Nimrod Hurvitz | From Scholarly Circles to Mass Movements: The Formation of Legal Communities in Islamic Societies | The American Historical Review, 108.4

From Scholarly Circles to Mass Movements: The Formation of Legal Communities in Islamic Societies

NIRMROD HURVITZ

FRONTISPIECE: Fleeing from the palace, "Noureddin," the vizier's son, and "the Fair Persian," his stolen mistress, stop in a notable's house in Baghdad and ask for lodging and a glass of wine. "Heaven defend me from keeping wine in my house, and from ever going to a place where any is to be sold!" replies Scheich Ibrahim. But it is not long before the clever visitors persuade their host to buy some, and even to join in the singing and drinking. Arabian Nights Entertainments: Consisting of One Thousand and One Stories . . ., from the French translation by Antoine Galland, 4 vols. (London, 1785), 3: plate opposite 357, E. F. Burney, et al., illustrators, quote from 356.

At the outset of al-Muqtadir's (r. 908–32) Disastrous Reign over the Caliphate, a short-lived and somewhat puzzling coup rocked the 'Abbasid court.¹ Al-Muqtadir, an inexperienced youth who had reached the throne through the machinations of shrewd administrators, was challenged by the seasoned and widely respected prince Ibn al-Mu'tazz (d. 908). In the first hours of the coup, it seemed that Ibn al-Mu'tazz, who had forged a powerful alliance of bureaucrats and army officers, would easily oust the young and incompetent caliph, but by the end of the day, due to folly or intrigue, Ibn al-Mu'tazz lost control of his troops and was forced to flee Baghdad.

The ignominious defeat of Ibn al-Mu'tazz would have been just another brief episode in the annals of the 'Abbasid empire had it not been for one historian, who mentioned an unfamiliar political actor in his account of the affair: the Hanbali madhhab (legal community; plural, madhahib).² According to this report, when Ibn al-Mu'tazz faced defeat, he sent his servant into the streets to call out, "Oh, ye people of the community, call unto your Sunni caliph al-Barbahari." The chronicler, Ibn al-Athir (d. 1233), explains that the name al-Barbahari (d. 941) was mentioned because "the common people considered him to be the leader of the Hanabila and the Sunnis, and they held him in great esteem, and [Ibn al-Mu'tazz] wanted to attract them to his cause."³ After being let down by his generals and political allies, Ibn al-Mu'tazz attempted to mobilize the masses by mentioning al-Barbahari, the charismatic leader of the Hanbalis. Although al-Barbahari was not more cooperative than the generals and did not lead the masses to the streets or save Ibn al-Mu'tazz, this description of an attempt to draw the Hanbalis into caliphal politics illustrates their growing influence in Baghdadi politics.⁴

The caliphal claimant's desperate appeal to the Hanbalis points to a unique Islamic phenomenon: the development of small groups of jurists into huge and even powerful legal communities that added a novel dimension to the burgeoning Islamic social order. The madhahib stand out as a singular merger between legal concepts, religious attitudes, and social structure. Between the eighth and tenth centuries, over a dozen such circles of legal scholars attracted masses of rank-and-file Muslims, evolving into large, popular madhahib. Four of them stood the test of time and have survived to this day. Of these four, the Hanbali madhhab was the last and smallest. The other three, the Hanafis, Malikis, and Shafi'is, began to attract adherents from the middle of the eighth century (that is, several decades before the Hanbalis), and they gradually built up large followings throughout the world of Islam.⁵

The madhahib shaped and colored Islamic society in a variety of ways. The jurists of each madhhab articulated and recorded the distinctive legal doctrines that both regulated their adherents' lives down to the most minute details and at the same time set them apart from the other madhahib.⁶ Their patrons and leaders established mosques, institutions of higher learning, and separate courts of law, which passed judgment in accordance with their legal traditions.⁷ Hand in hand with these institutions appeared congregations of adherents that prayed in the mosques, studied in the institutions of learning, and turned to the madhhab's courts to resolve their legal disputes, all of which engendered a sense of belonging to the community and of loyalty to its leaders.⁸ Due to their sheer size, the madhahib became valuable potential allies for political aspirants who needed popular support, and as a consequence were drawn into, or walked into, a variety of social and political confrontations.⁹ From the countless details of everyday life, through social activities and institutions, to destructive street battles—the madhahib left their mark on the lives and identities of their members, and on the structure of society as a whole.

The madhahib were a novel social configuration and therefore a new component in the social matrix of Islamic societies. In effect, from the tenth century on, every Muslim belonged to a madhhab, and as a consequence the madhahib became as important as ancient social alignments such as family, tribe, and ethnic group. In a succinct assessment of the madhahib's impact on Islamic societies, Ira Lapidus wrote: "In an urban context the schools of law [referred to in this study as madhahib] and Sufi brotherhoods served as confessional collectivities which could recruit individuals across the lines of existing community structures and unify smaller-scale family, clan or residential collectivities into larger units ... But Muslim religious associations could operate wholly within the frameworks of existing collective units. Schools of law ... gave previously existing collectivities an Islamic identity."¹⁰ The newly formed "confessional collectivities" demonstrated a remarkable ability to mobilize followers and create new social entities that were based on legal and moral bonds. This development gives rise to several questions: How did jurists attract such large followings and become popular leaders? What sort of beliefs and values brought individuals to join one madhhab and not another? How were these religious values disseminated among the lay public?

These three questions are parts of a larger issue, the interaction between learned elites and their less educated followers. Although the questions hint at a divide between high and low culture, this study aims to do the opposite, to uncover the commonly held worldview of jurists and their congregations. Hence the focus of this study will not be the professional aspects that set apart the intellectual leaders from their adherents but rather the shared moral premises that brought them together. A useful tool for studying the commonly held values of all of the madhhab's members is Robert Cover's concept of nomos, which he describes as "an integrated world of obligation and reality from which the rest of the world is perceived."¹¹ The gist of Cover's arguments is that legal doctrine does not stand apart from other ideals that guide individuals' conduct but is in fact integrated into them. Thus laws are understood, acted on, manipulated, and resisted in accordance with a wider moral vision. He implemented this approach in studies of the ancient Jews and twentieth-century Amish and uncovered the manner in which these communities wove together moral premises with legal prescriptions and instilled meaning in their systems of law. By bringing together legal doctrine with moral positions, it is possible to examine the connections between legal documents and other texts and, as a consequence, investigate the ways in which experts and their adherents communicated with each other and forged a shared worldview.

The methodological contribution of nomos is in bridging the dichotomy between elite and followers. In order to apply this approach to the Hanbali case, we need to reconstruct the Hanbali moral vision, as it is elaborated in legal and non-legal texts. This essay will start with non-legal texts, such as Hanbali biographies of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 855) and his followers, which reveal a mildly ascetic outlook that was shared by both Hanbali jurists and their lay adherents.¹² In order to grasp the full implications of this outlook, we need to place it in the context of the moral and cultural struggles that were taking place in the ninth and tenth centuries. Thus the second part of this essay will depict the tensions between a large and growing pietistic trend, which included among others the Hanbalis, as well as the lifestyle of the courtly hedonists and their middle-class imitators. Traces of these tensions can be identified in Hanbali legal texts known as masa'il literature (a subgenre of legal writing in which lay men and women pose questions about legal, moral, and religious matters to their spiritual guides, who are most often jurists). The third part of this study will examine how Hanbali jurists and activists discussed among themselves the possibility of imposing their moral vision on the rest of society. The last part of the essay examines the flaring up of violence that occurred in tenth-century Baghdad, when Hanbali activists attempted to force their way of life on others and, as a consequence, instigated riots in the name of a more moral society. Together, the four parts illustrate how Hanbali jurists utilized their ethical vision to mobilize a popular following.

