For a discussion of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s justification of the Imams’ authority in Daʿāʾim al-Islām on the basis of Qurʾanic verses, see Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, 68–70.
On the religious authority of the caliphs, see Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Religion and Politics under the Early Abbasids (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Eric J. Hanne, Putting the Caliph in His Place: Power, Authority, and the Late Abbasid Caliphate (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007); A. Hartmann, An-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh (1180–1225): Politik, Religion, Kultur in der späten ʿAbbāsidenzeit (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1975).
On religious authority and the authority of the jurists, see George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981); Devin J. Stewart, Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1998), 25–59; idem, “Al-Ṭabarī’s Kitāb Marātib al-ʿUlamāʾ and the Significance of Biographical Works Devoted to ‘The Classes of Jurists,’” Der Islam 90.2 (2013): 347–75.
See the introduction to al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s Intiṣār, 189–92, in Devin J. Stewart, “al-Sharif al-Murtada (d. 436/1044)”, in Oussama Arabi, David S. Powers, and Susan A. Spectorsky (eds.), Islamic Legal Thought: A Compendium of Muslim Jurists (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 167–210.
The question is somewhat more complicated in the Zaydi case than it is for the Twelvers. See Bernard Haykel and Aron Zysow, “What Makes a Madhhab a Madhhab: Zaydī Debates on the Structure of Legal Authority,” Arabica 59 (2012): 332–71.
Devin J. Stewart, “Muḥammad b. Dāʾūd al-Ẓāhirī’s Manual of Jurisprudence, al-Wuṣūl ilā maʿrifat al-uṣūl,” in Studies in Islamic Legal Theory, ed. Bernard Weiss (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002), 99–158.
Muṣṭafā Ghālib believes, it appears, that this statement was written by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān himself, when it is clearly the work of his grandson.
The Disagreements of the Jurists
The Provenance of this Book
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1
الحمد لله على ما أسبغ من عطائه حمد عبد شاكر لآلائه مستدعٍ للمزيد من نعمائه وصلّى الله على رسوله محمّد خاتم أنبيائه المشفّع في أمّته١ يوم لقائه وعلى عليّ أمير المؤمنين وصيّه والأئمّة من آله وأصفيائه .
١ ل: لأمته.
I praise God for the gifts He has showered upon us, as a worshiper who is grateful for His grace and pleads for more of His bounty. God