Ahmed Bin Hanbal Zuhd

Ahmad Ibn Hanbals Book of Renunciation
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by C h r i s t o p h e r M e l c h e r t University of Oxford
Abstract
Ahmad ibn Hanbals book al-Zuhd (renunciation) is one of the largest extant collections of renunciant sayings from the first two Islamic centuries. It was assembled by his son Abd Allah, who contributed about half the sayings in it independently of his father. The extant text is only half or a third of the version available to Ibn Hajar in the Mamluk period. Some of what is missing can be recovered from quotations in Abu Nu aym, Hilyat al-awliya#. It is notably dominated by data from Basra. Its contents are highly miscellaneous, but rejection of worldly goods appears to be the theme that comes up most often.
Renunciation (zuhd) is a major feature of early Islamic piety. Its values, especially fear of God and insistence on taking seriously the question of ones place in the Afterlife, apparently predominate in securely datable Islamic inscriptions of the seventh century ce, to the point that little else can be made out about the religion at that stage, such as the importance of law and the Prophet.1 Modern scholarly consensus has for some time agreed with medieval Islamic scholarship in locating the origins of Sufism, which flourished from the later ninth century, in the early renunciant movement.2 Our principal sources for the history of renunciation are collecti1) V . Solange Ory, Aspects religieux des textes pigraphiques du dbut de lIslam, Les premires critures islamiques, dir. Alfred-Louis de Prmare, Revue due Monde Musulman et de la Mditerrane 58 (Aix-en-Provence 1990), 309; Fred Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 14 (Princeton 1998), chap. 2. 2) The classical account is Louis Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, trans. Benjamin Clark (Notre Dame 1997). Recent historical overviews are Alexander Knysh , Islamic Mysticism: A Short History, Themes in Islamic Studies 1 (Leiden 1999), and Ahmet Karamustafa , Sufism: The Formative Period, The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys (Edinburgh 2007). For the
Der Islam Bd. 85, S. 345359 Walter de Gruyter 2011 ISSN 0021-1818
DOI 10.1515/ISLAM.2011.007
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Christopher Melchert
ons of stories and sayings from the ninth to eleventh centuries, among which the second largest is the Kit a b al-Zuhd (book of renunciation) attributed to Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241/855). The intention of this study is to sketch its extent and character. As for Ahmad ibn Hanbal, modern biographies in Arabic have stressed his involvement in the Inquisition and the formation of Islamic law.3 Nimrod Hurvitz s more recent biography in English rightly stresses Ahmads piety as one basis of the regard in which he was held and of the Hanbali school of law that formed after his death; however, it cites al-Zuhd very seldom, in line with its general neglect of Ahmad s activity as a collector of hadith.4 Two versions of al-Zuhd are in print, based on different manuscripts, both without a critical apparatus. The first appeared in Mecca in the mid-1930s with an introduction by one Abd al-Rahman ibn Qasim, who presumably also edited it on the basis of one Moroccan manuscript.5 Dar al-Kutub al- Ilmiya of Beirut published a photomechanical reprint in the 1970s, then a resetting of it with new pagination in the 1980s.6 The second
present writers understanding of the historical development of Sufism, v. Christopher Melchert , Basran Origins of Classical Sufism, Der Islam 83 (2005), 22140. 3) Oustandingly, Ab u Zahra , Ibn Hanbal: haya tuhu wa- asruhu wa-fiqhuh ak a , al-A#imma al-arba a (Cairo and Beirut 1399/1979), (Cairo n.d.), Mustafa al-S 687973, idem, al-Im a m Ahmad ibn Hanbal (Beirut 1404/1984), and Fahmi Jad a n , al-Mihna (Amman 1989). 4) Nimrod Hurvitz , The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power, Culture and Civilisation in the Middle East (London 2002). Other recent treatments of Ahmads piety, both excellent, are Michael Cook , Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge 2000), chap. 5, and Michael Cooperson , Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma#mu n, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge 2000), chap. 4. V . also Christopher Melchert , Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Makers of the Muslim World (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006), chap. 5. 5) Ahmad ibn Hanbal, K. al-Zuhd (Mecca 1357), 400 pp. Sezgin identifies the MS as Rabat, Kattan i 292 (GAS 1:506, no. 3), 236 ff., confirmed by Roger Deladrire, Introduction to Bayhaqi, Lanthologie du renoncement, Collection Islam spiritual (Lagrasse: Verdier, 1995), 9. According to Sezgin , the manuscript is from the 12th century H. (i.e. approximately the 18th century CE). A facsimile of the title page shows the year 1243 under the name of an owner, mostly crossed out, but this seems to be the year someone acquired it, not when it was copied: Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd, ed. Yahya ibn Muhammad S u s (n.p. n.d.), 29. 6) Ahmad ibn Hanbal, K. al-Zuhd (Beirut 1396/1976), 400 pp.; idem, al-Zuhd (Beirut 1403/1983), 480 pp. Henceforth, citations of page numbers in the former will appear in roman, in the latter in italic. From the same publisher is now available a h i n (Beirut 1420/1999), 327 pp., Ahmad, al-Zuhd, ed. Muhammad Abd al-Salam S
