Students of Thomas Aquinas have so far lacked a comprehensive study of his doctrine of the transcendentals. This volume fills this lacuna, showing the fundamental character of the notions of being, one, true and good for his thought. The book inquires into the beginnings of the doctrine in the thirteenth century and explains the relation of the transcendental way of thought to Aquinas's conception of metaphysics. It analyzes "Being," "One," "True," "Good" and "Beautiful" individually and discusses their importance for the philosophical knowledge of God. Medieval Philosophy and the...

Based on years of research in Saudi Arabia, this volume investigates the legal system of Saudi Arabia both for its own sake and as a case-study of an Islamic legal system. As a study of Saudi Arabia, it is the first extensive treatment in English of the constitution and Islamic court system of Saudi Arabia. As a study of an existing legal system in continuity with past Islamic law and practice, it sheds new light on Islamic legal doctrine, practice, and institutions, correcting for past scholarly neglect of Islamic law's application.
The book develops a framework of concepts, rooted in...

This book studies the functions of Islamic courts within the framework of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Ottoman provincial administration, and explores the processes of adjudication and dispute resolution through a detailed juxtaposition of court records from two Anatolian towns, Cankırı and Kastamonu. In particular, it identifies the socio-economic backgrounds of the court clients, the kinds of issues that they brought to the courts, their strategies of litigation, and how disputes were resolved in the courts. This book also sheds light on the costs of court...

The present volume is dedicated to an analysis of positive solutions adopted by Muslim jurists active in the first centuries of Islam regarding civil liability, certain kinds of sale and the prohibition of riba. The analysis has two aims. The first is to trace the origins of some hitherto unclarified institutions and transactions within Islamic law with an account of how they developed over this law's formative and classical period. The second aim is to determine why and how the teachings of particular jurists became predominant in Iraq and Medina, and laid the foundation of the Hanafi and...

This book looks at Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ al-shāfiʿīyah by Ibn Qāḍī Shuhbah (d. 851/1448) and how its author attempted to portray the development of the Shāfiʿī school of law up to his own times. The volume examines the impact of crises on the formation of the ṭabaqāt genre. It demonstrates how ṭabaqāt, dedicated to explicating religious authority, were used by authors to sort-out challenges to intellectual orthodoxies. It also examines in detail the Ṭabaqāt directly,...