Shaʿrānī met Suyūṭī at the age of twelve, three months before the latter’s death, and received some scholarly transmissions from him. He highly admired Suyūṭī, studied his writings and kept in contact with Suyūṭī’s close friend and partner on the Sufi path, ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Mughayzil al-Shādhilī. The latter gave him access to private letters in which Suyūṭī described some of his spiritual experiences. The greatest influence on Shaʿrānī, however, came from the writings of Ibn ʿArabī, as we have previously seen. The jurisprudential ideas of Ibn ʿArabī and Suyūṭī, as discussed in the previous chapter, were synthesised and worked into a novel theory by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī. This theory he called ‘al-Mīzān’ (the Scale).

Shaʿrānī first introduced his Scale in brief in the introduction to Kashf al-ghumma, a work that was discussed in Part 1. There, the summary of the Scale served as a guide for the reader on how to understand and deal with apparent contradictions in the ḥadīth literature. Shaʿrānī later dedicated two works to this idea. The first was a slim volume titled al-Mīzān al-khaḍiriyya (The Scale of al-Khaḍir) – the reason for this name will be given below – also known as al-Mīzān al-ṣughra (The Smaller Book of the Scale). This first work was mostly an introduction to the theory behind his idea but included a small section demonstrating it on a practical level. Finally, in his old age, Shaʿrānī wrote his al-Mīzān al-Shaʿrāniyya (Al-Shaʿrānī’s Scale), also known as al-Mīzān al-kubrā (The Large Book of the Scale), in which he both vastly expanded the theoretical introduction and gave an extensive application of the theory covering all main chapters of jurisprudence, making it a complete work of comparative fiqh. This was no ordinary work of comparative fiqh, however. Instead of giving the evidence for each madhhab’s position on any issue, Shaʿrānī instead offered the wisdom behind that position and how each position would be classified according to his ‘Scale’.

The Scale

Shaʿrānī’s idea of the Scale was simple: that wherever the Qurʾān, sunna, or practices of the Companions seemed to offer contradictory teachings, it was never a case of contradiction, and, contrary to most scholars, rarely a case of abrogation.