Zaidi Texts

In terms of schools of shari'a interpretation, Yemen has a further, quite special, and largely homegrown tradition. This concerns the Zaidi madhhab , which takes its name from Zaid b. 'Ali (died 740), a fourth-generation descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. While the Shafi'is, as was noted, are one of four standard schools of the Sunni tradition, the Zaidis are Shi'is. In the local relationship of these two schools, Yemen has experienced its own microcosm version of a dialectic that has structured the Islamic world at large. Whereas the Shafi'i school, which prospered in many locales from the central Middle East to Southeast Asia, has an international identity, the Zaidi school is comparatively unknown, having flourished mainly in Yemen. In both technical ("school" of shari'a interpretation) and popular (geopolitical identity) senses, the two madhhabs have been associated with distinct regions of the country: the Shafi'is mostly concentrated in the southern highland districts of Lower Yemen, the Zaidis mainly in the northern plateau, or Upper Yemen.^[1]

In substantive doctrine, regarding everything from ritual matters to contracts, the differences between Shafi'is and Zaidis are minor. Unlike the far more numerous and better-known Shi'is of Iran, the Zaidis prided themselves on being extremely close to many Sunni positions, so much so that they have been considered a virtual "fifth" Sunni school.^[2] A fundamental divergence exists, however, between Shafi'is and Zaidis, and this centers on the issue of legitimate rule. While Sunni states were typically ruled by a temporal sultan or a king, the Zaidi state was led by an imam . The imamate is an institution of spiritual-temporal rule, although the very "this-worldly" Zaidis differ from other Shi'is in their

rejections of the doctrine of imamic infallibility and the concept of a "hidden" imam.^[3] Whereas other Shi'i histories were interrupted (e.g., in the seventh or twelfth generations) with the occultation of a last imam recognized as genuine, the Zaidis continued to produce worldly incumbents until the mid-twentieth century. An essential requirement for a Zaidi imam was that he be a sayyid , a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through the union of his daughter Fatima and his cousin 'Ali. Early on in Muslim history the Shi'is were a "faction" that resisted the emergent Sunni view of the legitimacy of leaders lacking this strict qualification of descent.

Beyond the descent requirement, according to Zaidi theory,^[4] an imam is ideally an individual who, in addition to being of full adult capacity, male, free (not a slave), sound in senses and limbs, and both generous and just, is capable as an administrator, a battlefield commander, and a shari'a interpreter (mujtahid ). A pious but retiring scholar would not suffice: an imam is meant to be the sort of man who, upon recognizing his own exemplary qualities and perhaps on the urging of his fellows, rises up and makes himself known, actively and even aggressively asserting his call and claim (da'wa ) to be the imam. As a ruler, as the "commander of the faithful," an imam ought to be outgoing and responsive rather than reclusive, and he had to be willing, as the school's epoynym, Zaid b. 'Ali, put it, to "draw the sword."^[5] An imam was meant to be a "master," as a twentieth-century Arab visitor said in honoring his host Imam Yahya, "of both the pen and the sword."^[6]

Mastery of the pen was taken very seriously: Zaidi imams were the most scholarly of rulers, prolific in a wide spectrum of intellectual genres, most notably in shari'a jurisprudence.^[7] As their scholarly achievements demonstrate, many imams were capable of advanced interpretation. The "word"/"opinion" (qawl ) of such imamic interpreters, especially when reinforced by the consensus of leading jurists, was authoritative among the Zaidis.^[8] As had been the practice of some of their predecessors, the ruling imams Yahya and his son Ahmad of the twentieth-century Hamid al-Din line issued collections of personal interpretations, which guided rulings in the courts of their realm. The distinctive form of textual domination in the Zaidi state thus derived from the presence of a qualified interpreter at the pinnacle of authority. Although it was a general phenomenon that the shari'a provided the idiom of authority in premodern Muslim states, the Zaidis were special in their worldly fusion of the roles of interpreter and commander.

