The early spread of Hanafism in Khurasan

Book section

Nurit Tsafrir, The history of an Islamic school of law (2004), traces the spread of Ḥanafi law from Kufa to the cities of Iraq, Fars, Egypt, and North Africa. Here is a complementary study of its spread to Khurasan and Transoxania. Early Khurasani adherents of the Ḥanafi school are here identified first of all from Ḥanafi biographical sources, above all Ibn Abī l-Wafā’, al-Jawāhir al-muḍiyya. Of about ninety identified followers who died in the second half of the second century H., the overwhelming majority are Iraqi but ten are Khurasani; of 130 who died in the first half of the third century H., 23 appear to be Khurasani or Transoxanian. Secondly, I have looked at transmitters of hadith from Abū Ḥanīfa who appear in al-Khwārizmī, Jāmi‛ al-masānīd. In a sample of 381 reported isnāds, 21 transmitters from Abū Ḥanīfa are Khurasani. Khurasanis make up a similar proportion of transmitters from transmitters, although the very large number of unknowns at this level makes comparison with other regions difficult. It is a puzzle why so few of these names are identified with remembered legal positions in later Ḥanafi legal literature (e.g. Sarakhsī). A prominent theme of Tsafrir’s study is that Ḥanafi strength depended on the authority of the ‛Abbāsid dynasty; hence, for example, Ḥanafism had special difficulty establishing itself in Syria, where sympathy for the defeated Umayyads was still strong. The same apparently accounts for Ḥanafi penetration of Khurasan and Transoxania, the region whence the ‛Abbāsids had originally come to confront the Umayyads. The conquest of Khurasan had been organized from Basra, and there is much evidence of Basran influence on the development of religion in Khurasan. But Khurasan is the only region besides Baghdad where Ibn Sa‛d locates any follower of Abū Ḥanīfa, and it seems likely that the identification of Ḥanafism with Baghdad and the ‛Abbāsids is the reason for its success in Khurasan, by comparison with, notably, Basran Mālikism.

Authors: Melchert, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: I B Tauris
• Host title: Medieval Central Asia and the Persianate World: Iranian Tradition and Islamic Civilisation
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 4
• Series: I B Tauris and BIPS Persion Studies Series
• Publication date: 2015-09-30
• ISBN-10: 1784532398
• ISBN-13: 9781784532390
• Keywords: SBTMR