- Karen Armstrong
and utter simplicity of God. This doctrine seemed to make the
Quran a second divine being. But, like the esoteric Shiah, the
Mutazilah was only for an intellectual minority, and this devo-
tion to the Quran became extremely popular. Its adherents
were known as the ahl al-hadith, the Hadith People, because
they insisted that Muslim law must be based on the eyewitness
"reports" of the maxims and customary practice (sunnah) of the
Prophet. They disagreed with the followers of Abu Hanifah,
who had deemed it essential for jurists to use their powers of
"independent reasoning" (ijtihad), arguing that they must have
the freedom to make new laws, even if they could not be based
on a hadith or a Quranic utterance.
The ahl al-hadith were, therefore, conservatives; they were
in love with an idealized past; they venerated all the rashidun,
and even Muawiyyah, who had been one of the Prophet's
companions. Unlike the Mutazilites, who had often been po-
litical activists, they insisted that the duty of "commanding the
right and forbidding the wrong" was for only the very few; the
rank and file must obey the caliph, whatever his religious cre-
dentials. This was attractive to Harun al-Rashid, who was to
conciliate the more pious movements and approved of the
anti-revolutionary tendency of the ahl al-hadith. The Mu-
tazilites fell from favour in Baghdad, and the Hadith People
felt encouraged to ostracize them socially. On occasion, at
their request, the government even imprisoned leading Mu-
tazilites.
The Abbasids were aware of the strength of the religious
movement and, once they had established their dynasty, they
had tried to give their regime Islamic legitimacy. They there-
fore encouraged the development of figh to regulate the life
of the population. A split developed in the empire. The lives
of the ordinary people would indeed be governed by the
Shariah, as the body of Islamic law was called, but Muslim
principles did not prevail in court circles nor among the