Before we turn our attention to the Hanbalis' transformation into a mass movement, it would be useful to sketch the rough contours of 'Abbasid politics in the ninth and tenth centuries, as well as mention some of the Hanbalis' ideological and social characteristics. The Hanbalis' increase in numbers and vigor occurred just as the Caliphate's power was in decline.¹³ Ibn al-Mu'tazz's appeal to the Hanbalis for their help is an apt illustration of the caliphal circle's enfeeblement and the growing strength of a popular socio-religious movement. The central government's debilitation was the outcome of a century of military turmoil and diminishing revenues.¹⁴ Ever since the middle of the ninth century, the Caliphate suffered from military chaos and social disorder that wreaked havoc on the fragile Iraqi agricultural system. The caliphs were caught up in a vicious cycle in which military violence led to falls in revenues, which in turn angered the military, who could not get the pay they wanted and as a consequence resorted to more violence. As a result of the army's confrontations with the caliphs and its own factional strife, performance in the battlefield deteriorated. Gradually, rebels and intruders gained control of more and more parts of the empire. This phenomenon of breakaway provinces began at the peripheries of the empire and worked its way to the center. By the tenth century, the caliphs barely controlled the streets of their own capital. Riots and popular demonstrations became commonplace, shook the tottering regime, and added to its instability.

Throughout these decades, several of the caliphs made heroic, and occasionally successful, efforts to check the decline of caliphal influence, but by the mid-tenth century they succumbed to their generals and bureaucrats. The harshest blow came during the reign of the above-mentioned al-Muqtadir, who was incapable of holding onto any caliphal power base. Fifteen years after al-Muqtadir was murdered by one of his generals (932), a warlord by the name of Ahmad Ibn Buya entered Baghdad and founded the Buwayhid dynasty. The Buwayhids became the effective rulers of what remained of the 'Abbasid empire, while the 'Abbasid caliphs functioned as the symbolic figureheads of the Sunni world. In a nutshell, by the middle of the tenth century, the 'Abbasid empire fell apart into numerous principalities and dynasties as a new political order came in its place—the Muslim commonwealth.

Despite the breakdown of the 'Abbasid political system, the Islamic world remained unified in many ways, and its communal associations proved highly resilient. It was held together by the Arabic language, a shared faith, one economic system, and open borders that enabled merchants to transfer merchandise from one region to another and scholars to travel in search of teachers wherever they were. Furthermore, the political fragmentation did not impede the centuries-long social and religious developments that began in the eighth and ninth centuries, such as the formation of half a dozen madhahib as well as various trends of Shi'i Islam. For example, the Hanbalis, who made their first appearance in the public arena before this military-economic crisis began, continued to grow and develop in the next few decades. They first became involved in public affairs when their eponymous founder, Ibn Hanbal, was catapulted from his standing as a widely respected jurist to that of a charismatic leader who led popular opposition to caliphal religious policy. This confrontation, between one branch of jurists (led by Ibn Hanbal) and an alliance of theologians, caliphs, and another branch of jurists, was triggered by a theological debate and came to be known as the Inquisition (mihna).¹⁵ Ibn Hanbal's positions regarding theology, together with his jurisprudential conservatism and his austere way of life, gained him the admiration of many Muslims. Starting in his lifetime and continuing in subsequent generations, the Hanbali circle attracted numerous individuals who identified and agreed with Hanbali views on jurisprudence, theology, and morality.¹⁶ By the end of the ninth century, the Hanbalis were one of the largest movements in Baghdad, and most of its adherents lived in the Harbiyya quarter, which would become the Hanbali stronghold and center of their activism.

This essay assumes that a wide range of ideological issues such as jurisprudence, theology, and morality drew numerous believers to the Hanbalis. However, although each of these ideological components is important, I will concentrate on the Hanbalis' moral views and some of their social ramifications so as to better understand how the Hanbali jurists and their ordinary followers forged the Hanbali nomos.

The Hanbali moral vision was made up of an intricate "lexicon of normative action."¹⁷ The modes of conduct that constitute this lexicon were not defined or specified solely in the Hanbali law books. They appear in biographies, which construct a series of role models, and tracts that deal with specific moral issues. In this, the Hanbalis were not different from other "legal communities," Islamic and non-Islamic, whose amalgam of law and ethical vision was articulated through a variety of literary genres. In the words of Cover, "The [legal] tradition includes not only a corpus juris, but also a language and a mythos—narratives in which the corpus juris is located by those whose wills act upon it. These myths establish the paradigms for behavior. They build relations between the normative and the material universe, between the constraints of reality and the demands of ethic."¹⁸ The ethos that shapes "paradigms for behavior" is often found in sermons, proverbs, and life stories that convey subtle moral and religious messages. As John S. Hawley reminds us in his discussion of the means by which great religions gain sway over their adherents: "Within each religion a powerful body of tradition emphasizes not codes but stories, not precepts but personalities, not lectures but lives."¹⁹ Stories, or as Cover would phrase it, "narratives," were a highly effective means of gaining the attention of believers and instilling in them the moral ethos of a community. Hagiographies and biographies of widely admired individuals would highlight commendable patterns of conduct and move their listeners to identify with these ideals.

However, there are some important differences between the two genres. Whereas hagiographies attribute power to the divine, biographies of Islamic scholars ascribe it to the individual. In the hagiographies, the miracles and superhuman ascetic achievements transform the protagonist into a conduit through which divine power appears to the listeners and readers in strong, startling flashes. The very stories that are predicated on supra-normal feats are testament to the flow of power from the divine into the chosen saint or Sufi. In the biographical tradition, the scale of the achievements are of human proportions, with the narrative depicting minor victories over one's own appetites and desires. Such stories stress attainable levels of self-control and are not concerned with awe-inspiring miracles that require divine intervention but with daily routines that all the believers perform.

Just as the locuses of power in hagiography and biography differ, so do the visions of asceticism. Whereas hagiographies depict an extreme form of asceticism, which aims at the "ultimate extinction" of the body so "that the soul may be free," biographies of scholars elaborate a more moderate ascetic regimen whose purpose is to control bodily needs.²⁰ The first, and more militant of the two, was preached and practiced by mystics who aspired to unite with the divine and, as a consequence, employed the harshest forms of self-mortification. Such ascetics made attempts to crush bodily appetites, because they perceived them as a hindrance to their spiritual ascent that was to culminate in union with the divine. Among the Christians, such spiritual goals and acts of extreme self-denial were prevalent amidst hermits, monastic movements, and religious orders.²¹ Among the Muslims, the quest to unite with Allah and the concomitant ascetic measures that eradicated the body's appetites and passions and prepared the soul for its highest spiritual state were widespread amidst the Sufis.²² The second, more moderate, form of asceticism exhorted its adherents to lead a virtuous life within the world and, as a consequence, advocated much milder techniques of self-deprivation. Such were eleventh and twelfth-century Christian thinkers who were growing aware and critical of the spiritual traps that lay before overly zealous ascetics. One of them was Bernard of Clairvaux, who "repeatedly praised balance and moderation and condemned excessive abstinence and asceticism."²³ Likewise, many Muslims, including numerous Hanbalis, imposed on themselves restrictions aimed not at annihilating all physical appetites and severing all social relations but simply at leading a pious life.