Although Sunni states, including several that ruled from capitals in Lower Yemen in the thirteenth through the fifteenth century, were typically led by the temporal authority of a sultan or a king, Sunni schools recognized their own version of the imamate.^[9] A Sunni imam differed primarily from a Shi'i one in not being required to have the specific legitmacy of direct blood descent from the Prophet Muhammad, the issue that preoccupied Shi'is. There was a descent qualification for a Sunni imam (also known as a khalifa , "caliph"), but this pertained to the much more inclusive category of Quraysh, the leading "tribe" of seventh-century Mecca.^[10] The other major difference, taking the Shafi'is and Zaidis now as specific examples, was that the Shafi'i imamate existed only in theory, in the confines of the fiqh manuals, while that of the Zaidis had an existence in both theory and practice. The Shafi'is nevertheless elaborated formal "requirements for the imam." According to al-Nawawi, he should be "Muslim, of full adult capacity, free (not a slave), male, a Qurayshite, a qualified shari'a interpreter (mujtahid ), courageous, of discerning views, and sound in hearing, sight, and speech."^[11]

If an ideal Shafi'i imam was envisioned as scholarly and courageous, an interpreter-commander much like that of the Zaidis, in actual Shafi'i states interpretation and command were decisively separated into an interpretive authority controlled collectively by the scholarly community (the 'ulama' ) and a temporal authority held by the sultan or king. Ibn Khaldun remarked upon this division of labor between wielders of the pen and of the sword in Muslim states. In observing that "scholars are, of all people, those least familiar with the ways of politics" and that their intellectual craft was disdained by men in power, Ibn Khaldun was identifying a situation characteristic of Sunni sultanates, not the Zaidi imamate.^[12]

Like the Shafi'is, the Zaidis had their own concise and authoritative manuals of shari'a jurisprudence, the most important of which is Kitab al-Azhar (The Book of Flowers). A chapter devoted to the imamate represents the mainstream Zaidi position on qualifications and activities connected with the position. The Azhar text is very similar to the Shafi'i manuals with respect to arrangement and chapter contents. Its author, Ahmad b. Yahya al-Murtada (d. 1432), was the deposed imam who composed his work while in prison. More than thirty commentaries and glosses were prepared for this authoritative manual, among them separate multivolume commentaries by the original author and by his sister.^[13]Al-Azhar was often studied in its composite, commented-

upon form, known as Sharh al-Azhar , which was the basic text combined with its most noted commentary by 'Abd Allah b. Miftah (d. 1472).^[14] A work of enduring importance in the northern highlands, the Sharh al-Azhar came to figure in the intellectual world of Ibb as a result of conquest.

The first Zaidi imam appeared in the far northern Yemeni town Sa'da at the end of the ninth century.^[15] He was invited by local tribes to help in settling their disputes. Relations with the powerful northern tribes would be central to imamic politics of the subsequent centuries, but, as Paul Dresch notes, "there is something of a paradox involved: the tribes have always been politically important, and yet tribalism forms no part of the language of statecraft."^[16] Despite wide vicissitudes in the reach of imamic authority, a long succession of these Zaidi leaders would be of continuing significance in highland history down to the mid-twentieth century. Originally confined to a far northern sphere of influence by strong Sunni states based in the southern highlands, Zaidi imams eventually managed to assert their control over the districts of Lower Yemen as well. It was at the conclusion of the first Ottoman occupation of Yemen, circa 1635, that Ibb and the rest of the southern highlands fell under extended but gradually weakening Zaidi imamic rule from the north. This rule continued until a period of nearly complete anarchy at about the middle of the nineteenth century, followed by the reappearance of the Ottomans in 1872. The second period of Ottoman rule, which concluded with the dissolution of the old empire at the close of World War I, was followed by the assumption of independent rule by Zaidi imams of the Hamid al-Din family. These imams, father, son, grandson, and (briefly) great-grandson, initially opposed Ottoman authority and then governed the highlands independently until the coming of the 1962 Revolution and the birth of the Yemen Arab Republic.

