Disagreements of the Jurists. al-Qadi al-Nu'man
works and ideas were suppressed, making it more difficult to reconstruct the contours of formative debate in the ninth and tenth centuries over jurisprudence and legal hermeneutics. Shiʿi authors such as al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān may preserve aspects of debate and sources that were later marginalized and may be more ecumenical in their description of Sunni thought than contemporary Sunni writers who represented one party in a large debate. Overall, it appears that al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān was drawing on manuals of uṣūl al-fiqh not only in the Shāfiʿī, Ḥanafī, and Mālikī traditions of legal study, but also from the Ẓāhirī, Jarīrī, and Muʿtazilī traditions, and of these it appears that Ẓāhirī influence was uppermost, so that, beside Ibn Ḥazm’s work al-Iḥkām fī uṣūl al-aḥkām, Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib is the most important witness of Ẓāhirī jurisprudence in existence. Other Shiʿi sources may also provide valuable insights into the development of Sunni uṣūl al-fiqh, such as al-Shaykh al-Ṭūsī’s al-ʿUddah, al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā’s (d. 436/1044) al-Dharīʿah ilā uṣūl al-sharīʿah, and the uṣūl al-fiqh manual of the Zaydi Imam Abū Ṭālib Yaḥyā ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Nāṭiq bi-l-Ḥaqq (d. 424/1033), al-Mujzī, and should not be overlooked in future research.
A Note on the Text
The Arabic Text
It is very difficult to identify, let alone collect, all the available manuscripts of Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib because most are not catalogued. Earlier editors have referred to the fact that many manuscripts are held by religious authorities and private individuals who are reluctant to make them available, with the result that it has not been possible to construct a proper stemma codicum of the work based on all extant copies. To date, two editions of Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib have been published, in 1972 and 1973. The manuscripts those authors used as a basis for their editions, as well as the other manuscripts that I have been able to consult, are all late, dating between the late eighteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The manuscript tradition shows many instances of contamination, whereby one manuscript has been corrected with readings from another manuscript, one factor complicating the construction of a stemma codicum. Because of the continued importance of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s legal work in modern Ismaʿili Islam, Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib has continued to be copied throughout the centuries, and a large number of copies may exist. Counting the ones used for previous editions, I am aware of nine extant manuscript copies, and I surmise that dozens more may exist. Moreover, it is very likely that several older copies of the work exist but remain inaccessible. Ismaʿili religious authorities and owners of private collections are likely to have expended great efforts to preserve the works of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān in particular, and the relatively large number of copies suggests that copyists had access to earlier exemplars from which to make them in the not-too-distant past. The fact that Asaf A. A. Fyzee located a manuscript of Daʿāʾim al-Islām that dates from 865/1461 indicates the likelihood that copies of Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib that are of a similar age and presumably stand at fewer removes from al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s original work are extant but not available to the public. Under these circumstances, I have expended great effort to present a version of the Arabic text that is as reliable as possible, but I am forced to admit that this is not a definitive edition but merely a significant advance over what has been available since the early 1970s. If a superior manuscript copy comes to light, it may enable scholars to rectify the edition further and to resolve some of the problems of interpretation that have remained intractable or that have escaped my notice.
In editing the text I have consulted two manuscripts in the library of the Institute of Ismaʿili Studies in London, Lokhandwalla’s published edition, and Muṣṭafā Ghālib’s published edition.
[خ] MS No. 256 (Ar.)
This manuscript is in the collection housed at the Institute for Ismaili Studies in London. A note on the front page indicates that it belongs to the Chhotu Lakhani Collection of Fatimid Ismaili Manuscripts, no. 60. The colophon, which is rather long, and in verse, states that the manuscript was completed on Thursday, the 8th of Rajab 1209, corresponding to 29 January 1795. It does not give the name of the copyist. I have designated this manuscript as (خ).
[ز] Zāhid ʿAlī MS, no. 1131
The other manuscript, also housed at the library of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, belongs to the Zāhid ʿAlī collection and is numbered 1131. The colophon gives the date of completion of the copy as 27 Shawwal 1255/2 January 1840. No copyist’s name is given. Corrections are made in the text itself and corrections and missing passages have been added in the margin, sometimes followed by the word nuskhah, indicating that the source of the corrections was a different manuscript copy. The fact that this manuscript was corrected by someone who had access to a superior manuscript makes it the better of the two manuscripts to which I had access. I have designated this manuscript as (ز).
[ل] Lokhandwalla’s 1972 edition
Shamoon Tayyib Ali Lokhandwalla published an edition of Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib at the Indian Institute for Advanced Study in Simla in 1972. Lokhandwalla had access to three manuscripts of the work. He based the edition primarily on a manuscript in his possession which he designated as (ب). The manuscript is dated 8 Safar 1272/20 October 1855. He compared the text with another manuscript owned by Fyzee, which he designates (ع), and which was copied by Ḥamūd Yaḥyā Ismāʿīl al-Aḥlasī, who he believes was a student from Yemen. That second manuscript was copied at the Madrasah of Adamjee Peerbhoy in Bombay on 20 Jumada al-Thani 1335/13 April 1917. He also consulted a third manuscript owned by an anonymous source who allowed him to consult it for a short time and which he designates (حذ).50 He does not give a date for that manuscript. While the editor clearly took some care in producing the Arabic text, it contains many minor errors in punctuation and spelling. I designate Lokhandwalla’s edition as (ل).
[م] Muṣṭafā Ghālib’s 1973 edition
The Syrian Ismaʿili Muṣṭafā Ghālib, who edited many Ismaʿili works, published an edition of Ikhtilāf uṣūl al-madhāhib in Beirut in 1973. He was not aware of Lokhandwalla’s edition, which had been published the previous year in India. He based his edition on two manuscripts, one from Pakistan and one from Iran. The first manuscript, which he obtained through the Ismaili Society of Pakistan, was copied by Muḥammad Mubārakpūrī and did not include a date. That manuscript he designates as (أ). He obtained the Iranian manuscript through the Nizari dāʿī Sulaymān Bāy Badakhshānī. It was copied by al-Shaykh Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Badakhshānī in the year 1323/1905–6. He designates this manuscript as (ب). There are many lacunae in the published text, primarily caused by saut du même au même. It also appears that the editor has taken some liberties with the text, editing and rephrasing it to conform more closely to modern Arabic style. For these reasons I have only noted the variants from this edition in particular cases. I designate Muṣṭafā Ghālib’s edition as (م).
I have based the Arabic edition primarily on the text of MS 1131 (ز) and the edition of Lokhandwalla (ل). I have indicated all points at which the text differs significantly from that of Lokhandwalla’s text, but I have considered a number of types of deviation to be minor and not noted variants. I have divided the text into paragraphs which often differ from those of Lokhandwalla’s edition, and I have changed the punctuation throughout without noting it. I have not noted variants for differences in vowels that Lokhandwalla or the manuscripts have provided. I have rectified without noting that I have done so many minor issues, including punctuation, voweling, pointing, spelling, use of hamzah, shaddah, and maddah, division of words (e.g. in shāʾ Allāh for inshāʾ Allāh, in kāna for inkāna, kull mā for kullamā, which are ubiquitous in the manuscripts, and so on. I have not reported variants for minor points such as the substitution of wa- for fa- or vice versa. I have not recorded variants for errors in Qurʾanic verses or hadith reports.
I have provided an indication of all points at which the text of [ز] departs from that of Lokhandwalla’s edition. If no variants are given,