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CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE AND THE EXEMPLARY SCHOLAR: THE LIVES OF SAHNUN B. SAʿ ID (D. 854)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2011

Jonathan Brockopp
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Abstract

When writing biographies of historical figures, narrative convention requires that concision and clarity be wrested from sources that are multiple and often confusing. In this article, I argue that multiple accounts of a person's life may be more than an accident arising from the way that information was compiled. Rather, such multiplicity renders exemplary figures adaptable to a wide variety of circumstances, making them even more useful as a focus of devotion and emulation. Examining multiple accounts of early Maliki scholar Sahnun b. Saʿ id (d. 854), including those of his travels in search of knowledge and of his suffering under the miḥna (trial) in Kairouan, I find that close attention to apparently contradictory evidence may not get us any closer to understanding the man himself, but it does offer us much information about the ways in which he was considered an exemplary individual.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 2011, pp. 115 - 132
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Islamic history is filled with exemplary individuals: ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwan (d. 705), who reformed the Arabic language and built the Dome of the Rock; Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111), who synthesized philosophy and Sufism into a systematic theology; Süleiman the Magnificent (d. 1566), who greatly expanded the Ottoman Empire. Many other men and women could be named as among those who have shaped Islamic history, leaving a permanent mark on the tradition, and both premodern and modern scholars have devoted many pages to the recording of their biographies.

The further these individuals recede from us into history, however, the less certain we can be about our knowledge of them. For Süleiman, we have many different types of evidence that can be used in concert to create a solid impression of the man and his achievements. For al-Ghazali, we do not have this same variety of sources, but we do have much of his scholarship, an autobiography, and several other literary accounts of his life. Of the three individuals, ʿAbd al-Malik is the hardest to know, because the numismatic and archeological evidence is hard to square with literary accounts, most of which were written by those who were not entirely sympathetic to his reign.

The accidental survival of historical sources is only one problem for understanding these figures; another problem is that multiple, and often contradictory, views are an inescapable element for an individual of status. These multiple views may arise initially because of primary sources that are written for a particular polemical purpose. For example, European diplomatic missions to Süleiman's court provide valuable insight into his life, but their views are quite different from those found in the reminiscences of courtiers or in Ottoman documents of state.Footnote 1 These source issues are of concern for any historical study, but exemplary individuals are more likely to attract comments from a greater number of sources, thereby increasing multiple views. Multiple views may also arise when an exemplary individual, such as al-Ghazali, has been particularly prolific. Depending on what one reads from his writings, al-Ghazali comes across as the quintessential philosopher, theologian, legal expert, or Sufi. Secondary sources, both premodern and modern, further complicate matters by selecting from this information the material that fits their purposes, leading one modern scholar to note that “there have been as many Ghazālīs as there have been readers of this major figure.”Footnote 2

Nonexemplary individuals, in contrast, are depicted as having lives devoid of contradiction. Laconic entries in the biographical dictionaries on thousands of such individuals give us only the most basic information. We can see patterns in these accounts, and it may be that the compilers of dictionaries have made these persons, as a class, into an exemplum for others.Footnote 3 Either because of this explicit editing or because of a lack of interest on the part of contemporaries, these individuals do not elicit the sort of contradictory material we tend to see in the accounts of exemplary figures. This is no judgment on the actual personalities of such individuals—they may have led lives of tremendous importance within their local worlds—but rather only a recognition that the source texts have already determined who is exemplary and who is not.

It is a short step from contradiction being an inescapable part of the portrayal of exemplary figures in premodern texts to it being an expected element. Certainly it seems that many premodern compilers of biographical information are quite comfortable incorporating variant dates of birth and death, or contradictory lists of teachers and students, without trying to resolve the dissonances. When modern scholars remove these contradictions, they necessarily change the nature of the traditional biographical entry. But perhaps they also remove an essential aspect of the exemplary quality of that individual. I have become especially aware of this concern in the course of writing several short biographies for encyclopedias and collected volumes, venues demanding that concision and clarity be wrested from sources that are multiple and confusing. I have found such articles easier to write for lesser known figures, such as Ashhab b. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz (d. 820) and Asbagh b. al-Faraj (d. 839) than for famous individuals such as Sahnun b. Saʿid, the focus of this article. It is primarily the preponderance of contradictory information on Sahnun that makes it difficult to construct a coherent narrative. For example, Sahnun is said to have commenced his travels in search of knowledge in three separate years: 794, 801, and 803. In accounts of his trial in front of the local amir and qadi he comes across as two different men: a noble example of personal piety in the face of persecution and a player in the game of court intrigue. As I will discuss, modern scholars have treated these contradictions simply as problems to be resolved, though they do not agree on the correct resolution.

A larger issue concerns me here: what Saba Mahmood has identified as the risk of doing “violence” to the imaginaries and lifeworlds of our sources.Footnote 4 In this article I therefore attempt to carry out Dipesh Chakrabarty's “double task” for historians: acknowledging the need for communicating information in forms of writing that seem authoritative while “unsettling totalizing thought” through exploration of a nonhistoricist way of being-in-the-world.Footnote 5 In the case of Sahnun, I present the contradictions inherent in his biography as more than the natural result of the way that information was collected. Rather, I believe that they emphasize an important aspect of the biographers’ imaginary, because the very preponderance of contradiction helps to present Sahnun as an exemplary individual.

Contradictions in the sources that record Sahnun's life have an effect on the reader, and they can be considered key features of biographies that prevent the individual from becoming fully explicable. Because of what psychologists call the “mirroring effect” of charismatic leaders, being enigmatic is essential to being paradigmatic.Footnote 6 By collecting contradictory accounts and refusing to select among them, our premodern sources allow an exemplary figure to be portrayed in many different ways, as Moosa observed for al-Ghazali. Consider, for example, the contradictory elements in the life of the Prophet that allow modern readers to see Muhammad as warrior, Sufi, statesman, and revolutionary, all based on traditional accounts. As Uri Rubin argues in a recent study on the multiple accounts of Muhammad splitting the moon in Mecca, various groups of Muslims, from Muhammad's time up to the present, consider this single event to be a vital aspect of the Prophet's early mission, although they disagree on whether it was a sign of the eschaton, a vindication of ʿAli's leadership, or a miracle on the order of those performed by Jesus and Moses.Footnote 7 A greater number of variants increases the possibilities that different groups will agree in seeing Muhammad as exemplary, though they may disagree in precisely how he is exemplary.

Sociologists, building on Max Weber's pioneering work, have argued that groups produce the qualities in their leaders that they most admire. Some go so far as to assert that there is no essential psychological element in leaders or in followers but rather that group dynamics create “an imputed quality of persons or objects . . . [which] is essentially an illusion. The actual personality of a leader has little to do with charisma.”Footnote 8 In reading biographies of exemplary leaders, we need not go so far as to believe that all accounts are illusory and that these individuals are nothing more than dramatis personae who play roles on stage as determined by the writers of history.Footnote 9 After all, we often have physical evidence (ʿAbd al-Malik's name on coinage, Sahnun's name in manuscripts) that identifies specific roles for these men without necessarily presenting them as exemplary or charismatic. When it comes to the literary accounts, however, the same social dynamics that produce leaders in a charismatic community are present in these texts, and therefore such accounts must always be queried for the polemical nature of the tales they tell.

