Jump to content

Joseph Schacht

Add links
From wikishia
Joseph Schacht
Full NameJoseph Franz Schacht
Religious AffiliationChristian
Known forScholar of Islamic jurisprudence


Joseph Schacht (1902-1969) was a German-British Orientalist whose most important field of research is considered to be the study of Islamic jurisprudence and the critical analysis of the content of legal hadiths.

Schacht was a professor of Islamic and Arabic studies at universities such as Freiburg in Germany, Oxford in England, Algiers in Algeria, Leiden in the Netherlands, and Columbia in the USA. His book, an Introduction to Islamic Law, is considered the most important book written by Western Islamologists about Islamic jurisprudence.

Schacht's main field of research is considered to be Sunni jurisprudence, and it is said that he did not have a deep familiarity with Shi'a jurisprudence. However, in some of his works, he addressed Shi'a jurisprudence and raised issues that some researchers have termed baseless claims.

In his legal studies, following Ignaz Goldziher, Schacht believed in the lack of authenticity of Prophetic hadiths. This view has been criticized by non-Muslim and Muslim researchers; for instance, it is said that Schacht was unfamiliar with the system of Isnad (chains of transmission) and the terminology used for hadith transmission in the first Islamic century.

Schacht as a Researcher of Islamic Jurisprudence

Joseph Schacht was a German-British Islamologist and specialist in the Arabic language whose most important field of research is considered to be the study of Islamic jurisprudence and the critical analysis of the content of legal hadiths.[1] Some have considered Schacht's book, An Introduction to Islamic Law, to be the most important book written among Western Islamologists regarding Islamic jurisprudence.[2]

Some researchers believe that Schacht's main field of research was Sunni jurisprudence and that he did not have deep familiarity with Shi'a jurisprudence.[3] It is said that he himself admitted to this lack of knowledge.[4] Nevertheless, he addressed Shi'a jurisprudence in some of his works and raised issues that some researchers have called baseless claims;[5] for example, Schacht rejected the famous Shi'a belief that legal rulings trace back to the works of Imam al-Sadiq (a).[6]

Based on this, some believe that Schacht's opinions regarding Islamic hadith do not fundamentally extend much to Shi'a jurisprudence and hadith; rather, on the contrary, his scientific methods in criticizing Sunni hadiths somewhat confirm the scrutiny of Shi'a hadith scholars in criticizing Sunni narrative sources through the historical investigation method.[7]

According to Abd al-Rahman Badawi (d. 2002), an Egyptian researcher of the history of Orientalism, Schacht possessed great obsession and scrutiny in his investigations regarding legal schools and general issues of jurisprudence, and he avoided the generalizations and hypothesis-making of figures like Ignaz Goldziher; for this reason, Schacht's works have been more influential, reliable, useful, and closer to scientific research.[8]

Views and Critiques

According to some researchers, Schacht, believing in the fundamental status of fiqh in the individual and social religious life of Muslims, focused his studies on how the legal-social aspects of jurisprudence were formed.[9] The result of his studies is considered to present an image contrary to the definitive belief of Muslims regarding fiqh being derived from the Qur'an and Sunna: that a practice and opinion first became common among Muslims, and then a suitable legal interpretation was inferred for it from the Qur'an and linked to a hadith.[10]

It is said that one of Schacht's ways to justify these views was proving the historical lack of authenticity of Prophetic narrations.[11] Harald Motzki (d. 2019), a German Islamologist, listed Schacht in the field of discussing the authenticity of the Prophet's (s) narrations among a group who, following Ignaz Goldziher, had an approach accompanied by extreme skepticism towards these sources.[12]

According to him, in the book The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, Schacht severely attacked the reliability of hadith as a religious source in the first Hijri century; in Schacht's view, hadiths claimed to be from Prophet Muhammad (s) were the result of legal, theological, and political developments of the second Hijri century and lacked any connection to the era of the Prophet (s).[13]