Since the Islamic biographical tradition promulgated ideals that were within the reach of ordinary believers, it is not surprising that the aura of authority such biographies constructed is founded on acts of everyday life. A close look at the descriptions of Ibn Hanbal's diet will reveal how mundane forms of conduct can serve as the basis for elaborating the mildly ascetic moral ethos and conveying socioeconomic standing. The reference to food is a prevalent topos in texts that are concerned with morality, since food and its consumption are deemed to be fundamental religious and moral issues in numerous societies, including Islamic ones. As Caroline Walker Bynum argues, food was probably of greater importance to the average believer than sex and money.²⁴ As a consequence of the practical and symbolic importance of food, accounts of its preparation and consumption store a wealth of information and can be investigated in a variety of ways.²⁵ One such perspective pertains to social status, since in 'Abbasid society, as in several other societies, culinary differentiation corresponds to social stratification.²⁶ Based on this premise, when we examine what Salih Ibn Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 880), the son of Ibn Hanbal, wrote about his father's diet, it will be possible to decipher where the Hanbalis situated themselves in the 'Abbasid social template. Food can also be approached as a means of expressing moral and cultural criticism. In Islam, as in Chinese, Roman, and early Christian societies, there were ascetics who imposed on themselves dietary restrictions that they, and society as a whole, understood as a form of criticism of the elites and their way of life.²⁷ This sort of criticism, I contend, is what Salih had in mind when he wrote about Ibn Hanbal's eating habits.

The following anecdote illustrates where the Hanbalis placed themselves in the 'Abbasid social and cultural map, and how they expressed their moral criticism of the pursuit of luxuries that was typical of many upper-class 'Abbasids:

He [Ibn Hanbal] often seasoned [ya'tadimu] [bread] with vinegar; at times I saw him eat a slice of bread, shaking the dust off it, placing a plate and sprinkling water on it until it softened, after which he would eat it with salt. I never saw him buy pomegranates or quince or any other fruit except [that he bought] watermelons that he ate with bread or grapes or dates.²⁸

Bread in ninth-century Baghdad, as in ancient Greece and modern France, was a basic staple that was found on most tables, and its presence in Ibn Hanbal's diet does not reveal much about his social standing.²⁹ What do afford insights about his social standing and moral outlook are the bread's ingredients, forms of production, and manner of consumption.³⁰ Thus it is the contrast between the stale bread that Ibn Hanbal ate and the fresh, soft bread that "people of elegant taste" consumed that hints at Ibn Hanbal's association with the poorer segment of Baghdadi society.³¹ Furthermore, when Salih mentions that his father used vinegar, a cheap condiment that was used by the poor, he is again insinuating that Ibn Hanbal ate the same food as the lower classes in Baghdad. The fruits that Salih mentions convey a similar message: dates and watermelons, for example, were very cheap and were consumed by the "common folk,"³² who served the dates as dessert because they could not afford the sweet dishes of the well-to-do.³³ In putting together this list of foodstuffs, Salih informed the listeners and readers in a subtle, indirect manner that Ibn Hanbal led the life of an unassuming, almost impoverished, Baghdadi.

The moral message encoded in these descriptions of stale bread and other cheap and basic foodstuffs is that of moderate self-discipline. It situates Ibn Hanbal between unconstrained indulgence and relentless self-mortification. On the one hand, the bread is stale, the condiments simple, and the fruits inexpensive—placing Ibn Hanbal apart from the connoisseurs of the 'Abbasid courtly cuisine. On the other, the stories are about eating and not about fasting—distancing Ibn Hanbal from extreme ascetics about whom hagiographies tell of exceedingly long fasts. Ibn Hanbal is placed in a middle ground: he satisfies his basic nutritional needs yet avoids lavish dishes. The underlying moral message of this anecdote goes hand in hand with descriptions of Ibn Hanbal's wardrobe, home, and furniture: a tempered approach toward material possessions and bodily needs. In line with this approach, Ibn Hanbal's austerity did not include abstinence from sexual relations, withdrawal from society, or giving up inherited properties, all of which were practiced, to some extent, by extreme ascetics and were familiar themes in hagiographic literature. Such extreme modes of behavior were aimed at crushing physical appetites and emotional needs and transcending them. By contrast, the ascetic ideal that guided Ibn Hanbal emphasized control of physical appetites and not their annihilation, measured relations with society and not a total break. Thus, although Ibn Hanbal shared with the more extreme ascetics a suspicion of materialism, the means he employed to curb his appetites and passions were different because they were much more moderate.

The moral vision and behavioral patterns imparted in the stories about Ibn Hanbal's lifestyle were shared and admired by many members of the Hanbali circle. In the Tabaqat al-Hanabila (Generations of Hanbalis), there are dozens of references to austerity and abstinence.³⁴ The prevalence of the ascetic idiom in Hanbali biographical literature implies that it was a central element of their ideology. Furthermore, a survey of these entries reveals that individuals who had a reputation for living under a strict regimen of austerity were often on close and intimate terms with Ibn Hanbal. Disciples such as al-Maymuni (d. 888), Ahmad Ibn Muhammad al-Marwadhi (d. 888), and Ibrahim Ibn al-Hani' (d. 878) came to be Ibn Hanbal's most trusted friends and influential followers due to their reputation for piety and not their scholarship.³⁵ Indeed, it seems that they were mediocre scholars, since they were not mentioned in scholarly biographical dictionaries. Clearly, then, an ascetic lifestyle added to the social standing of its practitioners in the Hanbali milieu.

Ibn Hanbal's propensity to draw ascetics close to him came to play an important role in the recruitment of Hanbali followers. According to Hanbali sources, there were instances in which Ibn Hanbal took the initiative and approached individuals who had a reputation for leading ascetic and pious lifestyles. Al-Marwadhi reported that whenever Ibn Hanbal heard that a devout person had asked about him, he requested that a meeting be arranged. If he discovered that the individual lived up to his standards, the master would befriend him; if the new acquaintance proved disappointing, he would lose his temper.³⁶ Since personal contact with the master became one of the most important paths for entering the Hanbali milieu, and Ibn Hanbal had a penchant for ascetics, asceticism became a means for attracting new affiliates and improving their standing among the Hanbalis.

The Hanbalis were by no means the first Muslims to embrace austerity, nor were they its sole practitioners.³⁷ As early as the seventh century and throughout the world of Islam, numerous individuals and groups "shared a strong repugnance to worldly delights" and "luxury."³⁸ By the ninth century, several regional ascetic trends had evolved in Basra, Jerusalem, Khurasan, Kufa, and Baghdad.³⁹ A unique form of asceticism also evolved on the Arab-Byzantine frontier, where "scholar-ascetics" came to fight the enemies of Islam.⁴⁰ What is more, the impact of the ascetics on society went beyond their immediate numbers. Their influence was felt among numerous individuals who admired the ascetic ethos but did not live in accordance with its norms. This was noted by Roy Mottahedeh: "Many men who actually believed in this principle [piety], or at least gave lip service to it, showed respect to men who lived exemplary and ascetic lives."⁴¹ Much like the holy men of Late Antiquity, and probably as a continuation of that moral mood, Muslim ascetics were placed on a pedestal and were revered by men and women who could not live up to their standards.⁴² Some of these pious ascetics kept a distance from society, while others involved themselves in the events that were taking place around them. Their influence was of such a magnitude that "[k]ings sometimes accepted the intercession of such men, and they did so not only because they admired men of outstanding piety, but also because such men had a certain following."⁴³ Asceticism was a powerful sentiment in Islamic societies, one that could be transformed into influential social movements. This was the environment in which the Hanbalis conducted their affairs, and it was from this social and moral niche that they recruited new adherents.

