The Four Great Imams -- Sh. Abdal-Hakim Murad

[Mujib]

Imam Abu Hanifa: Baghdad's Auspicious Fortune

Imam Abu Hanifa an-Nu’man ibn Thabit (d. 767), the master-scholar of Iraq, was one of the four great Mujtahid Imams, after whom were named the four Madhhabs to which Sunni Muslims belong. A pupil of Imam Malik, he was celebrated for his intelligence, and his school is famous for its high opinion of the Divine gift of reason.

In this the Imam was a faithful follower of the first generation of Muslims. According to many historians, he had the honour to meet several of the Companions of the Holy Prophet. His emphasis on rational approaches in law and theology, which went beyond even the method of Imam al-Shafi’i, did much to trigger systematic jurisprudence and theology in the Islamic world. Partly for this reason, a majority of Muslims in the world today are followers of his school.

[Mujib]

Imam Malik: Sage of the City of Light

Four great legal theorists dominate the history of Islamic Sacred Law. In this lecture, we meet Imam Malik ibn Anas (d.795), celebrated as the ‘Imam of the City of Emigration’ (Imam Dar al-Hijra).

Revered for his great love of the Sunna of the Chosen One (a.s.), Imam Malik dedicated his life to preserving the great treasure of Prophetic wisdom for future generations. As the honoured scholar of the City of Light, he knew that the Sunna was to be learned not only from the Hadith, but from the lived practice of the great people of Madina. His fiqh is therefore rooted in community practice, which gives it great flexibility and humanity.

Close to many of the Second Generation (the Tabi’un), he narrated the famous ‘Golden Chain’: his own teacher Nafi had learned hadiths from Ibn Umar, who reported directly from the Holy Prophet himself.

A sage who always made wudu before quoting a hadith, the Imam once remarked: ‘Allah places the gift of knowledge wherever He will. It does not consist in narrating a large amount.’

[Mujib]

Imam Abu Hanifa: Baghdad's Auspicious Fortune

After mentioning Imam Abu Hanifa’s (ra) origins in Afghanistan (Kabul), the shaykh comments:

But what it proves – and this is one of the most interesting aspects of the madhhab and one reasons why I think it spread so extensively in non-Arab lands – is that it indicates another of the subtle and beautiful dimensions of early Islam. That the genealogical principle through our love for the Ahl al-Bayt and for the Bani Hashim is important – and Imam al-Shafi`i knew that –, but at the same time one of the things that Islam was doing in its formative moment was overthrowing tribalism and tribal pride which had been the self-definition of Arab identity until the rise of Islam. So there’s something about his emergence from nowhere that recalls that beautiful dimension of the sira whereby some of the greatest of the early Muslims came from genetically nowhere, like Bilal or Salman al-Farisi or some people who were of slave origin who were taken into the household and under the wing of the Holy Prophet sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. So there’s something about his madhhab and about him himself and the position that he took in the difficult period in which he lived (almost impossible political situation he found himself in) that recalls that anti-tribal creation of a kind of super-tribe: all of the Muslims are equal in the religion of Islam.

[…]

So this is significant, and his fiqh becomes, in a sense, related to the concerns and the identity of the Mawali [non-Arabs] in the time of the tabi`in [the second generation of Muslims; the followers of the Companions]. And one of the most extraordinary things in the whole history of Islamic thought and culture is the fact that fiqh and, in fact, scholarship generally, in the time of the tabi`in, was amongst the non-Arabs and not amongst the Arabs. And Abu Hanifa (ra) comes explicitly from that world. Most of his teachers were in fact of non-Arab origin. So just to give you an example of the tensions, because these were kind of ethnic tensions that were kind of intense; there were a lot of Arabs of the traditional stamp who thought they were, as it were, the lords and masters and everybody else was kind of second class citizen. But the reality is that so fundamental was this overthrow of the traditional class system and caste system and tribal system that the great leaders of the religion, in the second generation, are actually of non-Arab origin. So Ibn `Abd Rabbih in his Al-`Iqd al-Farid, which is a nice historical work, tells us stories like this:

Ibn Abi Layla said to me:

`Isa ibn Musa said to me – and he was one of these Arab nationalists –: “Man kana faqih al-`Iraq?” (This Arab nationalist is saying, who’s the greatest scholars, who’s the faqih of Iraq? Who was it in your time, the time of the tabi`in?)

I said it was al-Hasan ibn Abi al-Hasan.

And he said, “And then who?”

“Muhammad bin Sirin.”

And he said, “And what are they?”

And I said, “Two non-Arabs.”

And he said, “And who was the great scholar of Mecca?”

And I said, “`Ata bin Abi Rabah and Mujahid and Sa`id bin Jubayr and Salman bin Yasar.”

And he said, “And what are they?”

“Non-Arabs.”

And he said, “And who are the great jurists of Medina?”

(Zayd bin Aslam, Muhammad ibn al-Munkadir, Nafi ibn Abi Nujih) And I said (I mentioned these three individuals).

And he said, “And who are they?”

I said, “They are not Arabs either.” And his color changed (he was getting angry).

And then he said, “And who was the most learned of the people of Quba?”

“Rabi`a al-Ra’i (remember him, the teacher of Imam Malik), [and] Ibn Abi Zinad.”

And he said, “And what were they?”

“They were also non-Arabs.” And his face really started to change.

And he said, “And who was the great scholar of the Yemen?”

And I said, “Tawus, and his son, and Ibn Munabbih.”

And he said, “And who were they?”

“They weren’t Arabs either.” And his cheeks started to swell up, and he stood up out of his anger.

And he said, “And who was the great scholar of Khurasan (Central Asia)?”

And I said, “`Ata ibn Abdillah al-Khurasani.”

And he said, “And what was this `Ata?”

“He was not an Arab.” And his face became even darker and became black until I started becoming afraid for him (though he’d have a stroke or something)

And then he said, “And who was the great scholar, the great jurist of Syria?”

I said, “Maqhul.”

And he said, “And what was that Maqhul?”

“He was a non-Arab.” And then he started hyperventilating.

And then he said, “And who was the great scholar of Kufa?”

And, because I was now afraid (that he might have a stroke or something), I would actually have said al-Hakam bin `Utba and Hammad bin Abi Sulayman (who as we’ll see is Abu Hanifa’s great teacher). But I was afraid for him, and so I said, “Ibrahim al-Nakha`i and al-Sha`bi.”

And he said, “And what were they?”

“Two Arabs.”

[And he said] “Allahu akbar.” And he calmed down.

So that’s an indication of really something quite extraordinary. When you consider how quickly all of this has happened and how it’s the Arabs who are engaged in the conquest, that Abu Hanifa is coming from a generation where scholarship, the leadership of the religion is overwhelmingly in the hands of new converts, usually people from the Eastern region, Central Asia and from Persia, but also from local non-Arab populations in Iraq, Egypt, and elsewhere. This is actually predicted by the Holy Prophet sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam. There’s a hadith which is in Bukhari and Muslim where he says, “Were knowledge to be attached to the Pleiades (a bunch of stars light years away) people from Persia would be able to reach it.” And some of the scholars have said that this is actually a prediction of Abu Hanifa radiallahu `anh whose ancestry is from Afghanistan, which is in the Persian cultural world.