The Library of Arabic Literature is a new series offering Arabic editions and English translations of key works of classical and pre-modern Arabic literature, as well as anthologies and thematic readers. Books in the series are edited and translated by distinguished scholars of Arabic and Islamic studies, and are published in parallel-text format with Arabic and English on facing pages. The Library of Arabic Literature includes texts from the pre-Islamic era to the cusp of the modern period, and encompasses a wide range of genres, including poetry, poetics, fiction, religion, philosophy, law, science, history, and historiography.

Supported by a grant from the New York University Abu Dhabi Institute, and established in partnership with NYU Press, the Library of Arabic Literature produces authoritative Arabic editions and modern, lucid English translations, with the goal of introducing the Arabic literary heritage to scholars and students, as well as to a general audience of readers.

Philip F. Kennedy

General Editor, Library of Arabic Literature

Acknowledgments

In completing this work I have accumulated a large number of debts that I hope I will be able to repay. I would like to thank the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, for providing copies of the two manuscripts of Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib in their collections, and especially to Dr. Omar Alí-de-Unzaga, the academic coordinator of the Qurʾanic Studies Unit at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, for his invaluable assistance on this and many other occasions. I would like to thank my colleagues on the editorial board of the Library of Arabic Literature and the staff of NYU Press for their hard work, support, and camaraderie, without which this project would not have come to fruition. I particularly would like to thank Shawkat Toorawa and Joseph Lowry for their continual advice and assistance over many years. As the volume editor, Joseph Lowry provided crucial input regarding the translation of terms related to legal hermeneutics as well as invaluable help in rendering al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s dialectical style in Arabic into intelligible English. He saved me on several occasions from making serious blunders in translation; without his indefatigable attention, the translation would certainly have suffered. Finally, I would like to thank my dear wife, Marmar, and my children, Noor and Ali, for enduring patiently the labor that preparing this volume has entailed. Support for research was provided in part by the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry of Emory University and by the University Research Council of Emory University.

Introduction

Al-Qāḍī Abū Ḥanīfah al-Nuʿmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Ḥayyūn al-Tamīmī was a prominent judge, jurist, and author of the Fatimid Empire (296–567/909–1171), in many ways the young Fatimid state’s chief ideologue for nearly half a century. He, more than any

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