This is a major and innovative contribution to our understanding of the historical unfolding of Islamic law. Scrutinizing its historical contexts, Salaymeh proposes that Islamic law is a continuous intermingling of innovation and tradition. The book's interdisciplinary approach provides accessible explanations and translations of complex materials and ideas.

The classic introduction to Islamic law, tracing its development from its origins,through the medieval period, to its place in modern Islam.

Focuses on a Muslim legal science known in Arabic as usul al-fiqh. Whereas the kindred science of fiqh is concerned with the articulation of actual rules of law, this science attempts to elaborate the theoretical and methodological foundations of the law. It outlines the features of Muslim juristic thought.

Wael B. Hallaq has already established himself as one of the most eminent scholars in the field of Islamic law. In this book, first published in 1997, the author traces the history of Islamic legal theory from its early beginnings until the modern period. Initially, he focuses on the early formation of this theory, analysing its central themes and examining the developments which gave rise to a variety of doctrines. He concludes with a discussion of modern thinking about the theoretical foundations and methodology of Islamic law. In organisation, approach to the subject and critical apparatus, the book will be an essential tool for the understanding of Islamic legal theory in particular and Islamic law in general. This, in combination with an accessibility of language and style, will guarantee a readership among students and scholars and anyone interested in Islam and its evolution.

This book considers the rarely studied but pervasive concepts of doubt that medieval Muslim jurists used to resolve problematic criminal cases.

The Second Formation of Islamic Law offers a new periodization of Islamic legal history in the eastern Islamic lands.

In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.