The Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics

Abstract

David Vishanoff’s The Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics is a significantcontribution to the study of Islamic legal theory and legal hermeneutics. Vishanoff’smain objective is to examine how Sunni legal hermeneutics becamea systematic and institutional discipline. For this purpose, he strives to restorethe reception and development of al-Shafi‘i’s (d. 820) legal hermeneutics during the pre-classical period (ninth to eleventh centuries). He presents the imamas the first scholar to have codified an Islamic legal theory and reads him inlight of four hermeneutical models: the Zahiri, Mu‘tazili, Ash‘ari and, whathe calls, a law-oriented model. The book is organized into seven chapters, fiveof which are devoted to al-Shafi‘i’s hermeneutics and the four responses to it.Chapter 1 and 7, respectively, serve as analytic introduction and conclusion.The most authoritative source investigated by the author, and to whichChapter 2 is devoted, is al-Shafi‘i’s Al-Risālah fī Uṣūl al-Fiqh. Central to thistext is al-Shafi‘i’s argument that a system of law can and should be inferredfrom revelation: the Qur’an and Sunnah. The Risālah, Vishanoff confirms, isthe first work to have raised a consequential hermeneutical question in the Islamiclegal theory: How does one reconcile revealed texts with legal rules?Al-Shafi‘i’s solution, one that places the Qur’an’s equivocalness or linguisticambiguity at the centre of its argument, was one of the most debated legalthemes at the time; a deliberation that has largely contributed to the formationof classical uṣūl al-fiqh ...