Abstract
Chapter 1, “The Current Project,” aims at providing an introduction, background, and context for the tasks undertaken in this volume. It introduces the study’s motives, objectives, and procedures (Sect. 1.1), with special attention paid to the terms “dialectical” and “forge” and what they are meant to convey, starting points in past research, “subject-text” and “lens-texts,” analytical method, thesis questions, and chosen modes of presenting the material. It provides a summary of the volume’s arguments, theories, and conclusions (Sect. 1.2); and it introduces and explains a number of important terms which occur throughout the volume (Sect. 1.3), including “proto-system,” endoxon, istidlāl, iʿtirāḍ, and “argumentation episteme.”
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Notes
- 1.
Although Miller’s dissertation takes precedence in detail and scope, a number of important studies both precede and follow it. Among others we find works by Muḥammad Abū Zahra (Tārīkh al-Jadal); Josef van Ess—who was in fact the supervisor of Miller’s dissertation (“Disputationspraxis in der Islamischen Theologie;” and “The Logical Structure of Islamic Theology”); George Makdisi (select chapters from The Rise of Colleges; and his edition of Ibn ʿAqīl’s K. al-Jadal ʿalā Ṭarīqat al-Fuqahā’); Wael Hallaq (“A Tenth-Eleventh Century Treatise on Juridical Dialectic”); Masʿūd Fallūsī (al-Jadal ʿinda al-Uṣūliyyīn); Mehmet Karabela (“The Development of Dialectic and Argumentation Theory in Post-Classical Islamic Intellectual History”); and Abdessamad Belhaj (Argumentation et Dialectique en Islam). The contribution of critical editions, with sometimes quite helpful introductions and notes, must also be acknowledged. In the realm of juridical dialectical theory the work of ʿAbd al-Majīd Turkī is of particular import, with editions of the Maʿūna fi’l-Jadal of Abū Isḥāq al-Shīrāzī and the Minhāj fī Tartīb al-Ḥijāj of Abū al-Walīd al-Bājī, among other important works.
- 2.
These are the “Treatises I-IX” frequently referenced by Schacht in his Origins. See his bibliography (p. 338) for a listing, and Appendix I (p. 330) for a proposed chronology. See also Ḥassūn’s introduction to his edition of the Umm (Mawsūʿat al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī, vol. 1, pp. 93–103), where each of these treatises is summarized in some detail.
- 3.
Whether the Iraqis of this last title are dual (ʿIrāqiyyayn) or plural (ʿIrāqiyyīn) remains a debatable question—though, perhaps, not a terribly pressing one. Both interpretations of عراقيين (which, unvowelled, could be either dual or plural) may be reasonably supported, and it may be that both interpretations were understood by different groups at different times, or even that the dual (recognizing only two Iraqis: Abū Ḥanīfa and Ibn Abī Laylā) gave way to the plural (in recognition of the additional Iraqi voices found in the text, viz. Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī). It is for this latter reason that I interpreted the title as plural (ʿIrāqiyyīn) in my dissertation, but I have attempted to allow for both interpretations in the present work by transliterating “Ikhtilāf al-ʿIrāqiyyīn / al-ʿIrāqiyyayn” and translating “Disagreement of the (Two) Iraqis”. Notably, al-Nawawī (Shāfiʿī; d.676/1277), in his Tahdhīb al-Asmā’ wa’l-Lughāt (Munīriyya ed., vol. 2, p. 280, §912), asserts that the title is in the dual (ʿIrāqiyyayn), and that he is pointing this out to prevent a mistaken reading (presumably, in the plural). He proceeds, however, to ascribe the original composition to al-Shāfiʿī (wa hādhā kitāb ṣannafahu al-Shāfiʿī), making no mention whatsoever of Abū Yūsuf or al-Shaybānī, and saying that al-Shāfiʿī “stated in it the problem cases which they [dual] disagreed upon [meaning: Abū Ḥanīfa and Ibn Abī Laylā], sometimes preferring this or that [opinion], and sometimes degrading them both and preferring a third.” This is more a description of Abū Yūsuf’s program in the subject-text, and al-Nawawī’s account, overall, does no justice to the layers of ikhtilāf which are evident in the text as it is found in the Umm. As a final note, ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib—editor of a respected critical edition of the Umm—prefers the plural (ʿIrāqiyyīn); describing his manuscripts in the introduction to his critical edition, he provides—and perhaps this is the only time—partial vowelling for the title: اختلاف العراقِيِّين (vol. 1, p. 33, last line). In the end, it seems safest to assume that Abū Yūsuf—if he ever referred to his book by this title, and it is not only a later appellation—would have intended the dual (ʿIrāqiyyayn). After al-Shaybānī’s additions, however, most later authors—perceiving the voices of four Iraqis in the text—would have preferred the plural (ʿIrāqiyyīn).
- 4.
We are somewhat advantaged with regard to the dialectical sequences forming the focus of this study: the intent of the disputants is to explain and justify—a great aid to one who is nowhere near as immersed in the theoretical and substantive realms of Islamic law as were the studied jurists. Unfortunately, this explanatory quality is absent outside of dialectical sequences—i.e., from the bulk of the subject-text’s material.
- 5.