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appeared in successive volumes from Alexandria and Beirut at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 80s, editing attributed to a Muhammad alal S araf, based on one Libyan manuscript.7 Later in the 1980s, there apG peared an index to both editions from Yusuf Abd al-Rahman al l i .8 Roger Deladrire speaks of the Meccan edition as compriMar as sing 2,379 items, which my own count confirms.9 A more recent reprinting of the Meccan edition, edited by Yahya ibn Muhammad S u s, counts 2,418 items.10 Mar as lis index indicates 893 items in the Meccan edition not araf s, 327 in S araf s edition not found in the Meccan, suggesfound in S ting an extant collection of about 2,700; however, his index is faulty on this araf s edition. point and exaggerates the number of additional items in S The two editions, which is to say the two manuscripts, follow the same plan of beginning with the sayings of prophets, proceeding to the sayings of Companions, then of persons who came after them, but the order of chap araf s edition has fewer sayings in inapproters is slightly different and S priate chapters. Both manuscripts come with an account of the books transmission up to the year 708/13091011:
Nasir al-Din Abu Abd Allah Yusuf ibn Muhammad ibn Abd Allah al-Dimas qi afi i, known as Ibn al-Munhar < al-S Taqi al-Din Abu Muhammad Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi l-Fahm ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Buldan i al- Abbasi <
with items numbered but again without indices or cross-references. Another reprint of the Meccan edition with items numbered and some cross-references is Ahmad, al-Zuhd, ed. Muhammad al-Sa id Basyun i Za g l u l (Beirut 1423/2002), 568 pp. The Meccan edition has also been reprinted by Dar Rayan and Dar Umar ibn al-attab, according to S u s, Introduction, Zuhd, 21. I have not myself seen Ahmad, al-Zuhd, ed. Isam Faris al- Harasta n i and Muhammad Ibr ahim al-Zughl i (Beirut 1994). 7) Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Zuhd, ed. Muhammad G alal S araf, 2 vols. (Alexandria 1980, then Beirut 1981). Citations of page numbers that include a volume ami a al-Libiya 3856, 358 ff., by number will be to this edition. MS identified as al-G araf, Zuhd, I, 6. S 8) Yusuf Abd al-Rahman al-Mar as l i , Fihris aha d i th K. al-Zuhd lil-im a m Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal, Silsilat faharis kutub al-sunna 6 (Beirut 1408/1988). 9) Deladrire, Anthologie, 9. 10) V . supra, n. 5. This edition, of 752 pages, includes marginal cross-references to the Meccan edition and the Moroccan manuscript, also notes commenting on the asa n id. My guess is that it was published in Cairo in 2003. 11) Ahmad, al-Zuhd, 3 8 = ed. S araf, I, 23; cf. ed. S u s, 37.
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Christopher Melchert Abu l-Qasim Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Yahya ibn Yunus al-Tag ir < Abu Talib Abd al-Qadir ibn Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Yusuf i < Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Ali ibn al-Muhib, by qira#a in Rabi I 443/July-August 1051, < a far ibn Hamdan ibn Malik al-Qati i. Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn G
The earliest three names are known.12 Ibn Hag ar once says of the earliest two that they alone transmitted the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal and al-Zuhd al-kab ir.13 However, other sources concerning Ibn al-Muhib (including other references by Ibn Hag ar) call the latter book only alZuhd, so we probably need not infer that there was ever a lost Kit a b alZuhd al-sa gir. Al-atib al-Bagdadi disparages Ibn al-Muhib: He also related from Ibn Malik K. al-Zuhd of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He had no old copy of it. His copy was in his own hand. He wrote it in his old age and it is not to ar was wrong inasmuch as Abu be argued by.14 Fortunately, Ibn Hag Nu aym al-Isbahan i also transmitted great parts, at least, of al-Zuhd. Comparison with his transmission suggests that Ibn al-Muhibs transmission was reasonably exact, on which more below. The Libyan manuscript begins with almost the same list of transmitters, so the text traditions represented by it and the Moroccan manuscript must have diverged subsequently to 708/130910. It seems fairly certain that neither manuscript depends on the other, but they may go back to a common ancestor subsequent to 708/130910. Saud Al-Sarhan, whose doctoral dissertation on the works of Ahmad ibn Hanbal we eagerly await, has shown me photocopies from two other manuscripts of al-Zuhd. Except for section headings, one seems to be practically identical to the Moroccan text published by Abd al-Rahman ibn Qasim. The other includes the first nineteen folios from a recension attributed to Salih ibn Ahmad (d. Isfahan, 266/880?) rather than Abd Allah (d. Baghdad, 290/903). It begins very similarly to the familiar Moroccan
12) On Abu Bakr al-Qati i (d. 368/979), v . al-ahabi, Siyar a la m al-nubala#, u ayb al-Arna #ut , &al., 25 vols. (Beirut 19818), XVI, 21013, with further ed. S references; on Ibn al-Muhib (d. 444/1052), v. ibid., XVII, 6403; on Abu Talib alYusuf i (d. 516/1123), v. ibid., XIX, 3867. 13) Ibn Hag ar, Lisa n al-Mizan, 7 vols. (Hyderabad 132931, repr. Beirut a far ibn Hamdan. 1406/1986), I, 146, s.n. Ahmad ibn G 14) Al-atib al-Bagdadi, Ta#r i Ba gda d, 14 vols. (Cairo 1349/1931, repr. n.d.), VII, 391 = Ta#r i mad inat al-sala m, ed. Bas s ar Awwad Ma r u f, 17 vols. (Beirut 1422/2001), VIII, 394. A similar charge from al-Silaf i apud Ibn Hag ar, Lisa n, II, 237, s.n. al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Muhammad.