Throughout the ninth and tenth centuries, the Hanbalis, and like-minded pietists, were on a collision course with the 'Abbasid leisured milieu.⁴⁴ At the center of this milieu was the immensely rich and powerful 'Abbasid court, located in a series of Baghdadian palaces where the caliphs, their wives, sons, brothers, and high officials of the empire were pampered and served by staffs that numbered several thousand eunuchs, servants, and concubines.⁴⁵ Living in what Oleg Grabar dubbed a "brilliant imperial life," the affluent inhabitants of these palaces spent most of their time running the empire and cultivating an atmosphere of cultural refinement.⁴⁶ In and around their palaces, they built gardens, game preserves, polo fields, and pavilions, in which they played and hunted.⁴⁷ They indulged in banquets, listened to music, and held nocturnal revels with convivial companions.⁴⁸ They spent huge sums of money on clothes, perfumes, food, and other items to make their lives pleasant, and invited the upper crust of 'Abbasid society, that is, its high-ranking army officers, refined boon companions, poets, physicians, and astrologers, to amuse them.⁴⁹ Not surprisingly, in the sources that describe this era, palace life epitomized and symbolized luxury, and was therefore the antithesis of the ascetic worldview.⁵⁰

One sort of conspicuous consumption in which the 'Abbasid upper classes indulged and which the ascetics criticized was food and its preparation.⁵¹ The interest that courtiers and affluent members of 'Abbasid society took in gastronomic matters is reflected in the numerous recipes that were written down and compiled into recipe books.⁵² By contrast to most medieval societies in which practical knowledge about cooking was transmitted orally and is therefore lost, the connoisseurs of medieval Islamic cuisine wrote about their gastronomic skills and pleasures and left behind a written "urban culinary tradition."⁵³ These recipe collections and descriptions in chronicles of dishes such as bone marrow,⁵⁴ breast of partridge, and cold lamb,⁵⁵ or sweets such as rose-flavored sugar candy or honey⁵⁶ indicate how much attention and money were lavished on food and its preparation. To run a kitchen that was up to the standards of 'Abbasid cuisine, one needed special ingredients, some of which came from a great distance, as well as numerous utensils and highly skilled labor.⁵⁷

Despite the expenses that courtly modes of consumption incurred, these practices spread and entered different segments of society, hence threatening to marginalize ascetic lifestyles. To the chagrin of pious Muslims, wealth and its tangible manifestations such as sumptuous dishes, ornate clothes, and depraved entertainment captured the fancy of many of the lower and middle classes. A delightful collection of tales that reveals how the court was perceived by the wider circle of 'Abbasid society is The Thousand and One Nights.⁵⁸ In the story of Sindbad the Porter, for example, Sindbad stops to rest next to a merchant's house, and upon hearing enchanting music he rises, enters a courtyard, and finds himself in a garden, in which "the aroma of the choicest meats and wines" wafts.⁵⁹ Sindbad joins the party, eats to his heart's content, returns several times, and becomes friends with the merchant, ending his days of hunger and hard labor. In this tale of rags to riches, food and music represent the comforts and pleasures of the leisured class.⁶⁰ In other stories in the Nights, we come across more offensive forms of debauchery, such as drinking wine (which is prohibited by Islamic law) and keeping company with women. Together, they make up the morally dubious image of "Wine, Woman and Song"⁶¹ that the popular imagination often associated with princely courts and merchants' mansions. This image is corroborated by the Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs), "a monumental 10,000-page ethnographic document" that was compiled in the tenth century.⁶² According to George D. Sawa, the Aghani recounts numerous instances of the playing of music at nocturnal assemblies, drinking bouts, and promiscuous engagements between caliphs and their male and female lovers.⁶³

The critics of 'Abbasid decadence were up against a formidable foe. The court constantly created new fashions, and its guests and workers, who came in and out, introduced those fashions to all who wanted to imitate them.⁶⁴ In a captivating account that appears in the chronicles of al-Mas'udi, we can read how the court created new modes of behavior and disseminated them among the general public. According to al-Mas'udi, when the caliph al-Qahir (r. 932–34) asked the court historian, Muhammad Ibn 'Ali al-Misri, about the accomplishments of previous caliphs, the historian chose to concentrate on the cultural leadership of the caliphal courts and not their military achievements. Al-Misri's account mentions Mansur, who was the first caliph to commission translations of works from foreign languages, which "the public read and studied" avidly; the renowned Harun al-Rashid, who is credited with popularizing "the games of polo, ... ball games and racket games ... and these games spread among the people"; Harun's wife Zubaida, who introduced "the fashion for slippers embroidered with precious stones and for candles made of ambergris—fashions which spread to the public"; and Mu'tasim, who wore "a turban over a soft cap. The people adopted this headgear in imitation of their sovereign."⁶⁵ Perhaps the most captivating story is that of Zubaida and her son, the caliph Amin. After noticing that Amin was attracted to eunuchs, Zubaida "chose young girls remarkable for the elegance of their figures and the charm of their faces." She dressed them up and arranged their hair "after the fashion of young men." Amin was smitten by their looks "and appeared with them in public. It was then that the fashion for having young slave girls with short hair, wearing qaba and belts, became established at all levels of society. These were called 'page girls.'"⁶⁶

Had such promiscuity remained confined to the court, its critics would have had little chance to confront it. However, since the music, cross-dressing, and frivolous games of the court appeared in the streets and homes of Baghdad, they drew the wrath of the pious milieu. Thus, alongside the elaboration and propagation of the ascetic code of conduct through exemplars like Ibn Hanbal, other pietists confronted this immoral conduct head on. In a tract called Censure of Instruments of Diversion (Dhamm al-Malahi), Ibn Abi Dunya (d. 894) admonishes the full gamut of courtly amusements: music, illicit sexual liaisons, and games.⁶⁷ Yet some pious believers were not satisfied with mere oral and written criticism and chose to do battle with the sinners. Such drastic actions devolved, in some instances, into full-scale riots. Leading the militant opposition to the courtly fashions that trickled into other segments of society were the Hanbalis. Their discussions about the use and limits of violence as a means to curb immoral behavior, known as commanding right and forbidding wrong, will be examined below.

