The First Islamic Legal Theory:Ibn al-Muqaffd on Interpretation,Authority, and the Structure of the Law

摘要

Disorder in the law is a recurring concern in legal systems. Premodern Islamic legalsystems are no exception, and indeed we find concerns about disorderly jurisprudence ex-pressed even in the formative period of Islamic law, as we shall see below. Commitment tothe rule of law is a commitment to orderly jurisprudence, sometimes in the name of orderlygovernance. But, of course, anything as complex as a legal system is by nature disorderly.Conceptualizing the ordering of a legal system therefore invariably involves an ideologicalmove in which some spheres of the law are imagined as well ordered (whether or not theyare) and others portrayed as potentially more fluid. Obviously, the distinction between settledlaw and law requiring interpretation, reform, and so on, involves questions of epistemologyand authority, especially interpretive authority, issues that are closely linked in premodernIslamic legal thought.1 We find precisely such a distinction, driven by concerns about epis-temology and interpretive authority, at the"aawn of Islamic legal theory, in the Risala fi-l-s'alydba of `AbdalPdh Ibn al-Muqaffa` (d. ca. 757).2