The Zaydi School

1An Imam from the house of the Prophet ﷺ

Zayd ibn Ali grew up in Madinah, in the house of his father Ali Zayn al-Abidin, the son of Husayn. His brother was Muhammad al-Baqir, his nephew Ja'far as-Sadiq. He belonged, then, to a family loved by all Muslims, in which knowledge, prayer and the Quran were part of daily life. Tradition describes him as a man who loved the Quran deeply and spent much time studying it, so that he was also called Halif al-Quran, "the one bound to the Quran".

Zayd lived at a time when many people felt injustice under the rule of the late Umayyads. He was convinced that a scholar must not stay silent when wrong is done, and so he rose in Kufa against the governor. According to most reports he lost his life there in 122 AH (740 CE). Muslims of different traditions remember him as a pious scholar from the Prophet's ﷺ family, and some historical reports mention that respected scholars of his time, among them Abu Hanifa, may Allah have mercy on him, sympathised with his cause.

Those who followed his path came to be called the Zaydiyyah, the Zaydis. It is important to note that the school did not base its thought on Zayd alone, but on many scholars from the descendants of Hasan and Husayn who taught after him.

2A work attributed to him

The Zaydis preserve a collection known as al-Majmu' or Musnad al-Imam Zayd. It is attributed to Imam Zayd and transmitted through his student Abu Khalid al-Wasiti. It contains hadith and legal rulings, mostly traced through Zayd's forefathers to Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Prophet ﷺ. It is regarded as one of the earliest law books arranged by chapters. Researchers discuss the exact history of how such early works took shape, as with many texts from this period. For the Zaydis it is a venerable witness to their beginnings.

3What makes the Zaydis distinctive

The Zaydis belong to the Shia tradition, because they regard Ali ibn Abi Talib as the most excellent of the Companions after the Prophet ﷺ and emphasise the leading role of the Prophet's ﷺ family. Yet on several points they differ clearly from Twelver Shia Muslims:

• No fixed number of Imams: the Zaydis have no line of twelve Imams and no hidden Imam. According to their classical teaching, any descendant of Hasan or Husayn who is learned, just and pious and who stands up for the truth may become Imam.
• Knowledge as a condition: according to this teaching, an Imam should himself be a mujtahid, able to derive the law from the sources. That is why many Zaydi Imams were also important scholars and authors.
• The first caliphs: many Zaydis, especially in the early period, held that the leadership of Abu Bakr and Umar was valid, even though Ali was the more excellent. This doctrine is called imamat al-mafdul, "the leadership of one who is not the most excellent". It reflects an attitude of respect that builds bridges to Sunni Muslims.

In theology the Zaydis are close to the Mu'tazilah on many questions, especially in their emphasis on the oneness of Allah and His justice. In practical law, by contrast, they often resemble the Sunni schools, and scholars have frequently observed that Zaydi law comes close to Hanafi law on many individual questions.

4The principles of faith

Zaydi scholars often summarise their faith in a few principles that appear again and again in their textbooks. They help us understand how this tradition thinks:

• Tawhid, the oneness of Allah: Allah is unique, nothing is like Him, and nothing in creation shares His perfection.
• 'Adl, the justice of Allah: Allah wrongs no one. The human being is responsible for his deeds because Allah has given him the ability to choose.
• Promise and warning: what Allah has promised the believers and announced to the disobedient is true. From this follows a serious attitude towards one's own responsibility.
• Enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong: for the Zaydis this is a duty that concerns not only the individual but the whole community. They refer to Surah 3:104: "And let there be among you a community that calls to good, enjoins what is right and forbids what is wrong."
• The imamate: the teaching that the community should be led by a learned and just descendant of the Prophet ﷺ.

A Sunni Muslim will recognise much in these points that is also taught in his own tradition, even if with a different emphasis and in different language. The idea that knowledge means responsibility in particular runs through the whole of Zaydi history: whoever knows must act, and whoever acts must know.

5The method: sources and legal reasoning

Zaydi legal theory (usul al-fiqh) knows sources that are familiar to Sunni Muslims too:

1. 1The Quran as the first and highest source.
2. 2The Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. The Zaydis especially value reports that come through the Prophet's ﷺ family, but they also use hadith from other lines of transmission.
3. 3Consensus (ijma'), with particular weight given to the agreement of the scholars of the Prophet's ﷺ family.
4. 4Analogical reasoning (qiyas), which the Zaydis – unlike the Ja'fari school – accept as a source.
5. 5Reason ('aql) and methods such as weighing the public good, which help with new questions.

At the heart of the Zaydi tradition is its esteem for ijtihad. Independent reflection on the sources was never considered closed. A Zaydi scholar was allowed, indeed expected, to reach his own conclusions if he mastered the tools for it. This openness is one reason why so many independent thinkers came out of Yemen.

