Amir's mirror

Mark Cohen evaluates dhimmi law, finding that Muslims usually didn't treat this as a dedicate topic. Usually.

The exception Cohen finds is 'Abd al-Razzâq whose published editions include, in the Musannaf, an internal "book" on the People Of The Two Books, ahl al-kitâbayn. Cohen must have got this secondhand because he calls it the ahl al-kitâb. In Habîb al-Rahmân al-A'zmî's classic edition, this section picks up volume 10 page 311 hadith #19209. To what extent does this exceptio, probat regulam?

The ahl al-kitâbayn book / section starts with its own transmission-chain: Abu 'Umar Ahmad b. Khalid < Abu Muhammad 'Ubayd b. Muhammad al-Kishuri < Muhammad b. Yusuf "al-Hudhâqî" (I suspect a mispoint for Hudhâfî). Note: not Dabarî as usual. It is also the last section before Ma'mar's Jâmi' which is volume 11.

This rather suggests an independent text attached to the Musannaf elsewhere. 'Abd al-Razzâq transmitted the Musannaf mainline to one company of copyists; and he transmitted the Ahl al-Kitâbayn to another.

I moot that kitâbî-law did exist, and was copied. Cohen remains correct inasmuch as the topic was never grist for the Musannaf / Sunan genre much less Sahih. The Musannaf was meant to adjudicate Muslim conduct among Muslims, mostly. Kitâbî-law was a mirror of Maghâzî (and Sîra) collections. As the Maghazi advised on conduct in war abroad, kitâbî-law handled the infidel within. There were places where so few kitâbîs lived, like the Madina in the Hijaz, that the topic wasn't worth a full book. Even as Maghazi goes, Ibn Ishâq strikes me as an entertainer concerned with the whole arc of the Prophet's heroic life.

From place to place, kitâbî-law competed with treaty, especially where the ahl al-kitâb were more numerous. The Pact of 'Umar so-called comes not from the law-books, but from the treaties: over the last decade see Milka Levy-Rubin, mainly based on the Samaritan experience; also Mirza. Under caliph Mutawakkil, the Pact - or some canon of it - became law and superceded the other books. (Although Arietta Papaconstantinou questions that.) SEE NOW 4/29/23 Yarbrough.