site of their most famous early representatives, al-Bistami, al-Junayd, and
al-Hallaj.
The other important ingredient in the intellectual scene is the lineages of
the teachers of jurisprudence (legal “schools” in a metaphorical but not insti-
tutional sense). Initially these were regionally based: Malik and his followers
at Medina; al-ShafiÀi in Egypt; Abu Hanifa at Kufa and Baghdad; yet other
styles of interpretation in Syria, Persia, and elsewhere (Lapidus, 1988: 164–
165). There was a huge proliferation of such legal sects; it is estimated that by
around 800 c.e. there were some 500 of them (Makdisi, 1981: 9). By around
900 to 1000, some four or five schools took the lead; by the 1100s, acceptance
of one of four schools had become the criterion of orthodoxy as a Muslim.
The law schools were by and large a decentralizing agent, even when they had
been winnowed to a few lineages. In the creative period of philosophy, it was
the Hanbalis who were most active as a scriptural, anti-rationalist opposition.
This traditionalist lineage was centered originally at Baghdad, in most imme-
diate contact with the rational theologians.
A nucleus for these competing factions existed at Baghdad with an outlier
at Basra. The sometimes violent conflicts among these groups did not threaten
the overall structure as long as the general conditions remained intact. But as
the Baghdad caliphate lost its political power, its importance as a patron of
intellectual life declined, and the central focus where networks might con-
front one another began to disappear. For a time Nishapur, in eastern Persia
far beyond the Caspian Sea (two months’ journey from Baghdad), became
important, but mainly in theological studies; it was the chief AshÀarite center
from 900 until about 1100. For a while some network connection was main-
tained between it and Baghdad; al-Ghazali, as well as some of his teachers,
was active in both places. Intellectual life was now dispersing; after 1100 even
Nishapur no longer maintained any central focus for the theologians, who were
found now in Isfahan, Kirman, Damascus, Jerusalem, and elsewhere (Watt,
1985: 92).
The madrasas which proliferated in every city after 1050 added to this
dispersion. The factional competition between Sunnite and ShiÀite motivated
many of these endowments. But the factions did not intersect institutionally;
madrasas specialized in one sect or the other. In addition, they remained small,
typically around 10 to 20 endowed students with a single professor, although
some of the large colleges reached as many as 75 students (Nakosteen, 1964:
42–44, 49–50; Makdisi, 1981: 31). At most, madrasas of the four legal schools
might amalgamate physically into a single architectural complex. Large and
internally differentiated faculties did not come into being. The expansion of
Sufi orders in this period also enhanced dispersion; particular orders dominated
in outlying regions such as Anatolia, Transoxiana, North Africa, and India, as
Academic Expansion: Medieval Christendom^ •^511