The Sources of Ismaili Law
Keywords: Isma‘ili Law, Tayyibi, Zaydi, Imami, Fatimids, Qadi al-Nu‘man, Da‘a’im al-Islam, Kitab al-idah, isnad, hadith, ahl al-bayt, Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq, Imam Muhammad al-Baqir.
This paper was delivered at the Congress of the American Oriental Society in Santa Barbara in March 1974. In it, Wilferd Madelung presents his exhaustive research into the origins and sources of a monumental document that was considered lost to history; the Kitab al-idah, Qadi al-Nu‘man's first legal work - a vast collection of legal traditions transmitted from the family of the Prophet (ahl al-bayt), indicating their points of consensus (ijma‘) and conflict (ikhtilaf) and elucidating what was firmly established doctrine in them with evidence and proofs. This article provides an invaluable resource for academics and students of Islamic studies and related fields.
Author
Professor Wilferd Madelung
A leading contemporary Islamicist, Professor Wilferd Madelung has made significant contributions to modern scholarship on mediaeval Islamic communities and movements, including Twelver Shi'ism, Zaydism and Ismailism. Educated at the Universities of Cairo and Hamburg, he became Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago in 1969 and the Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford from 1978.
Among his recent publications are Religious Schools and Sects in Mediaeval Islam (London, 1985), Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran (Albany, NY, 1988), Religious and Ethnic Movements in Mediaeval Islam (Hampshire, 1992), The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate (Cambridge, 1997), and with Paul E. Walker An Ismaili Heresiography (Leiden, 1998). He has contributed extensively to The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Encycopaedia Iranica of which he is also a Consulting Editor, and learned journals.
