A Reader’s Guide to al-Shāfiʿī’sEpistle on Legal Theory(al-Risāla)

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.