Al-Qaʿnabī’s recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ: Paths and vectors of transmission

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

Al-Qaʿnabī’s recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ: The single surviving copy

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

Welcome to our March Guest Blogger: Ahmed El Shamsy & Seminar Participants

Ahmed El Shamsy

The essays for this month arise from a seminar on Arabic philology taught by Professor Ahmed El Shamsy at the University of Chicago. Each essay is jointly authored by Professor … Continue reading Welcome to our March Guest Blogger: Ahmed El Shamsy & Seminar Participants

Against Impossibility

By Ovamir Anjum The conviction that the sharīʿa has been slain by modernity could be read as the resuscitation of the early classical debate on the sharīʿa’s fatigue. Yet it … Continue reading Against Impossibility

Resuscitating the Sharīʿa in South Asia

By Ovamir Anjum “The divine laws primarily and essentially consider [human] conventions [rusūm], and they are what is discussed and referred to in the heavenly injunctions. There are causes due … Continue reading Resuscitating the Sharīʿa in South Asia

The Shape of Islamic History

By Ovamir Anjum How should one imagine the shape of Islamic history? What bearing does that have on the shape of Islam’s future? The West thought the future was Star … Continue reading The Shape of Islamic History

The Endangered Sharīʿa

By Ovamir Anjum Murder is afoot, and modernity stands accused. The victim is the Sharīʿa, and the autopsy is grim: temporal lacerations, institutional mutilations, a missing heart. Not merely a … Continue reading The Endangered Sharīʿa