160 Christopher Melchert
embraced.^24 Tellingly, though, he sometimes proposes novel opinions
but plays down their novelty by referring to unspecified precedents.
He wrote at least more traditionally than his disciple Ibn al-Qayyim,
with more deference to the discursive tradition, which must partly
account for the relatively greater attention that later Ḥanābila paid to
Ibn Taymiyya’s expositions of the rules.
Conclusion
To sum up, then, it appears that Ibn Taymiyya’s disciples (with excep-
tions, Ibn Mufliḥ and al-Qāqūnī prominent among them) were impa-
tient with the indeterminacy of the tradition. Books like Ibn Qudāma,
al-Mughnī,^25 Ibn Mufliḥ al-Qāqūnī, al-Furūʿ,^26 and al-Mardāwī,
al-Inṣāf,^27 report a cloud of disagreement on one question after anoth-
er, not only between the Ḥanbalī school and others but also within the
Ḥanbalī school. All of them mention the opinions of other Ḥanābila
more often than they do the opinions of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal himself,
along with much disagreement over what Aḥmad said. The God-given
rule for each case apparently became impossible to discern with cer-
tainty. Somewhat in the fashion of modern Salafi fundamentalists,
Ibn Taymiyya’s disciples sought a certainty the tradition denied them
by going behind it back to original sources: above all to Aḥmad b.
Ḥanbal’s opinion in the case of Ibn al-Qayyim, to prophetic Hadith
in the parallel case of Ibn Kathīr (d. Damascus, 774/1373).^28 A diffi-
culty they faced was for Ibn al-Qayyim to know Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal’s
opinions, Ibn Kathīr to know what the Prophet had said and done,
without depending on the very scholarly tradition they wanted to go
behind. (Ibn Kathīr probably faced his problem more frankly, since
24 Al-Mardāwī, al-Inṣāf fī maʿrifat al-rājiḥ, vol. 7, p. 259. Many further examples
in Al-Matroudi, The Ḥanbalī School, chapter 4.
25 Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī (cited in n. 21).
26 Ibn Mufliḥ al-Qāqūnī: K. al-Furūʿ, ed. by ʾAbd al-Laṭīf Muḥammad al-Subkī
and ʾAbd al-Sattār Aḥmad Farrāj, Cairo 1379–88/1960–67, reprinted Beirut
1402
27 Al-Mardāwī, al-Inṣāf fī maʿrifat al-rājiḥ.
28 For Ibn Kathīr as a fundamentalist bent on simplistically going back to original
sources, see Calder, Norman: Tafsīr from Ṭabarī to Ibn Kathīr. Problems in the
Description of a Genre; Illustrated with Reference to the Story of Abraham, in:
G. R. Hawting and Abdul-Kader A. Shareef (eds.): Approaches to the Qurʾān,
London 1993, pp. 101–140.
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