Another group found proximity to Muh:ammad in a dif-
ferent device—physical descent. For them, maintaining
proximity to his sunnah depended on recapturing his intima-
cy with God and his closeness to and divinely guided desig-
nation of a relative, his cousin and son-in-law EAl ̄ı, to succeed
him. Although they too gathered h:ad ̄ıth, established sunnah,
and worked out shariah, for them it was all unusable without
a continuation of the charismatic interpretation the Prophet
had provided. They had sought, unsuccessfully, to provide
the community with a theocratic ruler (ima ̄m) who could in-
corporate the nomocratic functions of the khal ̄ıfah but
whose legitimacy would not depend on doing only that.
Muh:ammad’s charismatic function would not be duplicated
by the ima ̄ms but, rather, transformed and kept alive by them
on the basis of their special inherited inner skills.
Although affection for the family of the Prophet was dif-
fused throughout the Muslim community, this group carried
partisanship further. In their hearts and minds, certain de-
scendants of the Prophet through his cousin EAl ̄ı (ima ̄ms)
partook of Muh:ammad’s special qualities; yet they suffered
and were frequently martyred at the hands of wrongful rul-
ers. The passing over of EAl ̄ı for the caliphate the first three
times it was awarded and the martyrdom of the third of their
line, H:usayn ibn EAl ̄ı, at the hands of the fifth caliph, Yaz ̄ıd
(r. 680–683), as well as subsequent misfortunes, predisposed
them to support the Abbasids, who claimed to represent the
innate right of the family of the Prophet over those who had
usurped it.
However, after they came to power, the Abbasids reject-
ed the special claims of this group, which had generally been
known as the partisans (sh ̄ıEah) of EAl ̄ı, in favor of the no-
mocratic style favored by the majority, who styled themselves
“the people of the sunnah and the community” (ahl al-
sunnah wa-al-jama ̄Dah). Although the short form Sunn ̄ı
stuck to them, as did Sh ̄ıE ̄ı to the others, nomenclature
should not imply that only they were committed to sunnah
and h:ad ̄ıth as sources of knowledge. Rather, they established
proximity to the sunnah by maintaining a consensual
jama ̄Dah, whereas the Shi’ah stayed close to it by resisting the
decisions of the misguided jama ̄Dah and by trying to substi-
tute what they saw as a more profound, esoteric understand-
ing and style of leadership.
Subtle interpretations aside, however, “Sunn ̄ı” came to
stand, in different senses, for the majoritarian, mainstream,
“orthoprax” style of Islamic piety, especially among those
who adhered to it (more than 90% throughout history). By
the time of the influential legal theorist and schematizer
al-Sha ̄fıE ̄ı (d. 820), an unsystemic and sometimes imaginative
derivation and use of h:ad ̄ıth about Muh:ammad’s and his
community’s sunnah had become commonplace among the
several early Jama ̄E ̄ı-Sunn ̄ı “schools” of fiqh (jurisprudence),
as had many other legal techniques. Simultaneously, intellec-
tually important movements like Shiism and MuEtazil ̄ı ratio-
nalism had developed modes of reasoning that downplayed
the authority of a h:ad ̄ıth-borne sunnat al-nab ̄ı.
Responding to these and other factors, al-Sha ̄fıE ̄ı sought
to rationalize and circumscribe the legitimate roots or sources
(us:u ̄l) of jurisprudential deliberation. These he limited to a
hierarchy of four, each of which had a fixed relationship to
the one(s) before: QurDa ̄n, sunnah, ijma ̄E, and qiya ̄s. The
starting point had to be the QurDa ̄n. However, where the sun-
nah could explain or supplement revealed truth, it became
a second source by virtue of a frequent QurDanic injunction,
“Obey God and his Messenger.” The sunnah had to be based
on h:ad ̄ıth traceable back to the Prophet himself or a com-
panion through the supporting (isna ̄d) of an unbroken chain
(silsilah) of reliable transmitters. Thus did al-Sha ̄fıE ̄ı solidify
for Jama ̄E ̄ı-Sunn ̄ıs Muh:ammad’s role as uniquely authorita-
tive exemplar.
Furthermore, where the entire community, as represent-
ed by its learned men (Eulama ̄D), had reached consensus
(ijma ̄E), that too became law if it was consistent with the first
two sources. In justifying the use of ijma ̄E, al-Sha ̄fıE ̄ı had re-
course to a famous h:ad ̄ıth, “My community will never agree
on an error.” Ijma ̄E sometimes sanctioned, for example, the
Arab custom of male and female circumcision, which in turn
came to be known as sunnah too. Finally, the Eulama ̄D could
make adaptive extensions of the first three sources by using
personal judgment limited to analogy (qiya ̄s) to something
in the other three sources. They were equipped to perform
their functions not because they possessed any innate charac-
teristics but because they had acquired, through devoted
study of QurDa ̄n and h:ad ̄ıth, the knowlege (Eilm) of what is
right.
Deserving of comment is the relationship between this
approach to h:ad ̄ıth and sunnah and tradition, a word that is
often used to translate them. Al-Sha ̄fıE ̄ı’s h:ad ̄ıth-oriented ap-
proach was actually antitraditionalist. By insisting on the use
of texts in the form of h:ad ̄ıth that were traceable to
Muh:ammad, he was restricting the role “tradition” had been
playing among legists because, by the second Islamic century,
many things that had become “traditional” among legists had
no textual base or were contradicted by the texts.
Al-Sha ̄fıE ̄ı’s approach should more properly be viewed
as “textualist”: he accepted practices not because they were
customary but because they were documented. Not long
after his death, the h:ad ̄ıth began to be compiled into a series
of six major authoritative collections. Although some of
them may have reflected “traditions” in the narrower sense,
the impact of this whole series of developments was to con-
trol the traditional in favor of what was based on a text and
to undermine contemporary rulers’ attempts to legitimize
custom based on the court rather than sunnah based on
h:ad ̄ıth.
Emergence of schools. Gradually, four major
Jama ̄E ̄ı-Sunn ̄ı “schools” (sg., madhhab; pl., madha ̄hib) of
law, all influenced by al-Sha ̄fıE ̄ı’s system, formed around the
teachings of four leading early figures: Ahmad ibn H:anbal
(780–855), Ma ̄lik ibn Anas (715–795), Abu ̄ H:an ̄ıfah (699–
767), and al-Sha ̄fıE ̄ı himself. Eventually, standardization set8854 SUNNAH