By Adam DeSchriver, Ammar Farra, Henry Stratakis-Allen and Ahmed El Shamsy The preceding essays describe various aspects of the only surviving complete manuscript of al-Qaʿnabī’s recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ. We … Continue reading What else can we learn from the manuscript of al-Qaʿnabī’s recension of the Muwaṭṭaʾ?
By Raza Baqai, Zainab Hermes and Ahmed El Shamsy Previous studies of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ have relied primarily on the recension of Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Laythī (d. 234/848) to understand Mālik’s … Continue reading Legal language in al-Qaʿnabī’s recension of the Muwaṭṭaʾ
By Kainat Jalaluddin, Yousef Aly Wahb, Hamza Baig and Ahmed El Shamsy Shuhda In the year 490/1096, an eight-year-old girl named Shuhda accompanied her father, the renowned ḥadīth expert Abū … Continue reading Al-Qaʿnabī’s recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ: Paths and vectors of transmission
By Hamza Baig, Adam DeSchriver, Ammar Farra and Ahmed El Shamsy The Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik b. Anas (93–179/711–95) is one of the earliest surviving works of Islamic law, containing ḥadīth … Continue reading Al-Qaʿnabī’s recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ: The single surviving copy
By Ahmed El Shamsy (University of Chicago) This essay is part of the Islamic Law Blog’s Roundtable on Islamic Legal History & Historiography, edited by Intisar Rabb (Editor-in-Chief) and Mariam Sheibani … Continue reading How not to reform the study of Islamic law: A response to Ayesha Chaudhry
In this final post reflecting on my primary source seminar “Readings in Islamic law,” I want to highlight three further topics covered in the course. The first of these is … Continue reading Comparative law, the role of the judge, and the law theorized
After the first session of my Islamic law seminar this fall, I chose the readings for each class with an eye on the particular interests of the enrolled students. Accordingly, … Continue reading Fatwas: diverse in form, diverse in reach
For the first session of my graduate seminar “Readings in Islamic Law” this fall, I asked students to read two texts: a hadith on divorce initiated by the wife (al-Bukhārī, … Continue reading Different genres, different approaches
By Ahmed El Shamsy (The University of Chicago) The peripatetic Meccan jurist Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) studied with Mālik in Medina as a precocious youth. He reportedly memorized Mālik’s … Continue reading :: Muwaṭṭaʾ Roundtable :: Al-Shāfiʿī’s Recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ
In the fall quarter of 2019, I am teaching a graduate seminar titled “Readings in Islamic Law” at the University of Chicago. In this blog post and the three that … Continue reading Teaching Islamic law through primary sources
