Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Juristic typologies: a framework for enquiry
- 2 Early ijtihād and the later construction of authority
- 3 The rise and augmentation of school authority
- 4 Taqlīd: authority, hermeneutics, and function
- 5 Operative terminology and the dynamics of legal doctrine
- 6 The jurisconsult, the author–jurist, and legal change
- Summary and conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Taqlīd: authority, hermeneutics, and function
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Juristic typologies: a framework for enquiry
- 2 Early ijtihād and the later construction of authority
- 3 The rise and augmentation of school authority
- 4 Taqlīd: authority, hermeneutics, and function
- 5 Operative terminology and the dynamics of legal doctrine
- 6 The jurisconsult, the author–jurist, and legal change
- Summary and conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
As a term denoting the acceptance of legal authority, taqlīd has had a complex history. During the second/eighth century, it generally meant the acceptance of the Companions' legal teachings as well as those of the Followers (tābicūn) who had attained a ripe age during the time of the Companions. Later on, the term's connotation underwent change, and acquired the meaning of following the authority of a mujtahid, whether or not he was the founder of a school. However, this general sense of the term, which was to remain fairly constant throughout the centuries, carried with it at least one major ambiguity. On the one hand, it was used in the sense of following the mujtahid's authority without questioning either his textual evidence or the line of reasoning he adopted in a particular case. In this sense, the term was also applicable to the act of following the totality of the founder's legal doctrines as a methodologically systematic structure, without the muqallid being bound by all the individual opinions within the corpus of those doctrines. Hanafite muqallids, for example, were never bound by all of Abū Ḥanīfa's opinions, whether or not they were genuinely his, and regularly drew on the doctrines of several authorities affliated with the school. On the other hand, the term was also employed to indicate loyalty to a legal doctrine but with full knowledge, on the part of the muqallid, of the means by which this doctrine was derived.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Authority, Continuity and Change in Islamic Law , pp. 86 - 120Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001