Screening Ṣiddīq Ḥasan Khān’s Library 203
between the Ahl-i Ḥadīth and the Ḥanafīs are in this field of Islamic
law.
Two juridical topics, the outward style of ritual prayer and triple
divorce, played a major role in public debates. The Ahl-i Ḥadīth sup-
ported the style of prayer that they considered the “Prophet’s prayer”.
They stressed the “raising of the hands” (rafʿ al-yadayn), in which
the believer raises his hands to his ears at the beginning of the prayer,
praises Allāh (takbīrat al-iḥrām), while bowing down (rukūʿ), raising
his head and after bowing down. According to the Ahl-i Ḥadīth, this
was the exact method of the Prophet; the Mālikīs, Ḥanbalīs and Shāfiʿīs
prayed in this way. The Ḥanafīs, on the other hand, promoted raising
the hands only at the beginning of the prayer.^131 As Maribel Fierro has
shown, the discussion of the “correct” style of prayer dated back to
fifth-/tenth-century Andalus, where the Mālikīs discussed the rafʿ al-
yadayn within their own school of law.^132 In the English translation of
al-Albānī’s book on the prophet’s prayer, the translator/commentator
A. Q. Naqvi mentioned the Mālikīs practice of the rafʿ al-yadayn.^133
The Mālikīs also debated the question of sadl,^134 which is holding one’s
hands at one’s sides instead of folding them over the navel or lifting
them (rafʿ al-yadayn). Another question was where to cross the hands
during prayer: below the navel (as the Ḥanafīs did) or on the chest
(as the Ahl-i Ḥadīth did). The third problem was whether to speak
the amen (āmīn) aloud (bil-jahr) or silently (khāfī). The Ahl-i Ḥadīth
claimed that at least ten traditions supported the amen aloud.^135 The
131 The necessity of the rafʿ al-yadayn is stressed to the present day. Specifically on
this issue, see Allāhābādī, Raḥmat Allāh Rabbānī: Masʾalat rafʿ al-yadayn maʿ
āmīn bil-jahr, Delhi 1983.
132 Fierro, Maribel: La polémique à propos de rafʿ al-yadain fī l-ṣalāt dans al-
Andalus, in: Studia Islamica 65 (1987), pp. 69–90, here esp. pp. 73–80. Fierro
does not claim that the dispute had originated there, instead she refers to Kufa
and Medina (ibid., pp. 77–79). In fact already the early Ḥanafīs in Iraq and
Transoxania rejected the rafʿ al-yadayn and occasionally even persecuted those
who practised it, i. e. the ahl al-ḥadīth. See also van Ess, Josef: Theologie und
Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra, vol. 2, Berlin 1991, pp. 533–
535, 566.
133 Al-Albānī, The Prayer, pp. 51, 122.
134 Dutton, Yasin: ʿAmal v. ḥadīth in Islamic Law. The Case of sadl al-yadayn
(Holding One’s Hands by One’s Sides) When Doing the Prayer, in: Islamic
Law and Society 3 (1996), pp. 13–40, here pp. 29–33.
135 For the Ahl-i Ḥadīth point of view on all three questions, see al-Anṣārī,
Ḥusayn b. Muḥsin: Nūr al-ʿayn min fatāwā Shaykh Ḥusayn, Lucknow [?]
1339/1921, pp. 148–152.
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