al-Auzāʿī

Depiction of al-Auzai (1962)

ʿAbd ar-Rahmān ibn ʿAmr b. Yuhmid al-Auzāʿī ( Arabic عبد الرحمان بن عمرو بن يحمد الأوزاعي, DMG ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān b. ʿAmr b. Yuḥmid al-Auzāʿī born. around 707 in a village near Baalbek , d. 774 in Beirut ) was an Islamic legal scholar in Syria who, in contrast to many other Islamic scholars of his time, supported the Umayyad dynasty. The law school he founded spread mainly in Syria and al-Andalus , but was later replaced there by other law schools. His Nisba al-Auzāʿī probably comes from a place near Damascus , in which al-Auzāʿī settled and who settled there after oneYemeni tribe was named.

Life

Al-Auzāʿī initially worked as a scribe in the Yamāma in central Arabia, a post that earned him a place on the payroll of the Dīwān . Here he also studied with Yahyā ibn Abī Kathīr (d. Approx. 747). Around 728 he went to Basra to study there with al-Hasan al-Basrī and Ibn Sīrīn. However, by the time he arrived in al-Basra, al-Hasan had died, and Ibn Sīrīn died a short time later. He then returned to Damascus, where he studied with Makhūl ibn Abī Muslim , among others . In this way he gained reputation as a legal scholar ( faqīh ) and traditionalist ( muḥaddiṯ ). In the year 113 (= 731 AD), when he was only 25 years old, he was asked for information on questions of Fiqh for the first time .

The following years al-Auzāʿī lived in Damascus and in the ʿAwāsim and Thughūr ("border towns"). Muhammad ibn Saʿd lists him in his “class register” among those scholars who have lived and taught there. He spent his old age in Beirut. Until his death in 774 he worked there as a mufti . He was buried south of Beirut. His grave in the suburb of Hantus is still a popular place of pilgrimage today.

Works

Al-Auzāʿī is said to have arranged his legal teachings according to chapters of jurisprudence ( taṣnīf ). Ibn an-Nadīm names two books by him: a Kitāb as-Sunan fī l-fiqh ("Book of Norms in Jurisprudence") and a Kitāb al-Masāʾil fī l-fiqh ("Book of Problems in Jurisprudence"). Excerpts of them are only preserved in the processing of the following generations: in the Kitab al-Umm of asch-Shāfiʿī , where the theses of al-Auzāʿī are refuted by his contemporary, the Hanafite Abū Yūsuf . The original of his Kitāb as-Siyar in the tradition of his students is said to have been known until the 17th century.

Another source that enables the reconstruction of his legal works, which are no longer available today, is the Kitab as-Siyar of his student Abū Ishāq al-Fazārī (died around 804), who cites al-Auzāʿī throughout his book on international law issues ( siyar ) . In the edited part of this work, the author presents around 80 legal questions that his teacher had answered on the above-mentioned subject. The work was so widely recognized by ash-Shāfidī that he dictated a legal treatise on a similar subject that corresponded to its arrangement.

Further passages after al-Auzāʿī on questions of jihad and jizya quoted at-Tabarī through the mediation of Abū Ishāq al-Fazārī in his work on The controversial (doctrinal opinions) of the legal scholars . The Maliki scholar of Kairouan Sahnūn ibn Saʿīd (d. 854) draws on the doctrines of al-Auzāʿī in the chapters on jihad in his Mudauwana . His letters with legal directives to caliphs and their governors have been handed down in the writings of Ibn Abī Hātim ar-Rāzī (d. 938).

According to Ibn ʿAsākir, al-Auzāʿī also wrote a refutation of the teachings of the Qadarite Thaur ibn Yazīd (d. 770). However, this theological text has not survived either.

Legal theory

The materials of al-Auzāʿī preserved in the later legal works suggest that he is rooted in the tradition in the Sunnah of the Prophet Mohammed and his successors up to the Umayyad caliph Umar Ibn Abd al-Aziz (d. 720). The practice of the prophets has absolute priority in his teaching, which he justifies with a verse from the Koran:

"You have a beautiful example in God's Messenger ..."

- Sura 33 , verse 21

The application of the Prophet's Sun does not take place through the Hadith with the indication of Isnad , but it is understood as a well-known practice and "living tradition" among Muslims up to his time. One of his successors therefore characterized him as a connoisseur of the law, but not as an "authority on the traditional sayings of the Prophet" Mohammed . Thus, the doctrine of al-Auzāʿī can be understood as the representation of the legal practice recognized by the late Umayyads from the early 8th century.

effect

The legal doctrines of al-Auzāʿī reached al-Andalus as early as the end of the 8th century through the mediation of his students, where they were gradually supplanted by the Malikites. His teachings on questions of international and aliens law were taught through Syrian- Andalusian mediation in Andalusian scholar circles until the 12th century. In the Muwattaʾ commentary by the Maliki scholar Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr († 1070) from Córdoba , over five hundred references to the teaching of al-Auzāʿī have been preserved. The survival of his legal books on this subject in Andalusian scholarly circles was no accident of literary history. Three legal writings on jihad and siyar topics from the Islamic East were known in the Arab border brands on the Iberian Peninsula almost at the same time. As far as they can be dated, they were distributed in new copies between the years 833 and 990 in Córdoba, Guadalajara (Arabic: Wādī al-Ḥiǧāra) and Toledo . The Islamic law stipulation of the status of the non-Muslim population and the confrontation with the Christian neighbors - the later Reconquista - outside of Dār al-Islām was just as much a part of everyday life as it was at the border marks to the Byzantine Empire.

