3.

The Scholastic Method as Form: the Ta’liqa-Report

a. Advocacy
The technical terms of Islamic medieval education are a convenient
guide to the understanding of its method of instruction. Certain terms are
cited here for the light they throw on the scholastic method of the colleges
of law. Because of the ijma'-khilaf antithesis, the thrust of the educational
system in the college of law, whether the madrasa or its precursor, the
masjid-khan complex, was directed toward the training of the advocate.
With his preparation in the literary arts complete, the student of law
began his specialization in the field of legal studies. To survive through the
gruelling initial undergraduate years, and to go on to graduate studies and
the final ordeal of defending one's theses, the student, from beginning to
end, had to continue to develop a strong memory, learn how to stock it
carefully with the necessary stores, and so arrange and classify them there
as to be able to retrieve them with the least possible hesitation, drawing
upon the memory's treasures at will. For advocacy was a completely oral
exercise. There was no time for reference to sources, no time for that
deliberation one has when writing, no opportunity to draft and redraft
before delivering the final product. All deliberation had to be done
beforehand, and the material mastered definitively for instant recall, in
preparation for the supreme encounter with the adversary, at which time
there would there would be no margin left for error, no quarter asked and
none given. Reputations were made and unmade; careers hung in the
balance.
In Medieval Islam, the achievement of consensus (ijma’) was made
possible by the absence of disagreement (khilaf). Ijma' was thus arrived
at by a system of elimination. Eliminate khilaf and you have ijma’. Those
who sought the achievement of consensus had therefore to see to the
elimination of disagreement. This was the goal to be achieved; it was to be
achieved in one of two ways: by winning the adversary over to one’s side,
or by reducing him to silence.
The advocate's training thus revolved around khilaf. The object of
training was to learn how to meet all possible objections to one's thesis.
His training was dominated by two major initial concerns: (1) to
commit to memory an ever-growing repertoire of questions still being
disputed, and (2) to learn and practise the art of disputation, or
argumentation, with special emphasis on how to ask questions and how to
answer them. But it was not enough to know all previously known and
debated questions and the logical sequence of arguments, counter-
arguments, objections and replies to the objections-for this is a
repertoire equally available to the adversary for memorization; one had
also to know how to innovate: create new questions, develop new
arguments, to surprise the adversary and keep him off balance, the more
easily to knock him out.
This activity explains why the codification of khilaf, disputed
questions, is one of the most prolific genres of Islamic legal literature. It
was a repertoire of those questions that remained disputed and on which
there was no consensus, a repertoire of questions serving as a reference
work for the advocate.
b. Some General Terms
The technical terminology of medieval legal education revolved
mainly around the derivatives of the word for law, fiqh, supplemented by
the derivatives of the triliteral root, drs, when used in the absolute, without
complements, and by other terms combined with derivatives of the roots
fqh and drs: tafaqqaha ‘ala, darasa 'ala, darasa ‘I-fiqha ‘ala, akhadha ‘I-
fiqha ‘an, qara'a ‘I-fiqha 'ala, and sami'a 'd-darsa ‘ala, for instance, all
meant to study law under direction of a masterjurisconsult.
The root drs supplied many terms relating to law when the terms
were used without a complement: dars meant a lesson of law; mudarris, a
professor of law; darrasa, to teach law; madrasa, the place where law was
taught; tadris, the teaching of law, the legal teaching profession or post,
the professorship of law. The term darrasa did not have a synonymous term
taken from the term for law, fiqh; in other words, the term faqqaha was not
used as a synonym of darrasa. The term faqih, jurisconsult, loosely used,
designated any student of law; more specifically, it designated an advanced
student of law, or an accomplished jurisconsult. The faqih was not
necessarily a professor of law; being a doctor of the law did not guarantee
him a teaching pot.
Some or the other fields of knowledge had their special terms
relating to teaching and learning, and others did not. For instance, in the
field of Koranic science, the verb used was a derivative from the same root
as the term for Koran: Qur'an, the Koran, comes from the triliteral root
qr’ as does the verb qara'a, to recite, to read aloud, with Qur'an
meaning the Recitation, the Prophet having read aloud, recited, the
verses of the Koran as he received them from the Angel Gabriel. The
verb qara'a meant primarily to study the Koranic variants, the qira'at;
it was also used in the general sense of studying other fields of
knowledge, when followed by a complement designating the
particular field.
The verb akhadha, to take, to receive, is another such general
term which, with the preposition 'an, meant to study under; for
instance, akhadha al-adaba 'an, akhadha 'I-falsafata an, akhadha ‘ilma 'I-
kalami 'an, akhadha 'ilma 'n-nazari 'an, meant, respectively, to study under
(someone) the literary arts, philosophy, philosophical theology,
disputation, these subjects not having technical terms for this purpose
taken from the same root as the terms for the fields them-selves. For adab,
there was the verb ta'addaba bi meaning not only to study adab-literature
under (someone), but also to finish doing so; to graduate in that field under
(someone's) direction. But falsafa, kalam, and nazar or munazara did not
have such termsderived from their own roots.
On the other hand, the field of hadith had the verb haddatha, from its
own root, signifying to teach hadith, and tahdith, signifying the function or
the post of teaching it, the professorship of hadith. The terms haddatha and
tahdith, in hadith, were therefore the counter-parts of darrasa and tadris in
fiqh. Fiqh did not use the terms faqqaha and tafqih for the teaching of fiqh,
though it did use tafaqqaha to designate the learning of fiqh.
During the undergraduate years, the main thrust of learning was on
te legal principles of the school of law to which the student belonged, on
madhhab law. During the graduate period, the emphasis was on the
disputed questions, on khilaf law. This second period was that of the
student’s suhba, fellowship, during which he became a sahib, fellow, of the
master jurisconsult, a constant companion, a disciple, and was thus said to
sahaba (Form III) his professor. A latter synonymous verb is lazama, from
which is derived the verbal noun mulazama, synonymous with suhba, the
active participle of which, mulazim, was used especially in the Ottoman