158 Christopher Melchert
question among his fellow adherents of the Ḥanbalī school. He consid-
ers the authority of an opinion arrived at by takhrīj to lie somewhere
between that of what Aḥmad said expressly (al-madhhab al-manṣūṣ)
and something his known position does not manifestly entail.^19 Many
reports of alternative versions are quite late; for example (in chron-
ological order), from Abū Yaʿlā, Abū al-Khaṭṭāb, Ibn al-Jawzī, Ibn
Munajjā, Sāmarrī, Ibn Abī ʿUmar, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Ibn Ḥamdān, and
Ibn Taymiyya in the section of al-Mardāwī’s al-Inṣāf fī maʿrifat al-rājiḥ
on ʿaqd al-dhimma. These can hardly go back to contradictory quota-
tions in collections of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’s opinions by his immediate
disciples. It is often unclear how Ibn al-Qayyim himself knows what
Aḥmad’s position was. Even if he relies on a source as early as the
Mukhtaṣar of al-Khiraqī (d. Damascus, 334/945–946), he risks confus-
ing the tradition with what the imām verifiably said; that is, although
trying to get behind the tradition to Aḥmad himself, he still has little
more than the tradition to tell him what Aḥmad said, and the tradition
includes a good deal of back-projection.^20
To get a sense of how typical Ibn al-Qayyim was of Ḥanbalī juris-
prudents, I thought to examine a sample of similar size from Ibn
Qudāma, al-Mughnī. I found there rather more citations of prophetic
Hadith (21 percent of all items), less than half as many citations of
Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’s own opinion (eleven percent as opposed to 24),
relatively more citations of the Ḥanbalī school’s position or the opin-
ions of individual Ḥanābila (14 percent). What we see in al-Mardāwī,
Ibn Qudāma, and also al-Mardāwī’s favorite source, the Furūʿ of Ibn
Mufliḥ al-Qāqūnī, is a striking feature of the classical schools of law,
mainly insistence on legitimate disagreement (ikhtilāf) – something
we see much less of in Ibn al-Qayyim, especially disagreement within
the Ḥanbalī school. Ibn al-Qayyim does not completely ignore dis-
19 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn: al-Qawāʿid al-nūrāniyya al-fiqhiyya, ed. by
Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī, Cairo 1370/1951, p. 258.
20 Al-Khiraqī, Abū al-Qāsim: Mukhtaṣar, ed. by Muḥammad Zuhayr al-Shāwīsh,
Damascus 1378/1958; also published as idem: al-Matn, ed. by Abū Ḥudhayfa
Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad, Tanta 1413/1993. Comparison with the extant Masāʾil
collections of Aḥmad’s opinions shows that Khiraqī usually offers a summary
of his known position. However, he also often articulates a definite rule where
Aḥmad was vague or infers a rule from Aḥmad’s known position on other
matters. See provisionally Khalid, Anas: The Mukhtasar of al-Khiraqi. PhD
thesis, New York University 1992, and Hurvitz, Nimrod: The Mukhtaṣar of
al-Khiraqīʾ, in: Shaham, Ron (ed.): Law, Custom, and Statute in the Muslim
World, Leiden 2007, pp. 1–16.
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