Ibrahim al-Nazzam

While most of the Mu'tazila were followers of the Hanafite school of jurisprudence, with a minority preferring the Shafi'ite rite, al-Naẓẓām was entirely different. Diverging from many of the diverse held views of his time, he was famous for his strong rejection of analogical reasoning, which was accepted by both the Hanafites and Shafi'ites; of juristic preference, a pillar of Hanafite thought; of the doctrine of binding consensus, accepted by all of Sunni Islam; and of the reports supposedly transmitting prophetic traditions, accepted by Muslims of many sects.

Like other early Mu'tazilites, al-Naẓẓām was a scripturalist who had no use for the traditions and accounts supposedly related by Abu Hurayra, the most prolific ḥadīth narrater, which he held to be full of incongruities.[4][5] For al-Naẓẓām, both of the so-called single-source and multiple-source reports, such as the multitudinous narratives variously attributed to Abu Hurayra, could not be trusted.[6] His critique of all the extra-Quranic traditional canons encompasses an examination of their discordant content (matn), which he ascribed to faulty human memory and bias. Al-Naẓẓām bolstered his refutation of the thitherto long-held esteem of the accounts of Abu Hurayra and other contemporaries of Muḥammad (especially among Sunni circles) within the larger claim that such reports circulated and thrived mainly to support and legitimize the polemical causes of various theological sects and jurists and that no single transmitter, be he contemporaneous with Muhammad or not, could by himself be held above suspicion of altering the content of any single report. Al-Naẓẓām’s skepticism involved far more than excluding the possible verification of a report narrated by Abu Hurayra, whether it is traced back to a single source (wāḥid) or many (mutawātir). He also questioned reports of widespread acceptance, which proved pivotal to classical Muʿtazilite criteria devised for verifying the single report, thus earning a special mention for the depth and extent of his skepticism.[7]

Al-Naẓẓām's rejection of consensus was primarily due to his rationalist criticism of the first generation of Muslims, whom he viewed as possessing defective personalities and intellects.[8] Shi'ite theologians al-Shaykh al-Mufīd and Sharif al-Murtaza held in high esteem al-Naẓẓām's Kitāb al-Nakth (The Book of Dismantling), in which he denied the doctrinal validity of consensus.[9]