An Exposition of the Juristic Schools Among the Zaydīs

Chapter Three of al-Rawḍah al-Nadiyyah fī Ḥaqīqat al-Zaydiyyah (The Dewy Garden on the Reality of Zaydism) by Ibrāhīm al-Darsī

Know — may God grant success to us and to you — that the Zaydīs open the door of ijtihād (independent legal reasoning) to whoever fulfills its requirements properly, and they forbid it to no one who has met its conditions. Indeed, in the Zaydī view a qualified mujtahid is forbidden to practice taqlīd (following another’s ruling) in any matter in which he is capable of exercising ijtihād; he is obliged to act upon his own reasoning and upon whatever conclusion his investigation of the question leads him to. In the Zaydī view, the door of subsidiary legal questions (furūʿ) is a wide one, and every mujtahid within it is correct.

The Zaydīs respect the considered views of the mujtahids: each investigator is entitled to his own conclusion, and they do not require taqlīd of any particular group or faction. For this reason the opinions of mujtahids on subsidiary matters have multiplied among the Zaydīs, and there arose among them well-known juristic schools belonging to great mujtahids from among their scholars and eminent Imams from among their leaders. Their followers and imitators grew numerous, and the adherents of each school devoted themselves to the statements of the figure they followed: they worked to explain his words and expressions, to derive rulings on questions he had not explicitly addressed from those he had addressed that resembled or encompassed them, and to cite and strengthen the evidences upon which he relied.

The Zaydīs are the only sect among whom you find internal divisions in matters of jurisprudence while remaining united and in complete agreement on matters of doctrinal principle (uṣūl). This is unlike the other sects: take the group that affiliates itself in jurisprudence with Abū Ḥanīfa, for instance, or with al-Shāfiʿī, or with Mālik — you find that although they agree on the subsidiary rulings, they differ on the fundamentals. Among the men of the Ḥanafīs, Shāfiʿīs, and Mālikīs you will find the Ashʿarī, the Muʿtazilī, the Sufi, the predestinarian (mujbirī), the qadarī, and others. But the Zaydīs, though they differ on subsidiary matters, are all agreed on the fundamentals and the guiding principles — the Zaydī, the Qāsimī, the Hādawī, and the Nāṣirī alike.

This, then, is a distinctive merit setting the Zaydīs apart from the other Islamic sects.

Generally speaking, there is scarcely an Imam among the Imams of the Zaydīs (peace be upon them) who does not have his own considered views, preferences, exercises of ijtihād, opinions, and followers in juristic matters. The views of most of the Imams (peace be upon them) were set down in dedicated works — especially during the lifetime of a given Imam, when most people would follow his school and his opinion on many questions. Only a handful of these schools, however, became widely known.

Those Zaydī schools within Zaydī jurisprudence are as follows:

FirstThe Zaydiyya

These are the followers of the Greatest Imam, Zayd b. ʿAlī (peace be upon him), to whom the Zaydīs trace themselves in their fundamentals and principles. Because of his excellence, the depth of his insight, the soundness of his opinions, and his proximity in time to the era of prophecy and its trusteeship, he had followers in juristic matters who preferred his school and adopted his positions concerning strict obligations and dispensations, and concerning what is permitted and forbidden.

His exercises of ijtihād and his opinions are held in respect and esteem by all, whether they agree with him or differ from him, and his positions and views are recorded in the books of jurisprudence.

This school still has followers, and his positions still have partisans.

SecondThe Qāsimiyya

These are the followers of the Imam, the Expositor of the Religion and Star of the Messenger’s House, al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm b. Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (peace be upon them).

A great deal of his jurisprudence was transmitted by his grandson, Imam al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq (peace be upon him), in al-Aḥkām; by the great traditionist Muḥammad b. Manṣūr al-Murādī in the Amālī of Imam Aḥmad b. ʿĪsā; and by the sayyid and ḥāfiẓ Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-ʿAlawī in al-Jāmiʿ al-Kāfī. It is among the most renowned and largest schools of Zaydī jurisprudence.

ThirdThe Hādawiyya

These are the followers of Imam al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn b. al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm (peace be upon them), grandson of the aforementioned al-Qāsim. It is among the largest and best-known Zaydī schools, and it agrees at many points with the preceding Qāsimī school.

The Imams gave enormous attention to the jurisprudence of these two schools: they composed major works on it and derived numerous rulings from the texts of their Imams — so much so that many mujtahids and Imams wrote commentaries expounding the positions of these two schools such as they never produced for their own exercises of ijtihād.

Examples include al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh in Sharḥ al-Tajrīd, Abū Ṭālib in Sharḥ al-Taḥrīr, ʿAlī b. Bilāl in al-Wāfī and Sharḥ al-Aḥkām, and Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Ḥasanī in al-Nuṣūṣ, among others. They devoted the utmost care to the juristic doctrine of these two schools, to the point that al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh would at times argue in support of a position of al-Hādī or al-Qāsim (peace be upon them) that ran contrary to his own school and to the view he himself considered preferable.

FourthThe Nāṣiriyya

These are the followers of Imam al-Nāṣir al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Uṭrūsh (peace be upon him).

