Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Dawud al-Zahiri, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd al-Iṣbahānī, also known as Avendeath, was a medieval theologian and scholar of the Arabic language and Islamic law. He was one of the early propagators of his father Dawud al-Zahiri's method in jurisprudence, Zahirism.

Life Youth and education Ibn Dawud was born in Baghdad in the year 255 according to the Islamic calendar, corresponding roughly to the year 868 according to the Gregorian calendar. By the age of seven, he had memorized the entire Qur'an by heart.Louis Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallaj: Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Trans. Herbert W. Mason. Pg. 167. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. By the age of ten, he was already an exemplary student in the fields of Arabic grammar, lexicography, and Arabic literature under his teacher Niftawayh, himself a student of Ibn Dawud's father.Devin J. Stewart, "Muhammad b. Dawud al-Zahiri's Manual of Jurisprudence." Taken from Studies in Islamic Law and Society Volume 15: Studies in Islamic Legal Theory. Edited by Bernard G. Weiss. Pg. 114. Leiden: 2002. Brill Publishers. Regarding the variant readings of the Qur'an, Ibn Dawud learned from Al-Duri, a student of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala', one of the ten primary transmitters of the Qur'an.Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, History of the Prophets and Kings, trans. Franz Rosenthal. Vol. 1: General Introduction and From the Creation to the Flood, pg. 58. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989. Ibn Dawud's classmate, Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, also learned the Qur'an from the same study circle in addition to having been a student of Ibn Dawud's father, suggesting a close relationship early on, despite their later rivalry.

Ibn Dawud's relationship with his father was complex. As a child, Ibn Dawud was bullied by other children, being given the name "poor little sparrow." When he complained to his father about the nickname, his father insisted that names of people and things are predestined by God; there was no reason to analyze the meaning of names to know that they had been established. His father then actually affirmed the nickname given by the other children, emphasizing that all things occur according to divine will. While Ibn Dawud told his father that he was as mean as the other children were for laughing at his son, it is not known if this episode continued to affect Ibn Dawud into adulthood, or if this was characteristic of the entire father-son relationship.

Academia and judiciary Upon his father's death in 884, Ibn Dawud took up Dawud's teaching position in Baghdad.J.C. Vadet, Ibn Dāwūd. Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Brill Online, 2013. Reference. 9 January 2013Mohammad Sharif Khan and Mohammad Anwar Saleem, Muslim Philosophy And Philosophers, pg. 34. New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1994. Despite being only fifteen years old, he was still considered an outstanding jurist, and the four-hundred or so students of his father became his own students. Ibn Dawud had a tendency to speak using Saj', a form of Arabic rhymed prose, in everyday speech. This caused difficulty for many who sought verdicts from him, though it is not regarded as having lessened his popularity.

Some years after his teaching position, the Abbasid administration appointed him to a judicial post in western Baghdad.

Death Although Ibn Dawud is generally considered to have died young, his exact date of death has been a matter of some dispute. Masudi recorded Ibn Dawud's death at 296 Hijri, corresponding to 908 or 909 Gregorian. The Encyclopaedia of Islam records his death as 294 Hijri and 909 Gregorian, yet the two dates do not match. Ibn Khallikan recorded Ibn Dawud's death as Ramadan 9, 297 Hijri, or 22 May 910 Gregorian. While the exact cause of death is not known, Ibn Dawud proclaimed a deathbed confession to his teacher Niftawayh that he was dying of a broken heart, due to a forbidden love for another man.Lois Anita Giffen, "Ibn Hazm and the Tawq al-Hamama. Taken from The Legacy of Muslim Spain, pg. 425. Ed. Salma Jayyusi. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1994. The topic of Ibn Dawud's affections has been the topic of much discussion, as his confession of such feelings is unique among Muslim theologians even up to the present era.

The setting of his death has been perhaps the most vividly described piece of his biography. During his final moments, Ibn Dawud lied on a bed between the light filtering in through the grated window and the empty space of the floor as a blind nightingale sang in a gilded cage nearby; he was described as weary with regrets, yet also serene in his last moments.Masiggnon, pgs. 168–169.Jeffrey J. Kripal, Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism, pg. 132. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. His body was ritually washed by his student Ibn al-Mughallis according to Islamic funeral rites.

Philosophy Ibn Dawud was an opponent of using analogical reason and juristic preference in Muslim jurisprudence.Qadi al-Nu'man, Differences Among the Schools of Law, pg. 161. At the same time, Ibn Dawud still upheld the validity of using inference in order to deduce religious verdicts.Nu'man, pg. 193. The same views were held by his father, whom Ibn Dawud followed in his Zahirite religious views.

