Imam Tahawi: life and times
Part 1
When I want to relax from current affairs and the chaos of our times, I read about our predecessors and their beautiful and inspiring lives. The more I read, the more refreshed I feel. It’s like returning home from a dull and brain-picking 9 to 5 job.
I picked up a book on the life of Imam Tahawi as I had just started teaching his short but comprehensive treatise of the creed of Ahl Sunna and was so intrigued by his character and his knowledge, the politics of his time, the society and his teachers. He was one of the top muhaddithun and faqih of his time which naturally bestows on him the fancy word polymath, meaning one who is varied in his knowledge.
Those times were something else; the more I read, the more I felt compelled to bring him to life in a time when we have become increasingly estranged from our predecessors. But to get a more comprehensive portrait, context is important. This means understanding the culture, the politics, and the complexity of the time.
So I have veered here and there, but not without purpose.
The Beginning
Our collective connection with our pious predecessors is slowly fading. When someone says the word Salaf (predecessors), a few illustrious scholars and great masters of the Islamic world like Imam Bukhari come to mind. If our sputtering search engine pulls up the name Ibn Taymiyya, then let me put that Olympic gold medal around thee neck for citing the name of a great scholar.
But unfortunately, wrong!
We should know, with all due respect to Ibn Taymiyya (and he would not disagree), that he was not among the Salaf; he classifies under the second group, Khalaf (successors).
The Salaf- layers of the foundation of Islam
But who are the Salaf and how are they different from the Khalaf?
To start with, there is no precise historical milepost dividing the two revered groups, but as a matter of principle the Salaf includes the first few generations from the prophetic time, the succeeding Khulafa Rashidun all the way down to the time of the successors of the Tabi‘un.
You can call them the pioneers of Islam, but they did not contribute to building the foundation in the same way.
The Sahaba laid the foundation in a way their successors, the tabi’een, did not and the tabi’een contributed to the foundation of Islam in a way their successors did not.
But they still qualified as pioneers for they all either laid the first bricks, stacked them up, or cemented them down to each other.
These groups are personally authenticated by the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), which he labelled the khayr ul-qurun (Golden Era) in the hadith.
We hear about them in almost every Jumu’a khutba, if that rings any bells.
The Khalaf, on the other hand, are the celebrated masters in the fields of hadith, creed, fiqh and other Islamic sciences who came thereafter. Between these two unclearly marked periods lies the era of Imam Tahawi and many others who fall closer to the era of the Salaf than the Khalaf.
Knowing our Salaf and their names
The Salaf who sacrificed and passed on this sacred deen to us were in the thousands, so knowing only a few names is shameful considering we can read off a roster of players from the sports world and celebrities faster than we pick off samosas and pakoras after breaking our fast on the longest day of Ramadan.
This is why it is important to get acquainted with our Salaf and their names.
Think about it! How would we answer Allah for being ignorant of the names of our spiritual forefathers while being so well-informed of the names and lives of His enemies.
It is challenging to cover the complete biography of the life of Imam Tahawi in a single article, so I have included two parts (and may add a third if need be), and picked the best apples from the orchard so we have a taste of how he came to be one of the top muhaddithun and faqih of Misr regarding whom Imam al-Dhahabi and Suyuti both agreed, “He left no one behind the likes of him [in Misr].”[1]
Some biodata
Ahmed bin Muhammad bin Salama became known by his kunya Abu Ja‘far, and then Tahawi, his attribution to his birthplace Taha, a small village in upper Egypt. He was born in 239/853 some 211 years after the sahabi Amr bin As took it from the Byzantine during the khilafat of Ameer ul mumineen, ‘Umar (may Allah be pleased with both of them) in 18/642.
You may hear the word Azdi affixed to the end of his name, so let me touch on that for a moment. Azdi means he was from the tribe of Azd, a Sabataen tribe [descendants of Saba as mentioned in Quran], originally from Yemen which migrated soon after the conquest of Egypt.
So, Imam Tahawi was kind of like us. He was born in Egypt, but was not a native Egyptian like many of us are born in the U.S. though our parents emigrated from another country. Most of the Muslims in his time were a minority who dwelled mostly in the two major cities of Fustat (now the historical center of Cairo) and Alexandria while the rural areas and villages were settled by the native Coptic (or Qibti in Arabic). They are alluded to in the Quranic story of Musa (peace be upon him) who mistakenly killed one Qibti and was forced to flee the land of Misr.[2]
The Coptics were protected under Islamic jurisdiction as the people of Dhimma, but some among them were inflamed by the loss of their land to the Muslim victors, and sometimes attacked the Muslims.
Thereafter, many converted to Islam while the number of Arab immigrants from the Peninsula also grew, until Muslims became the majority. Even today, only 10% of the population is from this ethnoreligous group.