Commanding right and forbidding wrong is associated with some of the more volatile moments and individuals in Islamic history. Even though it appears in the canonic literature (Qur'an and Prophetic traditions) as a vague recommendation without specific instructions, it became the ideological foundation for lone and sometimes suicidal individuals who reprimanded rulers, rebellious movements that sought to topple corrupt regimes, state officials (mainly the muhtasib, inspector of the markets) who were in charge of maintaining social order, and ordinary believers who sought to remove vice from their streets.⁶⁸ Although it is not dealt with in most legal manuals, it is part of the Islamic ethical and legal discourse.⁶⁹

Within the Sunni milieu, the Hanbalis stood out as the earliest writers on, and most ardent practitioners of, forbidding wrong.⁷⁰ Their first written references on the topic appear in legal compendiums of disciples who studied with Ibn Hanbal himself.⁷¹ In the subsequent generation, Abu Bakr al-Khallal (d. 923), a Hanbali scholar who dedicated his life to collecting and writing down Ibn Hanbal's opinions on all branches of Islamic religiosity, composed a treatise that dealt solely with this topic.⁷² The tract deals with music, wine, games, and mixed company of the sexes, all of which were commonplace in court culture but were considered by the Hanbalis as corrupt. The following four short examples are illustrative of what the Hanbalis thought and how they discussed forbidding wrong. The first two are about musical instruments:

Abu Bakr al-Marwadhi told Abu Bakr al-Khallal: "I asked Ibn Hanbal⁷³ about breaking a tunbur [stringed instrument]. Ibn Hanbal said: 'It should be broken.' I asked: 'a small tunbur in the hands of a child?' Ibn Hanbal replied: 'It too should be broken, if it is out in the open—then break it.'"⁷⁴

This terse conversation, which was transmitted through three generations of teachers and disciples (Ibn Hanbal, Abu Bakr al-Marwadhi, and Abu Bakr al-Khallal), is followed by a short description of Ibn Hanbal's conduct:

'Umar Ibn Salih told Abu Bakr al-Khallal [when they met] in Tarsus [a town in northern Syria]: "I saw Ahmad Ibn Hanbal pass by an 'ud [lute] that was out in the open and he broke it."⁷⁵

Another offense discussed in the compendium is the consumption of alcohol.⁷⁶ The following question was posed to Ibn Hanbal regarding actions that ought to be taken when coming across intoxicants:

Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Matar and Zakariya' Ibn Yahya told me [Abu Bakr al-Khallal] that Abu Talib asked Ibn Hanbal: "If we pass near alcohol, kept in a small or large vessel, should we break it?" Ibn Hanbal replied: "Yes, break it. One should not pass by exposed wine [and not break the vessel]." Abu Talib asked: "And if it is covered?" Ibn Hanbal replied: "Do not interfere if it is covered."⁷⁷

In the fourth dialogue, an anonymous inquirer asks Ibn Hanbal about someone who disrupted a game of chess:

Sulayman Ibn al-Ash'ath told us: "I heard Ibn Hanbal being questioned about a man who walked by a group who was playing chess, and he rebuked them [that is, he spoke to them], and they paid no heed, and he grabbed the chess[board] and threw it." Ibn Hanbal said: "That's fine, there is no [problem] with that." I [Sulayman Ibn al-Ash'ath] said to Ibn Hanbal: "and the same when breaking an 'ud or tunbur?" He said yes.⁷⁸

These inquiries deal with specific modes of conduct and not with abstract principles. The interlocutors who turn to Ibn Hanbal for advice want to know how to apply the principle of forbidding wrong in specific situations. For instance, how does a devoted believer put an end to a wrongdoing? Is physical coercion acceptable? The four conversations touch on the legitimacy of ordinary believers using force when implementing the principle of forbidding wrong. In all of these cases, Ibn Hanbal replied that it is permissible to stop corrupt behavior with physical force, and that no allowances should be made even for children. However, both Ibn Hanbal and his interlocutors referred to acts of violence against things and not against perpetrators.⁷⁹ It seems that among the early Hanbali milieu, the possibility of attacking fellow Muslims rarely came up and was therefore not sanctioned.⁸⁰ Thus, although Ibn Hanbal encouraged his disciples to destroy material objects in the name of morality, he makes no mention of the wrongdoers themselves. Another limitation set by Ibn Hanbal was the intrusion of privacy.⁸¹ Although Ibn Hanbal does not address the issue of breaking into homes, he does mention that he is talking about musical instruments and jugs of wine that are "out in the open." Here, as well as in other works, the readers are expected to mind their own business and respect each other's privacy. According to most Muslim thinkers, forbidding wrong was to be performed solely in cases of glaring, public offenses.

A fascinating and crucial aspect of these anecdotes is that they are dialogues between scholars and the wide circles of relatively uneducated masses. The questions are simple, seeking practical advice about concrete situations, and the answers are clear instructions about what to do and what to avoid. This is not surprising if we consider that the compendium is a collection of masa'il, whose very purpose is to create a channel of communication between the scholarly elite and the intellectually lower stratum. This subgenre of legal literature, which was widely used in Islamic and Jewish societies in the Middle Ages, offers a unique means of accessing the beliefs and attitudes of lay believers. It is one of the few medieval genres that reveals, mainly through its questions, the concerns and apprehensions of the average Muslim.⁸²

Evidence of the interaction between first-rate Hanbali scholars and their lay admirers is found in the seemingly dull lists of names that appear at the beginning of each anecdote. In a study of this treatise, Michael Cook has pointed out that "Khallal transmits directly from some forty different authorities."⁸³ In several cases, these authorities did not have direct contact with Ibn Hanbal and learned about his opinions through another group of transmitters, hence creating two layers of transmitters between Ibn Hanbal and Abu Bakr al-Khallal and, as a consequence, enlarging the number of documented Hanbalis that participate in the discussions. Judging by Abu Bakr al-Khallal's compendium, forbidding wrong was an issue that interested dozens of Hanbalis. As Cook observes, it was an "everyday concern of the early Hanbalite community."⁸⁴ It is crucial to emphasize that many of the transmitters of these anecdotes were marginal figures in the Hanbali circle, who are barely mentioned in Hanbali biographical literature or any other record of scholars from that period. Clearly, the doctrine of forbidding wrong circulated orally among the lesser educated adherents of the Hanbali milieu before Abu Bakr al-Khallal wrote what his informants told him.

Mild asceticism and forbidding wrong stem from the same moral impulse: control of appetites and passions. From the Hanbali point of view, which espoused mild asceticism and encouraged the implementation of forbidding wrong, players of games are so engrossed in their frivolous pastimes that they forget themselves and their religious duties; alcohol distorts the senses; music breeds fornication; excessive consumption of clothes, food, and furniture requires huge resources of time and money and enslaves the believer to his or her physical needs and whims. The task that mild ascetics and individuals who forbade wrong took upon themselves was to minimize (as in the case of food, clothing, and furniture, music and sexual activities) or to do away with completely (as with games and wine) activities that excite passions. Thus the two have a common goal, which they try to attain in different arenas: forbidding wrong operates in the public sphere (or in other people's homes), while mild asceticism deals with one's own body and personal habits in the privacy of one's own home.⁸⁵

The link between rigorous self-discipline (asceticism) and strident social activism (forbidding wrong) is not a unique Islamic phenomenon. It is, in fact, part of a pattern that has been discussed by Max Weber in his Sociology of Religion, where he comments: "Religious virtuosity, in addition to subjecting the natural drives to a systematic patterning of life, always leads to the control of relationships within communal life ... and leads further to an altogether radical religious and ethical criticism."⁸⁶ In the Islamic context, asceticism ("religious virtuosity") and forbidding wrong ("radical religious and ethical criticism") were often performed by the same individuals. Although the two do not always converge, a disproportionate number of ascetics performed forbidding wrong. We learn that the renowned Ibn Karram, the founder of the Karramiyya, was both an ascetic and practitioner of forbidding wrong.⁸⁷ Other well-known ascetics, such as Hasan al-Basri, Sufyan al-Thawri, Bishr al-Hafi, and Malik Ibn Dinar, and also many lesser known ascetics, repudiated their neighbors and rulers.⁸⁸ The Hanbalis have their own share of mildly ascetic practitioners of forbidding wrong, starting with Ibn Hanbal himself and moving to al-Barbahari, who was reputed to be an ascetic and the leader of groups that forbade wrong.⁸⁹

The similarities between forbidding wrong and mild asceticism are evident in several areas. Both were elaborated in simple literary forms that were easily understood by the wide public (forbidding wrong was dealt with in masa'il, mild asceticism appears in biographic dictionaries). Both went beyond writings and were manifested in actions that were meant to check the spread of hedonism in Islamic society. In short, both were excellent instruments for disseminating their shared critique of excess materialism among a large audience. Yet, whereas mild asceticism operated through self-restraint and therefore in the private domain, forbidding wrong was an attempt to enforce moral strictures on others and was therefore applied in the public sphere.

