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Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. Ibrāhīm al-Anṣārī al-Kūfī (113–82/731–98) was a prominent Ḥanafī jurist whose opinions, with those of Abū Ḥanīfa and Muḥammad al-Shaybānī, form the core of Ḥanafī fiqh scholarship. According to biographical traditions, Abū Yūsuf—a descendant of Saʿd b. Ḥabta, who lived in Medina during the time of the prophet Muḥammad—was born in Kufa and died in Baghdad at the age of sixty-nine. A number of sources relate that Abū Yūsuf came from a poor family and that Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) supported his education in K…

Āzar refers to the father of Abraham, based on Qurʾān 6:74. Many exegetes take Āzar as a name or title of Abraham's father but some understand the word as an epithet or exclamation. Paralleling Genesis 11 and Joshua 24, the historian al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) reports that the name of Abraham's father was Teraḥ (Ar. Tāriḥ or Tārakh) b. Nāḥūr b. Serug. The traditionist Ibn Isḥāq (d. 144/761–2?) mentions that Āzar was originally from the people of Kūthā, from the district of Sawād, near Kufa, and al-Ṭ…

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Malik b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Dāmaghānī (d. 478/1085) was a well known Ḥanafī jurist and chief qāḍī (judge) of Baghdad. In later accounts sometimes referred to as “the elder” (al-kabīr), Abū ʿAbdallāh was the first in a long family line of al-Dāmaghānīs to hold the position of qāḍī or other administrative positions in Baghdad, up through the beginning of the seventh/thirteenth century. Al-Dāmaghānī was born in 398/1007 in Dāmghān, in the northeast Iranian province of Qūmis. He studied law under Abū l-Ḥasa…

Rukn al-Dīn Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-ʿAmīdī al-Samarqandī served as qāḍī of Lakhnawṭī-Ghawr in Bengal under the sultan ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Mardān I (605–8/1208–11) and died in Bukhara in 615/1218. He is known for his two works on Arabic dialectics, the Irshād al-ṭarīqa (“Guidance of the path”) and al-Ṭarīqa al-ʿamīdīyya fī l-khilāf wa-l-jadal (“The ʿAmīdī path on difference [of opinion] and argumentation”). The Irshād is a brief theoretical overview of legal argumentation as found in “foundations of jurisprudence” (uṣūl al-fiqh) scholarship, with examples illustrating ar…

Animals are discussed in Islamic law primarily in relation to certain dietary rules, ḥalāl meat and proper slaughtering, hunting, and the regulations pertaining to the zakāt and ḥajj rituals mentioned in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth. 1. Dietary laws Qurʾān 5:3 and other verses specify that certain types of animal flesh are not to be consumed. These include pork, carrion, blood, meat offered to other deities, and animals not properly slaughtered. Some authorities forbid the eating of all carnivores, while others prohibit only the eating of …

Abū Zayd ʿUbaydallāh b. ʿUmar b. ʿĪsā al-Dabūsī (b. c. 367/978, d. 430/1039 or 432/1041, in Bukhara) was a Ḥanafī jurist best known for his theoretical work in explaining juristic disagreements (ʿilm al-khilāf) among the founding authorities of the Ḥanafī school and between the Ḥanafī school and the other major Sunnī law schools. His nisba, al-Dabūsī, is taken from the city of Dabūsiyya (also Dabūsa), located between Bukhara and Samarqand. Some biographers, including Ibn al-ʿImād (d. 1089/1679), give his name as ʿAbdallāh rather than ʿUbaydallāh. All biographical notices credit …

Not honoring one's legally enforceable obligation to another. Muslim exegetes identify a number of qurʾānic verses which require that contracts ( ʿuqūd, sing. ʿaqd, see contracts and alliances ) not be broken, the most general of which is q 5:1. Other verses enjoin keeping covenants ( ʿuhūd, sing. ʿahd, see covenant ), trusts (amānāt, sing. amāna), oaths ( aymān, sing. yamīn, see oaths ) and pacts (mawāthīq, sing. mīthāq). According to many qurʾānic exegetes, the meanings of these terms are closely related but each carries particular legal obligations. q 9:4 and q 16:91, both of which…

Frequently paired terms that can connote moral qualities, ontological entites and categories of judgment, both human and divine. The direct opposition of an abstract good and evil as moral or ontological categories is not common in the Qurʾān, nor are there terms that are necessarily always understood as “good” or “evil,” though many passages in the Qurʾān are interpreted to depend on the opposition of positive and negative intentions and consequences. Note also that unlike the biblical account, in q 2:35 and 20:120 it is stated that it was the tree of life from which Adam and Eve (q.v.) we…

Something given as security for the satisfaction of a debt or other obligation; the contract incidental to such a guaranty. The term commonly translated as “pledge” appears three times in the Qurʾān in three different forms: rahīn (q 52:21), rahīna (q 74:38) and rihān (q 2:283). Al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1272), in his Jāmiʿ, reports that the term in q 2:283 is also read by Ibn Kathīr and Ibn ʿAmr as ruhun, by ʿĀṣim b. Abī al-Najūd as ruhn and by Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī as rahn (see readings of the qurʾān; recitation of the qurʾān; orthography of the qurʾān). Exegetes interpret the uses of “pledge” in q 52:21 …

Actions that are intended to harm others. The term normally understood as “evil deed” or “sin” (sayyiʾa) is mentioned in the Qurʾān 24 times in the singular, and 36 times in the plural. In many verses, the term is directly juxtaposed to “good deed(s)” (q.v.; ḥasana, pl. ḥasanāt) and is often interpreted by Muslim exegetes as denoting actions which are negative by means of their intentions and consequences. Other related terms include “sin” ( dhanb, see sin, major and minor ) mentioned in the Qurʾān 39 times in its various permutations, “wrong-doing,” attested over 200 times…

Meritorious acts that will accrue to an individual's benefit on the day of judgment. The term normally translated as “good deeds” (ḥasana, pl. ḥasanāt) occurs twenty-nine times in the Qurʾān. Related are two words, usually translated as “good,” which occur as a noun (ḥusn) six times, and as an adjective (ḥasan) nineteen times. Another term often translated as “good deeds” (ṣāliḥāt) is found 63 times in the Qurʾān, but often with the sense of “good things” or actions which produce good things rather than actions which are consistent with God's will. According to Muslim exegesis of the …

To confer with other individuals or a group. The term consultation (shūrā) does ¶ not appear to have been used in Arabic before Islam and the revelation of the Qurʾān and occurs only once in the text of the Qurʾān at q 42:38. Yet, the term shūrā in the sense of ‘consultation’ has important implications for social and political theory. Etymology The word shūrā is related to the verb shāra, meaning to remove something from its place. It can also refer to the display of a thing, showing the good qualities inherent in something. The term al-shūrā can thus connote a handsome outward appearance,…