In the case of Sahnun, his exemplary status grows with time. The earliest surviving account of his life was recorded by Abu al-ʿArab al-Tamimi (d. 944), who was a student of some of Sahnun's own students. Abu al-ʿArab's entry on Sahnun runs four pages in the printed version and includes significant details on his life,Footnote 10 yet compared to later compilations it is quite short. Two hundred years later, for example, Qadi ʿ Iyad b. Musa (d. 1149) wrote a biography of Sahnun nearly ten times as long; in fact, it is the longest entry in his voluminous history of the Maliki school after that of Malik b. Anas himself.Footnote 11 As I will discuss, ʿ Iyad's entry on Sahnun is full of contradictory details, because by this time Sahnun had come to represent the attributes of personal piety and religious knowledge, as well as the rejection of political power, that befit an exemplary scholar.Footnote 12

My discussion of Sahnun as an exemplary figure, full of contradiction, should in no way detract from his very real accomplishments: his compilation of juristic opinion (the Mudawwana), his training of a whole generation of scholars, and his service as chief judge of Ifriqiya (the old Byzantine province of Africa, equivalent to modern-day Tunisia and eastern Algeria). In fact, the old mosque library of Kairouan contains a rare manuscript fragment of the Mudawwana with two remarkable notations from students who read the text with Sahnun in the year 850, offering clear physical evidence that Sahnun passed this text on to his students within his lifetime.Footnote 13 Yet Kairouan's important collection of manuscripts also demonstrates that while Sahnun's Mudawwana received the continuous attention of scholars for centuries after his death, it was not until al-Qabisi (d. 1012) that the text achieved its final form.Footnote 14 The establishment of an accepted version of Sahnun's text therefore coincides with the final recognition of his exemplary status. As recorded by ʿ Iyad (and attributed to one of Sahnun's disciples): “I saw in a vision the Prophet (God's blessings and peace be upon him) walking on a path, and Abu Bakr behind him, and ʿUmar behind Abu Bakr, and Malik behind ʿUmar, and Sahnun behind Malik.”Footnote 15 In the Maliki world of Andalusia and North Africa, biographers after ʿ Iyad continued in this tradition of presenting Sahnun as the conduit to Malik b. Anas and through him to the Prophet. In contrast, entries on Sahnun in the eastern Islamic world, when they occur at all, remain brief and simple.Footnote 16 Sahnun's exemplary nature is therefore bound up with the history of Malikism and the practice of Islam in the Maliki world.

SAHNUN AND THE HISTORY OF KAIROUAN

At Sahnun's birth, supposedly around 776, North Africa was still frontier territory. Although Kairouan had been founded over a century earlier by ʿUqba b. Nafiʿ, the warrior who was said to have miraculously driven away scorpions and snakes from the place and who built the foundations of the mosque that still bears his name, Byzantine and Berber attacks continued for decades. Under the late Umayyads, North Africa was finally secured, and Kairouan became something of a scholarly center when ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz appointed Ismaʿil ibn ʿAbd Allah ibn Abi al-Muhajir as governor over the Maghrib in 720. Ismaʿil “invited the Berbers to Islam,”Footnote 17 and ʿUmar supported this mission by sending ten learned men to Kairouan; Abu al-ʿArab, one of our earliest sources, suggests that the first of Kairouan's renowned Muslim scholars came from this group.Footnote 18 The mission to the Berbers was not a success, rendering the mountainous, interior regions of the area closed to the Arab elite.

We know little of Sahnun's early life, but his father is said to have come to North Africa with a detachment of Syrian soldiers shortly before Sahnun's birth, and Sahnun is said to have begun his legal training in Kairouan and Tunis.Footnote 19 Following this chronology, Sahnun would have been in his twenties at the close of the 8th century, when Abbasid control had weakened to such a degree that Harun al-Rashid was forced to appoint as governor Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab, a local strongman who had revolted against the previous governor and made off with the contents of the treasury.Footnote 20 Al-Baladhuri reports:

Al-Rashid wrote to Ibrahim, stating that he had forgiven him his crime, excused his fault and thought it wise to assign him to the governorship of al-Maghrib as an act of favor, expecting to receive from him loyalty and good counsel. Ibrahim became ruler of the region and managed its affairs thoroughly.Footnote 21

Al-Baladhuri's account seems to demonstrate close ties between Baghdad and Kairouan, with Ibrahim established as a vassal to the caliph.Footnote 22 But given the increasing number of breakaway provinces at this time, a more likely interpretation is that Baghdad was so desperate for a modicum of control over North Africa that it was forced to accept a lawbreaker as governor. Not surprisingly, then, Ibrahim b. al-Aghlab and his progeny (the Aghlabids) mirrored symbols of the caliph's power and prestige while setting up their dynasty as an independent entity.

Coins imprinted at this time show that the Aghlabid amirs first minted money under the name of the Abbasid caliph, but after 810 they asserted their independence by substituting their own names, with no mention of their overlord.Footnote 23 In this and other ways, the Aghlabids joined the Umayyads in Spain, the Idrisids in al-maghrib al-aqsa, and the Khariji Berbers as autonomous units in the Islamic West.Footnote 24 Under the Aghlabids, Kairouan was reconceived as the capital of an independent state. Its architecture, as Marçais observed, replicated features of the Abbasid capital, thereby invoking the caliphal authority the new capital replaced.Footnote 25 Like the Abbasids, the Aghlabids also supported an active intellectual life at court, and Kairouan's renown as a center for scholarship grew, along with its economy, during a time of general prosperity.

At the same time, the rising power of Kairouan's citizenry, including its well-regarded religious scholars, led to a number of confrontations between the citizens of Kairouan and their rulers. Already in the early 9th century, Ibrahim b. al-Aghlab abandoned the old government palace, located to the east of the grand mosque, and moved the seat of administration outside of Kairouan to a location a few kilometers to the south. Al-Baladhuri, who died around 892, observed this new city, called al-Abbasiyya in honor of the house of the caliph, and mentioned that it “is still flourishing today.”Footnote 26 According to his account, Ibrahim built “al-Qasr al-Abyad” (perhaps the same as what is called al-Qasr al-Qadim in other sources) along with a large mosque. He then bought 5,000 slaves, freed them, and made them settle around it.Footnote 27 Yet despite the departure of the Aghlabid administrative center, Kairouan never lost its economic power or academic reputation.Footnote 28

There is nothing in these political histories, nor in the numismatic or archeological record, that gives us direct information about Sahnun's early life. Only at the end of his life, when he is appointed to serve as the qadi of Ifriqiya on 4 Ramadan 234 (1 April 849), does Sahnun appear in political histories. The sole piece of physical evidence that connects us to Sahnun, the manuscript fragment of the Mudawwana mentioned previously, was also written during this period, toward the end of his life. This fragment, along with the dozens of copies of Sahnun's Mudawwana, several books that Sahnun transmitted to his students, and numerous commentaries and expansions on the Mudawwana by his students, presents physical evidence of a vigorous teacher and an active intellect. For everything before this point, we are dependent on the biographical dictionaries of the Maliki school, which offer conflicting interpretations of Sahnun's brush with political power and contradictory details about his birth, early student life, and teaching career.

SAHNUN'S EARLY LIFE AND THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARIES

The biographical accounts generally agree that Sahnun was born around 776, spent his youth studying in Ifriqiya, then traveled to the East for several years, finally returning from Egypt in 806, whereupon he began immediately to teach. Closer examination, however, reveals Sahnun's early life to be an empty canvas on which his biographers painted differing portraits. For example, despite the claim (and the expectation) that Sahnun began teaching immediately upon his return from Egypt, he has no students of note until almost thirty years laterFootnote 29; we have an early anecdote of him teaching relatively unknown students that might be dated to 824, but it is more properly placed to several years later.Footnote 30 Many perfectly reasonable explanations can be forwarded for these missing decades, as well as for the fact that Sahnun's famous son Muhammad was not born until ten years after his return (either 816 or 817, when Sahnun would have been forty), and his daughter Khadija apparently even later, but they recommend approaching the narrative accounts cautiously.

