Ibrahim al-Nazzam

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm Ibn Sayyār Ibn Hāni‘ an-Naẓẓām (Arabic: أبو إسحاق بن سيار بن هانئ النظام) (c. 775 – c. 845) was an Arab Mu'tazilite theologian and poet. He was a nephew of the Mu'tazilite theologian Abu al-Hudhayl al-'Allaf, and al-Jahiz was one of his students. An-Nazzam served at the courts of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun. His theological doctrines and works are lost except for a few fragments.

Views

While most of the Mu'tazila were followers of the Hanafite school of jurisprudence, with a minority preferring the Shafi'ite rite, Nazzam was entirely different. He was famous for his strong rejection of analogical reason, which was accepted by both the Hanafites and Shafi'ites; of juristic preference, a pillar of Hanafite though; of binding consensus, accepted by all of Sunni Islam; and of the hadith supposedly reporting prophetic traditions, accepted by the majority of Muslims in multiple sects. Like other early Mu'tazilites, An-Nazzam was a scripturalist who had no use for hadiths, which he believed were full of contradictions.

Consensus

Nazzam's rejection of consensus as a valid source of law was primarily due to his rationalist criticism of the first generation of Muslims, mainly Abu Hurayra, whom he viewed as possessing defective personalities and intellects. Shi'ite theologians Al-Shaykh Al-Mufid and Sharif al-Murtaza held Nazzam's book Kitab al-Nakth in which he denied the validity of consensus for this reason in high esteem.