Law Syllabi and Text Production among Šāfi‘ite Ethiopian Muslims: A Short Note on Some Manuscripts of al-Nawawī’s Minhāǧ al-ṭālibīn

Abstract

One of the most powerful factors triggering the production and diffusion of manuscripts among the Ethiopian Muslim communities is the necessity of providing teachers and students with texts to be studied at the traditional learning institutions. In the present paper I will exemplify this connection by analysing the way the Minhāǧ al-ṭālibīn by Nawawī (d. 1277), a renowned handbook used in the Ethiopian syllabus for advanced students of Islamic law, is copied and circulated. Differently from what happens in other areas of the Muslim world, in Ethiopia the text is mostly distributed into four codices, each of which corresponds to a branch of the law, which is studied at different stages of the local curriculum.  Preliminary remarks: the school of al-Šāfi‘ī and the Horn of Africa The legal school of al-Šāfi‘ī (Ar. al-maḏhab al-šāfi‘ī/al-šāfi‘iyya) is one of four legal schools (maḏhab) unanimously regarded by all Sunni Muslims as giving an equally acceptable interpretation of Islamic law.1 Initiated by Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Šāfi‘ī (d. 820), a former disciple of Mālik b. Anas (the founder of the eponymous Mālikite school) and of Muḥammad b. Ḥasan al-Šaybanī (a student of Abū  1 I have tried to avoid the word ‘orthodox’ here as it is extremely problematic to define an Islamic interpretative ‘orthodoxy’. Despite their being at variance on many important issues, Šāfi‘ism and the three other schools (the Ḥanafī, the Mālikī and the Ḥanbalī) all recognise each other as fully legitimate ways of expounding the sources of law and make up the bulk of traditional Islamic Sunnite jurisprudence. For a general description of Islamic law and its four Sunni schools, see the handbook by Hallaq published in 2009.   Alessandro Gori Ḥanīfa’s, the founder of the Ḥanafī school), it is considered to be the third most widespread school of law in the Sunni world; it is well established in Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, the Kurdish regions of the Middle East, Dagestan, Chechenia and Ingushetia, Hijaz, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, the whole Swahili coast, the Maldives, coastal areas of India and Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines. As for the Ethiopian region, it can be reasonably hypothesised that since at least the second half of the eighteenth century, the law school of al-Šāfi‘ī has been overwhelmingly strong in the hinterland of central, eastern and southern Ethiopia. Nowadays it is possibly the most widespread maḏhab in the country, representing the absolute majority in the southern and eastern regions and sharing Islamic law instruction and practice with the Ḥanafite school in the central and northern areas. The history of the arrival and diffusion of Šāfi‘ism in the Horn of Africa is still practically unknown. The overall picture that has been gleaned so far from the few scattered sources that are available is that the Šāfi‘ites eventually managed to impose themselves at the expense of the school named after Abū Ḥanīfa, which was originally the most popular maḏhab in the whole area. In the 1330s, the classical Arabic geographer and historian Šihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Faḍlallāh al-‘Umarī (d. 1349) compiled a vivid description of the living conditions of Ethiopian Muslims, collecting information in Cairo from the renowned Ḥanafī law scholar (faqīh) of Zayla‘2 Ǧamāl al-Dīn ‘Abdallāh b. Yūsuf b. Muḥammad al-Zayla‘ī (d. 1360)3 and a group of other jurists from the same geographical area,4 from ‘Abd al-Mu’min,5 an otherwise unknown šayḫ, and from  2 Zayla‘ is an ancient port city on the coast of the present-day republic of Somaliland. In classical Arabic sources, the relation adjective (Ar. nisba) al-Zayla‘ī is commonly used to refer to people who not only come from the city itself, but from its hinterland as well (see the introductory article in Gori 2014). 3 Ǧamāl al-Dīn ‘Abdallāh al-Zayla‘ī became extremely famous in the Islamic world as the author of two huge collections of prophetic sayings, one extracted from the handbook of law according to the Ḥanafī school, al-Hidāya by al-Marġīnānī, and the second from the commentary on the Qur’an by al-Zamaḫšarī. 4 It is interesting to note that faqīh Ǧamāl al-Dīn was a Ḥanafite and a disciple of another renowned Hanafī law expert originating from the city of Zayla‘ and living in Cairo, Faḫr al-Dīn Uṯmān b. ‘Alī al-Zayla‘ī (d. 1342; the author of the Tabyīn al-ḥaqā’iq, a commentary on the handbook of law according to the Hanafī school, Kanz al-daqā’iq by al-Nasafī). The presence of several learned Hanafī men from the Horn of Africa in Cairo is in itself proof of the strength of that law school in the north-east African region in the middle of the fourteenth century. 