Such caution is evident in many of the modern accounts of Sahnun's life.Footnote 31 For example, Mohamed Talbi's carefully written article on Sahnun in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam never mentions Sahnun's birthdate (though he does report that Sahnun was 74 in 849, when he was appointed qadi of Ifriqiya). In contrast, Fuat Sezgin simply states that Sahnun was born in 776, and Muhammad ʿAzb adds the detail that he was born in Ramadan.Footnote 32 Abu al-ʿArab, our earliest source, quotes Sahnun: “my birth was in the year that Sufyan al-Thawri died, 160 [776].”Footnote 33 This statement, however, is worth more attention than modern scholars have given it. First, Sahnun's connection of himself to Sufyan al-Thawri, a major jurist and ascetic, only makes sense once Sahnun's own position in the pantheon of famous fuqahāʿ had been established; it is therefore far more likely that it stems from a student rather than from Sahnun. Second, this statement highlights the key relationships that color the recollection of facts in our sources. Not only does Sahnun's birth coincide with Sufyan al-Thawri's death but also the year given for the beginning of his teaching career (806) is the same year that Ibn al-Qasim died.Footnote 34 Perhaps most important, his travels in search of knowledge are sometimes connected with the death of Malik b. Anas. Each key date in Sahnun's early life is thus accompanied by major deaths in the world of scholarship, as if to suggest that Sahnun's birth, studies, and teaching are a partial compensation for the absence of these other exemplary figures. The question of when Sahnun was actually born is secondary to the establishment of his scholarly rank.

THE RIḤLA

Sahnun's famous book, the Mudawwana, is largely a dialogue where one person does all the asking and another provides all the answers, often referring to Malik in the process. Traditionally, it is assumed to be a conversation between Sahnun and the famous Egyptian faqīh ʿAbd al-Rahman b. al-Qasim,Footnote 35 and therefore it makes sense that all the recorded dates for Sahnun's trip to Egypt fall before Ibn al-Qasim's death in 806. As mentioned previously, the biographical sources offer three different dates for Sahnun's departure for Egypt from Ifriqiya (794, 801, and 803), with Sahnun remaining in Egypt for varying lengths of time. In the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Fritz Krenkow notes this variety of possible dates but follows those accounts that put Sahnun in Egypt before Malik's death in 795, calling the later dates “an evident error.”Footnote 36 By contrast, in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Mohamed Talbi makes a point of stating that “the latter date [803] is by far the more plausible” yet offers no further argument.Footnote 37 One might hope for greater clarity from Miklos Muranyi, who has contributed more than any living scholar to our understanding of North African Malikism, yet in one place he agrees with Krenkow, while in another he develops a new position: that Sahnun was abroad for the entire period of thirteen years from 794 to 806.Footnote 38

These modern scholars are engaged with the primary sources and attempt to weigh the facts as judiciously as possible. In the process, however, they treat the contradictions as a puzzle that can be solved, without fully realizing the significance of these dates for explaining the provenance of the Mudawwana, a key text of Maliki jurisprudence. Consider, for example, this highly entertaining account of Sahnun as a young student in Kairouan, first put into circulation two centuries after his death. As the story goes, an older Kairouan scholar, Asad b. al-Furat, had traveled to the East, studying first with Malik in Medina and then going to Iraq to get the Iraqi reaction to Malik's teachings. After leaving Iraq:

[Asad] entered Egypt and approached [ʿAbdallah] b. Wahb, saying: “These are the books of Abu Hanifa.” [Asad] asked [Ibn Wahb] to respond to them according to the madhhab of Malik. Ibn Wahb hesitated and declined. So [Asad] went to Ibn al-Qasim, and he responded to his demands, answering according to what he had memorized from Malik's dicta [qawl]. If [Ibn al-Qasim] was in doubt, he would say: “I suppose,” “I reckon,” or “I think.” These books are called the Asadiyya.Footnote 39

Upon Asad's return to Kairouan in 796, Sahnun (theoretically twenty-one years old and, in this tale, not yet departed on his own trip) is supposed to have made a copy of Asad's auditions from Ibn al-Qasim.

Thereafter Sahnun traveled to Ibn al-Qasim with the Asadiyya and presented it to [Ibn al-Qasim]. Ibn al-Qasim said to him: “There are things in [these books] that need to be changed.” So he gave answers about those things on which he had [previously] had doubts and corrected other things in them. Then he wrote to Asad [telling him] to compare his books with those of Sahnun [and make the appropriate corrections], but Asad did not do this. This reached Ibn al-Qasim so he said: “By God, do not bless the Asadiyya!” So it is discounted among [the Malikis] until this day.Footnote 40

Several points are worth mentioning here. The story seems to be denouncing Asad's legal text, explaining why it was forgotten while the Mudawwana flourished. Closer analysis, however, reveals that it can also be read as a calumny of Sahnun, since it suggests that this foundational text of Maliki jurisprudence has an underlying Hanafi framework; Asad was known to later biographers as a Hanafi scholar.Footnote 41 Despite the fact that the tale raises questions about the provenance of Sahnun's Mudawwana, it found its way into Maliki biographical dictionaries, reflecting the fact that entertaining stories like these have a power of their own. In 1969, Fuat Sezgin reported this story as fact, not realizing that it contradicts his suggestion that Sahnun may have met with Malik b. Anas directly. (The story says that Sahnun did not go to Egypt until after 796, when Asad returned to Kairouan, while Malik died in 795.) Mohamed Talbi also regards the story to be trustworthy in his Encyclopaedia of Islam article; in 1991 Norman Calder read the story as allegory, taking it as evidence that Sahnun was not the author of the Mudawwana but rather that the text developed organically after his death as part of school instruction; in 1997, Miklos Muranyi rejected the story outright, using evidence from the manuscript collections of Kairouan to back his claims.Footnote 42 All four of these modern authors, each in his own way, replicate the polemics of the past without realizing that by continuing these disagreements, they contribute to Sahnun's status as exemplary scholar.

I do not think, however, that modern scholars are doomed to repeat the past. In fact, by carefully distinguishing between two types of evidence—narrative accounts and transmission records—we can gain some clarity on the various accounts of Sahnun's travels even if we cannot know for certain when Sahnun was in Egypt. Narrative accounts are those recorded in the biographical dictionaries, including stories passed down from both Sahnun and his son; they are often both polemical and entertaining. Transmission records, in contrast, are rather dry and include the sources cited by Sahnun in the Mudawwana and the sources cited in manuscripts of other texts transmitted by Sahnun.

Narrative Accounts

Narrative accounts range from simple transmission of data to highly elaborate tales. Like all such narrations, they rest on the foundation of both isnād (the chain of authorities) and matn (the actual data transmitted). Consider, for example, the evidence for the earliest travel dates. The account stems from Muhammad b. Sahnun, who was not only Sahnun's son but also an important historian and legal scholar in his own right. He said that Sahnun had left for the East already in 794, “during the lifetime of Malik.”Footnote 43 ʿ Iyad also records corroborating information, citing Sahnun as saying,

“I was with Ibn al-Qasim when Malik's responsa were received by him [jawābāt Mālik taridu ʿalayhi].” Someone asked: “So what prevented you from attending his lectures [directly]?” He responded: “A lack of dirhams.” He also said: “God damn poverty! If it were not for this, I would have known Malik.”Footnote 44

These accounts seem convincing, and both Krenkow and Muranyi argue for these dates, partially on the strength of Ibn Sahnun as a source. But even though the isnād goes back to such a trustworthy character, it is a long chain, with our earliest attestation in the writings of Qadi ʿ Iyad (d. 1149).Footnote 45 Further, ʿ Iyad does not give Ibn Sahnun's account pride of place but first cites a biography by Abu al-ʿArab al-Tamimi (d. 944) that puts the trip fully ten years later.Footnote 46 We possess Abu al-ʿArab's original text, in which he states flatly: “[Sahnun's] excursion [khurūjuhu] for the seeking of knowledge was in the beginning of 188 [803]; he reentered Ifriqiya in 191 [806].”Footnote 47 In his four-page biography, Abu al-ʿArab spares no effort to lionize Sahnun, so if he had known of Ibn Sahnun's account, one that connected Sahnun to the founder of the school, he should be expected to cite it. It is possible, therefore, that Ibn Sahnun's account was put into circulation after Abu al-ʿArab's death.

