The Minor Compendium of Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam (d. 214/829) and its reception in the early Mālikī school

Abstract Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam's Minor Compendium may be the earliest known handbook of Islamic law. Remarkably compact and comprehensive, it challenges depictions of the pre-classical period as a time of unsystematic legal scholarship, consisting of only "organic" texts and student...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Brockopp, Jonathan (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill 2005
In: Islamic law and society
Year: 2005, Volume: 12, Issue: 2, Pages: 149-181
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Summary:Abstract Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam's Minor Compendium may be the earliest known handbook of Islamic law. Remarkably compact and comprehensive, it challenges depictions of the pre-classical period as a time of unsystematic legal scholarship, consisting of only "organic" texts and student notebooks. In this article, I argue for an early date for this text, based on analysis of the manuscript witnesses. I then compare the Minor Compendium with several contemporary texts to highlight its unique characteristics; in the process I discover, and seek to explain, several discrepancies in the descriptions of this text that are found in the biographical dictionaries. In my reading, the Minor Compendium is part of a nascent Mālikī tradition and demonstrates a close affinity to Mālik's Muwatta'. Yet it is also a highly creative and independent work, and its method of making legal arguments is quite different than that found in the Muwatta' and other early legal texts.
ISSN:1568-5195
Contains:Enthalten in: Islamic law and society
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/1568519054093725