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23 Islamic L. & Soc'y 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/islamls23 and id is 1 raw text is: ISLAMIC LAW AND SOCIETY 23 (2016) 1-22 Islamic Law Society BRILL brilI.com/ils The Appellation Sdhib Sunna in Classical Islam: How Sunnism Came To Be John A. Nawas KULeuven, Leuven, Belgium/Institute for Advanced Arabic and Islamic Studies, Antwerp, Belgium John.Nawas@arts.kuleuven.be Abstract The term sahib sunna is frequently encountered in classical Arabic biographical diction- aries. In this article, I compare the group of Islamic religious scholars (ulama) identified as ah.ab sunna with comparable religious scholars who did not receive such a designa- tion. The results show that the ah.ab sunna constituted a distinct group of Muslim reli- gious scholars. I suggest that the formation of the ah.ab sunna was further prompted by the Mihna initiated by the caliph al-Ma'mun. The opposition of the ah.ab sunna to the Mihna contributed to the development of the more elaborate formula ahlal-sunnawa-l- jama'a by which Sunnis define their creed. Keywords Classical Islam - hadith - Mihna - sahib sunna - Sunnism Introduction Classical Arabic biographical dictionaries preserve data for thousands of Mus- lim religious scholars, the ulama, who lived during the first four centuries of Islam. Any researcher who uses these works has, on more than one occasion, My sincere thanks go to Joseph Lowry, Christopher Melchert, Hayrettin Yiicesoy and my two co-workers in the research program History of the Fundamentals of Islam at Leuven University, Belgium, Stijn Aerts and Ahmed Azzouz, for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this article. ( KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2016 1 DOI 10.1163/15685195-02312P01

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