Ibn Dawud also rejected the notion that verdicts of the first generation of Muslims could constitute a source of law.Stewart, pg. 125. This position is not specific to the Zahirite rite, being the preferred view of the Shafi'ites as well.

Theology Like his father, Ibn Dawud has not left theological works which have survived to the modern era. Ibn Dawud was known to have been involved in public debates with the Mu'tazila, an ancient Muslim sect, in a court of the caliph Al-Muwaffaq in Wasit.Massignon, pg. 18. This is not surprising considering the Mu'tazilites ill reception of Ibn Dawud's father, in whose footsteps Ibn Dawud followed, and the scorn which the Mu'taziltes heaped upon Zahirites in general. More is known about what Ibn Dawud opposed theologically rather than what he himself believed.

Nature of the soul In his book on love, Ibn Dawud quoted Greek playwright Aristophanes who, according to Plato's Symposium, held the view that the soul of a person who had fallen in love was actually only half a soul. In this view, the bodies of two people in love were each given only half of the same soul by God. Later writers have mistaken this for being Ibn Dawud's own belief, though modern scholarship has shown that he was merely quoting the speech of philosophers in an almost derisive way rather than ascribing to the belief himself.Max Weisweiller, Halsband der Taube, uber die Liebe und die Liebenden. Pg. 19. Leiden: 1944. Ibn Dawud's own beliefs regarding the soul were never actually stated, and were likely no different from those held by the rest of Islamic orthodoxy at the time.

Anathematisation of al-Hallaj In 901, he declared the mystic Mansur Al-Hallaj as a heretic in a well-known verdict.John Renard, The A to Z of Sufism, pg. xxvi. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Initially, Ibn Dawud's appeal to the caliph Al-Mu'tadid was not heeded, and Hallaj was able to continue preaching his ideas for a time.Massignon, pg. 14. It is likely, however, that Ibn Dawud's verdict was one contributing factor to the caliph Al-Muqtadir's ordering of Hallaj's execution.

Reception Historically, Shi'ite writers and especially Ismaili Shi'ites have criticized Ibn Dawud for rejecting the usage of analogical reason and juristic preference in religious verdicts while affirming inference. Fatimid historian Qadi al-Nu'man was particularly scathing, accusing Ibn Dawud and his father of contradicting themselves.

Works Jurisprudence Ibn Dawud composed a book on the topic of the principles of Muslim jurisprudence titled The Path to Knowledge of Jurisprudence. It was one of the earliest works on the subject after Shafi'i's Risala, and the primary basis for Nu'man's Differences Among the Schools of Law, despite Nu'man's criticisms of Ibn Dawud.Stewart, pg. 100. Yaqut al-Hamawi mentions that in a chapter of the book regarding juristic consensus, Ibn Dawud criticizes his former companion Tabari as having contradictory views on the subject.Yaqut al-Hamawi, Dictionary of Writers, vol. 18, pg. 32. Like Ibn Dawud's other works, The Path has not survived on complete form to the modern era; however, large tracts of it are quoted in other works and modern scholarship suggests that al-Nu'man's Differences was derived from Ibn Dawud's book. Despite their differences in opinion, Tabari's own work on the principles of jurisprudence, The Clarification of the Principles of Verdicts, was strongly resemblant of The Path of Ibn Dawud and the works of Dawud's father, rather than Shafi'is work or even post-9th century works on the topic.Devin Stewart, "Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari's al-Bayan 'an Usul al-Ahkam and the Genre of Usul al-Fiqh in Ninth Century Baghdad," pg. 337. Taken from Abbasid Studies: Occasional Papers of the School of Abbasid Studies, Cambridge, 6–10 January 2002. Edited by James Montgomery. Leuven: Peeters Publishers and the Department of Oriental Studies, 2004. This not only contradicts the common theme within the genre, but also implies similarities between the extant yet non-mainstream Zahirite school of law, and the extinct Jariri school.

In addition to The Path, Masudi and Ibn al-Nadim both attribute three other works to Ibn Dawud within the field of Muslim jurisprudence: the Book of Admonishment, the Book of Excuse and the Book of Refutation.Al-Masudi's The Meadows of Gold, translated by Aloys Sprenger. Vol. 4, pg. 272. Printed for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland. Sold by W.H. Allen and Co. (now Virgin Books), Leadenhall Street, and B. Duprat, Paris. Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis. London: Garrison and Co. Printers, St Martin's Lane.Ibn al-Nadim, al-Fihrist, page 363. The latter book includes another critique of the views Tabari.

Divine Love