Legal co-construction in Ifrīqiya in the 4th/10th century 

tues 11th July 23
2:30 P.M - 4:30 P.M
Déméter 047

Abstract : 

The Ifrīqiyan scholarly milieu of the 4th/10th century is essentially known through the ṭabaqāt of the Maliki scholar al-Ḫušanī (d. 371/981). His work builds the identity of the Maliki legal school then facing the Fatimid ‘challenge’. Al-Ḫušanī’s ṭabaqāt often reduces the Ifrīqiyan scholarly milieu to the opposition between the Maliki ‘orthodoxy’ and the Fatimid Ismaili ‘heresy’ that emerged in Ifrīqiya in the early 4th/10th century. At that time, the Hanafis had supposedly massively "converted" to Ismailism causing the disappearance of their legal school in Ifrīqiya. The Ibadis do not appear in al-Ḫušanī’s writings; scattered in the North African margins, they only loom at the time of uprising against the Fatimid state. 

Al-Ḫušanī’s discourse has long permeated scholarship on the legal schools in Ifrīqiya. The opposition between Malikis and Ismailis has thus overshadowed the history of this region in the 4th/10th century. However, the most recent scholarship has sought to examine the cohabitation of the different social groups in North Africa. This panel aims at diving into the legal aspect of these relations in Ifrīqiya, specifically on the legal co-construction process. To this end, we intend to focus on two complementary aspects of this process: 1. ibadite. the The circulation of legal norms in the context of competition between legal schools; 2. the construction of identities and the writing of a shared past. On the one hand, legal norms circulated between the different legal doctrines as the social and political context of Ifrīqiya in the 4th/10th century bolstered borrowings as well as oppositions between jurists on specific legal questions. On the other hand, these exchanges led to the construction of specific identities that were crystallized in founding legal works. Ifrīqiyan scholars strengthened these identities by producing a contested memory between their schools of law. 

Convenors:
Athina Pfeiffer, Princeton University
Clément Salah, Sorbonne Université / Université de Lausanne

Chair: 
Wissam Halawi, Université de Lausanne

Ersilla Fransceca, University of Naples L’Orientale)
Resistance, resilience, exchanges: Ibāḍī-Mālikī dynamics in Medieval Maghreb 

Aslisho Qurboniev Aslisho QURBONIEV , Aga Khan University — ISMC
Text reuse and the consolidation of the Mālikī legal school in the tenth century

Clément Salah, Sorbonne Université / Université de Lausanne
The Sunna of the Prophet amid controversies between Mālikis and Ismā‘īlis 

Athina Pfeiffer, Princeton University
Ismaili law and legal competition in Fatimid Ifrīqiya