Consensus, Authority, and the Interpretive Community in the Thought of Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī

Abstract

Examination of al-Ṭabarī’s oeuvre as a whole reveals certain patterns that cut across fields. The following article addresses the concept of ḥujja, which is related to his understanding of consensus. It has been pointed out that al-Ṭabarī uses the term ḥujja (‘proof’) with two quite different meanings in his Qur'anic commentary, Jāmiʿ al-bayān. In one sense, ḥujja designates a proof such as a Qur'anic verse, a ḥadīth report, or an instance of consensus. In the second sense, ḥujja refers to particular people, scholars of the past whom al-Ṭabarī considers the most prominent authorities in a particular field. Al-Ṭabarī uses the term in a similar fashion in the extant sections of his legal work Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ, and examination of the two works in combination reveals regularities in al-Ṭabarī’s understanding of hermeneutics across fields, including law, Qur'anic variants (qirāʾāt), and Qur'anic exegesis (tafsīr). His use of the term ḥujja implies that he conceived of the interpretive community in tafsīr and other fields as comprised of two tiers, a lower tier of all competent scholars and an upper tier—the ḥujja—of those scholars whose opinions were instrumental in shaping discourse in the field in question.