Description
Book SynopsisA masterful overview of Islamic law and its diversity
Al-Qadi al-Nu''man was the chief legal theorist and ideologue of the North African Fatimid dynasty in the tenth century. This translation makes available for the first time in English his major work on Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh), which presents a legal model in support of the Fatimid claim to legitimate rule.
Composed as part of a grand project to establish the theoretical bases of the official Fatimid legal school, Disagreements of the Jurists expounds a distinctly Shi''i system of hermeneutics. The work begins with a discussion of the historical causes of jurisprudential divergence in the first Islamic centuries and goes on to engage, point by point, with the specific interpretive methods of Sunni legal theory. The text thus preserves important passages from several Islamic legal theoretical works no longer extant, and in the process throws light on a critical stage in the development of
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[Disagreements of the Jurists] is very important for students of jurisprudence and for reconstructing fiqh's development. * The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences *
This book will be useful especially to those who are interested in the history of law andthe history of the Fatimids. * Speculum *