According to the Hanbali worldview, forbidding wrong was a means of criticizing the members of the community and not the authorities, to whom Hanbalis remained loyal. However, despite their fidelity, the Hanbalis' activities did cause instability and place the rulers in jeopardy. In the early tenth century, as their numbers grew and their leaders became more militant, the Hanbalis reinterpreted forbidding wrong and took it upon themselves to be the moral patrol of Baghdad. Eschewing the very self-restraint that Ibn Hanbal prescribed, they harassed anyone that chose a way of life different from their own, and made it all the more difficult for the 'Abbasid regime to maintain its hold on the disintegrating empire.

The Hanbali transition from uncompromising, yet selective, criticism to unbridled persecution of ideological rivals is a fascinating enigma, which to a large extent is insoluble due to lack of sources. The chronicles and Hanbali biographical dictionaries do not address this change directly, and therefore do not divulge any information about this process. What they do refer to are eruptions of Hanbali rampages, sketches of their leaders, and the rulers' reactions to Hanbali rioting. These occasional descriptions of Hanbali disorderliness enable us to distinguish between two forms of conduct (that under the leadership of Ibn Hanbal and that under the leadership of al-Barbahari), to examine and analyze the dynamics of Hanbali upheaval, and to identify the ideology that generated the riots. But these inquiries will not explain why the disciples moved away from their founder's self-imposed restrictions to rampant disorder and how they justified it. Therefore, this part of the essay will focus on the descriptions of the Hanbali disturbances in the early tenth century. Based on the depiction and examination of the events, it will suggest some tentative observations regarding the context in which al-Barbahari and his followers acted so aggressively.

Outside the Hanbali milieu, it was mostly quixotic loners who forbade wrong.⁹⁰ In contrast to the Hanbalis, who were intensely preoccupied with the doctrine of forbidding wrong in the ninth century and by the tenth century were implementing it in large groups led by al-Barbahari, the adherents of the other three Sunni madhahib were slow to articulate a doctrine and rarely forbade wrong in groups.⁹¹ Thus, whereas most practitioners of forbidding wrong viewed their conduct as an expression of individual devotion and scrupulousness, among the Hanbalis it was both an act that was meant to strengthen the moral fiber of Islamic society and, at the same time, a way of belonging to their madhhab.⁹² This predilection to group action had an important political consequence: the Hanbalis became a formidable force in the streets of Baghdad, and the authorities had to appease or oppress them because in some instances their group activities devolved into religious riots that jeopardized the ruling elite.⁹³

Hanbali pugnacity became a nuisance for the rulers and evoked harsh words from such chroniclers as the contemporary historian al-Suli (d. 947) and the eleventh-century bureaucrat Miskawayh (d. 1030).⁹⁴ The two were part of an educated milieu that served the rulers as bureaucrats and courtiers, identified with their political agendas, and embraced the courtly cultural paradigm that the Hanbalis adamantly opposed.⁹⁵ Much like conservative French and British historians from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who viewed the violent masses as "rabble" without a cause and wrote about the crowds from the "spasmodic view of popular history," al-Suli and Miskawayh described the Hanbalis in a derogatory fashion.⁹⁶ The upshot of this elitist perspective was that the masses lacked an honorable purpose because their only concern was immediate material gratification. Furthermore, these historians depicted the Hanbalis as lacking any ideological and organizational attributes, and therefore as being easy prey for charismatic individuals who were set on inciting riots. However, despite al-Suli's and Miskawayh's enmity, their critical remarks and hostile descriptions unwittingly reveal the Hanbalis as a relatively organized movement whose members operate in the name of a well-defined worldview.

Some three centuries after al-Suli made his comments about the Hanbalis, Ibn al-Athir echoed his point of view. In a short sub-chapter about Hanbali sedition, the author describes their assaults on Baghdad's populace:

In that year [935] the Hanbali affair became more distressing as their fury intensified. They began to raid the houses of the commanders and of the common people, and if they found wine they poured it away, and if they found a singing girl they beat her and broke her instruments. They hindered buying and selling and delayed men who were walking along with women and youths, to question them about their companions. If the answers failed to satisfy them they beat the men and dragged them to the chief of police and testified about their immoral acts. The Hanbalis wrought discord upon Baghdad.⁹⁷

Hanbali belligerence drew severe reactions from the caliph and his chief of police. However, these measures did not subdue al-Barbahari and his adherents.⁹⁸ Ibn al-Athir continues: "The Hanbali evil and sedition grew. They sought the assistance of the blind who took shelter in the mosques and when adherents of the Shafi'i madhhab walked by, these blind men would set upon them and beat them with their sticks, nearly killing them."⁹⁹ These accounts of unjustified intrusions into houses, harassment of passersby, and disturbances at the markets are meant to create the impression that the Hanbalis were an unruly mob. However, despite Ibn al-Athir's detailed description of Hanbali violence and the erasure of any ideological motivations that may have moved them to such conduct, the connection between the two is quite clear. Although Ibn al-Athir does not use the term "forbidding wrong," his descriptions of pouring out wine, breaking musical instruments, and intervening between potential illicit sexual partners fall well within the Hanbali understanding of forbidding wrong. Thus, despite the historians' attempts to present the Hanbalis as a violent mob, whose actions cannot be justified, they reveal enough information to point to a connection between their conduct and forbidding wrong.¹⁰⁰

Yet, although it is possible to associate Hanbali riots and forbidding wrong, their mode of implementing the principle in the tenth century contradicted Ibn Hanbal's prescriptions.¹⁰¹ First of all, al-Barbahari's followers broke into houses in search of wine and musical instruments, acts that were contrary to Ibn Hanbal's instructions to avoid things that were not out in the open. Secondly, the masa'il of Ibn Hanbal rarely mentioned (and therefore rarely sanctioned) assaults on people. When he justified the use of physical force, it was only against material objects. By contrast, tenth-century Hanbalis assaulted singers and individuals who did not cooperate with them and even Shafi'is who happened to walk by their mosque. Thirdly, Ibn Hanbal directed his interlocutors to avoid the authorities and not to seek their help in implementing forbidding wrong.¹⁰² Eighty years later, the Hanbalis dragged people to the police station, and got themselves in more trouble than their victims, because the police considered Hanbali conduct to be a hindrance to public order and attempted to put an end to their vigilante actions.

