Abstract
Muhammad b. Idrīs al-Shafi’ī (150/767–204/820) occupies a preeminent position in the field of Islamic Law, and is considered highly influential in the articulation of its formative phase of development, especially with regard to the genesis of the religion’s legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh). A cursory glance at early Islamic history may cause one to assume that al-Shāfi’ī occupies this elevated status due to the fact that he was the eponym of a distinct legal school within the Sunni context, which has afforded him the position of an “iconoclast jurist” until the current period. Although this is certainly true, al-Shāfi’ī’s contribution to the development of Islamic law was much more far reaching than even this substantial feat.
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Notes
See Aḥmad b. ‘Alī al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdad aw Mddī nat al-Salām, edited by Muṣṭafā ‘Abd al-Qādir ‘Atā’, 24 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyya, 2004), 2:54–75;
Muhammad b. Aḥmad al-Dhahabī, Siyar ‘Alām al-Nubalā’, edited by Muṣṭafā ‘Abd al-Qādir ‘Atā’, 16 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyya, 2004), 7:335–70;
Yahyā b. Sharaf al-Nawawī, Kitāb al-Majmū’ Sharḥ al-Muhadhdhab, edited by Muḥammad al-Mutī’ī, 24 vols (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā’ al-Turāth al-’Arabī, 2001), 1:30–42;
Muhammad b. ‘limar ‘Fakhr ai-Dīn al-Rāzī, Mdndqib al-Imām al-Shāfi’ī: Irshād al-Ṭālibīn ilā al-Minhdj al-Qawīm, edited by Aḥmad Majāzī al-Saqā (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-Azhariyya li ‘l-Turāth, 2008), 23–94;
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and cf. Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfi’ī, al-Risāla, Translated as al-Shāfi’ī’s Risāla: Tredtise on the Founddtions of Islamic Jurisprudence by Majid Khadduri (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2003), 8–9.
Khadduri, 9–10 and Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfi’ī, al-Risāla, edited and translated as al-Shāfi’ī: The Epistle on Legdl Theory by Joseph E. Lowry, Library of Arabic Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2013), xviii.
On the Hijaz school see Ahmad Hasan, The Edrly Development of Islamic Jurisprudence (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1970), 115–151;
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and Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfi’ī, Dīwān al-Imām al-Shāfi’ī, edited by Imīl Ya’qūb, 5th ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb ai-’Arabī, 2000).
See: Joseph E. Lowry, “Does Shāfi’ī have a Theory of Four Sources of Law?,” in Studies in Islamic Legal Theory, edited by Bernard Weiss, Studies in Islamic Law and Society—15 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 25–30.
Joseph E. Lowry, Early Islamic Legal Theory: the Risala of Muḥammad Lbn Idrīs al-Shāfi’ī, Studies in Islamic Law and Society—30 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007), 25:fn. 3.
Muhammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfi’ī, al-Risāla, edited by ‘Abd al-Fatāḥ Kabbāra, second edition (Beirut: Dār al-Nafā’is, 2010), 35–40
See Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence, third edition (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2003), 274–284.
See John Burton, The Collection of the Qur’an (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 46–113;
John Burton, The Sources of Islamic Law: Islamic Theories of Abrogation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990)
and Christopher Melchert, “Qur’ānic Abrogation across the Ninth Century: Shāfi’ī, Abū Ubayd, Muḥāsibī, and Ibn Qutaybah,” in Studies in Islamic Legal Theory, edited by Bernard Weiss, Studies in Islamic Law and Society—15 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 75–98.
See Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, al-Mustasfā fī ‘Ilm al-Uṣūl, edited by Muḥammad al-Ashqar, 2 vols (Beirut: Mu’assassat al-Risāla, 1997), 1:236–239;
Muḥammad b. ‘Umar Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, al-Maḥṣūl fī ‘Ilm al-Uṣūl, edited by Ṭāha al-’Alwanī, 6 vols, second edition (Beirut: Mu’assassat al-Risāla, 1992), 3:347–354
and ‘Ali b. Muhammad al-Āmidī, al-Iḥkām fī Uṣūl al-Aḥkām, edited by Sayyid al-Jamīlī, third edition, 4 parts in 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-’Arabī, 1998), 3:162–165.