6How the school spread

By the Caspian Sea

An early centre of the Zaydis lay in the regions south of the Caspian Sea, in Tabaristan, Daylam and Gilan. In the third century after the Hijrah, scholars and rulers from the Prophet's ﷺ family were active there. Especially well known is an-Nasir li-l-Haqq al-Hasan al-Utrush, through whose work, it is reported, many people in these lands embraced Islam. These Zaydi communities no longer exist in their old form, but their scholarship left its traces.

In Yemen

The lasting home of the Zaydis became Yemen. In 284 AH (897 CE) Imam al-Hadi ila l-Haqq Yahya ibn al-Husayn came to Sa'dah in the north of the country. He was a grandson of the great scholar al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim ar-Rassi and combined piety with deep knowledge of law. His books, such as Kitab al-Ahkam, became the foundation of the line prevalent in Yemen, which after him is called the Hadawiyyah.

For more than a thousand years the Zaydis lived in the mountains and towns of the northern highlands: in Sa'dah, Sana'a, Dhamar and many villages in between. They built mosques, schools (hijar, places of learning) and libraries. To this day most Zaydis live in the north of Yemen, and many families preserve manuscripts that have been handed down from generation to generation over centuries.

7Important scholars

The Zaydi scholarly tradition produced works whose significance reaches far beyond Yemen. A few names:

• Imam Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Murtada (d. 840 AH): his al-Bahr az-Zakhkhar is a great comparative encyclopaedia of law that sets out the views of many schools side by side. His short legal text al-Azhar became the textbook of the Hadawiyyah and received many commentaries.
• Muhammad ibn Ibrahim al-Wazir (d. 840 AH): in his work al-'Awasim wa-l-Qawasim he defended the value of hadith scholarship and the great hadith collections and called for moderation and mutual understanding.
• Salih al-Maqbali (d. 1108 AH), an independent thinker who advocated the direct study of the Quran and Sunnah.
• Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Amir as-San'ani (d. 1182 AH): his Subul as-Salam, a commentary on Ibn Hajar's Bulugh al-Maram, is read in Sunni institutions of learning in many countries.

Imam ash-Shawkani

A special place belongs to Muhammad ibn Ali ash-Shawkani, may Allah have mercy on him (d. 1250 AH / 1834 CE). He grew up in the Zaydi scholarly milieu of Sana'a, studied there with Zaydi teachers and later became the city's chief judge. Over the course of his life he developed his own position: he called for deriving the law directly from the Quran and Sunnah rather than binding oneself to a single school, and was therefore esteemed across the boundaries of the schools. His works Nayl al-Awtar (a commentary on hadith concerning legal questions), Fath al-Qadir (a Quranic exegesis) and Irshad al-Fuhul (on legal theory) are among the most widely read books in the Sunni world today.

Whether ash-Shawkani is better described as a Zaydi scholar or as an independent mujtahid is seen differently. What is beyond dispute is this: he is an example of how the Zaydi tradition, with its love of ijtihad, could produce scholars who serve the whole ummah.

8What you notice in daily life

A Sunni Muslim praying in a Zaydi mosque will feel largely at home. A few differences stand out:

• Hands in prayer usually hang at the sides, as with many Malikis.
• In the call to prayer, after "Hayya 'ala l-falah" the phrase "Hayya 'ala khayr al-'amal" is said – "Hasten to the best of deeds".
• In ablution, Zaydis in the classical Hadawi teaching hold to washing the feet and do not accept wiping over leather socks (mash 'ala l-khuffayn) as a substitute for it.

Differences like these exist between all schools. They arise from different reports and from how they are weighed, not from a different faith.

9A contribution to Islamic civilisation

The Zaydis have preserved a special treasure for the ummah: manuscripts. In the libraries of Yemen, for example in the collections of the Great Mosque of Sana'a and in the private libraries of scholarly families, works have survived that were lost elsewhere. They include important writings of the Mu'tazilah, such as large parts of al-Mughni by Qadi Abd al-Jabbar, which were rediscovered in Yemeni manuscripts only in the twentieth century. Anyone researching the history of Islamic thought owes these libraries a great deal.

Added to this is the culture of the hijar, small scholarly settlements where teachers and students lived and learned together, often away from the big cities. In this way knowledge was passed on throughout the land for centuries.

10Recognition and unity

The Amman Message (2004, endorsed in 2005) names the Zaydi school explicitly among the eight recognised schools of law in Islam and forbids declaring its followers unbelievers. Because of its closeness to the Sunni schools in many matters of law and its historical respect for the first caliphs, it is often described as a bridge between the traditions.

11In closing

The Zaydi school tells a story many people do not know: a tradition from the house of the Prophet ﷺ that places knowledge above everything, that never declared reflection finished, and that in law stands so close to its Sunni brothers and sisters that one often hardly notices a difference. The next time you open Subul as-Salam or Nayl al-Awtar, remember the world of scholarship these books come from.

Allah says: "And hold firmly, all of you, to the rope of Allah and do not be divided" Surah 3:103. That rope is the Quran, which Zayd ibn Ali loved so much. It is the same rope that all of us hold on to.