Coptic Church in Sharm al-Shaykh, Egypt
Note: The Coptics had kinship with Quraysh and all the Arabs tribes descending from Ismael since Hajar the wife of Ibrahim (peace be upon them) was a Coptic. Once, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) advised the Sahaba to be kind to them after they overtake Egypt.
He said, “When you overtake the Qibt, be good to them for they will be under your protection [as a minority] and they have kinship (to you).”[3]
In addition, his wife, Mariyah Qibtiyya also a Coptic was gifted to him by Mawququs, the patriarch of the Coptic church. She bore him Ibrahim (may Allah be pleased with him) who died while a toddler.
Integrity of Azd tribe
The Azdi’ tribe were reputed in Misr for their integrity which is why Mu‘awiya bin Sufyan (may Allah be pleased with him) (d. 64) asked his governor of Misr, Maslamah bin Makhlad, to appoint only the Azd tribe to office and said, “Do not appoint anyone in your cabinet except an Azdi or Hadrami (also Yemen) because they are people of integrity.”[4]
Due to this policy, the Qahtani’s (i.e., Arab tribes descending from Yemen; this includes the Ansar of Madina) eventually dominated the politics of Misr.
Imam Tahawi’s mother on the other hand was an Adnani, a descendant of Ismael (peace be upon him), and the sister of Imam Muzani (whom we will talk about shortly).
Sarawat mountains in southern region of KSA where the Azd tribe hailed from.
To get a better idea of his timeframe, below is his age at the time when three famous contemporaries passed away:
- 17 when Imam Bukhari passed away (d.256)
- 22 when Imam Muslim passed away (d.261)
- 34 when Imam Ibn Maja passed away (d. 273)
They even shared the same teachers at some point. For example, Harun bin Sa‘eed al-Ayli was his teacher of hadith but also the teacher of Imam Muslim, Imam Abu Dawud, Imam Nisai, and Imam Ibn Majah.
Another one of his renowned teachers was one of the six imams of the famous hadith books, Imam Nisai.
Seeking knowledge
Masjid Amr bin al-As (ra) in Fustat [Cairo, Egypt] is the first masjid ever built in Africa.
He also studied under hundreds of other masters in different fields and collected hadith from wherever it was to be found as Allama Kauthari says, “Whoever has come upon the accounts of the life of Imam Tahawi knows that his shuyukh hailed from Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, Basra, Kufa, Hijaz (Makka and Madina Munawwara), Sham, Khurasan, and from all other regions. He collected hadith and other narrations, and he travelled far and wide within Egypt and outside of Egypt to take upon himself learning the hadith and all the other sciences of Islamic knowledge they upheld.”[6]
A clarification: were Makka and Madina the only two fountainheads of knowledge
Just to clarify, many are under the impression that the main and only hubs of Islamic knowledge were the two holy cities of Makka and Madina Munawwara. That would be true if belief in history was a form of kufr. Fortunately, it isn’t.
During the khilafat of Umar bin al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him), the two frontier cities of Kufa and Basra were populated by over 1000 Sahaba, among them Abdullah bin Mas‘ud (may Allah be pleased with him), one of the top jurists and most sought after for legal opinions among the Sahaba.
Later, ‘Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) shifted his capital to Kufa. He expanded the perimeters of knowledge for the Ahl Kufa by his legal edicts though, by the time he arrived, Ibn Taymiyya says, “The people of Kufa before his arrival had already acquired the deen from Sa‘d bin Abi Waqqas, Ibn Mas‘ud, Hudhayfa, ‘Ammar, Abu Musa and other [Sahaba] whom ‘Umar (may Allah be pleased with them all) had sent to Kufa.”[7]
Kufa: major center of knowledge
According to Qatada, a tabi‘, the number of Sahaba who settled in Kufa were 1050 among which 25 were veterans from the battle of Badr.[8]
Imam Bukhari, in his journeys to collect and learn hadith across the Muslim world visited all the major centers of hadith including Makka, Madina, Egypt, Sham, and many other places, but the number of times he was forced to travel to Kufa was so great he lost count. This was due to the sheer number of muhaddithun in Kufa at the time.
19th century image of Kufa, Iraq. [by Masterworld1000; licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0]
He himself says, “I went to Sham, Egypt, the Peninsula two times, to Basra four times, and I stayed in Hijaz (Makka and Madina Munawwara) for six years; and I cannot recount how many times I came to Kufa and Baghdad to be with the muhaddithun.”[9]
Egypt: another hub of knowledge
Egypt was no competition to Kufa or Basra and Baghdad, but it had its fair share of hadith masters and fuqaha and some Sahaba who either made it their home or blessed it with their visits during which they disseminated hadith and their wisdom to the large crowds of seekers.