Admittedly, the evidence for considering Ibn Sahnun's account to be a pseudopigraphon is an argumentum e silentio, yet it is interesting to speculate on the purpose that such a story would serve. One possibility is that Ibn Sahnun's account was meant to undermine the newly popular story, mentioned previously, that Sahnun's Mudawwana was an elaboration of a book originally composed by Asad. That story first appeared in a text by al-Shirazi (d. 1083), and since our first attestation of the Ibn Sahnun story is yet later (ʿ Iyad died in 1149), it seems reasonable to suggest that it is a kind of literary riposte to the Asad defamation, one that defenders of the Maliki school would have found useful. Ibn Sahnun puts his father's arrival in Egypt in 794, fully two years before Asad supposedly returned to Kairouan (796).

We probably will never know the real reason behind these conflicting accounts, but we are certainly not the first to struggle with them. Qadi ʿ Iyad relates both accounts, and, in the case of Abu al-ʿArab's version, we know he does so accurately. Further, he includes other narrative accounts that seem to argue for yet different dates.Footnote 48 It is not that ʿ Iyad is somehow blind to the contradictions; in fact he deals with them openly. After relating the accounts of Abu al-ʿArab and Ibn Sahnun, ʿ Iyad muses: “If [Abu al-ʿArab's account] is true, then [Sahnun must have] had two trips, but if not, then the report from his son is more correct.” The idea that Sahnun had two trips to Egypt is creative but is based on no narrative attestation. Rather, ʿ Iyad depends on an important new line of argument.

Transmission Records

Qadi ʿ Iyad argues for a longer trip than would be allowed by Abu al-ʿArab's dates by writing: “[this is] because [Sahnun] heard from some Madinans who died before [Abu al-ʿArab's recorded riḥla date of 188], such as Ibn Nafiʿ, who died in 186 [801].”Footnote 49 ʿ Iyad thereby introduces a second type of evidence, Sahnun's recorded transmissions from his sources. If nothing else, this demonstrates that ʿ Iyad was no mere compiler of narrative accounts. Rather, he brings multiple forms of evidence to bear and adjudicates them in a way that was unusual in the Maliki ṭabaqāt literature. In fact, contemporary scholars, such as Krenkow and Muranyi, use similar methods to argue for the earlier riḥla dates. Muranyi, for example, points out that our only extant manuscript of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Majishun's law book is transmitted via Anas b. ʿ Iyad to Sahnun; since most sources say that Anas died in 801, this seems, like Qadi ʿ Iyad's argument about Ibn Nafiʿ, to make the earlier dates more reasonable. But death dates are not as solid as they may seem. Ibn Nafiʿ, it turns out, may have died as late as 824.Footnote 50 Likewise, Anas b. ʿ Iyad may have died in 815.Footnote 51 At any rate, none of Sahnun's sources is said to have died before 801.Footnote 52 Therefore, while an analysis of transmission records seems to suggest that Abu al-ʿArab's dates for Sahnun's riḥla are too late, it does not prove that Sahnun must have traveled as early as Ibn Sahnun suggests.

Beyond the issue of uncertain death dates, there is another problem with the use of attestations in texts to adjudicate narrative accounts, one that most scholars have not addressed. After all, when Sahnun writes qāla Ibn Nafiʿ (Ibn Nafiʿ said) in the Mudawwana, this does not prove that Sahnun personally studied with Ibn Nafiʿ. Even if there were few books in this period, there were plenty of writings in circulation: lecture notes, personal lists of hadiths, and so forth.Footnote 53 For Sahnun, qāla Ibn Nafiʿ might be a reference to a written text or the recounting of a well-known juristic dicta that everyone would know stemmed from Ibn Nafiʿ, without indicating any personal connection between Sahnun and Ibn Nafiʿ.Footnote 54 This is not a purely modern argument. For example, al-Dhahabi (d. 1348) says that Sahnun did not hear from ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Mahdi (d. 813 and quoted often in the Mudawwana) directly but through Musa b. Muʾawiya (d. 840).Footnote 55

Paying closer attention to these narrative strands, it is possible to see some of the implications for different sets of dates and thereby possible reasons why differing accounts were put into circulation at all. By the 12th century, when Qadi ʿ Iyad was writing, the variety of accounts available allowed him to form his own creative solution, suggesting that variant riḥla dates might both be correct. He does this to account for transmission records in Sahnun's Mudawwana, which, by ʿ Iyad's time, had become the most important book of the Maliki school after Malik's Muwatta. In other words, it seems that the reputation of Sahnun's book drove ʿ Iyad's interpretation of the sources for Sahnun's riḥla. The contradictory nature of that evidence did not cause ʿ Iyad to question Sahnun's reputation. Rather, it allowed ʿ Iyad to see in the historical record what he already knew to be true, that Sahnun was an exemplary conduit for Malik's teachings.

By arguing in favor of one set of dates or another, modern scholars end up replicating premodern arguments. Rather than try to discover the true dates of Sahnun's riḥla, I prefer to leave the question open, appreciating the fact that connecting Sahnun with Sufyan al-Thawri, Malik, and Ibn al-Qasim is a way of getting at a different notion of truth than our perception of chronology. It is the status of Sahnun that is at issue here and the fact that he formed the key link in the chain between North African students and Medinan authority. This is not to say that it matters not at all when Sahnun was in EgyptFootnote 56 but rather that the meaning of these facts overwhelms any sense of historicity. A similar problem obtains when we read the stories of Sahnun's trials.

THE MIḤNA IN KAIROUAN

Secondary texts still commonly refer to the miḥna as a type of inquisition perpetrated on the Islamic empire by the Abbasid caliphs. Yet recent studies have made clear that our understanding of this event is colored by highly polemical sources that exaggerate the role of some players.Footnote 57 In Baghdad, as in Kairouan, the meaning of the miḥna was intensely local and was certainly not limited to a single theological issue such as the createdness of the Qurʾan. We have a unique account of the events in Kairouan from Abu al-ʿArab al-Tamimi, a historian who lived two generations after Sahnun and who wrote our earliest surviving biography.Footnote 58 His Kitab al-Mihan suggests a much broader concept of “trial” (miḥna) than we might first expect. With references from the whole of Islamic history (up to his own century), Abu al-ʿArab seems to argue that suffering at the hands of political power is an expected part of being a scholar. More than a badge of honor, it is a mark that the scholar is correctly responding to the inevitably corrupting influences of earthly power. From this and other accounts, we also learn that the miḥna was prosecuted unevenly in Kairouan, depending on who was in power at the moment.

In the case of Sahnun, his trials are said to have begun during Aghlabid Amir Ziyadat Allah's reign (i.e., before 838). Several accounts from Abu al-ʿArab have survived; in the following account, transmitted by Qadi ʿ Iyad, Sahnun is portrayed as defending his theological position in the face of political power, while Amir Ziyadat Allah seems utterly unaware of the possible threat posed by the piety of someone like Sahnun.

