What follows is a virtue ethics approach to one incredibly telling incident in Shiʿi sacred history. This incident, read in a particular way, illustrates how we might consider the relationship between what we call “law” and what we call “ethics,” or, on another level, what we might call “practical knowledge” and “divinely inspired wisdom.” The account is often recounted during celebrations of the birthday of the ninth Shiʿi imam, because it resolves a doubt that many held, namely, that a child could perform the functions of an imam. It occurs in al-Shaykh al-Mufīd’s (d. 413/1022) Kitāb al-irshād, which describes a scene wherein the caliph al-Maʾmūn responds to his family’s protests against his plan to betroth his daughter to the very young and inexperienced Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. ʿAlī, or al-Imām al-Jawād.
The sources tell us that the imam is only nine years old at the time—nine years and a few months. In general the caliph’s Abbasid kinsmen express concern about al-Maʾmūn’s interest in forging ties between the ninth imam and, before him, his father al-Imām al-Riḍā, ties that endanger their privileged position. Yet it is the issue of the ninth imam’s age that constitutes the caliph’s family’s key argument against the imam’s marriage to the princess Umm al-Faḍl, which they communicate using terms that I want to explore. My interest in those terms stems from my approach to the narrative itself through the dual lenses of virtue ethics and comparative mysticism.
The caliph’s familial inner circle complains that the young boy “even if his guidance impresses you, is still a young boy (ṣabīy).” They continue: “He has no cognizance (maʿrifa), nor any understanding (fiqh). So, give him some time to become educated (yataʾaddab) and acquire understanding in the religion (yatafaqqah fī al-dīn). Then, after that, undertake what you have conceived.” The caliph responds to them, “Woe unto you! I am more cognizant of this young man[‘s abilities] than you are! He is from the Ahl al-Bayt. Their knowledge (ʿilm) is from God, from divine subjects of knowing, and from God’s inspiration (ilhām).”
Thus, the caliph asks his family to test the child. They offer bringing in a third party, an expert, to ask him a question about the understanding of revealed commands, or fiqh al-sharīʿa. Structurally speaking, the format of this narrative is parallel to the incident between God and the angels in God’s nomination of Adam as His viceregent on earth. In that narrative, God also singles out someone for an exalted status, a special place. There ensues a protest or at least an inquiry that has to do with a possible lack of suitability. Therein follows a testing from which the hero emerges triumphant on account of divinely granted knowledge. The parallels between these two narratives to me hint at the sort of knowledge being highlighted in both. Thus, we will return to this parallel toward the end of this paper.
The young imam agrees to undertake the test. Nominated as examiner is a certain judge—the head judge of that day in fact— Yaḥyā ibn Aktham (d. 242/857). To explain what head judge or “judge of judges” (qāḍī al-quḍāt) signifies, consider that it represents to some extent the further institutionalization of the office of “judge” in Muslim-ruled lands. In the Umayyad and earlier Abbasid periods, the capital town of each territory had a qāḍī who adjudicated cases based on his own knowledge, though sometimes in consultation with a team of jurists. After the time of Hārūn al-Rashīd, however, this became a hierarchy that resulted in the office of qaḍāʾ al-quḍāt, a court of courts housed in the capital, Baghdad, such that the holder of that office (the qāḍī al-quḍāt) became responsible for administering the other courts of the empire, as well as, nominating, evaluating, or removing other judges. Ibn Aktham, thus, is a judge of other judges.
In the account, the judge’s question to the imam is quite simple: “What do you say—may I be sacrificed for you—regarding the one in pilgrim sanctity (the muḥrim) who kills while hunting?” Hunting is, of course, one of the actions forbidden to a pilgrim in a state of iḥrām. The imam’s response is to offer a series of follow-up questions:
Did the person in question kill the animal inside or outside of the sanctuary? Was the pilgrim aware of these restrictions at the time, or unaware? Did he kill intentionally or unintentionally? Was this person free or enslaved? Young or old? Was he killing for the first time or practiced in that action? Was the hunted animal a bird or something else? Was it a small animal that was hunted or a big one? Was he brazen in that action or repentant? Did the kill happen at night or in the day? Was the pilgrim in a state of sanctity for the lesser ʿumra pilgrimage or the greater ḥajj pilgrimage?
The judge at this stage cannot respond and begins to stutter. So dumbfounded is the judge, that “the entire congregation attending the council realized what was the matter with him.” The caliph then praises God and addresses his family members, once again paralleling what we find in the Quran regarding Adam, “Do you recognize now [in him] what you once denied?” Following this is the marriage of the child imam to the caliph’s daughter, which will serve as our conclusion to the narrative.
My present interest in this story stems from a problem raised in a well-known article by Julia Annas, called “Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing.” Annas objects to the idea that ethics can provide us with a formulized way to determine right from wrong, what she calls “decision procedures.” In this formulized conception, ethics would be an almost technological enterprise, where a series of directives could determine what is moral or immoral in any particular situation.