Among them were Abu Ayyub al-Ansari, Jabir bin Abdullah, and Abdullah bin Unays (may Allah be pleased with them all). ‘Uqba bin al-Harith is another sahabi, later appointed the governor of Egypt during the emirate of Mua’wiya (may Allah be pleased with both of them), whose grave can be visited in the historic section of Cairo.
This is in addition to the innumerable native seekers of knowledge from Egypt who acquired knowledge from Hijaz, Kufa, and Basra, and then established their own gatherings in the madrasas and masajid after returning to Egypt.
Haywa bin Shurayh
One of them was Haywa bin Shurayh regarding whom the Imam of Muhaddithun Abdullah bin al-Mubarak once said, “No one was ever glorified but after meeting them, I found them less worthy of their praise except for Haywa bin Shurayh; meeting him proved that he was beyond all the praise [showered] upon him.”[10]
Old Cairo, Egypt
Imam Shafi establishes his base in Egypt
Among the illustrious scholars who built their base in Egypt after years of learning across the Muslim world and studying under the greatest masters of the time was Imam Shafi.
According to one scholar, “Imam Shafi was able to pull many of the followers of Imam Malik [in Egypt] and attract them to his own thought because of his eloquence and uncanny ability in debate and because the path he paved for deduction of rulings integrated rai’ (opinion) and hadith...A large crowd of scholars inclined toward him and he transcribed to them (his legal opinions) and wrote books which vouchsafed his mad-hab. Then, he was granted students who organized, transmitted it and became protective of it.”[11]
Note: This last point is significant because without students, Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Shafi, Imam Malik, and Imam Ahmad would be long forgotten. The loyal students of the four imams systemized the legal thought of their imams into a comprehensive code of law that could be applied universally throughout the ages.
Old neighborhood in Basra, Iraq
You may not have heard of Imam Abu al-Layth for this very reason. His students could not achieve what the students of the four imams did to preserve their teachers’ fiqh though, he was an outstanding mujtahid of Egypt at par with Imam Abu Hanifa and Imam Shafi. The latter admired Abu Laith’s profundity and vastness of knowledge, but according to Imam Shafi, it was lost due to the incapacity of Abu al-Laith’s students. He lamented, “Laith was a greater faqih than Malik, only that his students laid waste to his knowledge [i.e., they did not strive to archive and preserve his fiqh].[12]
Imam Shafi while in Egypt attracted a great many students who claimed fealty to his mad-hab and codified it in their books and writings. Two of his top disciples were Imam Muzani (d. 264) and Rabi‘ bin Sulayman (d. 270). Through these two major proponents of the Shafi school, Egypt became central to the mad-hab jadeed of Imam Shafi the way Kufa became central to the madh-hab of Imam Abu Hanifa whose legal thought was inspired by the students of Abdullah bin Mas‘ud (may Allah be pleased with him), who were centered in Kufa. Imam Shafi’s new mad-hab was a revision of the old in which he reconstructed the principles for his mad-hab and changed his position on many issues; thus, the terms old and new mad-hab.
Imam Muzani
I know you are wondering, “All well and good, but what does this have to do with Imam Tahawi, shaykh?”
Imam Muzani one of the greatest influences on Imam Tahawi also happened to be his maternal uncle. Imam Tahawi was practically raised under the shade of Imam Muzani from an early age. Many of the highlights from Imam Muzani’s life will thus shed light on the evolution of his prodigy nephew.
Imam Muzani had a penetrating intelligence, and he was a master in the art of debate. Imam Shafi even said, “Had he ever debated Shaytan, he would have defeated him.”[13]
He occasionally differed with Imam Shafi being a mujtahid to some degree himself. But he chose to follow the legal opinions of Imam Shafi and wrote in his book al-Mukhtasar, “I have summarized this book from the knowledge of Muhammad bin Idris al-Shafi so that I can bring one closer to him [i.e, the mad-hab of Imam Shafi’) for he who desires, though he (i.e., Imam Shafi) prohibited against taqleed (following) of himself or anyone else, so that one may look into his deen and be cautious in regards to his nafs.”
Note: These last words disclose the real reason why even behemoths of knowledge like Imam Muzani chose to follow rather than rely on their own opinion—to observe their deen properly and be cautious about falling prey to their nafs.
His level of taqwa was so high that if he missed salat with jamat in the masjid, he would repeat it again 25 times to attain the reward of congregational salat.
His taqwa, proficiency in the sciences, debating skills, and propensity toward qiyas (analytical study) certainly helped imbue his maternal nephew Imam Tahawi with the same qualities and hone his analytical sharpness.
Imam Tahawi’s own mother, Umm Tahawi, another great scholar of Shafi mad-hab, inculcated faith and taqwa and learning throughout his early and adolescent years. According to Imam Suyuti, she often sat in the gatherings of Imam Shafi.[5]
By his twenties, Imam Tahawi had become a mujtahid in his own right with his proficiency, profundity, and ijtihad capabilities.
