Content area
Full Text
Fundamental questions to the discussion of Sunni schools' historical development include: What is the appropriate dating for the schools' formation? What are the key features of these schools? What is the role of the eponyms in the development of the legal schools (madhhabs)? Why were the schools exclusively attributed to them? Did the Sunni legal schools develop during the time of their eponyms primarily through their juristic contributions or was this process of formation consolidated much later? Why did some schools die out? Schacht's study of al-Shafi‘i's works is foundational to these debates and to the Orientalist discourses on the origins of Islamic law. In his Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, he argues that Sunni legal discourse remains unorganised until the arrival of al-Shafi‘i's works, a figure that Schacht labels the “master architect” of Sunni jurisprudence.
Wael B. Hallaq, on the other hand, challenges much of Schacht's original thesis, presenting his own antithesis, where he asserted that al-Shaf‘i's jurisprudence did not receive attention until a century after his death. Christopher Melchert in his monumental work The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law: 9th-10th Centuries C.E. further refines Schacht's ideas and makes new contributions to Schacht's thesis. Melchert provides additional points to expand and develop the initial timeline presented by Schacht. The present book review looks at the middle-stage analysis of the Sunni schools' formation, where Schacht's ideas were crystallised and some departure from Schachtian school was advanced This important contribution by Melchert attempts to answer most of the above questions regarding the early development of Sunni law.
Melchert provides a major revision to Schacht's thesis by revising his dating for the emergence of the classical madhhabs from the middle of ninth century to the late ninth and early tenth centuries (pp. 87, 116, 137). He, however, confirms Schacht's thesis that the classical schools moved away from identifying themselves primarily with geographical localities to an identification with their eponymous figures. Thus, the school of Kufa transforms into the school of Abu Hanifah (p. xxvi). Melchert offers some simple correctives throughout his...