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text but with occasional slight differences in the order of reports, additions, and omissions. It seems to regularly omit items in the Moroccan text that come through Abd Allah from someone else than Ahmad (more on these below). Unfortunately, it comes with no account of its transmission from Salih, nor does Salihs name reappear after the first line. Having come across no literary source that attributes any recension to Salih, I suspect that it was originally someones selection from an earlier version of the Moroccan text, omitting Abd Allahs name and items through him from someone else than Ahmad. Someone else, then, noticing the omissions, ascribed the whole at the beginning to Salih. The largest extant collection of renunciant sayings is Abu Nu aym alIsbahan i (d. 430/1038), Hilyat al-awliya#, which comprises about 15,600 items altogether.15 Even if we exclude its approximately 4,000 prophetic hadith reports and 1,000 items from ninth- and tenth-century Sufis, this remains our most abundant source by far. To my knowledge, the next-largest extant collection, after al-Zuhd of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, is K. al-Zuhd wa-l-raqa#iq attributed to Ibn al-Mubarak (d. 181/797), which comprises altogether about 2,050 items. After this come the kit a b al-zuhd included ayba (d. 235/849), al-Mu sannaf, which comprises about 1,500 in Ibn Abi S items, and the Kit a b al-Zuhd of Hannad ibn al-Sar i (d. 243/857), which comprises almost as many.16 However, al-Zuhd of Ahmad ibn Hanbal was originally much longer than the extant text. Ibn Hag ar al- Asqalan i (d. 852/1449) states that Ah ar worked from a mad s Musnad is three times as long as al-Zuhd.17 Ibn Hag
Abu Nu aym al-Isbahan i, Hilyat al-awliya#, 10 vols. (Cairo 13527/19328). A more recent edition is attributed to Mustafa Abd al-Qadir Ata #, 12 vols. (Beirut 1418/1997), but it represents no more than a retyping of the first edition with added mistakes scholars should avoid it as long as photomechanical reproductions of the Cairo edition remain in print. 16) Ibn al-Mubarak, Kit a b al-Zuhd wa-l-raqa#iq, ed. Habib al-Rahman al l i , Fihris am i (Malegaon 1386). Indices by Yusuf Abd al-Rahman al-Mar as Az . aha d i Kitab al-Zuhd, Silsilat faharis kutub al-sunna 5 (Beirut 1408/1987). The ayba, al-Mu sannaf, is now that edited by Hamd ibn standard edition of Ibn Abi S um a and Muhammad ibn Ibr ahim al-Lu h ayda n , 16 vols. (Riyadh Abd Allah al -G 1425/2004). K. al-zuhd appears at XII, 133468. To be sure, other renunciant sayings appear elsewhere in the larger work; e.g. k. al-du a#, about 800 items at X, abbar al5204. Hannad ibn al-Sar i, K. al-Zuhd, ed. Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd al-G Faryawa #i , 2 vols. (Kuweit 1406/1985). 17) Ibn Hag ar, Ta g il al-manfa a bi-zaw a#id ri ga l al-a#imma al-arba a (Hyderabad 1324), 8 = ed. Ikr am Allah Imda d al - H aqq , 2 vols. (Beirut 1416/1996), I, 243.
15)
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Musnad of about 28,000 items, very like the one in print today.18 This implies that he knew a Zuhd of more than 9,000 items, over three times as long as either version of al-Zuhd in print today. It is impossible to say how long after Ibn Hag ars day the full version was lost. Ibn Hag ars estimate is confirmed by quotations in Abu Nu aym, Hilyat al-awliya#. Abu Nu aym seldom mentions books by name; rather, like al-atib al-Bagdadi and other traditionists, he prefers to cite everything by isna d going up to the speaker of the item at hand. Yet many of Abu Nu ayms reports can be identified as coming from particular books, just as many of al-atib al-Bagdadis can.19 I have counted 480 certain quotations of al-Zuhd in the Hilyah; for example, from the entry for the Yemeni Successor Tawus (d. 106/7245?),20
< Abu Bakr ibn Malik < Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal < my father < Abd al-Razzaq < Ma mar that Tawus occupied himself with an ill comrade of his until he had missed the pilgrimage.
