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"The book is an essential contribution to the field. Highly recommended. Essential for collections on Islam and the history of law." --Choice
"...succinct, up-to-date, and stimulating account of the early history of Islamic law..." --Joseph E. Lowry, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, International of Middle East Studies
Book Description
Covering more than three centuries of legal history,The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law presents an important account of how Islam developed its own law while drawing on ancient near Eastern legal cultures, Arabian customary law and quranic reform. The book explores the interplay between law and politics, explaining how the jurists and the ruling elite led a symbiotic existence and mutual dependency that--seemingly paradoxically --allowed Islamic law and its application to be uniquely independent of the 'state'. This book will appeal to students, lawyers and legal historians.
Current events but also pure curiosity motivate many to seek out a better understanding of Islamic culture, especially as regards to its legal structure. This book is a good start, especially to those who have studied the religious aspects of Islamic culture, but need a more in-depth understanding of how the Islamic religion has influenced legal reasoning. It is of course difficult to assess the accuracy of the book if one is not an expert on Islamic law. This reviewer is not such an expert, but found the book very readable and gained much insight into the intricacies behind Islamic legal thought. Islamic culture had a great influence on Western scientific progress, and so an interesting question is to the degree that its legal structure encouraged this influence. This book does not address this question, but its contents could be helpful in studying this influence. The book could also assist in answering the question of whether Islamic law requires stricter adherence to its precepts than American or British law. Does Islamic law require dogmatic adherence to legal precepts or can its interpretation be flexible or allow rapid changes?
The author concentrates on what he calls the "formative" period of Islamic law, which he defines as the historical period where the legal system began to the point in time where the features of this system can be clearly identified. The "shape" of Islamic law, i.e. those attributes deemed essential to its identification, are determined according to the author by the presence of a complete judiciary, complete elaboration of positive legal doctrine and methodology, and the full emergence of doctrinal legal schools. Interestingly, he holds that the religious character of the law is also an essential attribute, but it must be derived from these four attributes.Read more ›
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Wael Hallaq does a good job giving the reader an overview of the evolution of Islamic Law. However he puts too much emphasis on the tenuous claim that Islam is merely a reformulation of previous religious and legal systems. This is often a mendacious claim. It is interesting the Hallaq himself has proclaimed the need to 'reform Islam' which seems to be none of his business being that he is an Arab Christian. Hallaq does an excellent job in the translation of Arabic passages for his book, which is much to his credit being that some are extremely difficult to render.
However Hallaq does a stellar job giving the reader an overview of the spread and codification of Islamic Law as a legal and social system. He is right in pointing out that the success of a certain school (madhhab) is largely due to it being patronized by the ruler (i.e. 'Abbasids, etc...). The fact that must be understood (one that is apparent from reading this and other works on Islamic law) is that the formation of the Madhahab are not as simple as their followers today choose to believe. It is largely the followers of the Imam of a certain madhhab which codify his rulings for the ages. Hallaq also makes evident that the founders of the four schools of Sunni Islamic Thought were not all-knowing scholars, but rather scholars who had a certain area of expertise and founded a system of thought based on that knowledge.
Hallaq finally points out the unfortunate fact that reason and interpretation lost out to literalism and tradition during the mihna of early Islam. He notes that many of the essential portions of Sunni thought are based on potentially unsound or tenuous hadiths. Thus after the formulation (arbitrary at that) of the four schools of Sunni thought the door to ijtihad (independent reasoning) was closed, Hallaq makes this obvious, and it is up to the reader to extrapolate the influences of this upon the modern Sunni Muslim world.
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An interesting technical discussion concerning the evolution of Islamic jurisprudence in the first three centuries after the Prophet. Key to understanding this is to know how Islam goes about legitimating authority. Hallaq looks at this through two lenses - the delegation of legal authority and the establishment of principles by which judgments can be made.
A progression of delegation was required as the size of the Community grew. The earlier Caliphs realized that brute power alone could not yield legitimacy and that "religion, erudition, piety, moral rectitude" were necessary to maintain the allegiance of the people (pp184). Thus respected or pious individuals were appointed as qadis (magistrates). These individuals, often lacking literacy skills and formal schooling, were frequently story tellers who could recollect what was said about the Prophet, which no doubt led to the prominence of Hadith as a source of Law. It wasn't until the end of the 1st century a more formal courthouse structure arose.
In term of principles, all human activitives are held to fall into one of five categories: obligatory (wajib), recommended (mandub), permissible or indifferent mubah), the repugnant(makruh) and the prohibited (haram). (pp131). Wajib and mandub are to be rewarded if carried out and makruh is rewarded if avoided, but the reward may be in the next world. Failure to perform the obligatory is also haram, and both are subject to punishment.
The primary source of knowledge about right behaviour is the sunna (practice) of Mohammed and, failing that, the practice of his estimated 4000 Companions. The next tier is the revelation of practices in accepted Hadiths, that is stories told about that time.Read more ›
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