Report of Critiques

Studia Islamica Journal

According to Andrew Rippin (d. 2016), a professor of Islamic studies, after Schacht, an attitude accompanied by extreme skepticism toward Prophetic narrations became an inseparable feature of Islamic studies;[14] however, some non-Muslim Islamologists, such as Hamilton Gibb (d. 1971) and Motzki, criticized the generalization of Schacht's theory regarding the fabrication of all hadiths.[15]

According to Motzki, the most serious criticism of Schacht was that he did not sufficiently differentiate between the form of the hadith and its content: the form of Hadith is a formal format that was not clothed onto narrations before the second Hijri century; however, the content of the hadith dates back to a much older time.[16]

Among Muslim researchers as well, figures such as Fuat Sezgin (d. 2018) have criticized Schacht's opinion regarding the authenticity of narrations; in their view, Schacht was unfamiliar with the system of Isnad and the terminology used for hadith transmission in the first Hijri century.[17]

However, in the field of Sira studies, according to Motzki, Schacht's theory regarding the lack of authenticity of Sira narrations did not influence Sira researchers much; for example, a Sira researcher like William Montgomery Watt, while accepting a kind of "biased shaping" in Sira narrations, considered the critical view as a strategy to assess authentic narrations and present a Sira close to reality by relying on Sira narrations.[18]

Biography: Education, Teaching, and Other Activities

Joseph Franz Schacht was born in 1902 in a Catholic family in Germany.[19] In 1920, he studied theology with a focus on learning Semitic languages (Hebrew and Arabic).[20] In 1923, he defended his doctoral dissertation, which was the editing of a book on legal stratagems (Ḥiyal) in Islamic jurisprudence.[21] In 1929, as the youngest associate professor in German universities, he achieved professorship in Oriental languages at the University of Freiburg.[22]

Between 1926 and 1933, Schacht made various trips to the Middle East and North Africa.[23] According to some sources, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, although he was not in danger regarding race or religion, being a liberal-minded individual, he left Germany for Egypt.[24] It is said that he did not return to Germany until 1939 and the start of World War II, and he did not write anything in his mother tongue.[25]

In Egypt, he taught Arabic linguistics and Syriac, and with the start of World War II, he went to England and collaborated with BBC radio against Nazi Germany.[26] Badawi, who himself associated with Schacht in Egypt, doubted the patriotic nature of Schacht's activities in this period.[27] He cited Schacht's non-return to Germany after the war and his acceptance of British citizenship as reasons for his opinion.[28]

Among Schacht's other activities, collaboration in founding and publishing the famous journal Studia Islamica has been mentioned.[29] Also, he is counted among the editors of the new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and the regular publication of this work is considered largely the result of his efforts.[30]

According to sources, Schacht was a professor of Islamic and Arabic studies at the universities of Oxford, Algiers, and Leiden (Netherlands), and from 1959 until his death (1969) at Columbia University in the USA.[31] Schacht was selected as a member of the Arab Academy of Damascus in 1954 and as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy in 1956.[32]

Arabic translation of An Introduction to Islamic Law

Works

Schacht's works have been categorized and reported in the following fields:

  • Research in Islamic Jurisprudence: Including the books The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950), Esquisse d'une histoire du droit musulman (1953), and An Introduction to Islamic Law (1964), and articles such as "Homicide", "Options" (Khiyārāt), "Retaliation" (Qiṣāṣ), "Taqlid", "Wills", and "Ablution" (Wuḍūʾ).
  • Editing Arab-Islamic manuscripts: Including articles "From the Libraries of Istanbul and Cairo" (1928), "From the Libraries of Istanbul and Its Surroundings" (1930), and "On Some Manuscripts in the Library of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez" (1962).
  • Textual research and publication of some legal texts: Including the books Al-Ḥiyal wa-l-makhārij, a work in Hanafi jurisprudence from the third Hijri century (1923), and Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ by Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari (1933).
  • Studies in Islamic Theology: Including articles such as "Islam" (a summary of Islamic beliefs) (1931), "New Sources for the History of Islamic Theology" (1953), and "Theology and Law in Islam" (1969).
  • Works in the field of the History of Science, especially medicine in Islamic civilization: Including articles "A Medico-Philosophical Controversy between Ibn Butlan of Baghdad and Ibn Ridwan of Cairo" (1937) and "Maimonides against Galen" (1937).[33]

