By Aron Zysow
Aron Zysow's 1984 PhD dissertation, "The Economy of Certainty," remains the most important, compelling, and intellectually ambitious treatment of Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh) in Western scholarship to date. It continues to be widely read and cited, and remains unsurpassed in its incisive analysis of the most fundamental assumptions of Islamic legal thought.
Zysow argues that the great dividing line in Islamic legal thought is between those legal theories that require certainty in every detail of the law and those that will admit probability. The latter were historically dominant and include the leading legal schools that have survived to our own day. Zahirism and, for much of its history, Twelver Shi'ism, are examples of the former. The well-known dispute regarding the legitimacy of juridical analogy is only one feature of this fundamental epistemological division, since probability can enter the law in the process of authenticating prophetic traditions and in the interpretation of the revealed texts, as well as through analogy. The notion of consensus in Islamic legal theory functioned to reintroduce some measure of certainty into the law by identifying one of the competing probable solutions as correct. Consequently consensus has only a reduced role, if any, in those systems that reject probability. Another, more radical, means of regaining certainty was the doctrine that regarded the legal reasoning of all qualified jurists on matters of probability as infallible. The development of legal theories of both types, that of Zahirism no less than that of Hanafism, was to a large extent shaped by theology and, most significantly, by Mu'tazilism, and subsequently by Ash'arism and Maturidism.
Zysow's important work is published here in full, for the first time, with updated references and some further reflections by the author.
The Economy of Certainty
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Table of Contents
Series Editors’ Preface
Foreword
Author’s Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
Addenda
1 The Authentication of Prophetic Traditions
I The Concurrent Tradition
II The Mashhur Tradition
III The Unit-Tradition
IV Discontinuity
Summary
Addenda
2 Interpretation
I The Nature of Islamic Hermeneutics
II The Hermeneutical Apparatus
III The Linguistic Postulates
IV The Imperative
V The General and Special Terms
VI Zahiri Hermeneutics
VII The Argumentum a Fortiori
VIII The Argumentum a Contrario
Summary
Addenda
3 Consensus
I Introduction
II The Basis of the Doctrine of Consensus
III The Operation of Consensus
IV Tacit Consensus
V Consensus of the Majority
VI Inqirad al-’asr
VII Consensus after Disagreement
VIII Zahirism and the Support of Consensus
IX Conclusion
Summary
Addenda
4 Analogy
I Introduction
II The Foundations of Analogy
III Noncausal Analogy
IV The Epistemology of the Cause
V The Ontology of the Cause
VI Al-Masalih al-mursala
VII Istihsan
VIII Specialization of the Cause
Summary
Addenda
5 Ijtihad
I Ijtihad and Probability
II Infallibilism
III Consequences of Infallibilism
Summary
Addenda
Epilogue
I The Supposed Zahirism of Ibn Tumart and Ibn ‘Arabi
II Twelver Shi’ism
III Conclusion
Addenda
Bibliography
Works cited in the Addenda and Preface
Table of Page Correspondences
Index of Qur’an Citations
Index of Arabic Terms and Proper Names