The Shifting Visions of Community and Politics in the Early Abbasid Period: From Abu Hanifa and Malik to Shafi`i and Ibn Hanbal

Two visions of authority in Islam struggled for dominance. The ideals of quranic egalitarianism resonated with Arabian tribal meritocracy and upheld the community as the primary recipient of the prophetic mission and authority, while the exigencies of an expansive Near Eastern empire militated in the direction of increasing stratification and accumulation of power at the center.  Neither ideal could vanquish the other. Both the Community-centered and ruler-centered visions were reconfigured in the course of the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries. As the Community could no longer be maintained as a united body (jama`a), its function was transferred to the sacred Sunna whose proper understanding was upheld by a minority of pious scholars in every generation. This shift is particularly noticeable as we move from Abū Ḥanīfa to his disciple Abū Yūsuf as well as from Malik to Shafi`i and Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. It is in this context that Shāfiʿī’s well-known attempt to tie legal interpretation to strict scriptural hermeneutics, bolster the authority of hadith as the sole source of the Sunna, and severely limit the discretion of the state in interpreting and applying the law can be best understood. Ahmad b. Hanbal’s vindication in the famous mihna helped consolidate the Sunna-centered approach. Thus, when faced with the loss of the Community-centered ideal, the pious froze the model of the Prophet and the early Community in a Sunna-centered vision of Islam, while the rulers of the expansive empire came to approximate a ruler-centered vision of religio-political authority familiar to the ancient Near East.