The Science of Madhhab: Al-kafiyaji’s Introduction of a New Sub-discipline for Islamic Jurisprudence
A leading figure among the Hanafi scholars in late-Mamluk Cairo, Muhyiddin el-Kafiyaji (d. 879/1474) claimed to have founded a new discipline that focused on the individual’s relationship with his/her legal madhhab. Examining Kafiyaji’s science of madhhab, this article first tries to reconstruct the historical context of his project. For this, I focus on the details of his biography that might help make better sense of this endeavor. Then, I discuss the relationship between the science of madhhab and Islamic history in terms of three themes: the Hanafi scholarship on Islamic legal methodology, the multi-madhhab social order during the Mamluk era, and the post-classical tendency to question and reconstruct the boundaries of scientific disciplines. The second half of the article includes an examination of al-Farah wa-l-Surur and Nashat al-Sudur, the two works that al-Kafiyaji wrote to introduce the science of madhhab. Here, one the one hand, I analyze the content of these books in terms of their main themes and arguments. On the other, I critically engage with these works to evaluate the extent to which they achieved his proposed objectives. The discussion concludes that alKafiyaji essentially failed in this project of introducing a new sub-discipline and the main reason for this is the prevalence of logicial-philosophical discourse in the study of Islamic religious disciplines in the post-classical period.
Eyyüp Said Kaya