They nearly all came to Abu Nu aym by the links < Abu Bakr ibn Malik a far ibn Hamdan < < Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal or < Ahmad ibn G 21 a far ibn Abd Allah ibn Ahmad. Ab u Bakr ibn Ma lik and Ahmad ibn G Hamda n are the same person, more usually known as Ab u Bakr al-Qa ti i, from whom Abu Nu aym collected hadith in Basra in about 360/9701. Besides these, however, I have also counted 737 apparent quotations not found in the published texts of al-Zuhd; for example, the next after the one just quoted22:
a far ibn Hamdan < Abd Allah ibn Ahmad < his father < Mahdi < Ahmad ibn G ibn Ga far < Damra < Bilal ibn Ka b: Tawus, when he went out of Yemen, ahili waters. would drink only from ancient, G
18) V . Christopher Melchert , The Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Der Islam 82 (2005), 3251, at 378, for these calculations. 19) Pedersen identifies quotations by Abu Nu aym of Sulamis Ta#r i al-suf iya in his introduction to Sulami, Kit a b Tabaqa t al-sufiyya, ed. Johannes Pedersen (Leiden 1960), 513, 579. On al-atib al-Bagdadi, v. Akram Diya# al- Umar i , Maw a rid al-a ti b al-Ba gda d i f i Ta#r i Bagdad (n.p. 1395/1975). 20) Abu Nu aym, Hilya, IV , 10 = Ahmad, Zuhd, 376 450. 21) For one exception among a handful noticed by me, v . Abu Nu aym, Hilya, I, 701, which quotes a story on the authority of Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn al-Hasan that appears in Ahmad, Zuhd, II, 71. 22) Abu Nu aym, Hilya, IV , 10.
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(The point was to avoid wells dug by tyrannical rulers.) Identifying quotations of lost works is a difficult operation.23 In this case, on the one hand, we are often able to compare our texts of al-Zuhd with Abu Nu ayms quotations, and they are reassuringly close. Sometimes one appears to give us a better text, sometimes the other, but discrepancies are always within the usual range between variant manuscripts. An example of Abu Nu ayms giving us the better text is where he quotes Ahmad as relating an item (on al-Hasan al-Basr i s longstanding sadness) from Al i ibn Hafs, whereas the extant Zuhd presents Ahmad as relating the a far.24 Ali ibn Hafs of Baghdad is an historical same item from Al i ibn G personage, Ahmads source for 38 hadith reports in the Musnad, whereas a far is easily expli a far is mentioned among his shaykhs.25 G no Ali ibn G cable as a scribal error. An example of a slightly better text in the printed version is where it has Bilal ibn Sa d enjoin us, la takun wal i Allah f i l- ala niya wa- aduwahu f i l-sirr (Be not Gods friend in public but his enemy in private), whereas Abu Nu aym has rather wal iyan lillah, which spoils the grammatical parallelism and is easily explicable as another scribal error.26 On the other hand, many of Abu Nu ayms quotations from al-Qati i from Abd Allah are manifestly not from al-Zuhd but rather from Abd Allahs version of al- Ilal wa-ma rifat al-ri ga l or from the Musnad. Some quotations of the Ilal or Musnad are easy to spot, as they concern questions of hadith transmission or law, but others concern matters of piety that one might expect to find in al-Zuhd. For example, this item from Abu Nu ayms
For recent treatments of the difficulty, v. inter alia Lawrence I. Conrad , Recovering Lost Texts: Some Methodological Issues, Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1993), 25863, Stefan Leder, Grenzen der Rekonstruktion alten Schrifttums nach den Angaben im Fihrist, Ibn al-Nad im und die mittelalterliche arabische Literatur (Wiesbaden 1996), 2131, and Ella Landau-Tasseron , The Reconstruction of Lost Sources, al-Qan t ara 25 (2004), 4591. The difficulties appear to be greatest for works from before around the middle of the ninth century CE, which is related to the very fluidity of texts before then, on which v. the works of Gregor Schoeler, esp. Die Frage der schriftlichen oder mndlichen berlieferung der Wissenschaften im frhen Islam, Der Islam 62 (1985), 20130. 24) Abu Nu aym, Hilya, III, 19; Ahmad, Zuhd, 266, 326. 25) V . Amir Hasan Sabr i , Mu g am shuyu al-im a m Ahmad ibn Hanbal f i l-Mus awzi, Manaqib al-im a m Ahmad ibn Hannad (Beirut 1413/1993), 26870; Ibn al-G i al-Kutubi (Cairo 1349), 45, chap. 5, f i tasmiyat bal, ed. Muhammad Amin al -a n g man laqiya. 26) Ahmad, Zuhd, 385 461; Abu Nu aym, Hilya, V , 228.
23)
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chapter on abit al-Bunan i (d. 720s/73848) is found also in the Ilal but not in al-Zuhd27:
< Abu Bakr ibn Malik < Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal < his father: I have heard that Anas said to abit, How your eyes resemble those of the Messenger of God , whereupon he ceased not to weep until he had damaged his eyes.
This item from the chapter on the Basran Maymun ibn Siyah (fl. earlier 2nd/8th cent.) is found also in the Musnad but not in either printed version of al-Zuhd28:
< Abu Bakr ibn Malik < Abd Allah ibn Ahmad < his father < Muhammad ibn Bakr < Maymun al-Mur adi < Maymun ibn Siyah < Anas < Prophet: There is no people who meet to recollect God, wanting by that only his face, without there calling to them a caller in Heaven, saying Go forgiven: your faults have been replaced by virtues.
A few prophetic hadith reports are found in both the Musnad and the extant text of al-Zuhd; for example,29
< Abu Bakr ibn Malik < Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal < his father < Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi < Hammam < Qatada < ulayd al- Asar i < Abu l-Darda# < the Messenger of God : The sun does not rise without there being sent next to it two angels who cry out, A little that suffices is better than much that distracts.