Despite the court historians' efforts to create the impression that the Hanbalis were a crowd gone berserk, their writings do reveal some characteristics of an organized movement, just as they unwittingly exposed the Hanbalis' ideological features. The tenth-century historian al-Suli, whose account of the 935 disturbances is similar to the above-cited depictions of assaults, adds meaningful information to what we know about these events—the names of the riots' leaders: "And the Hanbali affair intensified in this period as they plundered stores in the Syrian Gate [Bab al-Sham] ... and the ruler [sultan] resented this and ordered a search for al-Dalla' and Ibn Ramadan, but neither was found."¹⁰³ The use, by contemporary historians, of the term Hanbali suggests that the Hanbalis were a distinct and recognized group in that period, which was set apart from the faceless masses (named 'amma in these chronicles). Furthermore, the rulers' attempts to seek out and capture al-Dalla', Ibn Ramadan, and al-Bukhari, who was known as al-Barbahari's lieutenant, suggest that there was an acknowledged leadership among the Hanbalis.¹⁰⁴ We also read that when these leaders went into hiding, they could rely on a loyal network, which hid them for as long as was necessary, and in the case of al-Barbahari until his death.¹⁰⁵ Such a leadership and the long-term cooperation between leaders and followers suggests that the Hanbali disturbances cannot be characterized as spontaneous outbursts and demonstrations. The Hanbalis of the early tenth century had some sort of informal organization that included a handful of widely recognized leaders and numerous followers who were willing to risk themselves and hide or help these leaders. It also seems that they had a clear sense of group solidarity and estrangement from other madhahib, as when they assailed individuals who happened to pass by, simply because they belonged to the Shafi'i madhhab. Thus what might appear as a motley group of unorganized zealots turns out to be bands of Hanbali militants, confronting members of other madhahib.

Another indication that the Hanbalis were perceived by the early tenth century as a cohesive and organized movement was the caliph's explicit effort to stop their activities. During the reigns of al-Radi (d. 940), who was an admirer of non-Islamic sciences and games and a lover of lascivious living, the police were ordered to confront the Hanbalis.¹⁰⁶ Miskawayh, the eleventh-century historian, wrote: "In this year [935] Badr Kharshani [Baghdad's chief of police] rode and proclaimed on both sides of Baghdad that no two Hanbalite followers of Abu Mohammad Barbahari were to assemble in one place; a number of them were imprisoned, and Barbahari himself went into hiding. The reason for this lay in their frequent assaults on people and their constant stirring up of strife."¹⁰⁷

Miskawayh, like al-Suli before him, stripped the Hanbalis of their ideological plumage—theological positions and forbidding wrong—and presented them as a dangerous nuisance gnawing at the social order. At the same time, he did not present the Hanbalis as a mindless crowd or as a collection of moralizing eccentrics. The fact that he refers to them by their name, Hanbalis (Hanabila), mentions their leader, and remarks on the imprisonment and hiding of leaders suggests that this was a distinct movement whose rank and file were loyal to their leaders and had a strong sense of group solidarity.

If we compare the Hanbalis to other groups that rioted in tenth-century Baghdad, such as the masses that demanded reasonably priced bread, the soldiers that demanded unreasonably high salaries, and the Hashimites that demanded their subsidies, the Hanbalis stand out precisely because they do not present the rulers with economic demands but are in fact motivated by a religious agenda.¹⁰⁸ It is important to reiterate that even in the narratives of al-Suli and Miskawayh, which ignore the Hanbalis' ideological motives and emphasize their seemingly random violence, the Hanbalis are not linked to demands of material gain. Furthermore, they are set apart from the faceless masses whose discontents grew from their fear for their physical well-being or from their narrow economic needs. Despite the hostility that such historians felt toward the Hanbalis, the image that comes into relief in their accounts is of a relatively organized movement that is driven by ideological motivations (albeit, according to these historians, a misguided ideology).

By the early tenth century, the Hanbalis went through two important changes. First, like other madhahib, they evolved from a small scholarly circle into a large socio-religious movement. Second, they became more aggressive toward their ideological adversaries. These two developments beg two interrelated questions, which do not have conclusive answers. Why did a group of ascetically inclined jurists enter this path of violence? How did this shift in ideology and social practice affect their growth and influence on society?

The tendency of the Hanbalis to confront sinners and deviants, be they authorities or ordinary members of the community, is an important part of their self-image. Echoes of this ethos appear in the biographies of Ibn Hanbal, which tell of his resistance to caliphal religious policy and his criticism of all those that surrounded him: sons, wives, neighbors, and disciples alike. However, even though evoking Ibn Hanbal can reveal, to a limited extent, the premium that the Hanbalis placed on religious and social criticism, it cannot explain why later generations of Hanbalis altered such circumscribed and well-aimed criticism of individuals into unruly assaults against the inhabitants of Baghdad. Despite our inability to furnish a comprehensive and satisfactory explanation for such a change, we can put it in perspective and note some of the historical circumstances that contributed to it. To begin with, it is important to place Hanbali violence in its proper proportions, since it was not the only path that they chose, even though in the days of al-Barbahari it was probably the dominant one. During the centuries following Ibn Hanbal's death, two other forms of relations between the Hanbalis and other non-Hanbali Muslims evolved. One of the two continued Ibn Hanbal's position, admonition of sinners, without resorting to intrusive violence. The second broke off from the Hanbali critical posture altogether, as Hanbali leaders developed close relations with the rulers and agreed to work for them in different capacities. When the three options are taken into account, it becomes clear that we cannot treat the Hanbalis as if they remained an ideologically homogeneous moral movement that was transformed en bloc into a bellicose element in Baghdadi society. Rather, they became a multi-faceted movement that vacillated between these three ideological strands. The ebb and flow of Hanbali combativeness depended on at least two historic factors. The first was the spread of a candid anxiety among the Hanbalis that true Islam was about to be dealt a fatal blow and as a result might be irreversibly damaged. The second was the appearance of a capable leader, such as al-Barbahari, that would steer these moral desperados against their enemies.

Just as we remain in the dark regarding Hanbali contentiousness in the early tenth century, it is difficult to assess how the new patterns of violence influenced their ability to attract large followings. We simply do not have enough evidence to determine if their clashes with the surrounding environment were an asset or an impediment for their numerical growth. It is, however, safe to assume that Hanbali assaults in the name of morality elicited two kinds of reactions. The first was admiration by parts of the populace. Their austere lifestyles and preoccupation with public morality led them, and perhaps other segments of society, to perceive themselves as the moral elites of the Islamic community.¹⁰⁹ At the same time, their tendency to impose their ideals in such a forceful manner irritated a good many others, such as the caliphs who issued decrees against them and historians who wrote about them in negative terms. Hanbali zeal must have acted as both a magnet and a sieve—attracting some and keeping others away.

The madhahib are one of the most original and important Islamic social creations. Original, because the type of social organization that congealed around Islamic jurists did not have a precedent in Late Antique societies. Important, because the roles they played in the daily affairs of their followers as well as in local and imperial politics were crucial. In order to study such socio-intellectual entities, it is necessary to devise a methodology that analyzes the discrete elements of their worldviews, such as legal doctrine, moral ideals, and theological tenets, and synthesize them. In this essay, the conceptual framework that wove together the different elements of the Hanbali worldview is the nomos, which enabled us to trace the manner in which the underlying assumptions of the Hanbali moral ethos (mild asceticism) and its legal ideas (forbidding wrong) were linked to each other. A further aspect of the nomos, as Cover suggests, is its influence on the way in which that law is interpreted and implemented. Hence, it is an ideological framework that shapes the actual conduct of the community's members, because it determines the extent to which the community will cooperate with the rulers and the nature of its relations with the rest of society. The linkage between moral outlook, legal position, and social practice is of particular relevance to the Hanbalis, whose ethico-legal amalgam (mild asceticism and forbidding wrong) motivated them, on some occasions, to clash with individuals they perceived as sinners. Thus, on the basis of their nomos and the clashes that grew out of their attempts to implement its values, the Hanbalis viewed themselves as the guardians of true Islam, whose task was to do battle with moral transgressors. ¹¹⁰ As was stated above, such militant activism gained the respect of some believers, but it also annoyed many others. In the long run, Hanbali rigidity and aggression had a price: from the earliest stages of their formation to the twenty-first century, the Hanbalis were and have remained the smallest of the four madhahib. ¹¹¹

The concept of nomos creates a framework that brings together legal views with different strands of religious thought and investigates how such a worldview forges patterns of behavior. Such an approach is useful for scholars who study societies that are permeated with religious thought, and it is particularly promising for the study of Islamic societies, because the madhahib, in which law converges with a wide range of religious notions and social dynamics, constitute a pivotal element in their social configuration.

