Quick Facts
Biography
Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm Ibn Sayyār Ibn Hāni‘ an-Naẓẓām (Arabic: أبو إسحاق بن سيار بن هانئ النظام) (c. 775 – c. 845) was a Mu'tazilite theologian and poet. He was a nephew of the Mu'tazilite theologian Abu al-Hudhayl al-'Allaf, and al-Jahiz was one of his students. His theological doctrines were not accepted by his contemporaries and his works are lost except for a few fragments.
Views
While most of the Mu'tazila were followers of the Hanafite school of jurisprudence, with a minority preferring the Shafi'ite rite, Nazzam was entirely different. He was famous for his strong rejection of analogical reason, which was accepted by both the Hanafites and Shafi'ites; of juristic preference, a pillar of Hanafite though; of binding consensus, accepted by all of Sunni Islam; and of the Hadiths reporting prophetic traditions, accepted by the majority of Muslims in multiple sects. In Nazzam's view, only the Qur'an and pure reason were valid sources of Islamic law.
Consensus
Nazzam's rejection of consensus as a valid source of law was primarily due to his rationalist criticism of the first generation of Muslims, whom he viewed as possessing defective personalities and intellects. Shi'ite theoligans Al-Shaykh Al-Mufid and Sharif al-Murtaza held Nazzam's book Kitab al-Nakth in which he denied the validity of consensus for this reason in high esteem. Modern scholarship has suggested that this interest was motivated by the desire of Shi'ite theoligans to impugn the character of the first three leaders of the Rashidun Caliphate, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman.