically unconventional but rigorously justified and rather well received by Muslims in Yemen and beyond. Whether in his relationship with political and intellectual authorities, or in his own self-identification and the intellectual genealogy he constructed for himself, al-Shawkānī was a dissenter. Even when he was part of the state’s power structure, al-Shawkānī was primarily inspired by his intellectual identity, his role within a tradition of dissent, and not his formal political or sectarian affiliation. His legacy engendered a new reality in which the political was subservient to the intellectual, so much so that al-Shawkānī’s actions, and not only ideas, often undermined the state and subverted its hegemonic scripts. Al-Shawkānī’s subversive tendencies are all the more notable since they undermined the institutionalized intellectual authority he headed.

The examples cited in this chapter are meant to illustrate the genuine hybridity of al-Shawkānī’s intellectual identity, which exemplifies the hybridity of the reformers of the eighteenth century in general. In a move that has its own hegemonic undertones, contemporary historiography has often tended to circumscribe scholars like al-Shawkānī within specific and known doctrinal boundaries. This tendency usually translates into an attempt to determine al-Shawkānī’s affiliation, that is, whether he was Zaydi or Sunni. Alternatively, in its more nuanced forms, this scholarly tendency attempts to break down al-Shawkānī’s system of thought into its constitutive elements and then identifies each of these with their Zaydi or Sunni origins. All of these approaches fail to appreciate the genuineness of the hybridity of eighteenth-century thought. To be sure, as we have seen, the reformers of the eighteenth century anticipated such attempts to classify them into narrow categories and devoted much intellectual effort to defy such categorization. In this regard, al-Shawkānī was no exception. His thought was simply a culmination of a trend that started much earlier in Yemen and was evident elsewhere throughout the Muslim world. In fact, the fluidity of the intellectual world of eighteenth-century reformers is documented in the rich writings by the reformers of this and earlier periods. The official religious establishment’s resistance to this fluidity indicates its substantial influence. Already the early example of al-Maqbalī’s experience in Mecca illustrates this point—although al-Maqbalī did not get along with the religious establishment of the city, Mecca’s intellectual plurality was such that there was room for this scholar of Zaydi origins to be affiliated with Ibrāhīm al-Kurdī, one of the city’s leading scholars at the time. Moreover, as a sign of the buoyancy of this open intellectual atmosphere, we know that the official religious authorities tried but failed to crack down on al-Maqbalī.²⁸⁷Close Other examples of such fluidity are illustrated in the common phenomenon of having scholars from different schools exchange transmission licenses (ijāzas) in multiple subjects. Such, for example, were Walī Allāh’s exchange of ijāzas with al-Kurdī and al-Shawkānī’s exchange of ijāzas with Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī scholars.²⁸⁸Close It is also a telling indication of the spirit of the times that none of these scholars tried to conceal their intellectual loyalties and identities but rather were quite bold in asserting them.²⁸⁹Close

Historians have struggled to identify the intellectual identities of such scholars. In the case of al-Shawkānī, for example, assessments have varied from considering him an open-minded Zaydi to a Sunni who is trying to undermine the Zaydi school from within. Attempts to explain al-Shawkānī’s intellectual identity in terms of such affiliations miss what al-Shawkānī himself consciously devoted his whole intellectual career to, namely, the forging of a hybrid and truly independent intellectual identity that undermines strict adherence to madhhabs of all sorts.²⁹⁰Close Al-Shawkānī’s emphasis on hadith in effect meant that the law of the land was to be derived from hadith works rather than from the old manuals of school law that were used in the courts of the imamic state.²⁹¹Close Following the example of earlier Yemeni reformers, al-Shawkānī generated a large body of literature in which the primary authority is that of hadith and not the traditional legal manuals. Furthermore, al-Shawkānī trained a large number of students and appointed them to key administrative positions throughout the imamic realm. Indeed, almost everything in al-Shawkānī’s intellectual career undermined the established authorities, whether scholars, schools, or the canonical books defining the discursive culture of these schools.

The attempt to force al-Shawkānī and his predecessors into the cast of particular madhhabs is a by-product of the view that before modern, twentieth-century nationalist politics there was “sharia politics grounded in madhhab affiliation.”²⁹²Close Yet this is exactly the opposite of what the reformers of the eighteenth century set out to do, with varying degrees of success. Eighteenth-century reform was above all an attempt to undermine madhhab politics as manifested in the institutions of the state and in the cultural ideology that legitimated it. Eighteenth-century thinkers argued that the prevalent madhhabs were tools that reinforced the power of the central political authority rather than diluted this power and dispersed it. They also considered the subservience of scholars to rulers the main reason behind the disastrous divisions inflicting Muslim societies. Their earnest efforts, therefore, cannot be dismissed as mere attempts to distinguish themselves within the existing power hierarchies; instead, they were radical attempts to restructure these relations of power. A shared characteristic of eighteenth-century reformers was their emphasis on the study of hadith.²⁹³Close These reformers were all traditionalists, but they championed new varieties of traditionalism reflecting their radical critique of prevalent hierarchies of power and principles of authority. So we will now turn to the theories of hadith.