Sahnun had already arrived at a funeral when Ibn Abi al-Jawad—the man who was qadi before [Sahnun] and who both followed the opinion of the Kufis and also spoke in favor of the createdness [of the Qurʾan]—arrived and prayed at the funeral. Sahnun withdrew and did not pray behind him. This affair reached the ears of Amir Ziyadat Allah, and he ordered Sahnun to appear before the governor of Kairouan and [for the governor] to give Sahnun 500 lashes and to shave his head and beard. This [decision] reached the ears of his wazīr, ʿAli b. Humayd, who ordered the bailiff [barīd] to belay the order. [The wazīr] prevaricated until he came to the amir during his audience period. [The amir] had fallen asleep, but [the wazīr] said to him: “What is the meaning of this affair I hear of?” [The amir] replied: “Yes?”Footnote 59 [The wazīr] continued: “Don't do it! For surely al-ʿAkki was destroyed for his beating of al-Buhlul b. Rashid.” He responded: “This one is like al-Buhlul?” “Yes,” [the wazīr] said, “and I have already halted the bailiff as a favor to the amir.” So [the amir] thanked him and did not execute his original command.Footnote 60

Through comparison with other extant versions, we can demonstrate that this story is a pastiche. Only one sentence informs us that this confrontation is a matter of theology, and this sentence “the man who was qadi before [Sahnun] and who both followed the opinion of the Kufis and also spoke in favor of the createdness [of the Qurʾan]” is clearly an explanatory remark added to the narrative at some secondary stage; it is not, for example, found in the parallel account preserved by Abu al-ʿArab in his Kitab al-Mihan.Footnote 61

The theological implications are enforced through two alternate endings found in Qadi ʿ Iyad's retelling of the story. The first one emphasizes Sahnun's rejection of political power in favor of a pious stance: friends advise Sahnun to thank the wazīr ʿAli b. Humayd for his favor, but like a good anti-Muʿtazili, Sahnun refuses, saying: “I would rather thank God who propelled ʿAli b. Humayd to do this. He is the most deserving of thanks.”Footnote 62 In the other ending, Sahnun compares his beating to that of Malik and Ibn Musayyab, a response devoid of specific theological content, though it serves to reinforce Sahnun's connection with these great jurists.Footnote 63

The story looks very different once it is shorn of this theological overlay. It then appears more a matter of petty rivalry among competing camps of scholars in Kairouan, one that fits quite well with descriptions from historical sources that suggest the Aghlabids supported Hanafi scholars while the citizens of Kairouan preferred their Maliki scholars. The Aghlabids also apparently supported Muʿtazili theologians, in congruence with their desire to mimic the courtly disputes of Baghdad.Footnote 64 I do not claim that one of these interpretations is more true than another, only that the variety allows the tale to speak to very different audiences.

Despite Sahnun's refusal to thank ʿAli b. Humayd, the wazīr appears to have kept Qadi Ibn Abi al-Jawad's power in check over the next several years, during which time Muhammad b. al-Aghlab took over as amir.Footnote 65 Unfortunately for Sahnun, Muhammad's brother Abu Jaʿfar Ahmad b. al-Aghlab usurped the throne in 846 and took a different wazīr, opening the door for Qadi Ibn Abi al-Jawad to press the “inquisition.” Some sources say that this political change led to the trial of many of Kairouan's elite and that Sahnun was forced to go into hiding. But one early source has quite a different take, suggesting that Sahnun did not suffer at all and quickly gained a pledge of protection from the new amir. In this version Sahnun arrives at court and says to the amir, “I was fearful until I came into your presence, but now I feel secure,” at which point the amir grants him protection.Footnote 66 These obsequious words hardly seem appropriate to a scholar famous for rejecting political power. Other compilations give a much more satisfying account of the same meeting:

When Sahnun reached the amir, he gathered together his entourage and his qadi, Ibn Abi al-Jawad, and others, and he asked him about the Qurʾan. Sahnun answered: “Is this something I have begun myself? No! Rather I have heard from those with whom I have studied and from whom I have recorded [hadith]; all of them say: ‘The Qurʾan is the Word of God, Uncreated.’” Ibn Abi al-Jawad said: “He's a heretic! Kill him, and his blood be upon my neck.” Others who thought as he did said the same thing, and one of them said: “Draw him in quarters and put each quarter in a different place in the city to say: this is the reward for one who does not say [that the Qurʾan is created].”Footnote 67

In this account, Ibn Abi al-Jawad and his crew are portrayed as bloodthirsty bureaucrats, unable to refute Sahnun's argument in any way other than through violence. In contrast, the biographers portray Sahnun as a hero, a leader who would stand up to unjust authority. This impression is reinforced by accounts of personal conversions and miraculous interventions during Sahnun's trials.Footnote 68

When Muhammad b. al-Aghlab returned to the throne the following year, he deposed Ibn Abi al-Jawad and spent two years convincing Sahnun to take the position of qadi.Footnote 69 At first, this seemed to signal a rapprochement between the amirs and the jurists as well as a truce between the Iraqi (i.e., Hanafi) and Medinan (i.e., Maliki) scholars. By the time of Sahnun's death, however, this fragile truce had completely collapsed. It probably did not help that Sahnun used the authority of his position as qadi to flog Ibn Abi al-Jawad, theoretically for extortion.Footnote 70

As with the riḥla, the variety of accounts allows for differing interpretations of Sahnun's life. To Qadi ʿ Iyad, Sahnun is a hero, standing up to corrupt political power in a way that may have been inspiring in 12th-century Andalusia. ʿ Iyad was known for being a strict adherent of the Maliki school and had several altercations with rulers in Granada and Ceuta.Footnote 71 In contrast, Mohamed Talbi sees in Sahnun's actions those of an overly zealous judge, who in the name of stamping out heresy repressed “the freedom of independent thought.”Footnote 72 In either case, Sahnun's actions are taken as exemplary.

CONCLUSION

We can tease several threads from these intertwining stories, each of which appeals to a different audience. One thread seems to be an underlying trope of scholars embroiled in endless petty rivalries: Sahnun stealing Asad's books; Ibn al-Qasim denouncing Asad, his own student; Sahnun refusing to pray behind Ibn Abi al-Jawad at one point and then flogging him when he has the upper hand. Given the many similar stories about scholarly rivalries in Egypt, Iraq, and elsewhere, there seems no reason to discount the essential truth of such tales, though we may be skeptical about any particular instance. Yet the survival of so many stories that seem to belittle scholars, undercutting their exemplary nature, is surprising. It suggests that biographers like Qadi ʿ Iyad were more interested in collecting and preserving data than in overtly controlling the narrative. To be sure, some of these stories originated in political histories, and because the scholarly community was one of the few checks on government power, courtiers had significant motivations to fabricate or embellish such tales. Nonetheless, through biographers such as ʿ Iyad, these stories made their way into the histories of the madhhab. Further, premodern and modern scholars find these stories both humorous and illustrative, thereby contributing to their long life through repetition, analysis, and commentary.

A second thread is the more familiar trope of the scholar as hero, representing the key qualities of piety, knowledge, and rejection of political power that describe the ideal scholarly life. This fits far better with Reynolds’ argument that biographical dictionaries erase the individual in favor of a collective identity.Footnote 73 In the case of Sahnun, it certainly seems that some of the stories of his trials were embroidered to place the requisite pious sentiments in his mouth. As for his knowledge, already evident through the erudition of his Mudawwana and his many students, it was enhanced through personal connections to important jurists—Sufyan al-Thawri, Malik, and Ibn al-Qasim—with key moments in Sahnun's early life coinciding with the death of one or another of these great scholars. The final quality of rejecting political power is harder to square with Sahnun's active career as qadi, yet here narrative comes to the rescue once again. The stories of the amir pursuing Sahnun for two years before he would accept the post and Sahnun's less than triumphant arrival in town after accepting the position of qadi (riding a donkey “without cloak or cap,” he says to his daughter, “today your father is slaughtered without a knife”) describe a reluctant accession to power,Footnote 74 one that challenges political authority rather than succumbs to it.

