Can an age be without an independent reasoner (mujtahid)?

In the sixth aim of Irshad al-Fuhul, al-Shawkani takes up the question whether an age may be empty of independent reasoners (mujtahids). He reports two views and then answers those who held that the age was empty. ¹

Al-Shawkani notes that a group held that no time may be without a mujtahid upholding God's proofs and explaining to people what was revealed to them, and that some required one in every region sufficient for the need, since ijtihad is a collective obligation; he quotes a division of ijtihad into an individual duty, a collective duty and a recommended act. ¹ He holds that calling ijtihad an obligation entails that no time is without a mujtahid, and cites the hadith "a group of my community will remain manifest upon the truth until the Hour comes". ¹

Al-Shawkani reports that for the Hanbalis no age may be without ijtihad; Abu Ishaq and al-Zubayri affirmed this, and Abu Ishaq attributed it to the jurists, reasoning that if God left a time without anyone upholding the proof, legal obligation would lapse, since obligation is established only by a manifest proof. ¹ He quotes al-Zubayri that the earth will never be without someone upholding God's proof, however few. Ibn Daqiq al-Id chose this view, but only up to the point where the order of things breaks down as the world ends. ¹

He reports from al-Zarkashi's al-Bahr that most allowed an age to be without a mujtahid, and that the author of al-Mahsul, al-Razi, affirmed it. ¹ He quotes al-Rafi'i that people were all but agreed there was no mujtahid in his day, and al-Ghazali in al-Wasit that the age had become empty of the independent mujtahid; al-Zarkashi remarked that claiming agreement was strange, since the question was disputed between the Shafi'is and the Hanbalis. ¹ Al-Shawkani adds that al-Qaffal preceded al-Ghazali in saying the age was empty, but contradicted himself by saying he did not imitate al-Shafi'i, his opinion merely agreeing with his. ¹

Al-Shawkani finds the claim astonishing: if it refers to the claimants' own contemporaries, al-Qaffal, al-Ghazali, al-Razi and al-Rafi'i lived alongside scholars who fully mastered the sciences of ijtihad, and others came after them who knew still more. ^{1 2} If it means that God withdrew from later generations the understanding he gave earlier ones, or that knowledge was easier for the earlier ones, he calls that an empty claim: Qur'an commentaries and the Sunna had been written down, the imams had discussed authentication and preference beyond what a mujtahid needs, and the early generations used to travel from land to land for a single hadith; so ijtihad, he argues, is easier for later scholars. ² He names, among Shafi'is after those who claimed the age empty, a chain in which each was the student of the one before: Ibn Abd al-Salam, Ibn Daqiq al-Id, Ibn Sayyid al-Nas, Zayn al-Din al-Iraqi, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and al-Suyuti. ²

The views here are as al-Shawkani reports them; their holders' own texts, and academic studies of the history of the "closing of the gate of ijtihad", have not yet been added.