Al-Qādī al-Nuʻmān b. Muhammad al-Maghribī (m. 363/974). Risālat Dhāt al-Bayān fī l-Radd ͑alā Ibn Qutayba or «the eloquent clarification for the refutation of Ibn Qutayba» (I)

Abstract

Al-Qādī al-Nuʻmān b. Muhammad was the most outstanding and prolific Fātimī scholar and the founder of Ismā ͑īlī jurisprudence. In his pistle “The eloquent clarification for the refutation of Ibn Qutayba”, still in manuscript, al-Nuʻmān engaged in a heated attack on Ibn Qutayba, who had lived a century earlier. The epistle was probably composed in the time of al-Muʻizz at the request of an anonymous tutor of the caliph’s sons. Al-Nuʻmān’s purpose was to refute Ibn Qutayba’s assertion in the introduction to his famous Adab al-Kātib, according to which it was enough for the kuttāb, the civil servants of the state, to memorize a number of simple legal formulas in order to perform their duties, without the need to learn the lengthy dissertations of the fuqahā’ or doctors of law. Al-Qādī al-Nuʻmān, who was himself a famous faqīh, dedicates his epistle to prove that in fact without these long dissertations the law could not be properly applied. He refers to each legal formula mentioned by his opponent in Adab al-Kātib and shows how applications of the law should be based on the authority of the Imāms of the Ahl al-Bayt, the family of the Prophet Muhammad. At the same time he refutes various Sunnite legal perspectives on these same issues.