In Ibb, dominance was partly played out in the sphere of shari'a jurisprudence, as a relation between the schools of ruler and ruled.^[17] During earlier, Lower Yemen—based dynasties such as the Rasulids, the Shafi'i school was the official madhhab (al-Akwa' 1980:9), but under the Zaidi imams it would become subordinate. It was not only in this period in Yemen that Shafi'is found themselves in such circumstances, however. Maktari (1971:3–4) suggests that their frequent remove from state control gave Shafi'i jurists "a measure of intellectual freedom which uniformity and authority to a great extent denied to the other schools." As the early Yemeni historian Ibn Samura astutely

observed, "governments have miraculous influence through suppression of knowledge, or in diffusing and publicising it or in swiftly consolidating it."^[18] Madhhab politics under imamic rule dictated not only that imamic opinions were applied in the local Ibb courts, but also that scholars trained in the Zaidi tradition were appointed to judgeships and that texts such as the Sharh al-Azhar were taught in local schools. There was an impact as well on historical writing: the once prominent Shafi'i voice in biographical histories—including such Lower Yemen-based authors as Ibn Samura, al-Janadi, al-Khazraji, al-Burayhi—was replaced by that of Zaidi historians. From the limelight of historical attention, Lower Yemen passed into the shadows. In these later sources Ibb is regarded as a somewhat remote outpost, and, if they receive mention at all, local scholars are identified by the appended madhhab marker "al-Shaf'i." During the long period of imamic ascendancy and in the absence of such official stimuli as appointments, Shafi'i thought nevertheless persisted in Lower Yemen, its vitality attributable not only to intellectual resistance but also to continuing interchanges with Shafi'i communities elsewhere in Southwest Arabia. To the west, on the coastal Tihama, was the town of Zabid, a great, old center of Sunni scholarship, and there were also important communities of Shafi'i scholars located beyond the reach of Zaidi rule, in sultanates to the south surrounding Aden and especially in the Hadramawt to the east.

Nearly three hundred years of imamic suzerainty, interrupted only by the forty-seven-year interlude of Ottoman rule at the turn of the twentieth century, fostered among Zaidis a sense of their natural role as the overlords of Lower Yemen. In Zaidi eyes, the Shafi'is were a subject population (ra'iyya ); the inverse of this imaging was the Shafi'i view of the Zaidi imams as tyrants and of their tribal supporters as ignorant and ruthless. A reciprocally hostile sentiment^[19] long characterized Zaidi-Shafi'i interaction, although this was recast with the birth of the politics of nationalism in this century. The rigidity of these old stereotypes was in some ways mitigated and in others exacerbated by the substantial southward flow of northerners into the Shafi'i districts during the centuries of Zaidi rule. Governors, administrators, judges, teachers, military personnel, and tribesmen moved into Ibb town and its hinterland. As a consequence, a significant number of the contemporary families of Ibb as well as many powerful rural families trace their arrival in the area to the two-and-a-half-century interval between the early and the late Ottoman occupation.^[20] With the exception of some

townsmen who arrived this century and some rural "tribal" families who retained connections with the North, the descendants of Zaidis settling in Ibb and elsewhere in Lower Yemen, the scholarly and the untutored alike, eventually "became Shafi'is" (tashaffa'u ), in either the narrow juridical or the wider regional identity senses.

Muhammad Al-Shawkani

The distinctiveness of the Zaidi school in connection with shari'a interpretation went beyond the credentials of the imam. For the Shafi'is and the other Sunni schools, the right of scholars to engage in interpretation (ijtihad ) was eventually placed in question. In the centuries after the schools themselves had been consolidated, some scholars contended that the principal issues had been settled and that the requisite levels of interpretive skill for further fundamental elaboration were no longer to be found. This position was summarized in a famous assertion, that the "gate of independent interpretation (ijtihad )" was "closed." By contrast, in the Zaidi school, there had been no such debate concerning the practice of interpretation. For the Zaidis, the "gate of ijtihad " had always been unproblematically open, and the aggressive advocacy and pursuit of interpretation became a hallmark of their school.

Interpretive issues were at the center of the scholarly project of Muhammad b. 'Ali al-Shawkani, the towering intellectual figure of early-nineteenth-century Yemen.^[21] A man of multiple talents and achievements, al-Shawkani was not only an active teacher and a prolific writer, but also a powerful actor in the Yemeni politics of his day. In addition to his contributions as a poet and as a historian, al-Shawkani authored a number of substantial and influential works in the fields of hadith studies, Quran exegesis, and jurisprudence. One of the leading advocates and practitioners of ijtihad in the entire Muslim world in his day, he was also the chief judge, the "Judge of Judges" (qadi al-qudat ) in the Zaidi imamic state, from his appointment in 1795 until his death in 1834. In his writings, al-Shawkani emerges as a highly independent thinker, who criticizes, synthesizes, and innovates, both with respect to the internal debates in the Zaidi school and in mediating between the Zaidis and the Sunni schools. A Zaidi by ascribed intellectual birthright (and in his political commitment to the imamate), he strove for an intellectual posture transcending conventional madhhabs.

One of al-Shawkani's works appreciated by Shafi'i jurists in Ibb is his commentary on the Azhar text. The Raging Torrent (Al-Sayl al-Jarrar ), as it is known, is a strong, section-by-section critique of the

standard Zaidi manual. In this commentary, as in all his other works, his desire to revitalize the interpretive project of ijtihad comes through clearly. This overriding aim of his scholarship is exemplified by the stated purpose of his biographical history, perhaps his best-known work among the generally educated in Ibb. In the opening pages of this book, The Rising Moon , al-Shawkani identifies and then criticizes the Sunni view that interpretive ijtihad pertained only to the early age of Islam.

The special competence of the early generations of this [Muslim] community with respect to substantial achievements made in the sciences of knowledge has come to be assumed among the uninformed rabble, while at the same time that of the later generations has been ignored. This has proceeded until the notion appeared among adherents of the four [Sunni] schools of the impossibility of there having been a qualified interpreter (mujtahid ) after the sixth [A.H. , twelfth A.D. ] century, as some say, or after the seventh century, as others claim. This assertion is indicative of an ignorance that should be obvious to individuals of the lowest level of knowledge, the least perception, the most humble understanding. Because this represents a restriction of divine grace, of the abundance of God, to some of the faithful while excluding the others, to people of some eras while excluding other eras, to individuals of one age excluding other ages. And this without evidence or supporting text. This weak and despicable assertion would deprive the recent era of an upholder of the proofs of God, an interpreter of His Book and the Sunna of His Prophet, and a clarifier of what He established as law for his faithful. This undoubtedly would amount to the loss of the shari'a and the disappearance of religion. God the Most High has, however, undertaken to protect His religion: the intent being not simply to preserve it in the bodies of pages and registers but rather to have actual individuals available to represent it to the people at all times and in every necessity.^[22]

Al-Shawkani's purpose in The Rising Moon is thus to refute the idea held by some Sunnis that qualified practitioners of ijtihad did not exist after the formative centuries of Islam. He does so by providing biographies of about six hundred men and a few women, Yemenis and non-Yemenis, all of the highest scholarly achievements, who lived in the period from the eighth Hegira century down to his own time. His statement concludes by saying that the shari'a, and Islam generally, survives not so much in concrete writing ("in the bodies of pages and registers") as through embodiment in the lives of individuals, in the living "text" they transmit and interpret. One of al-Shawkani's intellectual endeavors in this connection was to document the specific human links (isnads ) by which his own learning had been received. Like

al-Shafi'i and others of the earlier generations, al-Shawkani authored a personal genealogical, men and texts, record that established the authoritative transmission of his knowledge.^[23] Al-Shawkani's position on ijtihad and his activity as an interpreter have been taken into account in recent reconsiderations of the controversial history of the "closure" of Sunni interpretation (e.g., Hallaq 1984). Such rethinking of the history of ijtihad will influence our understanding of the relative dynamism of the various schools. In the case of Yemen, for example, it cannot be maintained that the Zaidis were unique in their continuing intellectual vigor while the scholarship of the Sunni Shafi'is was "largely frozen in a tenth-century mold."^[24]

Al-Shawkani also wrote several treatises on the specialized subject of jurisprudential method. That is, in addition to such works as his commentary on the Azhar , which is at the shari'a manual level of applied jurisprudence (fiqh ) proper, he also wrote in the separate genre of legal studies known as the "sources of jurisprudence" (usual al-fiqh ). This special, methodological branch of the legal literature, which was launched by al-Shafi'i in his Risala , is specifically concerned with interpretation. One way the distinction between the two levels of discourse has been characterized in Yemen is by means of a simple botanical metaphor. In the new Preface to the published text of the Azhar , the difference between usul , the sources methodology, and furu' , the rules of applied law, is explained by means of the manual title, The Book of Flowers:

In the usage of scholars of interpretation in the Islamic community, fiqh is said to be composed of usul and furu'. Usul is the science through which shari'a rules are derived from first principles [i.e., Quran and Sunna]. Furu' are the applied shari'a rules concerning ritual obligations and worldly undertakings. Such applied shari'a rules are what this book [the Azhar manual] contains. The usul are like the tree, and the furu' are like the branches. On the branches there are leaves and flowers. And the author of this book therefore took flowers (azhar ) as his title.