Annas argues that this is not the case because the decisions we actually make are far too complex and specific to rely on such systems. The proposed “decision procedure” ethical systems might be compared to a computer manual—a technical sort of knowledge that directs any person to the right answer at any time. In fact, however, no one can put decision procedures into action consistently and avoid ethical failures. Previous to Annas, the philosopher Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe pointed to the most prevalent failure of the utilitarian ethical decision procedure system that predominated Western thought in the 20th century, namely, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
To illustrate her criticism of ethics as a technical variety of knowledge, Annas has us imagine a child teach us how to use a computer, or to offer another example, children who are excellent at chess. Could you ask that child a question that would require what we might call wisdom? Would you ask a child to help you with your marriage or to make an important decision, such as those that might be placed before a judge? A child with technical knowledge might be what we call an idiot savant, but he or she would remain what Annas calls a moral idiot. This is also true for people who are more morally deplorable. Those we know to have very little ethical substance who have yet mastered ethical theory. Would you feel comfortable, she says, relying on them because of his theoretical knowledge or not? Is the decision procedure, in other words, reliable enough that it simply does not matter who uses it? Or does it in fact, matter?
The reason that post-Enlightenment ethicists have offered such decision procedures at all, argues Annas, is that we want our ethics to be egalitarian and we want our ethics to be universal. We want a set of directives broadly applicable and determined by anyone, for such is what Enlightenment thinkers have argued is rational; and such is the basis of life in the modern state.
Let us then apply this to the story of the imam. The imam’s extraordinary ability might be read in at least two ways, as he stands before the caliph, the caliph’s family, and the judge of judges. One possibility is that the imam provides them with a technical response, as one might expect from a detailed manual of jurisprudence, impressing them because he has asked an array of questions to extract a more precise answer. A person who has studied his or her fiqh well enough would appreciate that the imam alludes to varied questions that exist about the matter of hunting while in pilgrim sanctity. Another possibility is that the imam responds from a place of profound wisdom, so profound that—even though he is merely a child—his wisdom qualifies him as something far beyond that. His response points not to a complex and technical knowledge but, rhetorically, to a style of addressing such questions, a style that always caters to the specific circumstances of the questioner.
A technical answer certainly would paint the imam as the most knowledgeable person of his age, a genius in a way, because a child should not know so much. If, however, the imam is using these questions to point to an awareness he always has, an awareness he draws upon when it is time to make judgments, then it would seem to address even more directly the concerns about his lack of cognizance (his lack of maʿrifa). That is, the imam might be using these questions to point to the fact that his awareness reaches into particulars and responds to those particulars when making judgments. The way he approaches the judge’s question differs greatly from the way the judge expects—hence the judge’s dumbfounded inability to respond. The word fiqh, then, and the phrase fiqh al-sharīʿa would refer to a more intuitive, personal, and small-community model of judgment that required the ability to make manifest God’s commands in one’s determinations for others. This is the “context-specific” approach to fiqh one finds in Islam’s past, as discussed by Wael Hallaq.
Then there is the word that al-Maʾmūn uses to describe the imam’s knowledge—ilhām or inspiration. It signifies that the Ahl al-Bayt’s knowledge comes from God, but what does this mean? Does divine inspiration give a person a knowledge of the whole from which they derive particulars? Or does God give a person knowledge of the particulars directly and in detail? The Quranic model of the Prophet’s revelation and reception of the Quran on one night, elaborated over twenty-three years, would seem to indicate that there is initially an undifferentiated whole.
In the story of Adam that runs parallel to this account, Adam receives the names from God. That source of his knowledge seems at first to be a plurality. But if those names are the names of God, then they point to one unitary essence, and if they are the names of exalted beings, that is, the Prophet and his family, again, they are united by the one light embodied in all of them. Models of God-granted knowledge seem to point to a unified realization that brings with it a plurality, and this would apply to ethical knowledge as well.
Of course, to say that multiple instantiations of knowledge might derive from one unveiled source of knowledge is not a new observation at all. It has been elaborated in the philosophy of Muhammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shīrāzī (d. 1045/1635–36), known as “Mullā Sadrā.” When he mentions the hereafter, the Prophetic heavenly ascent or miʿrāj, as well as other matters known exclusively through unveiling, he tells us that “most scholars and juristic authorities rely on imitation” in such matters, as they should, because “the intellects of those masters of contemplation and theory lack the capability to perceive such matters, for the tablet of these sciences cannot be written upon except through the school of ‘We taught him knowledge from ourselves.’” To know such matters requires a sort of unitary knowledge that evades study, books, and rational means. Instead, this model of knowledge is based on the episode of Khiḍr in Quran, whose knowledge comes to him directly from God and thus has value even for the exalted prophet Moses. Khiḍr’s knowledge in the various events he shares with Moses goes back to one luminescent source: God.
