yuti, Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, al-Dhahabi, Al-Nawawi and al-Tabari all attested to his morality, humility and personal ethics.
While al-Zahiri’s school is not as numerous today as the other four major schools of Sunni thought, the Zahiri, or “Dawudi” school as they were known in Islam’s early stages, was once a major school and encompassed Mesopotamia, the Iberian Peninsula, the Balearic Islands, North Africa and Southern Iran. Even his contemporary critics conceded to his intellect and level of knowledge, even while rejecting his beliefs.
He has been described as “the scholar of the era” by al-Dhahabi, and the hierarchy of religious knowledge in Baghdad was considered to have ended with al-Zahiri at the top. When al-Tabari was asked regarding the books of Ibn Qutaybah, he answered that Ibn Qutaybah’s work was “nothing,” and recommended the books of the “people of jurisprudence,” mentioning al-Shafi’i and al-Zahiri by name, then “their contemporaries.”
Members of other schools have often criticized al-Zahiri for his rejection of analogical reasoning. The early followers of al-Shafi’i in general held negative views of their former classmate, and from the followers of the Shafi’ite school Al-Juwayni in particular was harsh upon al-Zahiri himself. al-Dhahabi, however, defended al-Zahiri and his followers, stating that just as al-Juwayni had arrived to his views by the process of scholarly discourse, so had al-Zahiri.
Likewise, Ibn al-Salah also defended the legitimacy of al-Zahiris views and his school, listing a number of figures from the other Sunni schools of thought who considered al-Zahiri’s opinions in scholarly discourse.
Shi’ites have taken a dimmer view of al-Zahiri and his school. In the 1970s, Twelver Shi’ite scholar Abdul Kareem Mushtaq accused al-Zahiri of having held anthropotheistic beliefs regarding God, citing Sunni historian al-Shahrastani as his source. Nearly four decades later, the section of al-Shahrastani’s work was translated into English, demonstrating that al-Shahrastani had actually stated that al-Zahiri didn’t hold anthropotheistic beliefs. al-Shahrastani had stated:
“As for Aĥmad ibn Ĥanbal, Dāwūd ibn `Alī al-Işfahānī and a group of Imāms from the predecessors, they took the methodological course of the early predecessors from the people of narrations—such as Mālik ibn Anas and Muqātil ibn Sulaymān—and followed the safe path.
They said: ‘We believe in whatever is mentioned in the Book and the Sunna, and we do not come to grips with the interpretation; after we certainly know that Allāh, the Powerful and Exalted, does not resemble anything from the creation and that all what is portrayed in imagination is created and foreordained.’
And they used to guard themselves from anthropomorphism to such a degree, that they said: ‘Whosoever moved his hand during the recitation of His statement: ‘…I created with My hands?’ or pointed with his two fingers during his narration: ‘The heart of the believer is between two fingers of the Merciful,’ his hand should be cut and his two fingers removed.”
Ismaili Shi’ites have, perhaps, been more accurate in that for which they criticized al-Zahiri. al-Nu’man was particularly critical of al-Zahiri for rejecting analogical reason yet at the same time accepting inference as a valid means of logical deduction, a position for which he also criticized al-Zahiri’s son and school in general.
Being steeped in esoteric philosophy, the Mu’tazila were quite hostile towards al-Zahiri and his school. Although some prominent Mu’tazilite figures such as al-Nazzam denied the validity of analogical reasoning as al-Zahiri did, they also denied literalism and the validity of consensus, and most of them found al-Zahiri’s ideas to be ridiculous.