Shari'a manuals together with their commentaries and glosses—that is, the furu' literature—were the practically oriented product, while the usul (commonly known as the "roots") literature contained the methodology. In Ibb, the principal usul work studied was the extremely short and memorizable text, known simply as the Pages (Waraqat ) by the famous early Shafi'i jurist al-Juwayni (d. 1086),^[25] the teacher of the great al-Ghazzali. Al-Juwayni's text concludes with a concise definition

of the intellectual activity of ijtihad and the position of the interpreter, the mujtahid. This discussion is arrived at after a summary treatment of the essential features of several related disciplines, all of which are brought to bear in the exercise of ijtihad. Thus al-Juwayni touches upon key issues of the language sciences, rhetoric, logic, and argumentation; the field of Quranic exegesis (tafsir ); and the field of hadith studies, including the mechanism of oral transmission. The practice of ijtihad is a method predicated on competence in all these fields. The usul, or "roots," of jurisprudence are four: the two foundational "source-texts," the Quran and the Sunna, and two methods, analogy and consensus. An interpreter reasons from the two authoritative "texts" to new applied principles that are not specifically covered in either the Quran or the Sunna, and such individual interpretive acts may become generally accepted through the working of scholarly consensus (see chapter 7).

Nearly a school unto himself, al-Shawkani had numerous students and influenced many colleagues, and as chief judge he was responsible for recommending judicial appointments to the imam. He also visited Lower Yemen where he is said to have taught briefly in the towns of Ta'izz, Jibla, and Ibb.^[26] Among his close disciples was his student and son-in-law Salih al-'Ansi.^[27] As al-'Ansi's biographer, al-Shawkani emphasizes his studies in the field of hadith: "He studied under me the two sahihs [i.e., the works of al-Bukhari and Muslim] and the sunan of Abu Da'ud and some of my own writings." Al-'Ansi initially served as a judge in San'a', where he occasionally represented al-Shawkani in the imamic council. Later in his career, al-'Ansi was posted to a judgeship in Ibb, where he died in 1875. With this appointment, a local scholarly family of contemporary importance took root in Ibb town society. As eventually occurred in the case of the descendants of other new arrivals from the Zaidi north, the al-'Ansi line became Shafi'i. In this instance it happened that the shift to a Shafi'i identity occurred in one generation, as Salih's son 'Ali received instruction in Shafi'i jurisprudence from 'Ali b. Naji al-Haddad (d. 1893), father of 'Abd al-Rahman al-Haddad, whose biography was quoted earlier. 'Ali b. Naji, the apical ancestor of the Haddad line in Ibb, is memorialized in a poem by his student al-'Ansi, who speaks of his mentor's "passion for jurisprudence, which he used to / Dictate to me in the early morning darkness." Al-'Ansi goes on to lament the "death of our scholar and the interpreter of our era / Who clarified the ambiguous and the obscure."

Figure 4.
'Abd al-Rahman al-Haddad, front right, seated next to Sa'id Pasha, ca. 1915.

'Abd Al-Rahman Al-Haddad

Unlike his father, 'Ali b. Naji, al-Shawkani's transplanted student Salih al-'Ansi, and others of the previous generations in Ibb, who were witnesses to the dissipated patrimonial authority of the Zaidi imamate, 'Abd al-Rahman al-Haddad grew up in a district that identified itself as part of the far-flung Ottoman Empire.^[28] His dates (1876–1922) nearly coincided with those of the Ottoman Province of Yemen (1872–1918). Trained, as his biography states, on such manuals as al-Nawawi's Minhaj , al-Haddad was a distinguished representative of turn-of-the-century Shafi'i scholarship. By 1904 he had succeeded his father as the Ibb mufti, a judicial post requiring the highest level of scholarly achievement. During the protracted but unsuccessful siege of that year (ensuing from the accession of Yahya Hamid al-Din to the imamate), al-Haddad was a town leader, responding at one point to a Zaidi commander's surrender demand with a well-remembered defiant riposte: an envelope containing five bullets and a satirical poem.

