The Canonization of Islamic Law

A Social and Intellectual History

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-Shāfiʿī (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.

606/1209) compared al-Shafi'i's contribution to Islamic law with that of Aristotle to
logic: both formulated for the first time abstract principles and definitions to
govern processes of reasoning that had previously been carried out in an
unreflected and therefore unsystematic way.I In the modern study of Islamic law,
Joseph Schacht concurred with al-Razi, arguing that al-Shafi'i's legal-theoretical
doctrine, particularly the central role that he granted to Hadith, eventually came to
be accepted ...