The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law: 9th-10th Centuries C.E.

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BRILL, 1997 - 244 pages
The Sunni schools of law are named for jurisprudents of the eighth and ninth centuries, but they did not actually function so early. The main division at that time was rather between adherents of "ra'y" and "?ad?th," No school had a regular means of forming students. Relying mainly on biographical dictionaries, this study traces the constitutive elements of the classical schools and finds that they first came together in the early tenth century, particularly with the work of Ibn Surayj (d. 306/918), al-Khall?l (d. 311/923), and a series of ?anaf? teachers ending with al-Karkh? (d. 340/952). M?likism prospered in the West for political reasons, while the hir? and Jar?r? schools faded out due to their refusal to adopt the common new teaching methods. In this book the author fleshes out these historical developments in a manner that will be extremely useful to the field, while at the same time developing some new and highly original perspectives.
 

Contents

The Traditionalists of Iraq
1
From Regional Schools to Personal
32
The Hanafi School of the Later Ninth Century
48
The NinthCentury Shafii School of Law
68
The Shafii School in Egypt After the Disciples of alShafiī
82
Ibn Surayj and the Classical Shafiī School
88
The Commentary on the Mukhtașar of alMuzanī
100
88
106
The Hanafi School in Egypt and Africa
129
The Collection of Ahmads Opinions by
137
The Maliki School
164
Two Schools That Did Not Last
178
Conclusion
198
Works Cited
204
Index
208
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About the author (1997)

Christopher Melchert, Ph.D. (1992) in History, University of Pennsylvania, is a student of Islamic movements and institutions of the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. He has published half a dozen articles besides this, his first book.

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