Sayed Mahmoud Al-Mosawi
Between the calls to preserve the heritage and revive it, and the calls to purify the heritage and refine it, a problem emerges in dealing with the religious heritage: excessive sensitivity in discussing the heritage, or excessive sensitivity about accepting the heritage, preserving it and retaining it. The discussion is not about the methodological dimension in dealing with the religious heritage,
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but rather about ethical conduct in dealing with the heritage; for the methodological dimensions discuss the way of dealing and engaging within the subject, whereas the behavioral dimension is the way and etiquette of dealing around the subject. In other words, we need to search for a practical conduct in dealing with the material of the religious heritage, which is what can lay the foundation for creating an ethical method that would benefit the scholarly dimension concerning the heritage and the trust of preserving it.
Just as the Sharia has set an etiquette for dealing with every subject—such as the etiquette of mosques, the etiquette of ziyārah (visitation), the etiquette of eating, the etiquette of travel, the etiquette of visiting the sick, the etiquette of reciting the Qurʾan, and an etiquette for supplication—an etiquette for dealing with the religious heritage can likewise arise, for its importance is no less than that of many subjects that have come to have an etiquette of dealing. In one of its aspects, the heritage is considered a source of religious knowledge, at times directly, through the narrations, and at other times indirectly, through more general texts.
What is meant by the religious heritage is the available documentary material that we have inherited across the generations, which carries within it a religious product, whether it contains narrative texts, supplications, historical events, or scholarly opinions. By etiquette in dealing with the heritage we do not in any way mean the method of reading texts, but rather dealing with this documentary material, in a way that contributes to supplying knowledge and to not depriving earlier scholarly efforts of their due.
The Heritage between Preservation and Destruction
Looking at the religious heritage, we find that religious teachings called for recording knowledge and learning through preserving it in memory or preserving it in books. It has been narrated from the Messenger of Allah (s): “Whoever of my community memorizes forty hadiths, Allah will raise him on the Day of Resurrection as a learned jurist” [1]. And there has come from him (s), regarding writing, his saying: “Bind knowledge with writing.” And from Imam al-Sadiq (a): “Keep hold of your books, for you will need them” [2].
Historically, the first eras of Islam, from the Prophet (s) through the era of the Imamate up to the Occultation of the Awaited Imam al-Mahdi (aj), passed with intense attention to recording knowledge; the Imams (a) and their companions took care of recording, and many books were composed to be documents that could be benefited from across the generations. “After a long investigation in the books of rijal, some researchers set out to record (1,695) books composed” in the time of the Infallible Imams (a). This is apart from what fell out of the recorded memory, due to neglect or to the events of history that struck at books and documents, burning them or throwing them into rivers to get rid of them. Many books have perished whose titles have reached us without their texts, and many of them have vanished in title and text.
Among the causes of the loss of the religious heritage was the prohibition of recording hadith, and its burning, in the first Islamic period by some of the Companions; then reliance came to be on memory, which is liable to cause changes in texts when they are transmitted from generation to generation. Likewise came the political will of the rulers to distort historical facts, with the support of hired historians.
The Heritage as Material for Research and Knowledge
The basic material, after the long time that has passed since the first period of the time of the text and what followed it, is the historical document that carries within it narrations or historical facts; when it is lacking, the process of research becomes more difficult. Therefore we find that efforts were made by great scholars in recording, collecting and compiling the scholarly material, regardless of belief in its authenticity and the degree of its reliability for the compiler, so that researchers would be able to deal with the documentary material according to the methodology they see fit. Those works were great scholarly efforts that served the interest of religious knowledge.
Among them are the Four Books: al-Kafi by al-Kulayni, Man La Yahduruhu al-Faqih by Shaykh al-Saduq, and al-Tahdhib and al-Istibsar, both by Shaykh al-Tusi. These books are among the most reliable of what has been transmitted, and the reason for that goes back to the methodology their compilers followed of seeking accuracy and reliability, so that they would be suitable for scholarly argumentation. Likewise came the books of supplications and ziyarat, collected and arranged, such as “Kitab al-Duʿaʾ by al-Kulayni, Kamil al-Ziyarat by Ibn Qulawayh, Kitab al-Duʿaʾ and al-Mazar by Shaykh al-Saduq, Kitab al-Mazar by Shaykh al-Mufid, Misbah al-Mutahajjid by Shaykh al-Tusi, and Rawdat al-Waʿizin by al-Karajuki”[3].