A third thread is the role of contradictory evidence itself. In a strict historicist sense, most of these tales do not hold up to scrutiny; it seems doubtful that Sahnun was born in 776, and he almost certainly did not have two separate trips to Egypt; he may never have faced a theological inquisition, and, if he did, then his responses were unlikely to match the orthodoxy of later generations. Repeating these stories in modern encyclopedias and journals reinscribes them and lends them an aura of factuality far greater than our sources can support. But the suspicion that these events did not happen in this way only increases their significance as indicators of the motivations of later generations of scholars. As Cooperson argues for Ibn Hanbal, stories such as these give us important insights into the ways that “representative men” should comport themselves.Footnote 75

The prominent place of contradictory evidence, however, suggests that this ideal type is itself pluriform. Here, it is useful to remember that Sahnun was not only an exemplar who set a pattern for future jurists to follow; he was also exemplary of the Prophet's way of doing things, even to the point of reproducing the multiple and conflicting hadith reports about his life. It certainly appears that compilers such as ʿ Iyad were rather comfortable with conflicting evidence and that, like al-Bukhari and Muslim, they believed that recording all trustworthy stories was a better homage to the representative man than choosing one view over others. Therefore, adjudicating among conflicting dates and depictions is not only misleading. It may efface a central truth about exemplars: multiple images of ideal figures—whether the Prophet or Sahnun—make them even more useful as a focus for devotion and emulation. Their pluriform nature renders them adaptable to a wider variety of circumstances than would a simple, uniform vision of a man. While all this highlights problems in arguing for specific dates, or for one interpretation of events over another, it does not mean that we need to consider Sahnun wholly a creature of his biographers. We have his texts, one of which is preserved in a manuscript fragment that dates to his own lifetime, precious physical evidence that links us to Sahnun. Further, analysis of the manuscripts can offer something of a corrective to the biographical dictionaries’ own claim to completeness, since the transmission records of manuscripts preserve the names of many scholars who have been forgotten by the biographers. As encyclopedic as these dictionaries are, the many unidentifiable names in these manuscripts demonstrate that the biographical dictionaries offer us only a selective view of the scholarly community of 9th-century Kairouan.

Transmission records and samāʿ remarks preserved in manuscripts are subject neither to narrative convention nor to literary tropes. Building on these kernels of information, we may comfortably conclude that Sahnun was a teacher of renown who passed on the wisdom of Medina to a whole generation of students and in the process served as a key figure in establishing Malikism as the majority school of Islamic law in North and West Africa. It is these achievements that make him a figure worthy of the dreams, prophecy, and panegyric—as well as the contradictions—found in the biographical sources. By leaving these contradictions unresolved, we admit the limits of our knowledge and throw valuable light on motivations that guided and restricted the authors of biographical accounts. In contrast, resolving the contradictions might be seen as playing into what Chakrabarty calls the hegemony of scholarship by imposing our own presumptions on the sources.Footnote 76 Chakrabarty's reasonable concern, however, is balanced by the fact that the conflicting arguments of Krenkow, Talbi, Muranyi, and others inevitably add to the layers of contradiction and so therefore to the very status of Sahnun as an exemplary individual.

Footnotes

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

References

NOTES

Author's note: I am grateful to the editors of IJMES and especially to the anonymous readers for their helpful and critical comments. I presented a very different draft of this paper at a conference in honor of Bernard Weiss in Alta, Utah, in 2008 and again at Tübingen University in 2009 and benefited greatly from the ensuing discussions with colleagues.

1 See, for example, de Busbecq, Oghier Ghiselin, Les lettres turques (Paris: Champion, 2010)Google Scholar; and Kunt, Metin and Woodhead, Christine, Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World (London: Longman, 1995)Google Scholar. My thanks to Tijana Krstic for pointing me to these references.

2 Moosa, Ebrahim, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 3Google Scholar. For different views on al-Ghazali, see Macdonald, D. B., “The Life of al-Ghazzālī,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 20 (1899): 71–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Margaret, Al-Ghazālī the Mystic (London: Luzac and Company, 1944)Google Scholar; Watt, W. Montgomery, Muslim Intellectual (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; and Griffel, Frank, Al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 To date, most work on biographical texts has focused on periods for which we have much more information (e.g., the later Abbasid period, Mamluk Egypt, and the early modern empires), allowing for easier identification of these patterns and tropes. For an analytical summary of much of this work, see Humphreys, R. Stephen, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry, rev. ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), 187–207Google Scholar; more recently, Reynolds, Dwight and several others have written an important book that, despite its title, has much to say about how one reads biographies: Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 Mahmood, Saba, “Women's Agency within Feminist Historiography,” The Journal of Religion 84 (October 2004): 573–79, at 576–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this article she refers to Chakrabarty's, DipeshProvincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar and explains that Chakrabarty's double task “allows an academic historian to . . . both . . . engage the hegemonic terms of the discipline of secular history constructively and to expose the violence this narrative commits against lifeworlds and imaginaries that are not encompassable within a secular framework.”

5 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 21–22.

6 Oakes, Len, Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997)Google Scholar. Oakes notes the “unpredictability” and paradoxes of the charismatic personality on pp. 15–16 and 168–69; he discusses the mirroring effect throughout the book, but see esp. pp. 128–29.

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9 The theatrical imagery was put forward by Jacob Neusner in his groundbreaking study of rabbis in the Talmud, Eliezer Ben Hyrcanus: The Tradition and the Man, 2 vols. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1973), and picked up approvingly by Calder, Norman in Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 1Google Scholar. sharply, Miklos Muranyicriticized Calder's theories for ignoring the evidence of early manuscripts in “Die frühe Rechtsliteratur zwischen Quellenanalyse und Fiktion,” Islamic Law and Society 4 (1997): 224–41Google Scholar. A more balanced view is found in the excellent article by Cooperson, Michael, “Ibn Ḥanbal and Bishr al-Ḥāfī: A Case Study in Biographical Traditions,” Studia Islamica 86 (1997): 71–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which nonetheless is more concerned with the reception of Ibn Hanbal's actions than with the man himself. A similar treatment is found in Gleave's, Rob useful study, “Biography and Hagiography in Tunukabuni's Qisas al-Ulama,” in Proceedings of the Third European Conference of Iranian Studies. Part 2: Mediaeval and Modern Persian Studies, ed. Melville, Charles (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1999), 237–55Google Scholar; my thanks to the anonymous reviewer who brought this article to my attention.

10 al-ʿArab, Abu, Kitab Tabaqat ʿUlamaʾ Ifriqiya, ed. Cheneb, Mohammed ben (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Lubnani, n.d.), 101–104Google Scholar. Following the convention of his manuscript sources, Mohammed ben Cheneb published Abu al-ʿArab's text together with two other works: the continuation by his student Muhammad b. al-Harith b. Asad al-Khushani (d. 371/981), also called Kitab Tabaqat ʿUlamaʾ Ifriqiya (reference to Sahnun on p. 236); and a second work by Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab Tabaqat ʿUlamaʾ Tunis. The first book runs from pp. 1 to 125, the second from pp. 127 to 241, and the third from pp. 243 to 256. Hereafter, I cite all three simply as Cheneb, Ben, Tabaqat. To Abu al-ʿArab is attributed another interesting book, Kitab al-Mihan, ed. al-Jabburi, Yahya Wahib (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1983)Google Scholar; the entry on Sahnun is found from pages 449 to 452. As I will discuss, I am not entirely convinced that this text is correctly attributed to Abu al-ʿArab.