Notes

  1. ↑ Badawī, Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i mustashriqān, p. 388; ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», pp. 210-211.
  2. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 1.
  3. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 5.
  4. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 216.
  5. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 216.
  6. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 216.
  7. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 5.
  8. ↑ Badawī, Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i mustashriqān, p. 388.
  9. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 214.
  10. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 214.
  11. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 214.
  12. ↑ Motzki, «Ḥadīth-pajūhī dar gharb: muqaddima-ī dar bāb-i khāstgāh wa taṭawwur-i ḥadīth», p. 27.
  13. ↑ Motzki, «Muqaddima», p. 11.
  14. ↑ Rippin, «Taḥlīl-i adabī-yi Qurʾān, tafsīr wa sīra: rawish-hā-yi John Wansbrough», p. 237.
  15. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 217.
  16. ↑ Motzki, «Ḥadīth-pajūhī dar gharb: muqaddima-ī dar bāb-i khāstgāh wa taṭawwur-i ḥadīth», p. 30.
  17. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 217.
  18. ↑ Motzki, «Muqaddima», p. 11.
  19. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 2; ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 211.
  20. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 211.
  21. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 211.
  22. ↑ ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», p. 211.
  23. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 3.
  24. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 3.
  25. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 3.
  26. ↑ Badawī, Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i mustashriqān, pp. 385-386.
  27. ↑ Badawī, Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i mustashriqān, p. 386.
  28. ↑ Badawī, Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i mustashriqān, p. 386.
  29. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 3.
  30. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 3.
  31. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 3; Badawī, Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i mustashriqān, p. 386.
  32. ↑ Nūrī, «Yāddāsht-i mutarjim», p. 3.
  33. ↑ Badawī, Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i mustashriqān, pp. 386-389; ʿAdālat-nizhād, «Shākht, Yūzif», pp. 213-214.

References

  • ʿAdālat-nizhād, Saʿīd. "Shākht, Yūzif". In Dānishnāma-yi Jahān-i Islām. Vol. 26. Tehran, Bunyād-i Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i Islāmī, 1397Sh.
  • Badawī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Dāyirat al-maʿārif-i mustashriqān. Trans. Ṣāliḥ Ṭabāṭabāyī. Tehran, Intishārāt-i Rūzana, 1377Sh.
  • Motzki, Harald. "Ḥadīth-pajūhī dar gharb: muqaddima-ī dar bāb-i khāstgāh wa taṭawwur-i ḥadīth". Trans. Murtaḍā Karīmī-niyā. In Ḥadīth-i Islāmī: Khāstgāh-hā wa sīr-i taṭawwur. Qom, Nashr-i Dār al-Ḥadīth, 1390Sh.
  • Motzki, Harald. "Muqaddima". In Zindagī-nāma-yi Muḥammad (barrasī-yi manābiʿ). Ed. Harald Motzki. Trans. Muḥammad Taqī Akbarī and ʿAbdullāh ʿAẓīmāyī. Mashhad, Bunyād-i Pizhūhish-hā-yi Islāmī-yi Āstān-i Quds-i Raḍawī, 1386Sh.
  • Nūrī, Asadullāh. "Yāddāsht-i mutarjim". In Dībācha-ī bar fiqh-i Islāmī. Tehran, Intishārāt-i Hirmis, 1388Sh.
  • Rippin, Andrew. "Taḥlīl-i adabī-yi Qurʾān, tafsīr wa sīra: rawish-hā-yi John Wansbrough". Trans. Murtaḍā Karīmī-niyā. In Nigarish-hāyī ba Islām dar muṭālaʿāt-i adyān. Tehran, Intishārāt-i Ḥikmat, 1396Sh.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikishia.net/w/index.php?title=Joseph_Schacht&oldid=200172"