La destrucción de la ciencia de la šarī‛a por Muḥammad b. Tūmart

Abstract

This article presents the first result of ongoing research on the doctrine of Ibn Tumart. The profound originality of the legal and religious thought of the founder of the Almohad movement, preserved in A‛azz mā yuṭlab, is analyzed. Ibn Tūmart's answer to the question «How can knowledge of the divine law be defined and from where does it stem?» is a radical critique of the positions taken by his predecessors in Uṣūl al-fiqh, given the fact that Ibn Tūmart rejects supposition (al-ẓann) as basis of knowledge. The analysis of the consequences of this starting point is followed by the analysis of the close connection between knowledge and practice established in Ibn Tūmart's doctrine, with the consequent elimination of the Ash‛arite principle of al-taklīf mā lā yuṭāq. In opposition to al-Ghazālī, for Ibn Tūmart, concepts and things are in a relationship which can be the object of analysis the results of which are guaranteed by the existence of knowledge created by God. The mission of almahdī al-ma‛ṣūm al-ma‛lūm is to ensure that this knowledge is made clear again as it was at the beginning. It is thanks to the mahdī that heaven and earth are sustained, an idea that recalls the doctrine of the Eastern Sufi ‛Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, a contemporaryof Ibn Tūmart.