The Musnad of al-Shāfiʿī


A collection of hadith called Musnad al-Shāfiʿī is associated with the Nishapuran traditionist Abū al-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Aṣamm (d. Nishapur, 346/957). It was apparently assembled by students from what al-Aṣamm had heard from al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān al-Murādī (d. 270/884) in his youth. Around 40 percent of the hadith in the Umm of al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) shows up also in the Musnad of al-Aṣamm. Comparisons between the Musnad and the Umm can tell us something of the state of the Umm as al-Rabīʿ dictated it near the end of his life. Books in the Musnad correspond only roughly to books in the Umm, so there was still some fluidity of organization. There are also many minor differences of wording, especially to isnāds. However, the order of hadith within books of the Musnad agrees well with their order in the Umm, confirming that the Umm as we have it is close to the state in which al-Rabīʿ left it.


Mots-clés
al-Aṣamm -al-Shāfiʿī -hadith -Droit musulman A collection of hadith called Musnad al-Shāfiʿī is associated with the Nishapuran traditionist Abū al-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Aṣamm (d. Nishapur, 346/957).1 He was born in 247/861-2. After collecting some hadith in his home town, he travelled west in the company of his father to collect hadith in Fars, Iraq, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt in his teen-age years, the mid-250s to the mid-260s/late 860s-late 870s. He lost his hearing at about the time he returned to Nishapur but was able to dictate what he knew until he went blind in 344/955, which meant that he could no longer check his notes and could relate only fourteen hadith reports and seven other narrations (ḥikāyāt) he had from al-Rabīʿ from al-Shāfiʿī. He disliked to accept payment for hadith and so would support himself as an occasional copyist (warrāq). As early as 277/890-1, he was dictating Kitāb al-Maʿānī by al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/823-4), a philological commentary on the Qurʾan.
Biographers stress mainly his transmission of the works of al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), which he had heard from the Egyptian al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān al-Murādī (d. 270/884). The story is told that he was once asked to make the call to prayer. He stood up and said loudly, 'There related to me al-Rabīʿ there related to me al-Shāfiʿī' , then laughed together with those around. That was what he was normally asked to stand up and say in a loud voice. Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī  . El Shamsy takes it that 'the book of al-Shāfiʿī' refers to the whole of the Umm.11 This is possible, but I would say it more likely refers to Mukhtaṣar al-ḥajj al-kabīr alone, a title not found in the surviving Umm but matching one of the books named by Ibn al-Nadīm among its constituent parts (also an odd topic to be the last of the Umm for al-Rabīʿ to dictate, as El Shamsy reckons).12 El Shamsy professes to be impressed by a high degree of agreement among various lists of the books that constitute the Umm. of the Umm as al-Shāfiʿī left it in 204/820, may shed some light on its state as al-Rabīʿ had fixed it by the mid-260s/late 870s.
Although, like the Umm, the Musnad is mostly arranged by topic, it is plainly futile to infer anything from the Musnad about the order of books in the Umm. Ritual purity and prayer come at the start, as one expects of a law book, but then fasting is interrupted by reports on the permissibility of divorce. Extracts from the Risālah, apparently the introduction to the Umm, show up about three-quarters of the way through the Musnad. Similarly, Ibn al-Nadīm's list of the constituent parts of al-Mabsūṭ, although beginning with the Risālah and proceeding from there to ritual purity and prayer, names two books on apostates before it gets to the alms tax. The coincidences that El Shamsy detects seem to be mainly the standard categories of Islamic law, presumably formed over the eighth century. Some section titles are common to all three; e.g. kitāb jirāḥ al-ʿamd. Most are different, though.
