Al-Awza'i, Abd al-Rahman ibn Amr

Al-Awza'i, Abd al-Rahman ibn Amr ibn Yuhmid, Abu Amr, a jurist and hadith scholar. The encyclopaedia describes him as the imam of Syria and its first jurist in his time, and gives his birth as 88 AH and his death as 157 AH according to the common report. ¹

Historians differ on the origin of his nisba to al-Awza'. Al-Mas'udi says his home was in al-Awza' in Damascus and that he was not of them, but was from the captives of the people of Yemen, and that he died in 157 AH at the age of ninety. ² Al-Shirazi quotes Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi as saying that no one in Syria knew the Sunna better than him. ³

Al-Dhahabi calls him shaykh al-Islam and the scholar of the people of Syria, recording that he lived in the Awza' quarter — the small 'Uqayba outside Bab al-Faradis in Damascus — then moved to Beirut as a frontier devotee until he died; some say he was born in Baalbek. ⁴

He narrated from 'Ata' ibn Abi Rabah, Abu Ja'far al-Baqir, 'Amr ibn Shu'ayb, Makhul, Qatada, al-Zuhri, Yahya ibn Abi Kathir, Hassan ibn 'Atiyya, Isma'il ibn 'Ubaydallah ibn Abi al-Muhajir, Ibn al-Munkadir, Maymun ibn Mihran and Nafi' the client of Ibn 'Umar; a great many Syrians and travelling students narrated from him. ⁴

Abu 'Amr 'Abd al-Rahman ibn 'Amr was the main representative of the ancient Syrian school of religious law. His nisba is derived from al-Awza', a suburb of Damascus named after a South Arabian tribe, or an agglomeration of clans, which lived there. He seems to have been born at Damascus, to have studied at least in part at al-Yamama, where he went in government employment, and later moved to Beirut, where he died about seventy years old in 157 AH (774). He is buried at the village of Hantus near Beirut, and pilgrims still visit his tomb. ⁵

His works on law, the Kitab al-Sunan and the Kitab al-Masa'il, are known from the Fihrist but are not preserved in their original form, and the Musnad was composed later. His opinions survive in quotations by al-Tabari in his Ikhtilaf al-fuqaha' and in Abu Yusuf's refutation of al-Awza'i's criticisms of Abu Hanifa, with al-Shafi'i's comments in the Umm. His opinions generally represent the oldest solutions adopted by Islamic jurisprudence. He relied on the practice of the Muslims, beginning with the Prophet ﷺ, maintained by the first caliphs and later rulers and verified by the scholars, which he called the sunna of the Prophet, and he set this idealised sunna against actual administrative practice, making the "good old time" last until the killing of al-Walid II in 126 AH (744) and the civil war that followed, so that it included most of the Umayyad period. ⁶

He gained the respect of the new rulers, and of the future caliph al-Mahdi as a prince, to whom he seems to have talked; his applications on behalf of political prisoners and the people of Beirut to al-Mahdi, al-Mansur and influential courtiers are doubtless genuine. His disciples included al-Walid ibn Mazyad (died 203 AH). His school became the personal madhhab of al-Awza'i, prevailing in Syria and in the Maghrib, including al-Andalus, until it was superseded by the madhhab of Malik, in the Maghrib about the middle of the third/ninth century and in Syria towards the end of the fourth/tenth. ⁷

Tareq al-Suwaidan presents al-Awza'i as a model of one of his quartets' secrets of greatness: early orphanhood — he was born fatherless at Baalbek and raised in the Beqaa in his mother's lap — faulting the view that makes orphans into figures of pity in charity films, for the early loss of a father was, for many of the greats, the very secret of their greatness ^{8 9}. He transmits through Ibn Kathir the testimony of al-Awza'i's son: among the sons of kings, caliphs, ministers, merchants and scholars none was more sensible, courteous, scrupulous, learned, eloquent, venerable, patient or silent than al-Awza'i — he never uttered a word but the hearer felt bound to write it for its excellence ¹⁰. He recounts the story of his pilgrimage: Sufyan al-Thawri and Malik ibn Anas went out to receive him at Mecca, al-Thawri leading his camel and Malik driving it from behind, calling 'make way for the shaykh' until they seated him by the Kaaba — and at Medina Malik sat with him from noon to sunset, al-Awza'i overwhelming him in the maghazi and Malik in fiqh ^{11 12}. Of his rank in learning: Ibn Ziyad's report that he gave rulings on seventy thousand questions, never ruling by opinion but by a hadith; his method being transmission — 'hold to the sunna, stop where the people stopped, say what they said, and refrain from what they refrained from' — and his saying 'knowledge is what came from the Companions of Muhammad' with his warning 'beware the sayings of men however embellished' ^{13 14 15}. Of his worship: Ibn Asakir's report that he was constant in worship, fine in prayer, scrupulous, ascetic and long in silence; that after the dawn prayer he sat remembering God until sunrise; that his mat ran wet with tears in prostration until a woman thought a boy had wet it; and that he inherited more than seventy thousand dinars and kept none of it, leaving at death only seven dinars that were spent on his shrouding ^{16 17 18 18}. Of his severity for the truth: the account of his answer to the Abbasid governor of Damascus — before drawn swords — that the removal of the Umayyads was no jihad since works are by intentions, that their blood was lawful only under one of three cases, and that their wealth, if illicit for them, was illicit likewise, and if licit became lawful only by a lawful path — then he distributed the governor's gift of two hundred dinars to the poor before leaving his place; and his anger at the onion-seller who cried 'onions sweeter than honey', counting the exaggeration a lie ^{19 20 21 22}. He gives his birth as 88 AH and his death in 157 AH, a murabit in God's path at seventy-nine ^{23 24}.