(The point is not to let possessions distract from ones dependence on God.) It is possible that the example just quoted, on people who meet to recollect God, originally was in al-Zuhd as well as the Musnad. Altogether, I feel fairly sure that my count of Abu Nu ayms quotations of al-Zuhd is below rather than above the true number. It is impossible to tell for sure whether Abu Nu aym or the anonymous abridgers behind the printed versions of al-Zuhd present us more nearly with a random selection of items from the original, long version. Among Abu Nu ayms quotations, the ratio of those found in the printed version to those not found is about 2:3, whereas it would be 1:2 or more if Ibn Hag ars
27) Abu Nu aym, Hilya, II, 323; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al- Ilal wa-ma rifat alri ga l, ed. Wasi Allah ibn Muhammad Abb a s, 4 vols. (Beirut 1988), II, 373 = idem, a mi f i l- ilal wa-ma rifat al-ri al-G ga l, ed. Muhammad Husam Baydun, 2 vols. (Beirut 1410/1990), I, 332. 28) Abu Nu aym, Hilya, III, 1078; Ahmad, Musnad im a m al-muhaddith in, u ayb al6 vols. (Cairo 1313), III, 142 = Musnad al-im a m Ahmad ibn Hanbal, ed. S Arna #ut et al., 50 vols. (Beirut 141321/19932001), XIX, 437. 29) Abu Nu aym, Hilya, IX, 60; Ahmad, Musnad, V , 197 = ed. Arna #ut , XXXVI, 523; Ahmad, Zuhd, 19 26.
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figure were certainly correct, if Abu Nu ayms selection were certainly random, and if my undercounting of prophetic hadith quoted by Abu Nu aym from the lost part of al-Zuhd were certainly negligible. If we assume that Abu Nu ayms selection from the original was random, then the original, long Zuhd should have comprised about 6,800 items, not 9,000. It is also possible that Abu Nu aym was guided by some of the same principles of selection as the anonymous abridgers, and I have somewhat undercounted Abu Nu ayms quotations of prophetic hadith from al-Zuhd; therefore, an original size of around 9,000 remains at least credible. Just as Ahmads Musnad includes a significant number of additions from his son Abd Allah, meaning items he heard from other persons than his father, so does al-Zuhd include many additions from him: a little more than one-third of the printed versions, almost exactly one-half of the quotations from Abu Nu aym. Here, the parallel with the Musnad is weak evidence that the proportions of material from Ahmad and Abd Allah in the original, long version of al-Zuhd were more like those in Abu Nu ayms sample; that is, equal. Abu Nu aym also quotes a substantial number of prophetic hadith from Abd Allah that he did not hear from his father. It is possible that these were once transmitted with the Musnad, then excised with other hadith from Abd Allah. Such excision must have happened on a considerable scale if we are to harmonize medieval reports that Abd Allahs additions comprised about a quarter of the Musnad with the extant text, of which Abd Allahs additions make up less than 5 percent.30 If there was a tendency over time to drop material from the Musnad that did not come through Ahmad, the same tendency might account for the diminished proportion of items from Abd Allah in al-Zuhd. (I have supposed the same tendency accounts for the manuscript of al-Zuhd attributed to Salih ibn Ahmad.) The table of contents to al-Zuhd suggests stories of twelve quranic prophets, not in chronological order (nor with all reports of particular ones gathered together; e.g. sermons, wisdom, and the renunciation of Isa are distributed among three). Then come Companions, Successors, and others of the eighth century CE. A comment from Ibn Taymiya confirms that the original, long version of al-Zuhd was likewise arranged biographically, for he reports preferring this arrangement to the topical one of Ibn al-Mubarak, al-Zuhd.31 The Musnad, likewise assembled by Abd Allah from his fatV . Melchert, Musnad, 37, 47. Jean R. Michot , Musique et danse selon Ibn Taymiyya, tudes musulmanes 33 (Paris 1991), 1223. Similar quotation apud Katib elebi, Kas f al-zunu n, ed. Yaltkaya and Rifat Bilge, 2 vols. (Istanbul 19423), II, 1423, s.v. kit a b Serefettin al-zuhd.