I would like to thank Dror Wahrman for his encouragement and criticism throughout the stages of this article's preparation. A partial draft of this essay was presented at the Seventh International Workshop at Ben-Gurion University: "Considering Consumption, Production, and the Market in the Constitution of Meaning in the Middle East and Beyond." I would like to express my gratitude to Relli Shechter for enabling me to participate in this conference and to its participants for their comments. I am indebted to Michael Cook, Michael Gluzman, Dina Hurvitz, and Nurit Tsafrir, who have read early drafts of this essay and offered valuable remarks. Special thanks go to Haggai Hurvitz, who read several drafts and offered excellent advice and guidance.

Nimrod Hurvitz is a senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and is the chairperson of the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy. He received his PhD in 1994 from Princeton University, where he studied with Michael Cook. His main areas of interest are Islamic religious movements in the medieval period and 'Abbasid courtly culture. Hurvitz is the author of The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power (2001), and is currently working on social and intellectual aspects of Hanbalism.

Notes

¹�Ibn al-Athir, 'Ali Ibn Abi al-Karam, Al-Kamil fi al-ta'rikh, 13 vols. (Beirut, 1966), 8: 14–16; a short exposition of al-Muqtadir's reign and its catastrophic consequences appears in Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (London, 1986), 187–99. For summaries of this event, see Harold Bowen, The Life and Times of 'Ali Ibn 'Isa (Cambridge, 1975), 84–98; David B. J. Marmer, "The Political Culture of the 'Abbasid Court 279–324 (A.H.)" (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1994), 54–59.

²�I find "legal community" more appropriate than the usual translation, "school of law," because "school of law" emphasizes doctrine and a handful of jurists that articulate doctrine and ignores the huge following and social dynamics of the madhhab, while "legal community" captures the social dimension of the madhhab and integrates it with its legal features. Terse descriptions of the different madhahib appear in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (2d edition) and any introductory study of Islam. Although there are many in-depth studies of the legal doctrine of the madhahib, none focuses on their spread among the wider population. For a survey of the scholarly elites of the madhahib, see Christopher Melchert, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th–10th Centuries C.E. (Leiden, 1997).

³�Ibn al-Athir, Al-Kamil, 8: 16.

⁴�On Hanbalis, see Henri Laoust, "Le Hanbalisme sous le Califat de Baghdad, (241/855–656/1258)," Revue des études islamiques 27 (1959): 67–128; for a brief survey of literature about the Hanbalis, see Nimrod Hurvitz, The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power (London, 2002), 11–16; on al-Barbahari, see Encyclopaedia of Islam (2d edn.), "al-Barbahari"; Ibn Abi Ya'la, Tabaqat al-Hanabila, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1952), 2: 18–45.

⁵�There are several studies on the spread of the Hanafi madhhab, such as Wilfred Madelung, "The Spread of Maturidism and the Turks," Actas do IV Congresso de Estudos Arabes e Islamicos 1968 (Leiden, 1971), 109–68; Madelung, "The Early Murji'a in Khurasan and Transoxania and the Spread of Hanafism," Der Islam 59 (1982): 32–39a; Nurit Tsafrir, "The Beginnings of the Hanafi School of Isfahan," Islamic Law and Society 5, no. 1 (1998): 1–21.

⁶�On the legal doctrines of the madhahib, see Joseph Schacht, Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford, 1950); Jonathan Brockopp, Early Maliki Law (Leiden, 2000); on legal reasoning and methodology, see Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford, 1964); Wael B. Hallaq, The History of Islamic Legal Theories: An Introduction to Sunni usul al-fiqh (Cambridge, 1997).

⁷�On institutions of education, see George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges (Edinburgh, 1981); Dafna Ephrat, A Learned Society in a Period of Transition (Albany, N.Y., 2000).

⁸�On communal activities and loyalty, see Daniella Talmon-Heller, "The Shaykh and the Community: Popular Hanbalite Islam in 12th–13th Century Jabal Nablus and Jabal Qaysun," Studia islamica 79 (1994): 103–20; Stefan Leder, "Charismatic Scripturalism: The Hanbali Maqdisis of Damascus," Der Islam 74 (1997): 279–304.

⁹�Richard Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 28–46; Wilfred Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Albany, N.Y., 1988), 26–38.

¹⁰�Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (Cambridge, 1988), 232–33.

¹¹�Robert Cover, "Nomos and Narrative," in Martha Minow, Michael Ryan, and Austin Sarat, eds., Narrative, Violence and the Law (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1993), 128. I would like to thank Edward Fram for introducing me to the work of Robert Cover.

¹²�On mild asceticism, see Nimrod Hurvitz, "Biographies and Mild Asceticism: A Study of Islamic Moral Imagination," Studia islamica 85 (1997): 41–65; Hurvitz, Formation, 91–101. For a discussion of the term zuhd (asceticism), see Leah Kihnberg, "What Is Meant by Zuhd?" Studia islamica 61 (1985): 27–44. On the precursors of Hanbalism and their understanding of asceticism, see Jacqueline Chabbi, "Fudayl b. 'Iyad: Un precurseur du Hanbalisme (d. 187/803)," Bulletin d'études orientales 30 (1978): 331–45; Gerard Lecomte, "Sufyan al-Tawri: Quelques remarques sur le personnage et son oeuvre," Bulletin d'études orientales 30 (1978): 51–60. For a study of Muslim critics of ostentatious asceticism, see Sara Sviri, "Hakim Tirmidhi and the Malamati Movement in Early Islam," in Leonard Lewisohn, ed., Classical Persian Sufism: Sufism from Its Origins to Rumi (London, 1993), 583–613, esp. 600.

¹³�On the collapse of the 'Abbasid empire, see the summary by Lapidus, Islamic Societies, 126–36.

¹⁴�On the connection between economic decline and political instability, see Marshal G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1974), 1: 483–95; Muhammad Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1988), 2: 115–36.

¹⁵�For a review of historiography on mihna, see John A. Nawas, "A Reexamination of Three Current Explanations for Al-Ma'mun's Introduction of the Mihna," International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (1994): 615–29; for a different interpretation of its causes, see Nimrod Hurvitz, "Mihna as Self-Defense," Studia islamica 92 (2001): 93–111.

¹⁶�On the growth of Hanbalism during Ibn Hanbal's life, see Hurvitz, Formation, 75–90; on his jurisprudence, see 103–10.

¹⁷�Cover, "Nomos," 101.

¹⁸�Cover, "Nomos," 101.

¹⁹�John S. Hawley, "Introduction: Saints and Virtues," in Hawley, ed., Saints and Virtues (Berkeley, Calif., 1987), xi.

²⁰�This distinction was proposed by Thomas C. Hall, "Asceticism," in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, James Hastings, ed. (New York, 1964), 2: 64.

²¹�Hall, "Asceticism," 67–69. For a recent study of Christian attitudes toward the body, see Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988).