Islamic Law in the News Roundup

ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS "US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that 'when the Taliban enacted restrictive bans on higher education for women, governments from across the Muslim world … Continue reading Islamic Law in the News Roundup

Weekend Scholarship Roundup

SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law In "The Method in Understanding Hadith Through Ijmā' and Its Implications for Islamic Law in Indonesia: Studies on the Hadiths of the Month of Qamariyah" … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup

The Challenge of Absence: Writing a History of Salafī practice

By Aaron Rock-Singer In the previous essay, I argued that periodicals constitute a vital source for reconstructing the process by which particular legal rulings emerge as authoritative, as well as … Continue reading The Challenge of Absence: Writing a History of Salafī practice

Terminological Tensions

By Guy Burak [Muḥammad al-Timurtāshī] said in Minaḥ al-Ghaffār: “the sijill is the document (ḥujja) where the verdict (ḥukm) of the judge [is written].” But this is in their custom … Continue reading Terminological Tensions

Narrating Change

By Guy Burak The increasingly systematic study of Ottoman Islam – or, perhaps, Islam in the Ottoman Empire – is arguably one of the greatest historiographical developments in Islamic studies … Continue reading Narrating Change

Islamic Law in the News Roundup

UPCOMING EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES PIL & Harvard Calendar: Student work opportunity: Research assistant, Widener Library, Harvard University. Call for Papers: The 22nd Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies, Harvard University, November … Continue reading Islamic Law in the News Roundup

The Forms of Commentaries

By Felicitas Opwis As my previous posts illustrated, commentaries take different forms in length and scope. The commentator selects which topics and points found in the underlying matn he wants … Continue reading The Forms of Commentaries

The Commentary as Platform for Debate, Change, and Authority Construction

By Felicitas Opwis As presented in the previous post, the discursive tradition of commentaries involves extensive intertextuality. This intertextuality is not only a dialogue between matn and sharḥ, but a … Continue reading The Commentary as Platform for Debate, Change, and Authority Construction

The Content of Commentaries

By Felicitas Opwis In the previous post I mentioned the vibrant commentary tradition on Abū Shujāʿ’s compendium of Shāfiʿī law, which indicates that Muslim scholars deemed it necessary to comment … Continue reading The Content of Commentaries

The Discursive Tradition of Commentaries (shurūḥ) – Lessons from Matn Abī Shujāʿ

By Felicitas Opwis The study of commentaries (shurūḥ) and glosses (ḥawāshī) has rightly received attention and appreciation in recent years. The scholarship of Asad, El Shamsy, Saleh, Wisnovsky as well … Continue reading The Discursive Tradition of Commentaries (shurūḥ) – Lessons from Matn Abī Shujāʿ