in particular, and he may have had access to manuals of uṣūl al-fiqh written by Muʿtazilī scholars that included chapters devoted to naẓar.
Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib shows the importance of Shiʿi works for shedding light on the historical development of Sunni uṣūl alfiqh. This is not only because seminal works from the tradition have been lost but also because the variety of opinion on many issues in the tradition considerably narrowed over time, and many works and ideas were suppressed, making it more difficult to reconstruct the contours of formative debate in the ninth and tenth centuries over jurisprudence and legal hermeneutics. Shiʿi authors such as al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān may preserve aspects of debate and sources that were later marginalized and may be more ecumenical in their description of Sunni thought than contemporary Sunni writers who represented one party in a large debate. Overall, it appears that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was drawing on manuals of uṣūl al-fiqh not only in the Shāfiʿī, Ḥanafī, and Mālikī traditions of legal study, but also from the Ẓāhirī, Jarīrī, and Muʿtazilī traditions, and of these it appears that Ẓāhirī influence was uppermost, so that, beside Ibn Ḥazm’s work al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām, Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib is the most important witness of Ẓāhirī jurisprudence in existence. Other Shiʿi sources may also provide valuable insights into the development of Sunni uṣūl al-fiqh, such as al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī’s al-ʿUddah, al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s (d. 436/1044) al-Dharīʿah ilā uṣūl al-sharīʿah, and the uṣūl al-fiqh manual of the Zaydi Imam Abū Ṭālib Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Nāṭiq bi-l-Ḥaqq (d. 424/1033), al-Mujzī, and should not be overlooked in future research.
THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
I have expended a great deal of effort to render al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s prose into intelligible and fluid English, in keeping with the goals of the Library of Arabic Literature (and recognizing that those who would like to consult the original Arabic may do so in the bilingual hardcover edition.)52
This has not been a simple task, for two main reasons. The first is the use of the technical vocabulary of law and legal hermeneutics, which I have endeavored to translate into English terms rather than retaining the Arabic words in transliteration, a procedure often followed in Western studies of Islamic law. Because of the use of the same terms in varying contexts and on occasion with slightly different meanings, it has been necessary to modify the translation of these terms to fit the context while at the same time trying to avoid changing them so much that the continuity would be lost. This is particularly difficult when al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān stresses a certain sense of a word in order to defeat the argument of an opponent who used the word to mean something different.
The second difficulty arises from the dialectical nature of the text. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān often argues in extremely long, drawn-out sentences, presenting an actual or hypothetical objection of an opponent, with several subsidiary parts, and then the appropriate answer to that objection, also with several subsidiary parts, in a single sentence. In translating many passages of this type, I have found it necessary for the reader’s sake to divide the sentence into more manageable pieces, for to do otherwise would have led to confusion. This has resulted in modifying the grammar of the original sentences, but my goal, throughout, has been to render clear the arguments that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān is making rather than to reproduce his syntax.
The pious formulas of blessing that occur after mentions of God and the Prophet are so frequent that they can interfere with the reader’s understanding of the English translation. They often occur a dozen or more times in close proximity, and in many cases it is clear that they were not in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s original work but have been added by later copyists. I have omitted those that follow the name of God and the name of the Prophet in the translation, but I have retained those that occur after the names of other figures such as scholars and Imams, which are much less frequent.
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1 For an accessible account of Ismaʿili Shiʿi Islam in general, and its Nizārī and Mustaʿlī branches in particular, see Heinz Halm, Shia Islam: From Religion to Revolution, 2nd ed., trans. Janet Watson and Marian Hill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 160–201. For a more substantial treatment, see Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
2 Richard J. H. Gottheil, “A Distinguished Family of Fatimide Cadis in the Tenth Century,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 27 (1906): 217–96; H. F. Hamdani, “Some Unknown Ismāʿīlī Authors and Their Works,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1933): 359–78; A. A. A. Fyzee, “Qadi an-Nuʿmān: The Fatimid Jurist and Author,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1934): 1–32; F. Dachraoui, “al-Nuʿmān,” Encyclopaedia of Islam 2, 8:117–18; Wilferd Madelung, Review of Hadi Roger Idris, La Berberie orientale sous les Zirides, Xe-XIIe siècles, Journal of the American Oriental Society 84 (1964): 424–25; S. T. Lokhandwalla, Introduction to Kitāb Ikhtilāf Uṣūli ‘l-Madhāhib of Qāḍī Nuʿmān B. Muḥammmad, Edited with a critical introduction (Simla, India: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1973); Ismail K. Poonawala, “Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Works and the Sources,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 36.1 (1973): 109–15; idem, “A Reconsideration of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Madhhab,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 37 (1974): 572–79; Wilferd Madelung, “The Sources of Ismāʿīlī Law,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 35.1 (1976): 29–40; Ismail K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismaʿili Literature (Malibu, California, 1977); Wadad al-Qadi, “An Early Fatimid Political Document,” Studia Islamica 48 (1978): 71–108; Ismail K. Poonawala, “Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Ismāʿīlī Jurisprudence,” in Farhad Daftary (ed.), Medieval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 117–43; Sumaiya A. Hamdani, Between Revolution and State: The Path to Fatimid Statehood. Qadi al-Nuʿman and the Construction of Fatimid Legitimacy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006); Agostino Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence: Law under the Fatimids. A critical edition of the Arabic text and English translation of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Minhāj al-farāʾiḍ (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 5–42.
3 Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Maḥāsin Yūsuf ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhirah fī mulūk Miṣr wa-l-Qāhirah, 16 vols. (Cairo: al-Hayʾah al-Miṣriyyah al-ʿĀmmah, 1963–71), 4:106–7.
4 Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence, 18.
5 It is also possible that al-Nuʿmān’s father was dissimulating, using adherence to the Ḥanafī legal madhhab as a cover for secret adherence to Ismaʿili Shiʿism.
6 Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, 46–48; Ismail K. Poonawala, “Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Ismaʿili Jurisprudence,” in Farhad Daftary (ed.), Medieval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 119–20.
7 Madelung, “The Sources of Ismāʿīlī Law,” 29–40.
8 Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ, ed. Muḥammad Kāẓim Raḥmatī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī, 2007).
9 Kitāb al-Iqtiṣār, ed. Muḥammad Wāḥid Mīrzā (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1957); ed. Tāmir ʿĀrif (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1996).
10 Al-Urjūzah al-mukhtārah, ed. Ismail Kurbanhusayn Poonawala (Montreal: Islamic Studies Institute, McGill University, 1970).
11 Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence,
