Die Entstehung Der Juristischen Hermeneutik (Usul Al-Fiqh) Im Fruhen Islam (Book Review‪)‬

Die Entstehung der juristischen Hermeneutik (usul al-fiqh) im fruhen Islam. By HANS-THOMAS TILLSCHNEIDER. Arbeitsmaterialien zum Orient, 20. Wurzburg: ERGON, 2006. Pp. x + 220. [euro]30. The great questions animating the modern study of the Islamic sacred texts have thus far been primarily concerned with issues of origin and authenticity. The assumption that has frequently under-pinned such studies is that the interpretation of the texts, once these had been established, naturally took the form characteristic of classical Muslim scholarship. Accordingly, Joseph Schacht and John Wansbrough concluded that the hadith and the Quran, respectively, must be of later provenance than conventionally assumed, given that early Muslim jurists failed to use these texts in the manner of later scholars, namely, as the exclusively authoritative sources of religious norms. The intrinsic premise is that there could be only one way to view and use the sacred texts. This paradigm gives rise to a dichotomy between, on the one hand, the fluidity of religious teaching at the oral stage, which accommodates change and manipulation but also precludes a reliable historiography, and, on the other hand, stable written texts that are timeless and unchanging in both form and interpreted content.