Author: Murteza Bedir
Islamic Law and Society, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2002

This is a study of an early Hanafī jurist, ‛Isā b. Abān (d. 221/836). After collecting historical information about his life, the author explores his views, as preserved in a fourth century text, al-Fuṣūl fī al-Uṣūl by Abū Bakr al-Jaṣāṣ. ‛Isā’s views, as presented there, shed important light on the development of the Hanafī concept of prophetic reports. Bedir refers to non-Hanafī texts in order to check any possible ideological reconstruction by al-Jaṣāṣ. Finally he compares hisfindings with J. Schacht’s observations on “early schools of law” and find interesting parallels between them and ‛Isā’s views, as presented by al-Jaṣāṣ. Murteza Bedir after a long examination of ‛Isā b. Abān draws a number of conclusions regarding the early phase of Islamic legal theory, in particular with regard to the Hanafī position. He shows here that Wael Halaq’s position in recognizing the traces of the early schools of law is not true and Joseph Schacht successfully distinguished between them and the official schools of law. Second, with regard to the relationship between the traditionalists and rationalists, as described by Schacht, ‛Isā’s approach to reports and their transmitters reveals important indications of tension between these two groups. Third, ‛Isā b. Abān’s exposition of the notion of khabar contains the seeds of abstract theoretical thinking, with which we are familiar from the uṣūl literature of later centuries. The close relationship between jurists and theologians in the court of the Abbasids especially that of al-Ma‛mūn, seems to have contributed to the transfer of speculative theology to the legal sphere.

Bibliography:
Bedir, Murteza; An early response to Shāfi’ī: Īsā B. Abān on the prophetic report (khabar), Islamic Law and Society, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2002, 285-311