Zahiri school
The Zahiri school or Zahirism is a school of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. It was named after Dawud al-Zahiri and flourished in Spain during the Caliphate of Córdoba under the leadership of Ibn Hazm. It was also followed by the majority of Muslims in Mesopotamia, Portugal, the Balearic Islands, and North Africa. The Zahiri school lost its presence around the 14th-century. The school is considered to be endangered, but it continues to exert influence over legal thought. Today it is followed by minority communities in Morocco and Pakistan.
The Zahiri school is characterized by strict adherence to literalism and reliance on the outward meaning of expressions in the Quran and a limited amount of ḥadīth literature; the consensus of the first generation of Muhammad's closest companions excluding the scholars, for sources of Islamic law ; and rejection of analogical deduction and societal custom or knowledge, used by other schools of Islamic jurisprudence, although the anti-Hazm wing of Zahiris usually accept religious inference.
After a limited success and decline in the Middle East, the Zahiri school flourished in Islamic Iberia, particularly under the leadership of the Andalusian Muslim jurist Ibn Hazm. The Zahiri school is said to have lingered on in various locations under various manifestations before being superseded by the Hanbali school.
History
Emergence
During his formative years, al-Ẓāhirī relocated from Kufa to Baghdad and studied the prophetic traditions and Quranic exegesis with a number of notable Muslim scholars of the time, including Abū Thawr, Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. His study under renowned figures of traditionalist theology was in contrast to the views of his father, who was a follower of the Ḥanafī school. Indian Muslim reformist Chiragh Ali has suggested that Ẓāhirī's school was, like that of Ibn Ḥanbal, actually a direct reaction to the Ḥanafī system of jurisprudence.The Ẓāhirī school was initially called the Dāwūdi school after Dawud al-Ẓāhirī himself, and attracted many adherents, although they felt free to criticize his views, in line with the Ẓāhirī school's rejection of legal conformity. Alongside the Ḥanbali jurists, Ẓāhiris constituted one of the major schools that originated from the Ahl al-Ḥadīth school, which advocated the superiority of the Quran, ḥadīth literature, and sunnah in legal jurisdiction, and denied the validity of logic as an independent source of Islamic law. By the end of the 10th century, members of the madhhab were appointed as judges in Baghdad, Shiraz, Isfahan, Firuzabad, Ramla, Damascus, Fustat, and Bukhara.
Umm al-Qura University professor Abdul Aziz al-Harbi has argued that the first generation of Muhammad's closest companions followed the methods and rulings of the Ẓāhirī school, and therefore it can be regarded as "the school of the first generation."
Westward expansion
Parallel to the school's development in the east, Ẓāhirī ideas were introduced to North Africa by theologians of the Maliki school who were engaged in lively debates with the Hanafi school, and to the Iberian Peninsula by one of Dawud al-Ẓāhirī's direct students. Unlike Abbasid lands, where the Ẓāhirī school developed in parallel and in opposition to other madhhabs, in the West it only had to contend with its Maliki counterpart, which enjoyed official support of the Umayyad rulers. Starting in the late 9th century CE, an increasing number of "hir" scholars emerged in various regions of the Iberian peninsula, but none of their works have survived.It was not until the rise of the Almohads that the Ẓāhirī school enjoyed official state sponsorship. While not all of the Almohad political leaders were Ẓāhirīs, a large plurality of them were not only adherents but were well-versed theologians in their own right. Additionally, all Almohad leaders – both the religiously learned and the laymen – were extremely hostile toward the Malikis, giving the Ẓāhirīs and in a few cases the Shafi‘is free rein to author works and run the judiciary. In the late 12th century, any religious material written by non-Ẓāhirīs was at first banned and later burned in the empire under the Almohad reforms.
Decline
The Ẓāhirī school enjoyed its widest expansion and prestige in the fourth Islamic century, especially through the works of Ibn al-Mughallis, but in the fifth century it lost ground to the Hanbalite school. Even after the Zahiri school became extinct in Baghdad, it continued to have some followers in Shiraz. Ẓāhirism maintained its prestige in Syria until 788 A.H. and had an even longer and deeper impact in Egypt. In the 14th century C.E., the Zahiri Revolt marked both a brief rekindling of interest in the school's ideas as well as affirmation of its status as a non-mainstream ideology. Al-Muhalla, a medieval manual on Ẓāhirī jurisprudence, served in part as inspiration for the revolt and as a primary source of the school's positions. However, soon afterwards the school ceased to function and in the 14th century Ibn Khaldun considered it to be extinct. With the Reconquista and the loss of Iberia to Christian rule, most works of Ẓāhirī law and legal theory were lost as well, with the school only being carried on by individual scholars, once again on the periphery.Wael Hallaq has argued that the rejection of qiyas in Ẓāhirī methodology led to exclusion of the school from the Sunni juridical consensus and ultimately its extinction in the pre-modern era. Christopher Melchert suggests that the association of the Ẓāhirī school with Mu'tazilite theology, its difficulty in attracting the right patronage, and its reliance on outmoded methods of teaching have all contributed to its decline.