11 Qadi ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 8 vols., ed. ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Sahrawi et al. (Rabat: Wizarat al-Awqaf, 1982), 4:45–88; see also Talbi's, Mohamedpartial edition, Tarajim Aghlabiyya (Biographies Aghlabides) (Tunis: University of Tunis, 1968), 86–136Google Scholar.

12 I am borrowing these key terms from Bernard Weiss, who writes about the role of individuals—qadis, caliphs and jurists—as mediators of Islamic law: “in the burgeoning Islamic society, authority was fast becoming linked to personal piety and religious knowledge, not to power.” The Spirit of Islamic Law (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 7.

13 This fragment is located in the collection of the Raqqada Center for Islamic Arts, Tunisia; I express my gratitude to Miklos Muranyi for telling me of its existence and to Mourad Rammah, director of the center, for facilitating my research. I discuss this fragment at length in “Saḥnūn's Mudawwana and the Piety of the ‘Shariah-minded,’” in Alta Essays in Honor of Bernard Weiss, ed. Kevin Reinhart and Ruud Peters (Leiden: E. J. Brill, forthcoming).

14 Work on the manuscript remains of Sahnun's writings was pioneered by Shabbuh, Ibrahim, “Sijill Qadīm li-Maktabat Jāmiʿ al-Qayrawān,” in Revue de l'Institut des Manuscrits Arabes 2 (1956)Google Scholar; Schacht, Joseph, “Sur quelques manuscrits de la bibliothèque de la mosquée d'al-Qarawiyyīn à Fès,” in Études d'Orientalisme, 2 vols. (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1962), 1:271–84Google Scholar; idem, “On Some Manuscripts in the Libraries of Kairouan and Tunis,” Arabica 14 (1967): 225–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sezgin, Fuat, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 1:468 ffGoogle Scholar; and Forneas, J. M., “Datos para un estudio de la Mudawwana de Saḥnūn en al-Andalus,” in Actas del IV Coloquio Hispano-Tunecino (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1983), 93 ffGoogle Scholar. Much of this research is now superseded by the work of Muranyi, Miklos, particularly Die Rechtsbücher des Qairawāners Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd: Entstehungsgeschichte und Werküberlieferung (Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner, 1999)Google Scholar; Muranyi discusses the role of al-Qabisi throughout, but see esp. pp. 16–17.

15 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:87; this is just one of several visions of Sahnun in heaven. For the importance of the Prophet as the ultimate exemplary figure, see Cooperson, “Ibn Ḥanbal,” 71; and Brockopp, Jonathan, “Theorizing Charismatic Authority in Early Islamic Law,” Comparative Islamic Studies 1 (2005): 129–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See, for example, the short entry in al-Dhahabi, Taʾrikh al-Islam wa-Wafayat al-Mashahir wa-l-Aʿlam, 37 vols., ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salim Tadmuri (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-ʿArabi, 1994), a.h. 231–40, pp. 247–49. While the actual entry on Sahnun is not terribly interesting, the editor includes an extensive list of entries in the most important Arabic sources. This list does not include the sources mentioned in n.12, however.

17 al-Baladhuri, Ahmad b. Yahya, Futuh al-Buldan (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-ʿUlum, 1987), 323–24Google Scholar. Note that this seems to continue a policy initiated by Abu al-Muhajir in the 670s; see Talbi, Mohamed, “al-Ḳayrawān,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), 4:826Google Scholar.

18 Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 20–21.

19 With ʿAbd Allah b. Ghanim (d. 805) and al-Buhlul b. Rashid (d. 799) in Kairouan and with ʿAli b. Ziyad (d. 799) in Tunis. Ibn Ziyad's transmission of Malik's Muwattaʾ seems to have been the best known version of Malik's book in North Africa at the time, though comparison of Ibn Ziyad's transmission with Sahnun's citations of him in the Mudawwana does not demonstrate a clear connection between these two texts.

20 Al-Baladhuri, Futuh, 327.

21 Ibid., 370.

22 This is Mohamed Talbi's interpretation in L'Emirat Aghlabide (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1966), 105.

23 al-ʿUsh, Muhammad Abu al-Faraj, Monnaies aġlabides étudiées en relation avec l'histoire des Aġlabides (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1982), 18Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., 15–16.

25 Marçais, Georges, Manuel d'art musulman (Paris: Picard, 1926), 9Google Scholar. For more recent work on Kairouan's architecture, including a fascinating survey of its graveyards, see Hantati, Nejmeddine, ed., Dirasat fi Taʾrikh al-Qayrawan (Kairouan, Tunisia: Centre d’Études Islamiques/Unité de Recherche de l'Histoire, 2009)Google Scholar.

26 Al-Baladhuri, Futuh, 371.

27 Ibid.

28 See Al-ʿUsh, Monnaies aġlabides, 20, where he shows that this prosperity came from local wealth as well as an active commerce with Europe, central Africa, and the East. See also Laroui, Abdullah, The History of the Maghrib, trans. Mannheim, Ralph (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 117–19Google Scholar.

29 I give a full account of Sahnun's best known students in “Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd and the Mudawwana,” in A Compendium of Muslim Jurists, ed. Oussama Arabi, David Powers, and Susan Spectorsky (Leiden: E. J. Brill, forthcoming).

30 Ibid., where I translate and analyze this story in detail.

31 Modern accounts include Krenkow, Fritz, “Saḥnūn,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1934), 4:64–65Google Scholar; Talbi, L'Emirat Aghlabide, 227–39; idem, “Saḥnūn,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 8:843–45Google Scholar; Muhammad ʿAzb, Muhammad Zaynuhum, al-Imam Sahnun (Cairo: Dar al-Farjani, 1992)Google Scholar; and Brockopp, “Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd and the Mudawwana.”

32 Sezgin, Geschichte, 1:468; ʿAzb, al-Imam Sahnun, 65. ʿAzb does not give his source, but it is presumably a late one. Ramadan, of course, is an appropriate month for the appearance of a great jurist, and very many jurists are born, or die, in Ramadan.

33 Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 104.

34 Ibid., 102.

35 The interlocutors are not always identified, leaving the door open to skeptics, such as Calder, who regard this as a composite text. The text usually reads, “I asked . . . He replied,” with Sahnun's name appearing only a few times in the entire printed edition. Ibn al-Qasim's name appears more regularly, usually at the beginning of sections. An initial comparison with the earliest manuscript fragments suggests that some of these identifications are glosses by scribes and not part of the archetype. See my edition of a partial fragment in “Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd and the Mudawwana.” Much more work needs to be done on the numerous manuscript witnesses before we can state anything certain about the authorship of this text.

36 Krenkow, “Saḥnūn,” 4:64.

37 Talbi, “Saḥnūn,” 8:843. He does not consider 801 in this article.

38 Muranyi argues for 794 as the beginning of the riḥla in Ein altes Fragment medinensischer Jurisprudenz aus Qairawān (Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner, 1985), 12–13; cf. idem, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ḥadīth- und Rechtsgelehrsamkeit der Mālikiyya in Nordafrika bis zum 5. Jh. d.H. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1997), 34Google Scholar, where he considers all the data and seems to argue for the entire period from 794 to 806 as the best dates.

39 al-Shirazi, Abu Ishaq, Tabaqat al-Fuqahaʾ, ed. ʿAbbas, Ihsan (Beirut: Dar al-Raʾid al-ʿArabi, 1981), 156Google Scholar.