This model of knowledge—and the model of ethical decision making resulting from it—mirrors what Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) described, when he traced his knowledge to one incident, an unveiling that happened to him as a youth, which became elaborated for him throughout his life. It is the model of unveiling and witnessing, or kashf and mushāhada, that I and others have discussed elsewhere. Lastly, it is the model of knowledge described by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) in his story of the Chinese and Greek artists, the lesson of which is that knowledge is not an accumulation of forms of knowledge in the soul. Rather, it is the erasure of human qualities in the soul so that the soul can reflect the light of God.
Here let me clarify that I do not present any of this as a reconsideration of the way we study Islamic law, not at all. Rather, I would like to consider what is meant by this narrative and the complexity to which the ninth imam points. Is it meant that there should be a book or a number of books with multiple different scenarios answered therein—any possibility that might occur when a pilgrim in sanctity kills an animal? Or perhaps a database of rulings from which some incredibly advanced artificial intelligence could one day draw out the most pertinent response? In other words, is the imam advocating for a decision procedure that anyone could use with enough knowledge—in a technical way?
Or is the imam saying that the wise judge would get to know the situation of the person asking them this question, and on a case by case basis every time, determine what that person would need to do? Bear in mind that the imam responds to is none other than the qāḍī al-quḍāt, the judge of judges, someone who evaluates other judges.
I prefer the latter. Still, jurisprudential wisdom can unite both of these possibilities. It might be that the imam’s wisdom becomes a model for the sciences that imitate his wisdom. The Quran seems to support this view—namely, that God grants a certain knowledge by which a pious person interacts with others, illuminating their manifold lives in the process. Thus in 6:122 the Quran states, “Is the person who was dead, so that We brought him to life and made for him a light with which he walks among the people, like the one whose example is like remaining in shadows without being able to exit from them? That is how we have embellished for the truth-coverers what they have been doing.” True knowledge and this light are synonymous, an interpretation supported by a hadith attributed to the sixth imam, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq:
Knowledge is not through an abundance of study, but is instead a light cast into the heart of whomsoever God desires to guide. So, when you desire knowledge, then first seek the reality of servitude within yourself and pursue knowledge by acting upon it. And ask God for understanding—He will make you understand.
This light, the light that the hadith describe as being cast into any heart that God desires, is on display in the imam’s response to Ibn Aktham, the judge. He walks with that light among people by showing them the effects of that light on the imam’s decision-making, so that it can become for others what we would call moral reasoning. In other words, our moral and legal reasoning efforts are simulations of what those inspired with this light know through God’s direct teaching, the phenomenon of unveiling.
Certainly, jurisprudence, uṣūl al-fiqh especially, is one of Islam’s great contributions to global ethics. It has allowed the maintenance of a traditional way of life that has weathered changes that could have easily meant the abandonment of the Quranic ethos. Yet the story of the ninth imam as a wise child gives us a sense, when read the way I have suggested, that God’s connection to us is not through laws that are elaborated on paper or a series of rulings that can be offered as a kind of procedure, something that is technical, but rather, that God’s connection to us is through people, and that those people are wise—that they have a light that God has given them.
That light comes to be understood by others, imitated by others, so that it is formulated in a predictable and one might say rational way. Mullā Ṣadrā would argue that through spiritual exertion and the elevation of the immaterial dimensions of the human soul one can perhaps also enjoy glimmers of that light on their own.
The narrative indicates that the imam is a paradoxically “wise child,” having gained through inspiration the wisdom that would—in normal circumstances—require experience. This would indicate that ethics, and indeed all forms of moral knowledge, are subject to revelation and inspiration. All forms of moral knowledge are cases of divine circumvention. If this is the case, this model suggests that one can receive directly and perhaps even at once the effect of experiences acquired over a lifetime that yield wisdom. This would render all of ethics a counterpart to inspiration. All of ethics is an imitation of the inspiration given by God to His friends.
Endnote
[1] al-Mufīd, al-Irshād, p. 2:283. [2] al-Mufīd, al-Irshād, p. 2:282. [3] Quran 2:30-33 and elsewhere. [4] Tyan, “Kāḍī,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. [5] al-Mufīd, al-Irshād, p. 2:283-284. [6] al-Mufīd, al-Irshād, p. 2:284. [7] Ibid. [8] Annas, “Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing,” p. 63. [9] Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy.” [10] Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law, p. 166. [11] Quran 2:31. [12] Mullā Ṣadrā, Risāla-yi Sih aṣl, p. 42. See Quran 18:65. [13] Quran 18:65-82. [14] Addas, Quest for the Red Sulphur, pp. 35-44. [15] Zargar, Sufi Aesthetics, pp. 11-30. [16] Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, p. 3:21. [17] Ibn ʿAlī, Munyat al-murīd, pp. 149-150. This is even further supported by the Quranic language about learning: “Be wary of God, and God will teach you,” in Quran 2:282.
