Texts of Islam

Islam: Chapter Three: The Law: Fiqh, Sharī‘a: 4. The Bidding Unto Good (Al-amr bi al-Ma‘ruf)

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This is an anthology of primary source excerpts from classical Islamic legal texts, drawn primarily from the Hanafi jurist al-Marghinānī and the 14th-century Egyptian Shāfi'ī scholar Ibn al-Ukhūwa, covering practical regulations of Islamic law (fiqh) as they applied to daily life in premodern Muslim societies. The central subject is the concept of ḥisba — the Islamic duty to enjoin right conduct and forbid wrong — and its institutional expression in the office of the muḥtasib, a market inspector and public morals officer who enforced legal norms in commerce, public space, and personal conduct. The texts cover specific rulings on ritual animal slaughter (dhabaḥ), sacrifice, land cultivation, and market practices such as fraudulent pottery sales, overloaded ships, money-changing, and the conduct of barber-surgeons. A distinctive feature is the running record of juristic disagreement: the Hanafi, Shāfi'ī, and Mālikī schools are repeatedly set against one another on questions such as whether omitting God's name during slaughter voids the meat, or whether sacrifice is obligatory or merely praiseworthy. The excerpts also include a notably frank discussion of circumcision as a religious obligation for both men and women under the Shāfi'ī school, as well as a graduated theory of enforcement — from prohibition to admonition to verbal rebuke — with explicit limits on what ordinary subjects versus authorities may do. Readers interested in the texture of Islamic legal practice, the sociology of premodern market regulation, or intra-Sunni juristic debate will find this a dense but concrete set of primary materials.

Islam: Chapter Three: The Law: Fiqh, Sharī‘a: 4. The Bidding Unto Good (Al-amr bi al-Ma‘ruf)

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