More remarkable are some odd pairings. For example, Ibn al-Nadīm's list includes a kitāb al-ḥudūd wa-kary al-dawābb (qurʾanic penalties and the renting of riding animals), two topics not obviously related and not near each other in either the Umm or the Musnad.15 Devin Stewart has suggested correcting our text to kitāb al-ḥadw wa-kary al-dawābb (driving and renting riding animals).16 This is conceivable, but also that penalties and renting were joined not because the two topics seemed related, rather because the first left a certain amount of space in a fascicle, which the second exactly filled. The same would explain such odd pairings in the Musnad as kitāb ibāḥat al-ṭalāq wa-kitāb al-ṣiyām al-kabīr (the permissibility of divorce and fasting, although the six hadith reports in this section concern only divorce, not fasting). It would explain why one manuscript of the Musnad includes six hadith reports from the Umm, kitāb ṣalāt al-khawf (the fear prayer), at the end of the section kitāb al-ʿīdayn (the two festivals; Musnad 1:513-20; Umm 2:437-64). Such variant combinations and sections seem incompatible with El Shamsy's assertion that Ibn al-Nadīm's list and the Musnad show remarkable stability of organization. It seems likely from the manuscript evidence of Māliki books, among other things, that long books like the Umm circulated in the form of separate fascicles in the ninth and tenth centuries, so that the order of books could easily change. In this example, the Musnad generally follows the order of hadith in the Umm but does not get beyond the topic of ritual purity except for thirteen reports having to do with the penalty for adultery. This section of the Musnad seems to be indeed an extract of the Umm but very incomplete. It is also somewhat disordered, for it seems much more likely that hadith in the Musnad about adultery were somehow interpolated into a sequence of hadith about ritual purity than it is that Ikhtilāf al-ḥadīth as dictated by al-Rabīʿ jumped back and forth between ritual purity and adultery, to be set straight by subsequent redactors. It seems impossible to know whether the Musnad omits most of Ikhtilāf al-ḥadīth because al-Aṣamm knew only part of it or for some reason his disciples heard only part of it, left their extract unfinished, or compiled a longer extract that was mostly lost some time later.
A similar example is Wa-min kitāb ikhtilāf Mālik wa-al-Shāfiʿī in the Musnad, comprising 136 hadith reports, corresponding to Kitāb Ikhtilāf Mālik   Here also is fairly strong evidence that the Umm was available to al-Aṣamm in just the form in which we have it, although differently divided into sections. Many more such overlaps could be cited.
The Musnad also includes occasional comments on organization from al-Aṣamm; for example, These two hadith reports are not in the kitāb al-wuḍūʾ, but we have brought them out because this is their place. In this place in kitāb al-wuḍūʾ, al-Shāfiʿī said that Abū al-Ḥuwayrith related < al-Aʿraj < Ibn al-Ṣimmah that the Messenger of God … pissed, then performed tayammum (the minor ritual ablution without water) (Musnad 1:102).
On the one hand, this bespeaks consciousness of the order of hadith in one book of the Umm, from which al-Aṣamm was dictating with some rearrangement by himself. On the other hand, the previous four hadith reports in the Musnad have these numbers as they appear in the Umm: 12, 43, 46, 44. The next four are 45, 50, 51, 52. It is conceivable that someone subsequently altered the arrangement of hadith in the Umm in the same way al-Aṣamm had thought to rearrange them but more likely that either al-Aṣamm's notes were confused or his remark about two hadith reports from elsewhere is misplaced in the Musnad.
There is extant a separate book with the title Aḥkām al-Qurʾān attributed to al-Shāfiʿī, well known to be an extract from the Umm and a few other works (mostly no longer extant) by al-Bayhaqī (d. 458/1066).20 However, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān is also mentioned by Ibn al-Nadīm and apparently even the The number in italics refers to a report that appears in Ikhtilāf al-ḥadīth, separately numbered by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. Considering how closely the Musnad usually agrees with the Umm as to the sequence of hadith, it seems plain that al-Aṣamm and his students did not extract this section from a book in the Umm as we know it. The high proportion of hadith in this section of the Musnad not found anywhere in the Umm, over a third, suggests the same.  1322 1341 1324 1260 1362 1113 1311 1132 1317 996 998 989 195 1185 1350 1348 1352  1353 1354 1355 It is possible that the 19 hadith reports not found in al-Umm were in a lost mukhtaṣar al-ḥajj al-kabīr, but it seems unlikely that al-Aṣamm and his students based this section on that book. Also telling, although less so because so short, are the sections wa-min kitāb al-nikāḥ min al-Imlāʾ, comprising four hadith reports (Musnad 2:1998-2000), and wa-min kitāb al-nikāḥ min al-Imlāʾ, comprising just one (Musnad 2:2001). One from the former section and the only one in the latter are not found in al-Umm.
