Review

Author(s): Irene Schneider

Review by: Irene Schneider
Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 114, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1994), pp. 684-685
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/606202
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684

Journal of the American Oriental Society 114.4 (1994)

as they shall have to be, if properly done, in one way or another indebted to it.
Daniel Gimaret, in a paper presented to the inaugural meeting of the Societe Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences et de
la Philosophie Arabes et Islamiques in 1989 (since published
under the title "Pour un r6equilibre des etudes de la th6ologie
musulmane,"Arabica 38 [1991]: 11-18), voiced a serious and
well-founded complaint regarding the disproportionate number of studies dedicated to the earliest period of kalam and the
conspicuous neglect of the great theologians of Islam's maturity, on the part of European scholars.2 The present work is
not, however, to be viewed as one more study on the beginnings of Muslim theology, for the origins and evolution of the
various major and minor trends of religious thought in Islam
during the second century A.H.are here presented together and
displayed in their integral relationship to the various aspects
of the broader historical matrix in which they arose and either
underwent metamorphosis and developed or withered away, in
a process out of which a number of distinctly Muslim genera
of systematic theology were ultimately to take shape and mature. These two volumes are hardly to be classed as light reading; they offer no tidy, linear account of the early emergence
of Muslim theology. They do, however, succeed in opening to
the reader who has the patience to work his way through them
a view of the multifaceted religious history-or, better perhaps, of the turmoil and confusion of a multitude of religious
histories and subhistories-of the second century A.H.in their
irreducible complexity and so of a very important part of the
historical past as plausibly it actually was.
RICHARDM. FRANK
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY

2 One must keep in mind, however, that the authors of the

best of these studies were trained for the most part in philology and history, not in philosophy and theology as such,
wherefore they are not likely to be fascinated by the subtlety
and elegance which Abu Hasim, CAbdal-Gabbar, al-Guwayni,
or Fahruddinal-Rfzi and the like may bring to the analysis of
the major issues of theology.

Die Anfange der islamischen Jurisprudenz: Ihre Entwicklung

in Mekka bis zur Mitte des 2./8. Jahrhunderts. By HARALD
MOTZKI.
Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des Morgenlandes,
vol. 50.2. Stuttgart: FRANZ
STEINER
1991. Pp. ix +
VERLAG,
292. DM 96.
Since the publication of Schacht's The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence in 1950 various contributions to the sub-

ject have appeared in the West, most of them in support of

Schacht's views on the formation of Islamic jurisprudence.
Motzki's Anfdnge poses a challenge to some of these generally
accepted views.
Motzki sets out to investigate the beginnings of Islamic jurisprudence and its development in Mecca up to the 2nd/8th
century. The book is divided into four chapters, an epilogue, a
bibliography and an index of names and importantterms.
The first chapter contains a historical account of the contributions to the study of the development of Islamic law, mainly
focusing on Schacht's theories and the subsequent discussions
it generated. Already at this juncture Motzki makes clear that
he will try to revise in part Schacht's account of the formation
of Islamic jurisprudence. While, for Schacht, only racy ('personal opinion') produced legal solutions up to the emergence
of Islamic law in the middle of the 2nd century, Motzki is
convinced that the beginning of Islamic law should properly
be dated some 50 to 75 years earlier. He criticizes Schacht's
theory of the artificial growth of the asdnid, which implies
that the most complete asanid going back to the Prophet and
the Companions are always the latest ones. Schacht had thus
been led to the conclusion that it is idle to try to reconstruct
the tendencies and characteristics of the doctrine of any particular Companion and of the Prophet from the traditions attributed to them.
Motzki's book is an attempt to show that in spite of the well
known problems of authenticity stated by Schacht it is possible
to reconstruct the early history of Islamic law from somewhat
later sources. To substantiatehis claim he proposes to investigate the Musannaf, an earlier hadit-book, by the Yemenite author CAbdarrazzaq
al-Sancani (d. 211), which was not available
to Schacht, and was published later.
Chaptertwo is devoted to a careful consideration of CAbdarrazzaq's work. Motzki examines the main transmittersof this
book: Macmar,Ibn 6uraig, Tauri and Ibn CUyaina,identifying
also their sources. He comes to two important conclusions.
First, the Musannaf itself is based on older reliable sources,
none of which have survived but can be reconstructed through
the asdnid; and second, the edited version (Beirut 1972, 19832)
should be considered as being nearly identical with that origihimself (pp. 66ff.). The proof
nally compiled by CAbdarrazzaq
of the authenticity of these traditions is pursued in the next
chapter.
In chapter three, Motzki develops two main sets of formal
criteria which he calls criteria for authenticity, namely, the externaland the internal(pp. 70ff.). He applies both sets of criteria
to the traditionswhich Ibn Guraigreports from cAta' and CAmr
b. Dinar. The external criteriaconsist in examining the transmitters from whom Ibn Guraig reports his traditions. Motzki discovers, for example, that Ibn Guraig takes only 38.5% of his
transmissions from CAt', 25% from a group of five scholars,
20.5% from 86 other scholars. This distribution,Motzki argues,
shows an individual profile which is unlikely to be forged. Be-

