Taqlīd, Legal Scaffolding and the Scope of Legal Injunctions in Post-Formative Theory

AbstractThe controversy surrounding ijtihād and Taqlīd is well-known in modern scholarship. In the present essay, I offer an alternative to the leading views on this crux by treating the issue of scope in the jurisprudential writings of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī as a reflection of the manner and direction in which the Islamic legal tradition tended to develop subsequent to the so-called settling down of the four schools of law. At the center of this development stood the highly intricate and spirited institution of Taqlīd, and I posit a causal relationship between the emergence of this institution and Muslim jurists' increased interest in issues such as scope. I also treat the technical aspects of al-Qarāfī's theory and compare it with the theories of a number of his predecessors.