See for example Zafar Ishaq Ansari, “Islamic Juristic Terminology Before Šāfi’ī: A Semantic Analysis with Special Reference to Kufa,” Arabica, 19(3) (1972): 255–300.
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Yaseen Dutton, The Origins of Islamic Law: The Our’an, The Muwatta’ and Madinan ‘Amal, Culture and Civilization in the Middle East (Abingdon: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 32–52 and 168–177;
Daniel Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought, Cambridge Middle East Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 6–20;
Adis Duderija, “Toward a Methodology of Understanding the Nature and Scope of the Concept of Sunnah,” Arab Law Quarterly, 21 (2007): 1–12;
Adis Duderija, “Evolution in the Canonical Sunni Ḥadith Body of Literature and the Concept of an Authentic Ḥadith During the Formative Period of Islamic Thought as Based on Recent Western Scholarship,” Arab Law Quarterly, 23 (2009): 1–27;
and Adis Duderija, “Evolution in the Concept of Sunnah during the First Four Generations of Muslims in Relation to the Development of the Concept of an Authentic Ḥadīth as based on Recent Western Scholarship,” Arab Law Quarterly, 26 (2012): 393–437.
See: Muhammad Mustafa Azami, Studies in Hadith Methodology and Literature (Plainfield: American Trust Publications, 1993), 1–3.
See R. Kevin Jaques, “The Other Rabī’: Biographical Traditions and the Development of Early Shāfi’ī Authority,” Islamic Law and Society, 14(2) (2007): 143–179.
See: Joseph E. Lowry, “Reception of al-Shāfi’ī’s concept of Amr and Nahy in the thought of his student al-Muzanī,” in Law and Education in Medieval Islam: Studies in Memory of Professor George Makdisi, edited by Lowry et al. (Cambridge: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004), 129–130;
R. Kevin Jaques, Authority, Conflict, and the Transmission of Diversity in Medieval Islamic Law, Studies in Islamic Law and Society—26 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 10;
Ahmed El-Shamsy, “The First Shāfi’ī: The Traditionalist Legal Thought of Abū Ya’qūb al-Buwayṭī (d. 231/846),” Islamic Law and Society, 14(3) (2007): 311
and Ahmed El-Shamsy, “Al-Shāfi’ī’s Written Corpus: A Source-Critical Study,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 132(2) (2012): 199–205 passim.
Ahmed El-Shamsy, “Rethinking Taqlīd in the Early Shāfi’ī School,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 128(1) (2008): 9.
Ahmed El-Shamsy and Aron Zysow, “Al-Buwayti’s Abridgment of al-Shāfi’ī’s Risāla: Edition and Translation,” Islamic Law and Society, 19(4) (2012): 329–330.
See: Gavin N. Picken ed., Islamic Law, Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies, 4 vols (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 1:5–7.
See Gavin N. Picken, Spiritual Purification in Islam: The Life and Works of al-Muhasibi, Routledge Sufi Series (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), 216–220,
and Gavin N. Picken, “Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Muḥāsibī: A Study of Early Conflicting Scholarly Methodologies,” Arabica, 55(3) (2008): 338.
See Sherman A. Jackson, “Getting the Record Straight: Ibn Al-Labbad’s Refutation of al-Shāfi’ī,” Journal of Islamic Studies, 11(2) (2000): 121–146
and cf. Christopher Melchert, “Traditionist-Jurisprudents and the Framing of Islamic Law,” Islamic Law and Society, 8(3) (2001): 383–406.
Asma Afsaruddin, “Renewal (tajdid),” in Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, edited by Josef Meri, 2 vols, Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages-13 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 2:678–679.
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Picken, G.N. (2015). The Concept of sunna in the Early Shāfi‘ī Madhhab. In: Duderija, A. (eds) The Sunna and its Status in Islamic Law. Palgrave Series in Islamic Theology, Law, and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137369925_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137369925_8
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