31) 30)
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hers dictation and notes, occasionally groups together hadith that Ahmad heard from some particular shaykh. So does al-Zuhd; for example, a sequence of 53 items from, ultimately, a very miscellaneous collection of prophets, Companions, and Successors, of which 45 came to Abd Allah from ayba.32 Abu Bakr ibn Abi S An oddity of al-Zuhd by comparison with other collections of renunciant sayings is the high proportion of items from pre-Muhammadan prophets. A little over a third of Ibn al-Mubaraks K. al-Zuhd comes from the aybas, fully 45 percent of Hannad ibn al-SaProphet, a tenth of Ibn Abi S r is. About one-fifth of the published versions of Ahmad, al-Zuhd are made up of hadith from the Prophet, an unsurprising proportion. The surprising portion is another fifth of al-Zuhd comprising items from prophets before Muhammad: in descending order, Isa, Luqman, Ayyub, Dawud, and others. This is far more than in any other such collection of renunciant sayings. The proportion of sayings from pre-Muhammadan prophets in Abu Nu ayms selection is a mere one in twenty, suggesting that the extant, abridged versions of al-Zuhd include most of the original, long versions material from pre-Muhammadan prophets and that the long original was less anomalous in this regard. About one-eighth of Abu Nu ayms quotations go back to Companions, who were probably also, then, less well-represented in the original, long version than in the extant abridgements. By the way, alZuhd includes 35 items transmitted by the Yemeni Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 113/7312?), almost all of them concerning biblical prophets but almost half of them concerning Isa, which seems to tell against the surmise that he was a convert from Judaism.33 Conversely, it was probably sayings from Successors that predominated in the original, long version of al-Zuhd, as among Abu Nu ayms quotations and as in most other ninth-century collections of renunciant sayings. The latest persons to be quoted in al-Zuhd at the other end (not just relating earlier sayings but speaking in their own right) are apparently Muhammad ibn al-Farag (d. 236/8501), Bis r al-Haf i (d. 227/841), and Fath al-Mawsili (d. 220/835), all quoted by Abd Allah,34 and Sufyan ibn Uyayna (d. 198/814?) and Ibr ahim ibn Adham (d. 163/77980?), quoted by Ahmad.35
Ahmad, Zuhd, 21017 25966. Contra Steven M. Wasserstrom , Between Muslim and Jew (Princeton 1996), 26, among others. 34) Muhammad ibn al-Farag at Zuhd, 317 385; Bis r at Abu Nu aym, Hilya, VIII, 337, 3389, 345, 347; Fath at Zuhd, 2067 254. 35) Sufyan at Abu Nu aym, Hilya, VII, 288 and Ahmad, Zuhd, 148 185, to which add Sufyans direct quotations of the prophets Luqman and Isa at Zuhd, I, 154 and
33) 32)
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Of Ahmad s immediate informants in al-Zuhd, 95 percent also appear in the Musnad, 92 percent somewhere in the Six Books. Prophetic hadith and renunciant sayings were thus transmitted by much the same persons, at least in the eighth and early ninth centuries. Of hadith reports in Ahmads Musnad, 34 percent came to Ahmad from Baghdadi shaykhs, 28 percent from Basran, 15 percent from Kufan. Altogether, the Musnad is about 86 percent Iraqi. Significant numbers of hadith reports there also came from Syrian, Meccan, and Yemeni shaykhs. Al-Zuhd is likewise 86 percent Iraqi. Proportions from different centres are similar except that Basra (36 %) and Baghdad (23 %) exchange places and Syria is insignificant. Ahmad settled in Baghdad from 204/81920 and travelled from it only once, to Syria, around 211/8267 (except for forced journeys to al-Raqqah and Samarra in connection with the Inquisition and its aftermath).36 The suggestion is that his interest in collecting renunciant sayings weakened over time by comparison with his interest in prophetic hadith, so that when he finally went to Syria, he concentrated on collecting prophetic hadith. Quotations of Ahmad himself certainly suggest that he thought physical privation unsuited to the married man, such as he had now become. His disciple al-Marr ui writes,37
I told Abu Abd Allah [i.e. Ahmad ibn Hanbal] that the self-deniers were saying that there is nothing better than paucity and hunger, and that if a man accustomed himself to not eating save every two or three days, he would be rewarded the same as someone who fasted perpetually. He said, This is possible only for someone who is alone. As for one who has dependants, how can he be so strong? I broke my fast yesterday, and today my lower self impelled me to break it (again). There is nothing to equal poverty. I remember those young men of prayer.
In his youth, by contrast, when he was an impoverished student, the strictest austerity had made more sense. The circulation of items in al-Zuhd also testifies to the geography of interest in renunciation over the eighth century. Here are comparisons with ayba, showing percentages more than 5. the kit a b al-zuhd of Ibn Abi S Ahmads source in early 9th cent. (first name in isna d):
Abu Nu aym, Hilya, VII, 2734, 288, 300, VIII, 101; Muhammad ibn Nadr at Ahmad, Zuhd, 86, 368 108 441. 36) ahabi, Siyar, XI, 306. 37) Ahmad ibn Hanbal, K. al-Wara , ed. Muhammad Sayyid Basyun i Zaghl u l (Beirut 1409/1988), 812 = K. al-Wara , ed. Zaynab Ibr ahim al-Q a r ut (Beirut 1403/1983), 100.
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Christopher Melchert Basra 76 (38 %), Kufa 37 (18 %), Baghdad 27 (13 %), Syria 16 (8 %), Wasit 13 (6 %), Yemen 9 and Khurasan 8 (4 %), Mecca 7 (3 %), Mesopotamia 5 (2 %), Medina 2 (1 %).
Ahmads sources in mid- to late 8th cent. (second name): Basra 89 (46 %), Kufa 54 (28 %), Syria 16 (8 %), Yemen 8 (4 %), Baghdad 5 (2 %) Medina, Mecca, & Khurasan 5 each (2 %), Egypt 4 (2 %), Wasit 2 (1 %). Transmitter from Successor (some overlap with previous category):
Basra 84 (53 %), Kufa 31 (20 %), Syria 9 (6 %), Yemen 7 (4 %), Medina 6 (4 %), Wasit and Khurasan 4 each (2 %), Baghdad 3 (2 %), Mecca and Egypt, 2 each (1 %).
