'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎179v] (363/862)

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252 HISTORY
in the days of Mamun, who greatly encouraged it, but it was checked
by an orthodox reaction under Mutawakkil, of which the champion
was Ibn Hanbal (d. 855). From his conservative teaching based on
the Koran and the Traditions and the refusal ‘to ask the question
why’ there grew up the Hanbalite school or rite of Moslem law.
The other three schools, of far wider influence, allowed a greater
place to reason in determining the law where the Traditions were
silent. The liberal Hanifite code, derived from Abu Hanifa (d. 767),
who taught at Baghdad and Kufa, allowed analogical deduction and
the notions of legal fiction and equity. Malik ibn Anas (715-795),
an Arab of Medina, established the principle of interpretation based
on the consensus of opinion. A mixture of the Hanifite and the more
conservative Malikite school produced the doctrines of the school of
A 1 Shafii (767-820) which admitted a limited freedom of speculation.
These principles of analogical deduction and consensus of opinion
gave a pliancy to the rigid system of Sunni Islam so that it could,
within narrow limits, be adapted to circumstances.
The rites answered the Mutazilites in matters of behaviour and
religious practice. There remained metaphysical speculation. Ortho
dox creed and thought were re-established on a sound logical basis
by diverting the philosophical method of the Mutazilites to Sunni
ends. In Iraq the leader of this Moslem scholasticism was Ashari
(d. 933), whose system gradually prevailed throughout Sunni Islam,
after a stern tussle with the Hanbalites, who applied their refusal of
discussion to beliefs as well as to law. ‘A 1 Mutazila’, went the saying,
‘held their heads high, but their dominion ended when God sent
Ashari’. ,
Sufism. The Mutazilites were succeeded by the teachers of Sufism,
which is the form taken by mysticism in Islam. The early Sufis were
simply ascetics. Later the love rather than the fear of God became
the object of a devotional system which assimilated many foreign
ideas from Christian, Persian, and Buddhist sources. This ran to
excess in interpretations of the Koran and tended to the neglect of
religious practices accepted by all Islam. Eventually pantheism and
the identification of the individual with the deity appeared, and
consequent antinomianism and disregard of normal rules of morality.
But Sufism at its best was a spiritual force which, like the great
monastic movements of medieval Christianity, continually brought
fresh life and vigour to orthodox religion. Its greatest representa
tives in Iraq were Hallaj, martyred in 921 for declaring ‘I am the
Truth’, and the more orthodox Ghazzali (1059-1111), originally