TY - JOUR
T1 - The kitĀb al-NawĀzil by abŪ al-Layth al-SamarqandĪ as a source for legal and social history
AU - Tsafrir, Nurit
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. All rights reserved.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - The Kitāb al-nawāzil, compiled by the Ḥanafī Abū al-Layth al-Samarqandī, is considered the earliest extant fatwā collection. It preserves legal decisions of Ḥanafī jurists primarily from Balkh, in Khurāsān, up to the late fourth/tenth century. Many of these legal decisions respond to the contingencies of the local community by reconciling Ḥanafī law with current practice, and hence reflect the social environment from which they arose. By examining the structure and contents of Kitāb al-nawāzil, which has so far been studied only in a preliminary fashion, this paper demonstrates the immense value of this collection for the development of Ḥanafī law, for our understanding of this development, and for learning about everyday life in early Islamic Balkh. This demonstration reveals the importance of the Nawāzil, first, as a reservoir of raw material from which legal opinions were incorporated into Ḥanafī standard law; second, in providing a picture of the interrelationships between Ḥanafī law in theory and practice, revealing the role of custom in shaping the law; and third, as a firsthand historical documentation of a specific Persian Muslim community, by its own members.
AB - The Kitāb al-nawāzil, compiled by the Ḥanafī Abū al-Layth al-Samarqandī, is considered the earliest extant fatwā collection. It preserves legal decisions of Ḥanafī jurists primarily from Balkh, in Khurāsān, up to the late fourth/tenth century. Many of these legal decisions respond to the contingencies of the local community by reconciling Ḥanafī law with current practice, and hence reflect the social environment from which they arose. By examining the structure and contents of Kitāb al-nawāzil, which has so far been studied only in a preliminary fashion, this paper demonstrates the immense value of this collection for the development of Ḥanafī law, for our understanding of this development, and for learning about everyday life in early Islamic Balkh. This demonstration reveals the importance of the Nawāzil, first, as a reservoir of raw material from which legal opinions were incorporated into Ḥanafī standard law; second, in providing a picture of the interrelationships between Ḥanafī law in theory and practice, revealing the role of custom in shaping the law; and third, as a firsthand historical documentation of a specific Persian Muslim community, by its own members.
KW - Abū al-Layth al-Samarqandī
KW - Balkh
KW - Eastern Iran
KW - Fatwās
KW - Kitāb al-nawāzil
KW - Ḥanafī law
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114737928&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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AN - SCOPUS:85114737928
SN - 0334-4118
VL - 2021
SP - 139
EP - 166
JO - Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
JF - Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
IS - 50
ER -