156 Christopher Melchert
disciple (ṣāḥib), just two others in the larger sample being referred
to thus as someone’s disciple, Ghulām al-Khallāl (d. 363/974) and
Abū al-Khaṭṭāb, disciple to the kadi Abū Yaʿlā. Despite al-Mardāwī’s
respect for him, he evidently did not think him much help at identify-
ing and elaborating the peculiar rules of the Ḥanbalī school. At the
level of identifying rules, even on a section of the law about which he
had written a long, specialized book, Ibn al-Qayyim was a fairly minor
Ḥanbalī.
My second project is to characterize Ibn al-Qayyim’s jurisprudence,
especially what the Ḥanbalī school meant to him. As a first essay at
identifying its place within the Ḥanbalī tradition, I have randomly
chosen and analysed in various ways a sample of seventy items in Ibn
al-Qayyim, Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma. Among these were 17 examples of
Aḥmad’s opinion (24 percent), of which only one was a variant ver-
sion. Eleven items were primarily theological (16 percent), one was
historical without obvious legal application, leaving 58 questions of
aḥkām (ordinances); that is, the classification of actions (83 percent).
Eleven items in the sample were supported by Hadith from the Proph-
et (16 percent), eight by sayings of Companions (eleven percent), four
by sayings of Followers (six percent). There was only one example of
Hadith criticism. The Shāfiʿī position was cited eight times (eleven per-
cent), the Ḥanafī four (six percent), the Mālikī three (four percent), the
Ẓāhiri just once (one percent). Abū ʿUbayd (d. Mecca, 224/838–839?) is
quoted six times (nine percent), usually quoting someone else in turn.
Ibn al-Qayyim appears from this to have been something of a
Ḥanbalī-fundamentalist. He is a fundamentalist in the sense that he
wants to go back to basics, avoiding the complexity of accumulated tra-
dition by reaching behind it; he is a Ḥanbalī-fundamentalist inasmuch
as what he goes back to is the opinion of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal himself.^14 In
avoiding the complexity of the tradition, he is similar to today’s Salafi
primitivists. However, whereas they seek to identify directly prophetic
law, before the rise of schools, Ibn al-Qayyim stresses Aḥmad’s doc-
14 ‘Fundamentalist’ has a particular meaning with regard to 20th-century Protes-
tantism, having been invented by a Protestant faction to designate themselves:
Shepard, William: “Fundamentalism” Christian and Islamic, in: Religion 17
(1987), pp. 355–378. However, it seems to have some scholarly usefulness when
defined not by particular fundamentals but an interest in going past the tradi-
tion back to original sources and a tendency to simplify, for which see Marty,
Martin E. and Appleby, R. Scott: Fundamentalisms Observed. Fundamentalism
Project 1, Chicago 1991, introduction, pp. vii–xiii.
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