Ibn'Asakir supplies in his city's history and scholarly biography of Damascus not only a 80-page biography of al-Auza'i but mentioned in the presentation of Qadi -Ämter of Damascus, the representative of Syrian scholar, who were under the influence of the school of law of al-Auza'i .

The Ouzai Mosque in southern Beirut

The Islamic University Imam al-Auzāʿī in Beirut is named after him.

literature

Arabic sources

• Shams ad-Dīn aḏ-Ḏahabī : Siyar aʿlām an-nubalāʾ. Ed. Shuʿaib al-Arnāʾūṭ. 2nd edition. Muʾassasat ar-Risāla, Beirut, 1982. Vol. VII, pp. 107-134. Digitized
• Muhammad ibn Saʿd : Kitāb aṭ-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr . Ed. E. Sachau. 9 vols. Leiden 1904–1940. Vol. VII / 2, p. 185. Digitized

Secondary literature

• Wilhelm Heffening: Islamic aliens law up to the Islamic-Franconian state treaties. A legal historical study on Fiqh. Reprint of the Hanover 1925 edition. 1975, ISBN 3-7648-0375-4
• Steven C. Judd: Religious Scholars and the Umayyads. Piety-minded supporters of the Marwānid caliphate . Routledge, Abingdon 2014. pp. 71-77.
• Joseph Schacht : The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence . Oxford 1967. pp. 70-73; Pp. 288-289
• Fuat Sezgin : History of Arabic Literature . Brill, Leiden 1967. Vol. 1, pp. 516-517
• Otto Spies and Erwin Pritsch: Classical Islamic Law . In: Bertold Spuler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Orientalistik . First Dept. The Near and Middle East. Supplementary volume III. Oriental law. Brill, Leiden 1964. pp. 267-268
• The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Brill. Suffer. Vol. 1, p. 772

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Judd: Religious Scholars and the Umayyads . 2014, p. 71.
2. ^ Yāqūt: Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (ed.): K.Muʿǧam al-buldān. (Geographical Dictionary) . Leipzig 1866-1870; Vol. 1. (al-Auzāʿ). Vol. 1, p. 280 (Beirut 1955); The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Brill. Suffer. Vol. 1, p. 772
3. ↑ See Judd: Religious Scholars and the Umayyads . 2014, p. 72.
4. ↑ Cf. Ibn Saʿd: Kitāb aṭ-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr . Vol. VII / 2, p. 185. S. XLIX: Summary in German
5. ↑ See Judd: Religious Scholars and the Umayyads . 2014, p. 72.
6. ↑ ^{a b} The Encyclopaedia of Islam . New Edition. Brill. Suffer. Vol. 1, p. 772
7. ↑ Ibn ʿAsākir: Taʾrīch Madīnat Dimaschq, vol. 35, p. 161; on taṣnīf see: Fuat Sezgin (1967), pp. 57–58
8. ↑ Fuat Sezgin (1967), p. 517; Otto Spies and Erwin Pritsch: Classical Islamic Law. In: Bertold Spuler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Orientalistik . First Dept. The Near and Middle East. Supplementary volume III. Oriental law. Brill, Leiden 1964. p. 268
9. ↑ W. Heffening (1925), pp. 149-150
10. ↑ Fuat Sezgin (1967), p. 292 must be corrected; the named "K. as-Siyar fī ʾl-aḫbār “is not a biography of a prophet , but a legal act
11. ↑ Miklos Muranyi : The Kitāb al-Siyar by Abū Isḥāq al-Fazārī. The Qarawiyyīn library manuscript of Fās. In: Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam (JSAI). Vol. 6 (1986), pp. 63ff; here: pp. 70–71. A partial edition of the work has been available since 1987 (Beirut). M Khadduri: The Islamic Law of Nations - Shaybānī's Siyar . Baltimore 1966. p. 26, note 56
12. ↑ M. Muranyi: Fiqh . In: Helmut Gätje (Hrsg.): Outline of Arabic Philology . Vol. II: Literary Studies. Dr. Ludwig Reichelt Verlag, Wiesbaden 1987. p. 308 and note 30
13. ↑ Miklos Muranyi: The legal books of the Qairawāner Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd. History of origin and transmission of works. Steiner, Stuttgart 1999. pp. 33-35
14. ↑ Fuat Sezgin (1967), p. 517, No. 1-9
15. ↑ See Judd: Religious Scholars and the Umayyads . 2014, p. 73.
16. ↑ See Joseph Schacht (1967), p. 34
17. ↑ See Joseph Schacht (1967), p. 70; 288-289
18. ↑ Ignaz Goldziher: Muhammedanische Studien . Halle as 1890. Vol. 2, p. 12
19. ↑ See Joseph Schacht (1967), p. 72
20. ↑ Miklos Muranyi (1985), pp. 92–93 (tradition table)
21. ↑ Miklos Muranyi (1985), pp. 90-91
22. ↑ Vol. 35, pp. 146-229 (Beirut 1996)
23. ↑ In detail: Gerhard Conrad: The Quḍāt Dimašq and the Maḏhab al-Auzāʿī . Materials on Syrian legal history. Beirut texts and studies. Vol. 46. Beirut 1994