His school was based in Gīlān and Daylam, and matters reached the point that his followers and those of the Qāsimiyya were locked in such bitter hostility that they came near to declaring one another unbelievers — until Imam al-Mahdī Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Dāʿī (peace be upon him) came and openly proclaimed that every mujtahid is correct. Thereafter each party held to the school of its own Imam while respecting the school of its opponent.

FifthThe Muʾayyadiyya

These are the followers of Imam al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. Hārūn al-Hārūnī.

Although he engaged extensively in deriving rulings for the school of al-Hādī (peace be upon him), he possessed sound insights and well-guided opinions of his own. He stated explicitly (peace be upon him) that on any question for which he had left no explicit ruling, his position was to be taken as identical to that of al-Hādī ilā al-Ḥaqq.

SixthThe Manṣūriyya

These are the followers of Imam al-Manṣūr bi-llāh ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥamza (peace be upon him). This school was distinguished by the freshness of Manṣūrī jurisprudence — as one scholar contemporary with the Imam (peace be upon him) put it, al-Manṣūr’s jurisprudence is “fresh” jurisprudence. This was because many questions arose anew in his time on which no one before him had ruled explicitly, and he ruled on them with the clarity of his thought and the penetration of his insight.

SeventhThe People of the School (Ahl al-Madhhab)

These fall into several ranks:

1. The People of the Texts (ahl al-nuṣūṣ) The founders: Imam Zayd, al-Qāsim, al-Hādī and his two sons, and al-Nāṣir al-Uṭrūsh (peace be upon them).
2. The Extractors (al-mukharrijūn) Those who derived from the texts of the Imams positions consistent with those texts — such as Imam al-Muʾayyad bi-llāh, Imam Abū Ṭālib, ʿAlī b. Bilāl, and Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Ḥasanī.
3. The Compilers (al-muḥaṣṣilūn) Those who devoted themselves to gathering the opinions of the Imams together with what had been derived from them, recording them, transmitting them to their students, and setting them down in their books and compositions — such as Qāḍī Zayd b. Muḥammad al-Kalārī, Qāḍī Jaʿfar b. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Salām, and ʿAlī b. al-ʿAbbās b. Ibrāhīm, down to the time of Imam al-Manṣūr bi-llāh ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥamza (peace be upon him), and the Amīr ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn, author of al-Lumaʿ, among others.
4. The Deliberators (al-mudhākirūn) Those who formulated juristic rules and principles, then reviewed the positions of the Imams who preceded them (peace be upon them) with respect to both content and chain of transmission, and measured them against those rules. Whatever position of the Imams (peace be upon them) accorded with those rules they endorsed and adopted — whether it happened to be the position of Zayd b. ʿAlī, or Imam al-Qāsim, or al-Hādī, or al-Nāṣir, or another — and they treated it as the school’s authoritative doctrine in their view. Whatever contradicted those rules they regarded as a view particular to the one who held it, arrived at through ijtihād, so that no objection is raised against its holder — but in their estimation it is not the doctrine of the school, even if it contradicts the position of the People of the Texts.

To this fourth rank belong Qāḍī ʿAbd Allāh b. Zayd al-ʿAnsī, Qāḍī Muḥammad b. Sulaymān b. Abī al-Rijāl, Imam Yaḥyā b. Ḥamza, and Imam Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Murtaḍā (peace be upon them). It should be noted that some of these Deliberators held positions on certain questions that ran contrary to the very rules they had established for the school.

It is this school that is referred to when Zaydī jurists say, “the people of the school (ahl al-madhhab) hold…”

Difference Without Division

These, then, are the best-known juristic schools among the Zaydīs. Although differences of view have arisen among them on questions open to ijtihād, each school respects the position of the others, and the position of any mujtahid whatsoever, without charging error, moral corruption, or unbelief. No mujtahid has priority over another in being followed; rather, the People of the House (peace be upon them) stand on an equal footing in this regard.

Imam al-Hādī is not more entitled to be followed than Imam Zayd; nor Imam Zayd more than Imam al-Qāsim; nor Imam al-Qāsim more than Imam al-Nāṣir — upon all of them be peace, mercy, and God’s good pleasure. They do not, however, differ regarding the obligation to act upon whatever the People of the House (peace be upon them) have agreed upon unanimously; as for matters on which they differed, each person is free to follow whichever of them he wishes.

Some people are unable to distinguish this kind of difference, which occurs only in subsidiary matters, and so they treat the Hādawiyya as a sect distinct from the Zaydīs in both fundamentals and subsidiary matters, and the Zaydiyya as distinct from the Nāṣiriyya in both. But the truth, according to whoever has investigated and examined the matter, is that there is no disagreement among the Imams of the Zaydīs (peace be upon them) concerning the fundamentals; as for subsidiary matters, their door is wide, and every mujtahid within it is correct.

As for the fundamentals, they have no divisions at all: they are nothing but a single body, united by the fundamentals set out above and the principles previously stated.

These, then, are the divisions of the Zaydīs in subsidiary matters. Keep this in mind, and do not believe what non-Zaydīs say about the Zaydīs.