Law and Politics under the Abbasids (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) by Sohaira Z. M. Siddiqui

Author:Sohaira Z. M. Siddiqui [Siddiqui, Sohaira Z. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2019-04-17T18:30:00+00:00

1 Standard books of uṣūl al-fiqh begin with extensive linguistic and hermeneutical inquiries, signaling that law rests on a robust theory of language and interpretation that serves as the foundation to legal derivation. One of the basic tenets is that the epistemic strength of a legal ruling is connected to its linguistic clarity as well as its linguistic form. This means that explicit scriptural prescriptions or proscriptions hold a higher epistemic value than do vague or ambiguous ones. Given the importance of the scriptural sources, their correct interpretation and epistemic weight were subjects of extensive debate. For more on the development of and disagreements in early legal hermeneutics, see Vishanoff, Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics; El Shamsy, Canonization of Islamic Law, part 1; Zysow, Economy of Certainty, chapter 2; Bernard Weiss, The Search for God’s Law: Islamic Jurisprudence in the Writings of Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010), chapters 1 and 3; Joseph Lowry, Early Islamic Legal Theory (Leiden: Brill, 2007), chapter 2; and Joseph Lowry, “Some Preliminary Observations on al-Šāfiʿī and Later Uṣūl al-Fiqh: The Case of the Term Bayān,” Arabica 55, nos. 5–6 (2008): 505–27. For a brief overview of various linguistic and hermeneutical classifications, see Sukri Ramic, Language and the Interpretation of Islamic Law (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2005).

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