Figure 5.
Ibb governor Isma'il Basalama with two sons, after meeting Imam Yahya in San'a', ca. 1920.

Three years later, he was among forty prominent Yemenis sent on a delegation to Istanbul to meet the Ottoman sultan. He was returned to a judgeship and a political position as vice-governor of Ta'izz (which then included the Ibb district). With the outbreak of World War I and the attack on the British near Aden, he headed a Lower Yemen contingent of mujahidin attached to the regular Ottoman forces under the overall command of Sa'id Pasha. A photo taken at the time shows al-Haddad, with deep-set eyes and in turban and engulfing robes, seated next to Sa'id in his officer's tunic, high boots, and tarbush. (See fig. 4.) Following the collapse of Ottoman authority in 1918, as Imam Yahya prepared to assume control of the southern highlands, an emissary was sent to reconcile the powerful men of Lower Yemen, including al-Haddad and the governor of Ibb, his father-in-law, Isma'il Basalama (al-Akwa' 1987). This descendant of Hadrami merchants who had settled in Ibb by the early 1800s was also the town's leading merchant in the valuable caravan trade to Aden. (See fig. 5.) Both men and a handful of other regional dignitaries traveled north to offer their allegiance to the imam. Like Basalama, who was reappointed to

his post in Ibb, al-Haddad was continued in his political position in Ta'izz and was also made presiding judge of the southern branch of the appeal court.

This Yemeni Shafi'i biography—bullets and a poem, military command and muftiship, political and judicial posts—is one that joins assertive leadership qualities and important state charges with distinguished scholarly credentials. In a manner reminiscent of an ideal Zaidi imam, al-Haddad combined an aptitude for statecraft (siyasa ) with shari'a knowledge: he "had a great capacity for siyasa ," his biographer writes, and "when he finished his work issuing juristic opinions and his responsibilities in conducting the administrative affairs of state, he would turn to study the works of al-Suyuti and others like him in the sciences of shari'a interpretation (ijtihad )." A more rarely instanced combination of power and knowledge, this alternative Sunni leadership ideal was modeled on the simple modesty of Abu Bakr (the first caliph) rather than, as was the Shi'i ideal, on the charisma of 'Ali (the fourth caliph) and the legitimacy of his issue. "Despite his unusual opportunity," the biographer remarks of al-Haddad, "he accumulated nothing in the way of worldly possessions, not even a house for his children." Al-Haddad was an urbane exemplar of a type of Yemeni "great man" accomplished in both the spoken and the written word. In stories told about him, al-Haddad is said to have expressed himself extemporaneously with audacious self-assurance, whether confronting the Ottoman sultan or the ruling Zaidi imam. In addition to his scholarly and administrative status, he was an adib , a man of letters: "Attributed to him are writings and dialogues, in verse and in prose, characterized by the most eloquent style and verbal facility."^[29]

Among al-Haddad's last works was a versification of Imam Yahya's recently issued ikhtiyarat , his personal shari'a interpretations.^[30] This commentary by a leading Shafi'i jurist on the opinions of the pivotal Zaidi interpreter is but one instance of an intellectual dialogue that has gone on in the highlands for many centuries. Aside from those aspects of their schools that set them apart—represented by their respective manuals, such as the Minhaj of al-Nawawi, the Mukhtasar of Abu Shuja', and the Azhar of Imam al-Murtada—in many other respects the Shafi'is and Zaidis of Yemen shared a common intellectual tradition. Beyond a convergence in the Quran itself, highland scholars of both schools held in equivalent esteem a number of fundamental works in such disciplines as hadith, Quran exegesis, grammar, and so on.^[31] A revitalizing synthesis of the combined tradition was the great accom-

plishment of Muhammad al-Shawkani, who is counted as an intellectual ancestor by virtually all Yemeni shari'a scholars.