Hasan's pupil Wasan ibn Ata (d. 748) founded a moderate school which "withdrew" (itazahu) from these two extreme positions. The Mutazilites agreed with the Qadarites in stressing the freedom of the human will, in condemning the luxurious lifestyle of the court and in their insistence on the equality of all Muslims. But the Mutazilites' emphasis on the justice of God made them highly critical of Muslims who behaved exploitatively towards others.
On the political question, they "withdrew" from making a judgement between Ali and Muawiyyah, since they claimed that only God could know what was in men's hearts. This obviously countered the extremism of the Kharajites, but the Mutazilites were often political activists, nevertheless. The Quran exhorts Muslims to "command what is good and forbid what is evil,"' and, like the Kharajites, some of the Mutazilites took this very seriously.
Some supported Shii rebellions; others, such as Hasan al-Basri, castigated the rulers who did not live up to the Quranic ideal. The Mutazilites would dominate the intellectual scene in Iraq for over a century. Mutazilites developed a rationalistic theology (kalam) which emphasized the strict unity and simplicity of God, which the integrity of the u m m a h was supposed to reflect.
The Murjites, another school, also refused to judge between Ali and Muawiyyah, since it was a man's interior disposition that counted. Muslims must "postpone" (arja) judgement, in accordance with the Quran.2 The Umayyads should not be prejudged or dismissed as illegitimate rulers before they had done anything to deserve it, therefore, but should be severely rebuked if they contravened the standards of scripture. The most famous adherent of this school was Abu Hanifah (699-767), a merchant from Kufah. He had converted to Islam and pioneered the new discipline of jurisprudence (fiqh), which would have an immense impact on Islamic piety and become the main discipline of higher education in the Muslim world.
Fiqh also had its origins in the widespread discontent after the civil wars. Men would gather in each other's houses or in the mosques to discuss the inadequacies of Umayyad government. How could society be run according to Islamic principles? The jurists wanted to establish precise legal norms that would make the Quranic command to build a just society that surrendered wholly and in every detail to God's will a real possibility rather than a pious dream. In Basrah, Kufah, Medina and Damascus these early jurists (faqihs) worked out a legal system for their particular locality.
Their problem was that the Quran contains very little legislation, and what laws there were had been designed for a much simpler society. So some of the jurists began to collect "news" or "reports" (ahadith; singular: hadith) about the Prophet and his companions to find out how they had behaved in a given situation. Others took the customary practice (sunnah) of Muslims in their city as a starting point, and tried to trace it back to one of the companions who had settled there in the early days.
Thus, they believed, they would gain true ilm, a knowledge of what was right and how to behave. Abu Hanifah became the greatest legal expert of the Umayyad period, and founded a school (madhhab) of jurisprudence which Muslims still follow today. He wrote little himself, but his disciples preserved his teachings for posterity, while later jurists, who developed slightly different theories, founded new madhhabs.
The Religious Movement
