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An Anthology of Islamic Legal TheoryClassical Arabic Texts

By Seyed Fatemi and Hashim Bata

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Published 31 March 2027

About this book

Provides a thematic collation and exploration of texts from seven legal-theological Islamic traditions

  • Organises texts into ten thematic discussions in uṣūl al-fiqh rather than by school or chronology
  • Pairs each thematic section with an analytical introduction and concise scholarly headnotes (author, work, madhhab)
  • Enables direct comparison of how different traditions approached language, evidence, certainty and interpretive authority

Uṣūl al-fiqh — Islamic legal theory — is the discipline through which Muslim scholars determined how divine revelation becomes binding law. Opening with a substantial English-language introduction to the discipline and its major schools, this anthology gathers Arabic primary-source excerpts from seven legal-theological traditions (Ḥanafī, Mālikī, Shāfiʿī, Ḥanbalī, Imāmī, Zaydī and Ibāḍī), spanning the eighth to the twenty-first centuries. Rather than ordering texts by school or chronology, it arranges them across ten themes. In doing so, this book reveals the uṣūl al-fiqh discipline as a trans-madhhab discourse with shared questions and competing answers.


Drawing on foundational works of legal theory from al-Shāfiʿī’s al-Risāla through to modern Najaf seminary manuals, this volume makes visible a shared analytical discourse that is obscured through a school-based or chronological lens.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Preface

Introduction
1. From Interpretive Tensions to Methodological Synthesis
2. Thematic Organisation of the Anthology
3. Scope and Source Selection
4. How to Use This Anthology

PART I: Foundational Concepts
THEME ONE: The Remit of Uṣūl al-Fiqh within the Ecology of the Islamic Sciences
THEME TWO: The Architecture of the Law

PART II: Linguistic Discussions
THEME THREE: The Theory of Meaning: Language, Signification, and Legal Inference
THEME FOUR: On Commands
THEME FIVE: On Prohibitions
THEME SIX: Scope of Revealed Rulings

PART III: Epistemology in Legal Hermeneutics
THEME SEVEN: Certainty, Conjecture, and Doubt: The Epistemic Foundations of Juristic Reasoning
THEME EIGHT: Evidence and Authority: Sources of Law in Islamic Legal Theory
THEME NINE: Conflict of Evidence: Reconciling Competing Proofs in Islamic Legal Theory

PART IV: Interpretative Application
THEME TEN: Ijtihād and Taqlīd: Competence, Delegation, and Disagreement

Authors Represented in the Anthology

Bibliography
Index

About the contributors

Seyed Fatemi

Seyed Mohammad Ghari S. Fatemi is a Professor of Comparative Human Rights Law and Islamic Legal Theories at the Al-Mahdi Institute, Birmingham, where he has taught Islamic legal theory since 1995 and serves as Research Lead for Islamic Legal Studies. He also holds professorships at Mofid University (Qom) and Shahid Beheshti University (Tehran) and is an Associate Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Birmingham. He completed his PhD in Law at the University of Manchester (1999), alongside advanced seminary training in the Ḥawza ʿIlmiyya of Qom. His research addresses human rights, Islamic law, and legal hermeneutics. His books include Human Rights in the Contemporary World: Analytical Essays on Rights and Freedoms (8th print 2025) and An Introduction to Human Rights in the Contemporary World: Concepts, Foundations and Sources (9th print 2025); he is co-editor of Regulative Verses of the Qurʾan: From Historical Trends to Contemporary Trajectories (2025).

Hashim Bata

Hashim Bata is a Lecturer in Islamic Legal Studies and Managing Director of the Al-Mahdi Institute, Birmingham, and an Associate Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Birmingham. He completed his PhD in Law at the University of Warwick (2014), examining Shīʿī legal epistemology and the authority of certainty (ḥujjiyyat al-qaṭʿ). His research spans uṣūl al-fiqh, fiqh, the history of Shīʿism, and Islamic theology. His publications include Exploring the Mind of God: An Introduction to Shiʿite Legal Epistemology (Brill, 2023) and, as editor, The Regulations of Purity and Impurity in Islam (AMI Press, 2022).