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Reviews of Books

sides this, one finds the same random patternby examining the
dicta, acta and responsa, i.e., utterancesand actions.
The internal criteria consist in the manner in which Ibn
6uraig presents his material. And here too Motzki finds support for his claim of authenticity because Ibn Guraig's comments show his criticisms of individual traditions, express his
own opinions, and make clear that he is uncertain about the
exact content of the sayings of CAta'and CAmr.
He concludes that especially the material which Ibn Guraig
received from 'Atia and 'Amr really does go back to them and
partly even one generation earlier, i.e., to the sahaba (e.g., to
Ibn CAbbas);therefore, we can gain insight into the early history of Meccan jurisprudence.
Motzki's methodological approach suits the purpose of analyzing the traditionsof Ibn Guraig. His argumentsare plausible.
His external criteria show that Ibn Guraig was not a conscious
forger; the internal criteria confirm that he was sincere in admitting his ignorance and doubts regarding certain traditions.
But one should always keep in mind that this does not automatically point to the authenticity of all the traditions transmitted
by Ibn 6uraig, as Motzki seems to conclude. Ibn Guraig may
have transmittedsome genuine, but also some forged material,
perhapsbeing subjectively convinced of its authenticity,and his
name may have been used by someone else to confer legitimacy.
So Motzki seems too bold when he writes that CAbdarrazzaq's
Musannaf contains "undoubtedlyauthentic material"(p. 66).
Motzki then attempts, through a detailed analysis of Meccan
transmittersand with the help of examples taken from family
law, i.e., the K. an-nikah and K. at-talaq (pp. 67ff.), to show
that many traditionscan safely be assumed to be genuine, stemming from the time of the Companions and Successors. He is
convinced that traditions originating from the Prophet existed
and were known. In one case he even convincingly argues that
a Prophetic hadit was known but was not cited at first to support a legal rule (p. 115). This can be seen as a very interesting
criticism of Schacht's argumentum e silentio, which, Motzki
concludes, should be used with extreme caution.
In the fourth chapter summarizing his results, Motzki concedes that Schacht's theory regarding the formation of Islamic
jurisprudence,namely that it was originally based on ra'y rather
than on the Qurdanand the sunna, is corroboratedfor the early
history of law in Mecca. Motzki rejects, however, Schacht's
opinion that during the first century no Islamic jurisprudencein
the technical meaning of the term existed. According to him
there are authentic traditionsgoing back to the Prophet and the
Companions, related by the fuqaha' of Mecca, while the decisions of Umayyad judges and governors did not play an important role in the early history of Meccan civil law.
Motzki's work must be considered a fruitful attempt to
throw light upon a hitherto obscure area of early Islamic law,
namely its development in Mecca-which Schacht did not
look at very closely. His critique of Schacht invites further
investigations in this area. This book must be seen as an

685

exceedingly valuable contribution to the understandingof the

formation of Islamic law.
IRENE SCHNEIDER
UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

The Composition of Mutanabbi'sPanegyrics to Sayf al-Dawla.

HAMORI.
Studies in Arabic Literature, SuppleBy ANDRAS
ments to the Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 14. Leiden:
E. J. BRILL,1992. Pp. viii + 128. DM 75.
Studies on the composition and style of classical Arabic poetry are rare, and even a major poet like al-Mutanabbi, and an
importantgenre like the madlh are still insufficiently known as
to techniques of composition and thematic patterns. Andras
Hamori's book fills a gap in our knowledge of the poet and his
favorite genre, and, at the same time, opens up new lines of
enquiry, which may prove valuable for the study of other poets as well. The basis of his analysis is a sample of 22 texts,
the more elaborate sayfiydt, i.e., the panegyrics addressed by
al-Mutanabbi to his patron, Sayf al-Dawla of Aleppo, during
the years between 337/948 and 345/956. Hamori concentrates
on textual analysis, aiming at an identification of recurrentdevices and thematic patterns, some of them already noted by
medieval critics, others defined by him with an evident predilection for terms from the sphere of music, e.g., 'cadence', or
'crescendo motif'. Historical questions, problems of content,
and comparison with other poets are excluded, except for a
short illuminating chapter on the relation of al-Mutanabbi's
technique to that of al-Nabigha al-Dhubyani. The analysis is
limited to the panegyrical sections of the odes, although some
of the sayfiyat are composed with a lengthy amatory prologue.
On this point I tend to deplore the limitations Hamori set for
himself. The relation of nasib and madlh is an intriguing question, and the inclusion of the amatory prologue in the investigation might have provided valuable results. The book has an
appendix containing diagrams of selected poems, a list of "cadential occurrences of conditional sentences," and the Arabic
texts of the poems quoted in the study.
Hamori begins his analysis with a chapteron closing lines or
clausulas (pp. 1-5), which are often gnomic, as alreadyobserved
by medieval critics with regardto other poets, and are frequently
connected with or cast as a conditional sentence. In the next
chapter("Gettingto the Chronicle,"pp. 6-18) a numberof techniques are pointed out which are used by al-Mutanabbiwhen
leading up to narrativesections referringto Sayf al-Dawla'scampaigns. There follows a discussion of the phenomenontermedby
Hamori "cadence" (pp. 19-34), defined as a type of utterance
markingthe end of a theme or providing "a thresholdbefore the

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