And “Shaykh al-Hurr al-ʿAmili, the author of (Wasaʾil al-Shiʿa), after mentioning the names of a large number of the relied-upon books from which hadith was transmitted through the intermediary of al-Saduq, Shaykh al-Tusi and other masters of hadith without their having reached him, said: As for what [books] they transmitted from—without stating their names explicitly—they are very many, mentioned in the books of rijal, exceeding six thousand six hundred books according to what we have recorded”[4]. Likewise the books of ethics and the books of exegesis; the process of recording continued according to the methodology of each compiler. Then came the encyclopedia Wasaʾil al-Shiʿa in jurisprudence, by al-Hurr al-ʿAmili (d. 1104 AH), and the model of collection and documentation was the encyclopedia Bihar al-Anwar, which is “authored by Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi; nothing like it has been authored in its breadth and comprehensiveness, as it comprises (110) volumes according to modern printings, and it contains diverse religious knowledge, including doctrines, history, knowledge of the world, ethics and jurisprudence.
This work is considered an encyclopedia of the Shiʿi narrative heritage, and it has played an important role in the survival of hadiths and their preservation from extinction”[5].
After these great efforts, researchers came to have abundant material for maturing research and for creativity in the fields of knowledge, and for plumbing the depths of the texts to uncover the unknowns.
Theories of Destroying the Heritage
After the deliberate destruction to which the abundant religious heritage was exposed as a result of entrenched hostility on the part of the perpetrators, and the disappearance of many scholarly books that this caused—among them, for example, the book (Madinat al-ʿIlm) by Shaykh al-Saduq, which in terms of size is considered double his book Man La Yahduruhu al-Faqih, yet no trace of it has been seen—after that tragic era, we can say that the calls that have arisen from within the Shiʿi milieu under the name of purifying the heritage of impurities, refining it of what is extraneous, and correcting it of crookedness, are operations similar to the act of destruction, but through theorizations and justifications that bear the form of knowledge; yet their outcome is the very same one in which the operations of destroying the religious heritage ended.
There is a difference between adopting a vision or a method in dealing with the heritage—for accepting or rejecting material from it, in order to formulate an opinion or a particular vision—and demanding the deletion and cancellation of heritage or narrative material. The expressions that some have used were not befitting the context, and they in reality lead to the same result as destruction, such as the expressions “cleansing” and “purification.” Moreover, the reasons behind those operations have been varied: some of them are epistemic and based on ijtihad, through belief in the falsity of the narrations, or through rational approval that does not comprehend the material and does not accept it according to sensory criteria; and for some of them, the present situation came as a justification for deletion, such as the necessity of coexistence among Muslims, and avoiding what provokes Muslims, according to their expressions, and other such flimsy reasons that do not give anyone the right to destroy and delete the heritage of knowledge.
There is a state of confusion between talk about the method of knowing the heritage and verifying what can be fit for argumentation for the researcher, and talk about the conduct and etiquette in dealing with that heritage in general, or even with the heritage that the researcher does not accept. The first approach flows in the direction of the probative force of reports and the reliance on narrations in forming and crystallizing a ruling or a vision, while the second flows into the general preservation of the heritage material, which is the material of research, whether one believes in its authenticity or believes that it contains both the worthless and the valuable. From that confusion, some have applied the discussion of method to the dealing with the heritage, and so one thought that his rejecting a narration necessarily means the necessity of deleting it and making it disappear.
The Heritage as One of the Rights of Researchers
A researcher may express his viewpoint regarding some heritage material, and he has complete freedom in research, investigation and declaring his opinion; however, it is not his right to demand the destruction of any heritage, which is the raw research material, even if that is under the pretext of weakness that cannot be relied upon in building an opinion, or of distorted myth, and the like. For heritage material is a public right of researchers and scholars, and the process of ijtihad in researching the heritage is ongoing and can develop, and this development may create a difference in results, as happened with the change of vision in the Qom school and its view of the concept of extremism (ghuluw).
The Threatened Heritage of al-Barqi
History has told us of a problem that prevailed in the scholarly atmosphere of holy Qom in the third century AH. The Qummis were strict regarding narration from the Prophet (s) and his Ahl al-Bayt (a), to the point that they clashed with the great narrator Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Khalid al-Barqi, who, according to his methodology, transmitted various narrations: he did not limit himself to narrating from the trustworthy, but went beyond that and narrated much from the weak or the unknown, and likewise mursal (unconnected) narrations. Shaykh al-Tusi said of him that he narrates from the weak and relies on mursal narrations; however, the books of rijal explicitly stated his trustworthiness in himself. The prevailing scholarly atmosphere in holy Qom at that time could not accommodate al-Barqi’s project. “For this reason the hadith scholars of Qom clashed, headed by Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿIsa al-Ashʿari, who was in effect the foremost personality in Qom and its undisputed head, as they found Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Barqi transmitting from the weak and narrating hadiths without a chain of transmission (mursal); so they did not allow him to remain in Qom, and Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿIsa expelled him.
However, Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿIsa and the Qummis soon became aware of the mistake they had made with regard to Ahmad al-Barqi, and saw that they had stumbled and slipped in that decision of theirs, since al-Barqi was an irreplaceable scholarly treasure: he had narrated, in the branches of the lawful and the forbidden and the legal rulings, nearly eight hundred and thirty narrations.
This is in addition to his narrations on the fundamentals of doctrine, and he narrated the explicit designation of the Twelve Imams (a).. After the Qummis became aware of that, and knew what a loss they had earned[6], the head of Qom and its foremost personality, Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿIsa, together with a group of its people, apologized to Ahmad al-Barqi and asked him to return to Qom and to carry out his intellectual and scholarly activities in its atmosphere”[7]. After al-Barqi’s death, people saw Ahmad ibn Muhammad come out bareheaded and barefoot, escorting al-Barqi’s funeral while sobbing.
This incident of al-Barqi is at the very heart of the problem we are dealing with, for he was not merely confronted with an opposing opinion, but with an administrative decision that excluded him from the arena of thought and blocked the heritage project that he was working to accomplish. This is considered a grave loss for researchers and scholars, especially when we know that al-Najashi and al-Tusi, in their Rijal works, mentioned (96) books by al-Barqi in various fields of religious knowledge. The result of drawing him near again and honoring him was that the scholars after him benefited from his compilations, such as Shaykh al-Saduq, “from his book al-Mahasin, from which he composed the book Thawab al-Aʿmal, ʿIqab al-Aʿmal, and Kitab al-ʿIlal..”[8].
From here we draw attention to the contemporary calls to purify and refine the heritage by a political decision, or the demand for a collective decision by the religious marajiʿ, to ban some books or delete some of the heritage from some books, for considerations of ijtihad or politics limited to the view of a person or a party, and taking into account only the current situation in which it lives: this temporal influence, or limited outlook, is dangerous in the end to which it will lead, namely banning the heritage and depriving the scholarly and research field of investigating and excavating in it.
What is understood from the narrations that call for discarding some hadith because it contradicts the Book and what is established of the Sunna—or dashing it against the wall, or leaving it, or not acting upon it, according to the differing expressions of the narrations—is that they look to the extent of probative force of what a person’s ijtihad arrives at: he should not act upon its content because it contradicts the religious principle. This result, as to contradiction or its absence, is a matter of ijtihad in many of them, as is known. So the point here, too, is that the problem lies in deletion and cancellation and in administrative decisions for purging.
The Religious Heritage between Humility and Scholarly Conceit
We can set out some points that are useful in the context of crystallizing a vision of the etiquette of dealing with the religious heritage. Among them is staying away from scholarly conceit, for a researcher cannot claim to have reached the perfection of knowledge that admits no error; it remains that every person—except the Infallible—has areas of ignorance that need to be filled. Consequently, through the process of research, viewpoints can change or visions can be completed. It is conceit for a person to believe that what he has reached is the summit, beyond which nothing can come that rises above it.
Indeed, “the conceit of knowledge has been behind many of humanity’s ignorances throughout history, and as the Imam of the wise, the Commander of the Faithful (a), mentioned: (Whoever claims to have reached the furthest limit of knowledge has displayed the ultimate extent of his ignorance). And he (a) said: (The utmost of reason is acknowledging ignorance).”[9]
From here we call for attention to several facts in this field:
A/ The researcher needs humility before the religious heritage, drawing from it according to the knowledge he has reached, and leaving the rest to other fields of research to draw from it. Passing a final judgment on some heritage and seeking to delete it is considered scholarly conceit in the results he has reached, and this is nothing but evidence of ignorance, as the Commander of the Faithful (a) indicated.
Among the scholarly conceit that may be hidden in some is that one calls for purifying the narrative heritage and raises the obstacle that the narration may have been issued by the Infallible (out of taqiyya), and so demands more criteria, yet insists on the same aim. What is strange here is that he allows for the possibility of issuance out of taqiyya only, and does not allow for the possibility that the narration was issued and came with what his mind does not accept, or with what his comprehension has not yet reached!!
This observation is among the effects of scholarly conceit among some researchers who demand the purification of the religious heritage.
B/ However much knowledge a researcher attains, the field of knowledge remains open to discovery and creativity, and because of that a person’s convictions may change from one period to another. One ought to take a lesson from the change of the opinions of scholars and their transformations in the fields of narration and others.
Among the scholars there were those who believed in the authenticity of certain books in their entirety, and then their opinion changed to accepting what was authentic in them, and the reverse as well. And as the scholars’ understanding of narration developed into divisions (branch and root), (decisive and ambiguous), and the like, many of the conflicts that had been understood as conflicting narrations fell away—some of them had dropped them all, and some had chosen to accept one of the two—and after that development it was discovered, in many examples, that there is no conflict at all.
For example, some have taken a view of the narrations about the Kurds, which say that they are a people of the jinn from whom the covering was lifted, and on the basis of which some jurists issued fatwas that dealing with them and marrying from them is disliked (makrūh): some of those demanding the purification of the religious heritage held that they contradict the spirit of religion, and that consequently these narrations are among what must be deleted and erased from the memory of the books of narration. But some scholars came with a different understanding, saying that the expression “jinn” for the Kurds is an indication of concealment, for they used to live in the mountains and were therefore far from the places of civilization and the cities that knew religion; so dealing with them is on the basis of their remoteness from religion and their not knowing the foundations of sound dealing; consequently, if the concealment that leads to that ceases, the ruling ceases. This example opens before us wide doors to looking at the heritage with more humility and discovering knowledge, and calls us to be wary of the slogans of purification, deletion and cancellation of the religious heritage.
C/ The calls that some have made regarding the religious heritage, in which they reached conclusions of the necessity of deleting some narrations or some of what is reported in history, are a case of ijtihad; consequently, other cases of ijtihad ought to be respected. It is strange that we find someone justifying the deletion of some of the heritage on the grounds that it was the ijtihad of scholars and not the opinion of an Infallible, forgetting that his own conclusion is in itself a conclusion of ijtihad and not the opinion of an Infallible!.
D/ The religious heritage is not necessarily useful for binding legal rulings; rather, part of it may be useful in non-binding matters, and indeed some of it may be of no benefit in the juristic direction, but rather useful in the social or political direction, through a collective reading of that heritage. Indeed, some scholars have held that weak or mursal narrations have a benefit in terms of the mutual support of the evidence and its being well-known, such that their totality forms an indirect evidentiary strength through the convergence of the evidence.
E/ The possibility of issuance from the Ahl al-Bayt (a), regarding narrations or acts, leaves another dimension in dealing, which is caution against rejection and against haste in non-acceptance. Therefore the narrations warned against belittling the narrations attributed to them, as in al-Kafi, the narration that the eminent trustworthy narrators report: From him—that is, Muhammad ibn Yahya—from Ahmad ibn Muhammad, from Ibn Mahbub, from Jamil ibn Salih, from Abu ʿUbayda al-Hadhdhaʾ, who said: I heard Abu Jaʿfar (a) say: “By Allah, the dearest of my companions to me are the most pious of them, the deepest of them in understanding, and the best of them at keeping our hadith secret; and the worst of them in state in my sight, and the most hateful of them, is the one who, when he hears a hadith attributed to us and narrated from us and does not accept it, is repelled by it, denies it, and declares an unbeliever whoever holds it as religion, while he does not know—perhaps the hadith came out from us and was attributed to us—and so by that he becomes outside our wilāyah.”[10]
[1] / Bihar al-Anwar: vol. 2, p. 153
[2] / al-Kafi, vol. 1, p. 4
[3] / Durus fi Nusus al-Hadith, Mahdi al-Mihrizi, p. 108
[4] / Durus fi Nusus al-Hadith wa Nahj al-Balagha, Mahdi al-Mihrizi, p. 66, from Wasaʾil al-Shiʿa: 20/165
[5] / Durus fi Nusus al-Hadith, Mahdi al-Mihrizi, p. 122
[6] / More correctly: “what a loss they had suffered.”
[7] / Rijal Hawl al-Rasul (s) wa Ahl Baytihi (a), vol. 2, p. 168
[8] / The same source, p. 170
[9] / Bayyinat min Fiqh al-Qurʾan (Surat al-Nur), p. 87
[10] / al-Kafi, by al-Kulayni, vol. 2, p. 223