Our subject-text will be more fully designated “the Umm Version,” thus distinguishing it from “the Shaybānī Version” (compiled by Abū Yūsuf and transmitted through Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī) upon which al-Shāfiʿī commented (thus producing the expanded Umm Version), and to which he appended his own arguments—including all the dialectical sequences treated in this study. Abū Yūsuf’s original text, without the material added by al-Shāfiʿī, appears to have survived and been edited (from a single, unidentified manuscript) by Abū al-Wafā’ al-Afghānī. Questions with regard to the authorship and transmission of both versions are addressed in Chap. 3.
- 6.
There may be even more refined and comprehensive jadal-theory treatises from later eras, but my selection reflects the “state of the theoretical field” close to its first inception sometime in the early fourth/tenth century. Examining the proto-system through these texts thus brings an additional benefit: providing indicants for continuity and change from older jadal teaching and practice.
- 7.
Some may mistake this as back-projecting; it is not. Nowhere will I argue that our proto-system jurist-dialecticians articulated the categories and terms under which we subsume their arguments. Though we classify a dialectical move executed by al-Shāfiʿī as muʿāraḍat al-ʿilla bi’l-ʿilla (supplanting one occasioning factor with another), it cannot be claimed this technical formulation ever passed his lips, much less with the systematic objective of cataloging a dialectical move. Of course certain terms (e.g., qiyās) have an ancient pedigree, but even these were likely to have been understood differently in the second/eighth century. Though sophisticated in their own right, proto-systems of dialectic and legal theory were nowhere near as refined as those which emerged in the fifth/eleventh century and after. This is the very reason I insist on calling the juridical dialectic of al-Shāfiʿī, et al., a “proto-system.”
- 8.
Should one’s opponent justify his/her solution to the contended case by drawing a supporting indicant from the Qur’ān (istidlāl bi’l-Kitāb), for instance, al-Shīrāzī lists some eight dialectical objections which may be of use to the questioner in testing or undermining that mode of argument. And for the very important domain of maʿnā al-khiṭāb (or qiyās) we find no less than fifteen dialectical objections, with very specific (and consistent) designations (e.g., manʿ; ʿadam al-ta’thīr; naqḍ; kasr; muʿāraḍa; etc.), each comprising a different genus of dialectical move.
- 9.
All of these terms will be fully explained in Chap. 4. For now, this is the briefest possible overview of the analytical categories distilled from our jadal-theory lens-texts. And please bear in mind that these are merely first-tier categories: for every genus of istidlāl and iʿtirāḍ there are species, types, and subtypes, resulting in hundreds of dialectical justifications, critiques, and responses. Our lens-texts are indeed very thorough and comprehensive treatments of juridical-dialectical theory.
- 10.
For example, I found naqḍ-like charges outside the domain of qiyās al-ʿilla; manʿ-like objections in the domain of istidlāl bi’l-Sunna; and both transmission-oriented objections and tarjīḥ in the domain of qawl al-wāḥid min al-Ṣaḥāba.
- 11.
These included objection-oriented (as opposed to istidlāl-oriented) questions and evidential demands (muṭālabāt); a Topics-reminiscent method of procuring premise after premise for elenchus; and other features.
- 12.
- 13.
Robin Smith lucidly discusses the meaning of endoxon in his “Aristotle on the Uses of Dialectic.” The same article serves as an excellent introduction to Aristotle’s dialectical theory, in general. Importantly, I will employ the term endoxon purely as a descriptor, not as an identification. That is to say, when I use “endoxon” to describe a dialectical phenomenon in the subject-text or lens-texts, I am not claiming an identity with Aristotle’s method, nor am I implying a genetic relationship with the Topics. Endoxon is a very useful analytical category, but—unless otherwise stated—it implies no intellectual-historical linkages in this study.
- 14.
The Prophet, by his formulation, is understood to have singled out only pasturing sheep/goats for zakāt, and excluded other categories of sheep/goats.
- 15.
For this, he might cite the authority of Ibn Surayj (d.306/918), a founding figure in both uṣūl al-fiqh and jadal-theory; see al-Shīrāzī, Lumaʿ, Mustū ed., 106.
- 16.
In the course of a multi-party discussion, Foucault says (Power/Knowledge, p.197): “If you like, I would define the episteme retrospectively as the strategic apparatus which permits of separating out from among all the statements which are possible those that will be acceptable within, I won’t say a scientific theory, but a field of scientificity, and, which it is possible to say are true or false. The episteme is the ‘apparatus’ which makes possible the separation, not of the true from the false, but of what may from what may not be characterised as scientific.”
- 17.
The “problem of induction” is a case in point. Even though recognized—axiomatically—as problematic in certain epistemes, the utility of induction and the great effects which may be achieved through controlled inductive reasoning ensure that induction is a “given” axiom in almost all argumentation epistemes. That is to say, even though axiomatically recognized as flawed in episteme X, we may still find the axiom “induction yields valid conclusions” to be a “given” within that same episteme X—just as we find it in epistemes which do not problematize induction.
- 18.
Axioms of this sort may also appear in certain developmental stages of a project, and not others.
- 19.
For example, such as incorporate the axiom “some Qur’ānic injunctions are specific to the time (and audience) of revelation, and are not applicable to modern situations.”
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Young, W.E. (2017). The Current Project. In: The Dialectical Forge. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25522-4_1
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