the orthodox Athari creed, affirming the attributes of God without delving into their fundamental nature. Al-Shahrastani, a 12th century historian of religions, grouped al-Zahiri along with Malik bin Anas, Ibn Hanbal and Sufyan al-Thawri as early Sunni figures who rejected both esoteric and anthropotheistic interpretations of God, and both Ibn Taymiyyah and al-Shahrastani considered al-Zahiri and his students, along with Malik, Ibn Hanbal al-Thawri, Abu Thawr, Al-Mawardi and al-Shafi’i and their students to be the people of the hadith, as opposed to the people of ra’y.
This creed of not delving into the fundamental nature of the texts likely affected al-Zahiri’s views on literalism as well. While all the major figures of Islam were united upon the Qur’an and Sunnah being the foremost sources of law, al-Zahiri held that these two sources must also be taken at the literal meanings and only applied in the particular circumstances which they described.
al-Zahiri rejected Qiyas, otherwise known as analogical reasoning, as a method of deducing rulings in jurisprudence, regarding it as a form of bid’ah, or addition to Islam which the prophet Muhammad had not allowed. There are conflicting views regarding al-Zahiri’s position when the specific causality of a command or prohibition within the Qur’an or prophetic example was stated, due to different historians recording opposing statements. Some take the view that al-Zahiri restricted the ruling to the incident or condition in which the causality arose, seeing that the causality provides a concrete law; others take the view that he would instead form a general principle in the event of a stated causality.
al-Zahiri considered Ijma, or religiously binding consensus, to consist of the consensus of the prophet Muhammad’s direct companions only, excluding all other generations after them from this definition. In this matter, al-Zahiri was actually in agreement with Ibn Hanbal and Abu Hanifa, figureheads of two other prominent Sunni schools of thought.
While al-Zahiri at one time studied Hadith studies under Ibn Hanbal, he was later barred from study due to a dispute regarding the nature of the Qur’an; al-Zahiri stated that the Qur’an was “muhdath,” or recently occurring, a stance of which Ibn Hanbal strongly disapproved. Even before that time, Ibn Hanbal had actually cut off contact with anyone who would study with or consult Zahiri regarding religious matters, a habit Ibn Hanbal started after witnessing Zahiri’s defense of al-Shafi’i against Rahwayh.
The rumor regarding Zahiri’s statement about the Qur’an only added more fuel to the fire. Syrian historian Ibn Taymiyyah said that the dispute was semantic in nature, arising from a confusion of al-Zahiri’s intended meaning – that God is existent without peers – and the intended meaning of the Jahmites and Mu’tazila – that the Qur’an was created.
Thus al-Zahiri, Ibn Hanbal, al-Shafi’i, Ibn Rahwayh, al-Tabari, Malik ibn Anas, Sufyan al-Thawri, Abd al-Rahman al-Awza’i, Abū Ḥanīfa, Ibn Khuzaymah, Abdullah ibn Mubarak, Al-Darimi and Muhammad al-Bukhari – described by Ibn Taymiyyah as the leading figures of Islam at the time – all agreed that the Qur’an was uncreated, but a semantic misunderstanding arose when al-Zahiri, al-Bukhari, Muslim bin al-Hajjaj and others used the phrase “recently occurring” to establish that God and the Qur’an, believed by Muslims to be the literal speech of God, are not the same thing, but rather than God’s speech is an attribute.
Modern-day scholarship has suggested, in light of the weakness in the chains of narration connecting the phrase “the Qur’an is recently occurring” to al-Zahiri that al-Zahiri may have never made such a statement or held such a belief at all.
Due to al-Zahiri’s denial of analogical reasoning and blind following – cornerstones in the other main Sunni schools of thought – the students of those schools may have forged the statement and attributed it to al-Zahiri as a means of pushing the common people away from him and his school of thought. Abu Ubaida further supported his point by noting th