5 In the last edition of the Arabic text of al-‘Umarī’s Masālik (2010), this personage is identified by the editor as Ṣafī al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Mu’min b. ‘Abd al-Ḥaqq al-Ḥanbalī al-Baġdādī (d. 1338), a Law Syllabi and Text Production among Šāfi‘ite Ethiopian Muslims   a merchant called al-ḥāǧǧ Faraǧ al-Fuwwī (or al-Fawwī). The data was used by the author to write the eighth chapter of his encyclopaedic work Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, which was intended as a handbook for educating the officials of the Mamlūk chancellery.6 According to the data provided by al-‘Umarī, Ethiopian Muslims were under the administration of seven different kingdoms (mamālik): the inhabitants of the kingdom of Ifat, the biggest and strongest of them, were mostly Šāfi‘is. In the six remaining kingdoms, Ḥanafites were in the majority. It is possible to compare this data with what the legal expert of the Ḥanafī school Ḥāmid b. Ṣiddīq of Harar (one of the main Islamic centres of education in the Horn of Africa) wrote in the middle of the eighteenth century.7 Apparently, in the course of four centuries, the situation described by al-‘Umarī had changed radically (and dramatically): the Ethiopian jurist lamented that his school was disappearing from the cultural and social landscape of his city and Šāfi‘ites had become the strongest group.8 In fact, he said, Harar was almost entirely Šāfi‘ite at the time of writing and Ḥanafism had practically disappeared.9 Combining these two sources, we can therefore surmise that Šāfi‘ism slowly established itself as the leading school of law in eastern and southern Ethiopia between the fourteenth and the eighteenth century while Ḥanafism slowly lost its influence and eventually only survived as a tiny minority stream.10 On the shores of the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, this process of change was made more complicated by the arrival of the Ottomans in the middle of the sixteenth century. Ḥanafism was always the law school officially supported by the Sublime Porte and wherever the Ottomans managed to extend their influence, they fostered its expansion.11 The Horn of Africa was no exception here: starting from the shores of contemporary Eritrea and Djibouti, Ḥanafism spread into the  representative of the Ḥanbalī school of law and author of an abridged version of the geographical dictionary of Yāqūt. No reference or source is provided to justify the identification, though, which thus remains a tentative one. 6 A French translation of Chapter 8 of al-‘Umarī’s Masālik was produced by the famous Arabist Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes (Gaudefroy-Demombynes 1927). 7 For more on faqīh Ḥāmid, see the general article in Wagner 2005. 8 On the position of the Ḥanafite Ḥāmid against the Šāfi‘ites, see Brunschvig 1974 (in particular 452–454). 9 See Cerulli 1936, 45 on this point; at the time the book was published, only one area of the city was still following the Ḥanafi school. 10 The chronology and the general picture is different in Somalia, where there is no hint of Ḥanafism’s earlier supremacy over Šāfi‘ism. 11 Peters 2005, 147–158.   Alessandro Gori Ethiopian hinterland and highlands thanks to the Ottomans. However, it is still unclear whether the strong presence of Ḥanafism in Eritrea, northern Ethiopia and the Awsa region was caused by this later wave of diffusion facilitated by the Ottomans or it was a well-preserved remnant of the older Ḥanafite establishments mentioned by al-‘Umarī in the fourteenth century. A third possible explanation (and probably the most plausible one) is that the Ḥanafite majority in those areas is due to a combination of both elements: some well-rooted remnants of an older presence resisted the expansion of Šāfi‘ism and were subsequently revived by the Ottoman influence, enabling them to survive and flourish to this day. The reasons why Ḥanafism lost ground in favour of Šāfi‘ism in most of the Ethiopian Muslim communities are impossible to discover in any detail. There are, however, a number of sources that provide us with a vivid account of how the shift of schools generally took place. A tale preserved in one of the hagiographies of the renowned holy man šayḫ Ḥusayn of Bale, a southern region of Ethiopia, who possibly lived in the thirteenth century,12 shows a Ḥanafite legal expert disputing with the šayḫ, who was a Šāfi‘ite, on the legal status of sorghum/ṭef beer (Arabic maḏar; Oromo farso, Amharic ṭälla). The Ḥanafite faqīh considers the beverage licit, whereas šayḫ Ḥusayn strongly forbids its usage and in the end manages to prove that his legal opinion is the best.13 Moreover, the same text recounts how faqīh Mūsā al-Muqri’, a devotee of šayḫ Ḥusayn, eventually came back to Ethiopia from Yemen, where he had completed his education under the guidance of the famous law experts Ismā‘īl b. Muḥammad al-Ḥaḍramī (d. 1298) and Aḥmad b. Mūsā b. ‘Uǧayl (d. 1291). The learned Ethiopian man took with him knowledge of the Tanbīh and the Muhaḏḏab, two fundamental books of the Šāfi‘ite maḏhab authored by the renowned Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Šīrāzī (d. 1083).14 Thanks to the strong support he received from šayḫ Ḥusayn, faqīh Mūsā managed to get these two ‘new’ handbooks to replace the ‘Book of al-Ḍumayrī’, which was previously used in the region as a