Successors:
Basra 80 (51 %), Kufa 35 (22 %), Medina 13 (8 %), Yemen 11 (7 %), Syria 8 (5 %), Mecca and Egypt 3 each (2 %), Wasit 2 (1 %).
aybas source in early 9th cent. (first name in isna d), sample Ibn Abi S of 138:
Baghdad 6 (4 %), Basra 23 (17 %), Khurasan 3 (2 %), Kufa 93 (67 %), Mecca 1 (1 %), Wasit 12 (9 %).
aybas sources in mid- to late 8th cent. (second name), sample Ibn Abi S of 145, of whom 137 identified:
Baghdad 1 (1 %), Basra 44 (32 %), Egypt 1 (1 %), Khurasan 1 (1 %), Kufa 73 (53 %), Mecca 3 (2 %), Medina 4 (3 %), Mesopotamia 1 (1 %), Syria 6 (4 %), unknown 8 (6 %), Wasit 3 (2 %).
Successors, sample of 146, of whom 137 identified.

Basra 46 (34 %), Hijaz 1 (1 %), Khurasan 1 (1 %), Kufa 52 (38 %), Mecca 12 (9 %), Medina 17 (12 %), Mesopotamia 1 (1 %), Syria 3 (2 %), Yemen 4 (3 %).
The Zuhd is notably dominated by data from Basra, a domination that ayba travelbecomes stronger the further back in time one goes. Ibn Abi S led much less than Ahmad and gathered most of his hadith in Kufa (twothirds of k. al-zuhd, likewise of al-Mu sannaf as a whole), and Kufan items outnumber Basran at all points in the eighth century; however, his collection shows the same pattern of increasingly more data from Basra the further back in the century one goes. A considerable number of hadith reports in al-Zuhd are duplicated in the Musnad. A few items are likewise repeated in al-Zuhd. Most of this repetition was probably deliberate, mainly similar or even identical sayings supported by alternative asa n id; e.g. Abu l- Aliya (d. 93/71112?) against learning the Quran, then not reciting it, at Zuhd, 303 368. A few are exact
357
duplicates and probably unintentional; e.g. al-Hasan al-Basr i (d. 110/728) on persons who feared to accept even wealth that was rightfully theirs at Zuhd, 37, 2623 48, 221. The most interesting questions about al-Zuhd naturally have to do with its doctrine. There are three main literary traditions that supply us with reports of renunciants. The most voluminous is that of hadith, under which category falls the bulk of Abu Nu ayms collection and the collecti ayba. The outstanding characteristic ons of Ibn al-Mubarak and Ibn Abi S of the hadith tradition is its insistence on full asa n id to document the provenance of every saying. Less voluminous but significant are the literatures of adab and Sufism. The outstanding ninth-century adab collections ahiz (d. 255/8689), al-Baya n wa-l-tabare the kit a b al-zuhd included in al-G y in, the k. al-zuhd included in Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889?), al- Uyu n wa-laba r, and numerous works by Ibn Abi l-Dunya (d. 281/884).38 The adab tradition is distinguished from the hadith by its attraction to elegant locutions, also, more subtly, to humorous material and often to miracle stories. The Sufi tradition crystallized only in the later ninth century, and only fragments and quotations remain of the earliest Sufi biographical dictionaries: Ibn al-A r abi (d. 340/952?), Tabaqa t al-nussa k, and a large col a far al-uldi (d. 348/959).39 It is dislection not referred to by title from G tinguished from the hadith tradition in sometimes projecting later, mystical values back onto the early renunciants, more regularly in making out renunciation as an early stage in the formation of a mystic and the historical formation of Sufism. There is, of course, considerable overlap among the three traditions: individual books would be most conveniently graphed on a triangle whose points would be zuhd, adab, and tasawwuf.
ahiz, al-Baya n wa-l-taby in, ed. Abd al-Salam Muhammad Ha r u n , Al-G ahiz (Cairo 13679/194850), III, 12592; Ibn Qutayba, al4 vols., Maktabat al-G Uyu n wa-l-aba r, 4 vols. (Cairo 13439/192530), II, 61375. For the works of Ibn Abi l-Dunya, v. Reinhard Weipert and Stefan Weninger, Die erhaltenen Werke des Ibn Abi d-Dunya. Eine vorlufige Bestandsaufnahme, ZDMG 146 (1996): 41555. My attention was first drawn to the distinction between significant practitioners and littrateurs by Jacqueline Chabbi, Remarques sur le dveloppement historique des mouvements asctiques et mystiques au Khurasan, Studia Islamica, no. 46 (1977), 572, at 24. 39) On Ibn al-A r abi, v . GAS 1:6601; on al-uldi, v. GAS 1:661. uldi is said to have assembled a book concerning 6,000 persons from the time of Adam until his own, all of whom espoused the doctrine of the Sufis: al-atib al-Bagdadi, Ta#r i, VII, 228 = ed. Ma r u f, VIII, 1478. An apparent extract (short) has been published: al-uldi, al-Faw a#id wa-l-zuhd wa-l-raqa#iq wa-l-marai, ed. Muhammad Fathi al-Sayyid (Tanta 1413/1993).
