The Canonization of Islamic Law
A Social and Intellectual History

Ahmed El Shamsy's The Canonization of Islamic Law is a detailed history of the birth of classical Islamic law.

Ahmed El Shamsy (Author)

9781107546073, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 July 2015

264 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.4 kg

'Ahmed El Shamsy has given us a ground-breaking picture of the third/ninth-century development of Sh?fi?? legal scholarship.' David R. Vishanoff, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations

The Canonization of Islamic Law tells the story of the birth of classical Islamic law in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. It shows how an oral normative tradition embedded in communal practice was transformed into a systematic legal science defined by hermeneutic analysis of a clearly demarcated scriptural canon. This transformation was inaugurated by the innovative legal theory of Muhammad b. Idr?s al-Sh?fi'? (d. 820 CE), and it took place against the background of a crisis of identity and religious authority in ninth-century Egypt. By tracing the formulation, reception, interpretation and spread of al-Sh?fi'?'s ideas, the author demonstrates how the canonization of scripture that lay at the heart of al-Sh?fi'?'s theory formed the basis for the emergence of legal hermeneutics, the formation of the Sunni schools of law, and the creation of a shared methodological basis in Muslim thought.

1. Tradition under siege
2. Debates on Hadith and consensus
3. From local community to universal canon
4. Status, power, and social upheaval
5. Scholarship between persecution and patronage
6. Authorship, transmission, and intertextuality
7. A community of interpretation
8. Canonization beyond the Shafi'i school.

Subject Areas: Law [L], Islam [HRH], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]