RT Article
T1 A Reader’s Guide to al-Shāfiʿī’s Epistle on Legal Theory (al-Risāla)
JF Islam and Christian-Muslim relations
VO 28
IS 3
SP 245
OP 269
A1 Vishanoff, David R. 1968-
LA English
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2017
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1562901184
AB Al-Shāfiʿī’s famous Epistle on Legal Theory (al-Risāla) has long been hailed as formative for the discipline of Islamic legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh), but its structure and the wording of some of its most important passages remain a puzzle. This essay is intended as an aide for the study of the Risāla’s Arabic text. It surveys scholarly disagreements about the work’s significance and structure, and argues that it is best understood as a sequence of three distinct compositions, the second and third having been appended to address issues raised by opponents during discussions about the first. Each ‘book’ makes a separate argument, has its own internal structure, and is distinguished by terminological and stylistic features. Most of the article consists of a detailed analytical outline that spells out what point al-Shāfiʿī is trying to make with each of his concrete legal examples, and shows how they fit together into a sequence of three related but separately organized arguments.
K1 al-Risāla
K1 al-Shāfiʿī
K1 Islamic Law
K1 Legal Theory
K1 Uṣūl al-fiqh
DO 10.1080/09596410.2017.1289705