38)
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With its ubiquitous asa n id and few lines of poetry, al-Zuhd is plainly part of the hadith tradition. Major emphases of al-Zuhd are difficult to make out, stories and quotations being so miscellaneous. Abu Nu ayms selection apparently includes more hostile sayings about rulers and fewer quranic glosses than the extant abridgements. Otherwise, I have noticed no recurring differences in the content of what they preserve of the original, long version. In a content analysis of a random sample of 117 quotations from Abu Nu aym, the category best represented is rejection of worldly goods; for example, that Mujahid (Meccan, d. 104/7223?) glossed Q. 102:8 (Jones translation: Then, on that day, you will be asked about bliss), About everything of the pleasures of the world.40 This is followed by items praising particular individuals in fairly general terms; for example, that on the Day of Siff in (the great battle between Mu awiya and Ali), a Syrian related of the Prophet that Uways al-Qaran i (said to have died in this very battle) was the best of the Successors at doing well.41 Of ritual activities, prayer (salah) is the single one most often commended; of austerities, restricted eating and drinking. Naturally, however, there is some overlapping of categories; for example, when al-Hasan al-Basr i says that the believer is sad morning and evening, so that just a little food and water suffice him is this to be classified as commending sadness or restricting ones food and drink?42 In fact, I did classify it as commending sadness, along with three other items in the sample. To classify it as a commendation of restricting ones food and drink would suggest that it is about techniques to produce moral states, whereas the actual sayings stress rather that physical austerities are the natural outcome of a desirable moral state. Like other renunciant literature, alZuhd is much more concerned with moral states than with teachable technique. The contents of al-Zuhd are evidence first of all for what items of the early renunciant tradition Ahmad and especially Abd Allah ibn Ahmad thought admirable. How far one takes them to be direct evidence of that tradition depends first on how reliable one thinks hadith in general. Ahmad is quoted as calling for a lower standard of reliability concerning altar gi b wa-l-tarh i b (making to aspire and making to dread): When we relate (hadith) from the Messenger of God concerning the licit and illicit,
Abu Nu aym, Hilya, III, 281, quoting a lost section of Ahmad, Zuhd. Al-Tabar i quotes Mujahid the same way apropos of Q. 102:8, also by a completely different isna d as glossing it security and health (amn, s ihha). 41) Abu Nu aym, Hilya, II, 86, quoting from a lost section of Abd Allah, Zuhd. 42) Abu Nu aym, Hilya 2:1323; Abd Allah, Zuhd, 258 316.
40)
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the precedents and ordinances, we are strict about asa n id; but when we relate (hadith) from the Prophet concerning the virtues of works and what neither lays down nor suspends any ordinance, then we are easygoing about asa n id.43 However, it does not appear that hadith reports in the Musnad pertaining to al-tar gi b wa-l-tarh i b are any more liable to be weak than hadith pertaining to ordinances.44 Neither have we reason to suppose he filled up al-Zuhd (or instructed Abd Allah to fill up al-Zuhd) with items he considered weak. And, of course, the interest of al-Zuhd is primarily in what it tells us of the piety of the eighth century, about which scholars nowadays tend to be markedly less sceptical than about the seventh. The extent to which its picture of eighth-century piety contradicts what is reported of Ahmad ibn Hanbals own for example, the extremes of self-denial it extols, as compared with the more moderate self-denial we are told that he practised raises our confidence that this material goes back well into the century from which it purports to come. The main findings of this study may be briefly summarized. The book al-Zuhd attributed to Ahmad ibn Hanbal is the largest extant collection of early renunciant sayings from its century, exceeded for all centuries only by Abu Nu aym, Hilyat al-awliya#. It was assembled by Ahmads son Abd Allah, who added to what he had heard from his father half or even as many items again that he had heard from other sources. Abd Allahs text was two or three times as long as the extant version, to judge by quotations in Abu Nu aym, Hilyat al-awliya# and a description by Ibn Hag ar. The usefulness of Hilyat al-awliya# is incidentally confirmed, both inasmuch as the Hilya gives us a better idea of the original version of Ahmads al-Zuhd and inasmuch as we see that it accurately transmits the knowledge of the ninth century. Ahmads al-Zuhd, finally, is an important source for the reconstruction of his own piety, that of the early Sunni circles around him, and more generally of Muslims in the eighth century, possibly also to some extent in the seventh. It is unusually rich in quotations of prophets before Muhammad. Scholars are still at an early stage of figuring out how to interpret it.
Al-atib al-Bagdadi, al-Kifa ya f i ilm al-riw a ya, ed. Ahmad Umar Ha shim (Beirut 1406/1986), 163 = ed. Muhammad al-Hafiz al-T i g a n i (Cairo 1972), 213. 44) Melchert, Musnad, 467.
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Ahmad Ibn Hanbals Book of Renunciation

Ahmad Ibn Hanbals Book of Renunciation

Ahmad Ibn Hanbals Book of Renunciation

Ahmad Ibn Hanbals Book of Renunciation

Successors, sample of 146, of whom 137 identified.

Ahmad Ibn Hanbals Book of Renunciation

Ahmad Ibn Hanbals Book of Renunciation

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