Al-Risala (al-Shafi'i book)
- See Risala (disambiguation) for other books known as "Ar-Risala".
The Risāla by
The word risāla in Arabic means a "message" or "letter, communication". Shafi'i's treatise received its name owing to a traditional, though unverified, story that Shafi'i composed the work in response to a request from a leading traditionist in Basra, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Mahdī; the story goes that Ibn Mahdī wanted Shafi'i to explain the legal significance of the Quran and the sunna, and the Risāla was Shafi'i's response.[1]
In this work, al-Shafi'i is said to have outlined four sources of Islamic law,[1][2] though this division based on four has been attributed to later commentators on the work rather than to Shafi'i himself.[3]
Contents
- Introduction
- On al-Bayān (Perspicuous Declaration)
- On Legal Knowledge
- On the Book of God
- On the Obligation of Man to Accept the Authority of the Prophet
- On the Abrogation of Divine Legislation
- On Duties
- On the Nature of God's Orders of Prohibition and the Prophet's Orders of Prohibition
- On Traditions
- On Single-Individual Traditions
- On Consensus (Ijmā‘)
- On Analogy (Qiyās)
- On Personal Reasoning (Ijtihād)
- On Juristic Preference (Istiḥsān)
- On Disagreement (Ikhtilaf)
The above list of contents follows Khadduri's translation. However, Khadduri rearranged the treatise in two places. Khadduri's chapters 8 and 3 (in that order) both follow Shafi'i's chapter on Traditions in the original. Khadduri rearranged those chapters because they did "not appear to fit into the logical order of the book."[4] Therefore, if one wishes to read Khadduri's translation while following Shafi'i's original arrangement, one can read the chapters in the following order: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 8, 3, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
Sources of law in Al-Risāla
The primary sources of law attributed to Shafi'is book are the
On the question of consensus, Shafi'i obligated affirmation of all living Muslims - both the learned and the laymen - in order to declare a true consensus.[5] Later followers of his school considered this to be practically impossible, and thus expanded upon the definition.[6]
References
- ^ a b c Islamic Jurisprudence: Shafi'i's Risala, trans. by Majid Khadduri, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1961, pp. 19-21 (Translator's Introduction).
- ^ McNeill, William H., and Marilyn Robinson Waldman. The Islamic World. University of Chicago Press, 1973.
- ^ "Does Shafi'i Have a Theory of 'Four Sources' of Law?, taken from the PhD dissertation of Joseph E. Lowry, The Legal-Theoretical Content of the Risala of Muhammad B. Idris al-Shafi'i, University of Pennsylvania, 1999.
- ^ Khadduri, p. 53 (Translator's Introduction).
- ^ Khadduri, Introduction to Shafi'i's Risala, pg. 33
- ^ Khadduri, pp. 38-39