Al-Muzanī also refers to various transcripts of al-Shāfiʿī's dictation as sources for the Mukhtaṣar. Sometimes, he simply cites the imlāʾ, which might be the same as the The question arises whether the amālī referred to in the Musnad actually comprised the raw notes from which al-Rabīʿ assembled the books of the Umm. Al-Muzanī refers to a wide variety of notes, including notes from al-Shāfiʿī never dictated to anyone, notes taken down by others from al-Shāfiʿī's dictation, and things he himself took down from al-Shāfiʿī's dictation.28 Later Shāfiʿi writers also quote al-Imlāʾ, suggesting a body of notes haphazardly available.29 There are many other small discrepancies as well between the Musnad and the Umm. Sometimes these look like minor copying errors such as were inevitable in the age of manuscripts; for example, where the Umm includes a conjunction (wa-) but the Musnad not (Umm 2:43-4; Musnad 1:107). Occasionally, the Musnad offers a shorter version; for example, leaving out most of the setting for the Prophet's instruction to a Companion not to recite the Qurʾan at great length when leading the prayer (Musnad 1:329; Umm 2:346). Sometimes the Musnad offers a longer version. For example, the Musnad reports < al-Rabīʿ < al-Shāfiʿī < Mālik < Nāfiʿ < Ibn ʿUmar 'that he performed the minor ritual ablution in the market, washing his face and hands, wiping his head. Then he was called to a funeral, so he went into the mosque to pray over it. There he wiped his leather socks (khuffayhi), then prayed in them' (Musnad 1:126). The Umm reports < Mālik < Nāfiʿ 'that Ibn ʿUmar pissed in the market, then performed the minor ritual ablution, wiping his leather socks, then prayed' (Umm 8:263-4). The Musnad sometimes offers comments not found in the Umm. Following a report of Ibn ʿAbbāsʾ advice, the Musnad includes this apparent quotation of al-Shāfiʿī: 'This is also the position of Ibn ʿUmar, by which we go' (Musnad 1:315). There is a similar report in Ikhtilāf ʿAlī wa-ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd (Umm 8:493) but lacking any mention of Ibn ʿUmar's position, also with a different Follower in the isnād: the Musnad version goes through ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ (Meccan client, d. 114/732?), the Ikhtilāf version through ʿAṭāʾ ibn Yasār (Medinese qāṣṣ, client, d. 103/721-2?). At one point, the Musnad gives a longer version of a hadith report found also in the Umm, then adds, 'Al-Rabīʿ said that al-Shāfiʿī asserted there was no one more given to disagreeing with the people of Medina stable, no longer just the lecture notes of one or another student. Similarities between the Musnad and the Umm sufficiently outweigh discrepancies to confirm that acceptance. The Musnad and the Sunan both confirm that there was a larger body of al-Shāfiʿī's teaching on which different disciples might draw, as Norman Calder proposed to account for discrepancies between the Mukhtaṣar of al-Muzanī and the Umm.41 Comparison between the Musnad and the Umm shows specifically that al-Rabīʿ himself transmitted more from al-Shāfiʿī than what made its way into the Umm, or at least than what survives to our day. Jonathan Brockopp has similarly proposed that early Māliki authors drew on a body of Mālik's doctrine, some but not all of which found its way into the recensions of the Muwaṭṭa ʾ.42 Calder and Brockopp disagree as to how much later jurisprudents added pseudonymously to these bodies: very much according to Calder, negligibly little according to Brockopp. Study of the Musnad shows that some adjustment of al-Shāfiʿī's doctrine was still going on after the mid-ninth century but very little. As for the extent of it in the earlier ninth century, the Musnad cannot be expected to provide significant evidence.