The Canonization of Islamic La A Social and Intellectual History [Paperback]

Ahmed El Shamsy's The Canonization of Islamic Law is a detailed history of the birth of classical Islamic law.Ahmed El Shamsy's The Canonization of Islamic Law is a detailed history of the birth of classical Islamic law. It shows how Islamic law and its institutions emerged out of the canonization of the sacred sources of Quran and Sunna (prophetic practice) in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. The book focuses on the ideas and influence of the jurist al-Sh
fi?+ (d. 820 CE), who inaugurated the process of canonization, and it paints a rich picture of the intellectual engagements, political turbulence, and social changes that formed the context of his and his followers' careers.Ahmed El Shamsy's The Canonization of Islamic Law is a detailed history of the birth of classical Islamic law. It shows how Islamic law and its institutions emerged out of the canonization of the sacred sources of Quran and Sunna (prophetic practice) in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. The book focuses on the ideas and influence of the jurist al-Sh
fi?+ (d. 820 CE), who inaugurated the process of canonization, and it paints a rich picture of the intellectual engagements, political turbulence, and social changes that formed the context of his and his followers' careers.The Canonization of Islamic Law tells the story of the birth of classical Islamic law in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. It shows how an oral normative tradition embedded in communal practice was transformed into a systematic legal science defined by hermeneutic analysis of a clearly demarcated scriptural canon. This transformation was inaugurated by the innovative legal theory of Mu%ammad b. Idr+s al-Sh
fi?+ (d. 820 CE), and it took place against the background of a crisis of identity and religious authority in ninth-century Egypt. By tracing the formulation, reception, interpretation, and spread of al-Sh
fi?+'s ideas, the author demonstrates how the canonization of scripture that lay at the heart of al-Sh
fi?+'s theory folÓ