The Conditions of Ijtihad and the Claim to Independent Reasoning: From "al-Sawaʿiq al-ilahiyya" to "Tahakkum al-muqallidin"

The central question: who may derive rulings?

One of the most debated issues in the twelfth century AH was a question of method: may anyone who has read the Qurʾan and the Sunna derive rulings from them directly, bind people to his understanding, and pass judgement on those who disagree? Two scholars from the same milieu answered it: Shaykh Sulayman ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab al-Najdi, brother of Shaykh Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, in his epistle "al-Sawaʿiq al-ilahiyya fi al-radd ʿala al-Wahhabiyya," and the Hanbali jurist Ibn ʿAfaliq al-Ahsaʾi in "Tahakkum al-muqallidin"; later, Shaykh Hasan al-Shatti al-Hanbali expanded on the issue in "al-Nuqul al-sharʿiyya."

The introduction of al-Sawaʿiq: consensus on the conditions of religious leadership

Sulayman ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab opens his epistle by establishing that the unlearned person does not act on his own opinion but asks the people of knowledge, and then cites from Imam Abu Bakr al-Harawi a report of consensus on the conditions of one who is followed in religion:

The scholars are all agreed that no one may be an imam in religion and the upright way until he combines these qualities^[1]

The text then lists these qualities: mastery of the dialects of the Arabs and their variations and of the meanings of their poetry; knowledge of the disagreements of scholars and jurists; of grammatical inflection; knowledge of the Book of God, its readings, its exegesis, its clear and ambiguous verses, the abrogating and the abrogated; knowledge of the hadiths and the ability to distinguish sound from weak and connected from broken chains; and then scrupulous piety, truthfulness and reliability. Al-Harawi draws a clear conclusion:

If he combines these qualities, he may then be an imam, may be followed, and may exercise ijtihad in his religion and his fatwas^[2]

The author holds that otherwise, one who has not reached this rank must follow one who has, since people in religion fall into two categories: the follower (muqallid) and the one who exercises ijtihad (mujtahid).

Ibn al-Qayyim as witness

Sulayman ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab does not rest on al-Harawi alone; he quotes Ibn al-Qayyim in "Iʿlam al-muwaqqiʿin," one of the imams his addressees hold in high esteem:

No one may take from the Qurʾan and the Sunna unless the conditions of ijtihad are combined in him^[3]

He follows it with the report attributed to Imam Ahmad on how many hadiths a jurist must know. The argument is that requiring these conditions is not merely the view of later imitators, but that of the very authorities the proponents of the call themselves invoke.

From conditions to judging people

The author then moves to the practical consequence of the issue: pronouncing unbelief (takfir) and distinguishing what takes a person out of Islam from what does not require, in his view, the explanation of imams in whom the conditions of ijtihad are combined; the understanding of one who has not reached that rank does not suffice. He states:

For the community is agreed, as has preceded, that derivation is the rank of the people of absolute ijtihad^[4]

He adds that even if the conditions of ijtihad were combined in a man, no one would be obliged to adopt his view without examination. His argument thus has two sides: one who does not meet the conditions does not derive rulings, and one who does meet them does not bind the community to his understanding.

Ibn ʿAfaliq: the practical test

Ibn ʿAfaliq presents the same issue in the form of a practical test. He asks about a person who has just reached the age of responsibility: should he be ordered to exercise ijtihad from the outset,

even though he does not know what pertains to ijtihad: the verses, the traditions, legal theory, Arabic, and the other things on which the community has agreed^[5]

He argues that the community has agreed that these sciences are conditions of ijtihad, and that one who has not acquired them must, while learning, turn to the people of knowledge. His argument complements that of Sulayman ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab: the latter reports the consensus on the conditions, while Ibn ʿAfaliq demands that the claimant to ijtihad demonstrate them in hadith, Arabic, rhetoric and inheritance law.

Al-Shatti: a method for verifying the claim

Hasan al-Shatti al-Hanbali sets out in "al-Nuqul al-sharʿiyya" the conditions of the mujtahid as established by the legal theorists of the four schools, citing al-Mardawi's "Tahrir" and its commentary, and then proposes a method for verifying a claim to ijtihad:

Whoever claims ijtihad in this age is to be asked about the conditions mentioned^[6]

In other words, the claim is neither rejected nor accepted in itself; it is tested by examining whether its conditions are met in the claimant, which is the very method Ibn ʿAfaliq had followed about a century earlier.

Conclusion

These three texts converge on a single thesis: ijtihad is a scholarly rank with known conditions, most of them agreed upon, encompassing the sciences of Arabic, the Qurʾan, hadith, legal theory, and the points of consensus and disagreement; it is not a right open to anyone who has read the texts. Their authors hold that overstepping these conditions, especially in matters of takfir, is the root of the error they refuted, and that returning to scholars who meet them is the guarantee of sound derivation and of the unity of the community.