Baghdad, the homebase of numerous muhaddithun and now the resting place of Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal and Shaykh Abdul Qadir Jaylani and many others, now a bustling modern city intersected by the ancient Tigres river.
Rabi bin Sulayman
Rabi bin Sulayman was also a student of Imam Shafi who also had a major impact on the thinking and unique style of Imam Tahawi to seamlessly amalgamate hadith and fiqh into a manual of authenticated rulings as he does in his book Sharah Ma‘ani al-Athar.
Rabi bin Sulayman as a young man was eager to learn the sacred knowledge but he was weak and completely missed the intricate legal arguments though, such natural deficiencies are not a hindrance for one whom Allah chooses for His deen.
Once, Imam Shafi explained a single ruling to him forty times in his gathering, but Rabi still could not understand the issue. Then, Imam Shafi called on him after the gathering and explained it to him again until he finally understood.
This is something I have a hard time getting over: the persistence of the student is astounding but the love and forbearance of the teacher is even more remarkable.
Eventually, Rabi bin Sulayman graduated to become the main voice of the Shafi mad-hab. When a difference of opinion between himself and Imam Muzani rose about the correct opinion of Imam Shafi regarding an issue, the ulama of Shafi inclined to the opinion of Rabi’ more than Imam Muzani.
The first capital of the Muslims in Egypt, Fustat, is now enshrined in Cairo, the largest city in Egypt. Photo: panorama of Cairo, Egypt at sunset.
Imam Tahawi seemed to be destined to lead the Shafi school considering his upbringing and tutelage under the direct disciples of Imam Shafi.
But things didn’t go that way.
There are many reasons why at the young age of twenty, he aligned himself with the Hanafi mad-hab. One of the reasons is the diversification in his choice of teachers. One of his most admired and revered teacher was Abu Ja‘far Ahmed bin Abi Imran, a student of Muhammad bin Sama’a and Bishr bin al-Waleed, both of whom were students of Imam Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad, the direct disciples of Imam Abu Hanifa and the proponents of his mad-hab. Imam Tahawi studied under Abu Ja‘far Ahmed for twenty years from the age of twenty to forty.
Imam Tahawi may be the only scholar in our history who holds the privilege of securing a one and three-person transmission to Imam Shafi and Imam Abu Hanifa through their most capable students. This unique privilege offered him a wide perspective in not only hadith and fiqh, but even the different Islamic sciences and principles and how they were employed in a multitude of ways to reach different conclusions on the same juridical issues between the different mad-haib. This experience strengthened his core understanding of Deen itself.
After all this, Imam Tahawi inclined toward Hanafi mad-hab for reasons we will mention in next part of our series. This is why Allama Qurtubi al-Maliki said, “He belonged to the mad-hab of the people of Kufa and was a scholar of all the mad-habs.”[15]
In fact, he went as far as to even dedicate the Aqeedah Tahawiyya to Imam Abu Hanifa and his two brilliant students, Imam Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad.
The Era of Ijtihad
The first four centuries was the era of ijtihad and the emergence of the most brilliant and brightest masters in various Islamic sciences the umma would ever produce. Many surpassed their own teachers in their profundity, proficiency, and their innate capabilities as the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “How many carriers of fiqh transmit to one who has more understanding than him [i.e., the teacher].”[14]
Masters rarely switched their mad-hab but Imam Tahawi was exceptional in that he was a master in hadith and fiqh and a mujtahid in his own right nurtured by a wealth of the greatest and most righteous scholars of the time from an early age. Other masters could only dedicate their lives to one field owing to natural limitations and inaccessibility to the people of knowledge from the very onset.
Insha’Allah, I’ll cover more of this in the next part of our series on Imam Tahawi.
[1] Tadhkirat al-Huffaz, 3/28 | Husn al-Muhadara, 1/147
[2] Tafseer Ibn Katheer, 6/225
[3] Musannaf Abdul Razzaq, 6/163
[4] Futuh al-Misr wa al-Maghrib, p. 152
[5] Husn al-Muhadara, 1/167
[6] Al-Hawi fi Seerat al-Tahawi, p. 18
[7] Minhaj al-Sunna, 8/50
[8] Kitab al-Kuna wa al-Asma, 2/540
[9] Siyar A‘alam al-Nubala. 12/407
[10] Al-Jami’u li ‘Ulum al-Imam Ahmad, 16/555
[11] Abu Ja’far Tahawi wa athruhu fi al-hadith, p. 26
[12] Tabaqat al-Muhadditheen, 1/406
[13] Tabaqat al-Shafi’yya, 2/93
[14] Abu Dawud, 5/502
[15] Al-Jawahir al-Madiyya, 1/105
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