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Many historians view Islamic law as an organic and methodologically coherent system in which there is a systematic link between legal methodology ( uṣūl ) and substantive law ( furūʿ ). In this essay, I will argue against the conventional view, drawing support from the evolutionary trajectories of four genres of juridical writing: abridged legal compendia ( mukhtaṣar s); juristic disagreement ( ikhtilāf) ; the commentary/supercommentary ( sharḥ/ḥāshiya ); and legal responsa ( fatāwā ) genres. The post-thirteenth century evolution of these genres reveals a pronounced tendency to marginalize the relationship between legal methodology and substantive law, privileging a codification ethos. Judges and low-ranking jurisconsults were expected to “apply” legal rules and frequently abandoned legal methodology as an avenue for legal change in favor of pragmatic school boundary-crossing. In doing so, they were less concerned with intra-school methodological coherence than with pursuing juristic flexibility by focusing on the content of the law rather than its process.
Ahmed Fekry Ibrahim (Fri,) studied this question.
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