40 Ibid. As Muranyi has pointed out (Beiträge, 42–43), al-Shirazi (d. 1083) was a Shafiʿi scholar, and his text is the first witness to this story. Thereafter it became quite popular in Maliki texts. See, for example, al-Maliki, Abu Bakr, Kitab Riyad al-Nufus, ed. al-Bakkushi, Bashir and al-Mutawwi, Muhammad al-ʿArusi, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1981–84), 1:261–63Google Scholar. This late text seems to have been Sezgin's main source for his life of Sahnun.

41 Brockopp, , “Asad b. al-Furāt,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008), 1:169–71Google Scholar.

42 Sezgin simply states that the Mudawwana was first worked over by Asad (Geschichte, 1:469). Norman Calder claimed the story as a prime example of the way tall tales grew around problems in textual criticism (Studies, 1). See also Muranyi, Beiträge, 42–43.

43 First recorded by ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:46 and repeated in later Maliki texts.

44 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:46. It is not clear whether Ibn al-Qasim was supposedly writing to Malik about Sahnun's questions; at any rate, I have not found evidence of this in the Mudawwana. In contrast, Ibn al-Qasim often states, “I did not hear anything from Malik on this matter,” suggesting that the dialogue is happening after Malik's death. Muhammad ʿAzb appears to gloss this statement from ʿ Iyad when he writes, “Ibn al-Qasim was the one with whom Imam Malik b. Anas would correspond regarding questions of jurisprudence which he sent to him.” Al-Imam Sahnun, 67.

45 Even Muhammad ʿAzb (ibid.) expresses skepticism toward stories that attempt to connect Sahnun to Malik, suggesting that students put them into circulation to enhance the reputation of their master.

46 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:46.

47 Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 102.

48 For example, ʿ Iyad includes another account where Sahnun says, “I went to Ibn al-Qasim when 25 and entered Ifriqiya when 30 years old.” ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:47; if Sahnun was born in 776, this would mean arrival in Egypt about 801 and return to Kairouan in 805 or 806.

49 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:46; see also ʿAzb, al-Imam Sahnun, 68, where he makes a similar suggestion without crediting ʿ Iyad or using ʿ Iyad's sophisticated arguments.

50 See al-Dabbagh, ʿAbd al-Rahman (d. 1297), Maʿalim al-Iman fi Maʿrifat Ahl al-Qayrawan, ed. Shabbuh, Ibrahim (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khaniji, 1968) 2:79Google Scholar, where Shabbuh points out in a note that that Ibn Nafiʿ died in a.h. 208, according to al-Bukhari and Ibn Saʿd.

51 Al-Dhahabi, Taʾrikh, a.h. 191–200, pp. 112–13.

52 See the extensive discussion of Sahnun's teachers in Brockopp, “Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd and the Mudawwana.”

53 I use “books” in a restricted sense to refer to texts produced by a single redactional effort (following Calder, Studies, 87) in an institutional setting that allowed for authorial control.

54 Calder (Studies, 1 and 20) points out that narrative accounts and transmission records can be self-reinforcing, with each used to prove the truth of the other in a circle of reasoning. Also, on occasion, the voice in the Mudawwana shifts, with Sahnun moving from first person (qultu) to third (qāla Saḥnūn). See, for example, Sahnun b. Saʿid, al-Mudawwana al-Kubra (Cairo: Matbaʿat al-Saʿada, a.h. 1323 [1905 c.e.]; reprint in 6 vols.: Beirut: Dar Sadir, n.d.) 1:174.

55 Taʾrikh, years 231–40, pp. 247–49; Muranyi argues for direct transmission (Rechtsbücher, 32–33). Ibn Mahdi's death date is relatively late, so this argument has no bearing on the question of when Sahnun was in the East. One might similarly argue that a transmission record on a manuscript does not guarantee that, for example, there was no further intermediary between ʿAbd al-ʿAziz al-Majishun, Anas b. ʿ Iyad, and Sahnun in the unique manuscript of al-Majishun's lawbook, but I maintain that two different sorts of conventions are at work here. Therefore I am more comfortable suggesting that Sahnun must have been in Medina before Anas b. ʿ Iyad died, though since we are not sure when this was, this still does not resolve the question of which riḥla dates are correct.

56 For researchers interested in pursuing this question further, I believe the place to start is with the many anecdotes about Sahnun in Egypt from the biographical entries of the great Egyptian scholars. Many of these have already been gathered by Qadi ʿ Iyad in his entry on Sahnun, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:45–88.

57 Melchert, Christopher, “The Adversaries of Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal,” Arabica 44 (1997): 234–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hurvitz, Nimrod, “Miḥna as Self-Defense,” Studia Islamica 92 (2001): 93–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 We are very much in need of an analysis of Abu al-ʿArab's works, much as Muranyi has done for Sahnun's writings. For one thing, his Kitab al-Mihan diverges from his Tabaqat in significant ways and appears as a much more polemical text. It may be a pseudopigraphon (falsely attributed work) or merely written for a very difference audience.

59 The amir's response here (naʿam) makes more sense in the parallel account found in Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 451.

60 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:69–70. Al-ʿAkki ruled Ifriqiya before the Aghlabids; al-Buhlul b. Rashid (d. 799) was one of Sahnun's teachers, though he is not quoted in the Mudawwana; he apparently transmitted the books of Sufyan al-Thawri. See Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 52–61; and Muranyi, Beiträge, 10–11.

61 Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 451–52. Although it is missing this phrase, Abu al-ʿArab's account is otherwise more elaborate than the one in Qadi ʿ Iyad's text, providing several details that are apparently superfluous from ʿ Iyad's perspective.

62 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:70; this ending is also found in Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 452.

63 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:70; this story is missing from Abu al-ʿArab.

64 We have, however, few written remains of Hanafi writings and nothing of these Muʿtazilis to know what, precisely, was meant by these epithets.

65 In addition to his own presence at court, one of his sons served Muhammad b. al-Aghlab, the next amir of Ifriqiya.

66 Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 227; this account derives from the text by al-Khushani (d. 981). A somewhat garbled version of this account is preserved by ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:73. Abu al-ʿArab does not include this story in Kitab al-Mihan, another example of the polemical nature of his text.

67 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:71. As with the previous story, a more detailed version of this one is found in Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 451.

68 ʿ Iyad b. Musa, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:71–72; and Abu al-ʿArab, Kitab al-Mihan, 451.

69 I address a number of these accounts in my “Theorizing Charismatic Authority,” 145–47.

70 Talbi, “Saḥnūn,” 8:845, points out that Ibn Abi l-Jawad was the nephew of Asad b. al-Furat; cf. Ben Cheneb, Tabaqat, 227. This is an interesting connection but presumes that the sources are correct in depicting Asad and Sahnun as bitter rivals; other accounts have Sahnun defending Asad as a defender of the uncreated nature of the Qurʾan.

71 Talbi, Mohamed, “ʿIyād b. Mūsā,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd. ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 4:289–90Google Scholar.

72 Talbi, “Saḥnūn,” 8:844–45.

73 Reynolds et al., Interpreting the Self, 41.

74 Qadi ʿ Iyad, Tartib al-Madarik, 4:57; Brockopp, “Theorizing Charismatic Authority,” 147–48.

75 Cooperson, “Ibn Hanbal,” 73.

76 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe, 21–22. We may also underestimate the degree to which all information on an exemplary individual is polemic. For example, it may be that one of the three dates given for Sahnun's travel to Egypt (178, 185, or 188) is correct, but we need to entertain the possibility that every one of these dates represents a different polemical position and that none of them may reflect the reality of Sahnun's travels.