The Sunnah and the Four Imams: Following Versus Imitation

A defining theme of I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in is the relationship between following the four legal schools and following the Sunnah of the Prophet, upon him be peace. Ibn al-Qayyim draws a sharp distinction between two modes of relating to the scholarly tradition: ittiba' (genuine following, grounded in understanding and evidence) and taqlid (blind imitation, which accepts a ruling without knowing its basis). His argument is that the four great imams, Abu Hanifa, Malik, al-Shafi'i, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, did not ask for taqlid. On the contrary, they consistently instructed their students and followers that when an authenticated hadith contradicted their own opinion, the hadith should be followed and their opinion abandoned. To blindly defend every position they happened to hold, even against clear textual evidence, is to contradict the imams themselves.

Ibn al-Qayyim marshals an impressive body of textual evidence for this claim, presenting recorded statements from each of the four imams. Abu Hanifa is reported to have said that when a hadith is authenticated, it is his madhab. Malik stated that the opinion of any scholar can be accepted or rejected except for the Prophet, upon him be peace, whose grave is right there pointing to the Prophetic mosque. Al-Shafi'i, whose method was perhaps the most explicit on this point, is reported to have said repeatedly that if an authenticated hadith contradicts his opinion, his followers should leave his opinion and follow the hadith. Ahmad ibn Hanbal similarly instructed those who transmitted his rulings not to record them in isolation from the evidence, because he might have been mistaken and the hadith might be clearer than his opinion. These are not marginal reports; they are widely authenticated and appear in the major biographical and legal sources.

The implication Ibn al-Qayyim draws is significant: the person who genuinely follows the imams in their method will sometimes be obliged to depart from their specific opinions in particular questions. If al-Shafi'i's stated method is to follow the authenticated Sunnah over his own view, then following al-Shafi'i's method requires following the hadith when it exists. This means that the truly faithful follower of a school is one who understands the school's approach to legal reasoning and applies it, including its approach to the relationship between school opinion and prophetic hadith. The person who defends every position of his school regardless of the evidence is not following the school more faithfully; he is following it less faithfully, because he is ignoring the imams' own explicit instructions.

Ibn al-Qayyim is careful not to turn this argument into a license for everyone to bypass the schools entirely on the basis of their own reading of hadith texts. The person who encounters a hadith that appears to contradict a school's ruling must ask whether the hadith has been properly authenticated, whether the school's jurists were aware of it and had reasons for ruling as they did, and whether the apparent contradiction disappears under more careful analysis. Many cases of apparent conflict between hadith and school opinion dissolve on examination because the hadith was interpreted differently, was considered to apply in different circumstances, or was understood in the light of other evidence. Ibn al-Qayyim respects the depth of the scholarly tradition while insisting that it must remain answerable to the sources from which it derives its authority. The Sunnah stands above any school, but approaching the Sunnah correctly requires the kind of learning that the schools preserve and transmit.