SHARIAsource

In this excerpt from his manual on judicial practice, Abū Bakr Ahmad b. ʿAlī al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 370/980) discusses "different types of duties to fight based on residence: an enhanced duty existed for people in frontier lands bordering enemy territory as compared to those living in the interior." Like many medieval jurists, Jaṣṣāṣ "privileges the ruler’s authority to utilize the jihād duty" for a variety of reasons, including additional strategic objectives beyond territorial defense. He also states that if a ruler desires to offensively engage the enemy in their territory, then the obligation is on individuals. For more on jihād, read Adnan A. Zulfiqar's essay “Territory and Jurisdiction” in the Roundtable on the History of Islamic International Law on the Islamic Law Blog.

In his work entitled al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir, Ibn Nujaym (d. 969/1563), examines similar historical legal cases and fatwas through collecting substantive legal canons and interpretive legal canons that “distinguish, explain, and guide varied outcomes in cases with seemingly similar facts.” As a principal work authored early in the Ottoman Era collecting legal canons in Ḥanafī law, Muslim jurists of many schools frequently reference his work. For example, drafters of the Ottoman Code of 1869, also known as the Mecelle, primarily relied on this work to select 99 legal canons to preface a new commercial code based on Ḥanafī law that would both modernize and reform Ottoman law based on traditional or classical Islamic legal norms, through reference to legal canons.

For more, view the full print edition or see Intisar Rabb, Doubt in Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press 2015) and “Experiments in Tracking Canons across the Mecelle” (Islamic Law Blog, March 16, 2022).

This poem from Abū Nuwās’s anthology of poetry stresses that human beings have always lived with one another in mutual assistance. In her analysis of Islamic mirrors-for-princes literature on judging in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Louise Marlow points to Māwardī’s use of this poem to support a notion of justice that prioritizes moderation, balance, and harmony.

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, ed. Intisar A. Rabb and Abigail Krasner Balbale (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of primary sources and other material used in and related to the book.

Suyūṭī’s (d. 911/1505) al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir is a treatise collecting Shāfiʿī legal canons. It examines the similarities and differences between legal and interpretive outcomes in Islamic law in ways that show how and why one judgment or outcome is distinguished from another, and in the process highlights the substantive and interpretive legal canons that guide those legal outcomes. 

For more, view the full print edition and see The Legal Thought of Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti: Authority and Legacy (Oxford, 2017) by Rebecca Hernandez.

This excerpt is from Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī's (d. 761/1359) al-Majmūʿ al-Mudhhab fī Qawāʿid al-Madhhab, which is a two-volume collection of substantive legal canons and interpretive legal canons, and the third-oldest known Shāfiʿī canons collection from the Mamlūk era. Substantive legal canons (qawāʿid fiqhiyya) are short formulas expressing fundamental principles and doctrines of Islamic law, while interpretive legal canons (qawāʿid uṣūliyya) are principles for interpreting textual sources. This excerpt provides the first few pages excerpted from the author's Introduction. 

For more, view the full print edition and read the commentary by Mariam Sheibani on the Islamic Law Blog.

Ibn Isḥāq's Kitāb al-maghāzī, is a compilation of reports on events that occurred during or prior to the life of the Prophet Muhammad, including his military expeditions. Ibn Isḥāq “arranged [the reports] into what he deemed to be their correct chronological order and to which he added his own comments” adding a chain of narration to most reports. This excerpt is on the birth of the Prophet. 

For more on the text, see Nicolai Sinai and William Montgomery’s entry on the Prophet Muhammad in Encyclopedia Britannica.