At the time of his death in 1998, Norman Calder was working on a book that was to form a sequel to his brilliant and controversial Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence. The four chapters presented here are the outcome of his research on this project, and although they are only part of the book that Norman had envisaged, they nonetheless make a substantial addition to the scholarly literature on classical Islamic jurisprudence. Their importance and position within this literature is the subject of Professor Robert Gleave's Introduction, while his Afterword provides a conspectus of Norman's intellectual and academic development as reflected in an important but easily overlooked part of his oeuvre.

The chapters were complete at the time of Norman's death, and my role has been strictly editorial, little more than incorporating hand-written material into the body of the text and providing full source references. I am particularly grateful to Robert Gleave for undertaking to write the Introduction and Afterword, and I must also record my thanks to Mustafa Baig for his bibliographic and technical help.