Modern history
The Zahiri school became extinct around the 14th-century. It was sometimes characterized as a fifth school of thought within Sunni Islam, In particular, members of the Ahl-i Hadith movement have identified themselves with the Ẓāhirī school of thought. In the modern era, the Ẓāhirī school has been described as "somewhat influential", though "not formally operating today". In particular, adherents of the modern-day Ahl-i Hadith movement in India and Pakistan have self-consciously emulated the ideas of the Ẓāhirī school and identified themselves with it. The family of Hasan al-Hudaybi reportedly was Zahiri. Modernist revival of the general critique by Ibn Hazm – the school's most prominent representative – of Islamic legal theory among Muslim academics has seen several key moments in recent Arab intellectual history, including Ahmad Shakir's republishing of Al-Muhalla, Muhammad Abu Zahra's biography of Ibn Hazm, and the republishing of archived epistles on Ẓāhirī legal theory by Sa'id al-Afghani in 1960 and Ihsan Abbas between 1980 and 1983. In 2004 the Amman Message recognized the Ẓāhirī school as legitimate, although it did not include it among Sunni madhhabs, and the school also received recognition from Sudan's former Islamist Prime Minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi. The literalist school of thought represented by the Ẓāhirī madhhab remains prominent among many scholars and laymen associated with the Salafi movement, and traces of it can be found in the modern-day Salafi movement. The school experienced a revival in the Islamic State. There have been attempts to revive the school in the mid-20th century.Principles
Of the utmost importance to the school is an underlying principle attributed to the founder Dawud ibn 'Ali; who had robustly denounced the delicacies and ambiguities in Fiqh sciences. According to Dawud, the validity of religious issues is only upheld by certainty, and that speculation cannot lead to the truth. This certainty is to be determined by the outward meaning of the Qurʾān and Hadith. Most Ẓāhirī principles return to this overarching maxim. Japanese Islamic scholar Kojiro Nakamura defines the Ẓāhirī schools as resting on two presumptions. The first is that if it were possible to draw more general conclusions from the strict reading of the sources of Islamic law, then God certainly would have expressed these conclusions already; thus, all that is necessary lies in the text. The second is that for man to seek the motive behind the commandments of God is not only a fruitless endeavor but a presumptuous one. Another major characteristic was their fierce condemnation of Qiyas as a heresy and distortion of Sharia but still accept religious inference.The Ẓāhirī school of thought generally recognizes three sources of Islamic law within the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. The first is the Qur'an, considered by Muslims to be the verbatim word of God ; the second consists of the Sunnah derived from hadith literature its adherents deem authentic, these consist of the sayings and actions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad; the third is absolute consensus of the Sahabah.
Certain followers of the Ẓāhirī school include religious inference as a fourth source of Islamic law.
The school differs from the more prolific schools of Islamic thought in that it restricts valid consensus in jurisprudence to the consensus of the first generation of Muslims who lived alongside Muhammad only. While Abu Hanifa and Ahmad ibn Hanbal agreed with them in this, most followers of the Hanafi and Hanbali schools generally do not, nor do the other two Sunni schools.
Additionally, the Ẓāhirī school does not accept analogical reasoning as a source of Islamic law, nor do they accept the practice of juristic discretion, pointing to a verse in the Qur'an which declares that nothing has been neglected in the Muslim scriptures. While al-Shafi‘i and followers of his school agree with the Ẓāhirīs in rejecting the juristic discretion, all other Sunni schools accept the analogical reasoning, though at varying levels.
Ẓāhirīs accept deriving rulings based off general, encompassing texts in the Quran and Sunnah as long as it is based off what a general ruling/statement in the textual sources necessarily encompasses and not based off making Qiyas, which Ẓāhirīs firmly reject.