History of Fiqh Reading List

Arabic Works

1. Al-Fikr al-Sāmī fī Tārīkh al-Fiqh al-Islāmī — Muḥammad al-Ḥajwī
2. Tārīkh al-Tashrīʿ al-Islāmī — Muḥammad al-Khuḍarī
3. Al-Madkhal al-Fiqhī al-ʿĀmm (first portion)— Muṣṭafā Aḥmad al-Zarqāʾ
4. Tārīkh al-Madhāhib al-Islāmiyyah — Muḥammad Abū Zahrah
5. Al-Ittijāhāt al-Fiqhiyyah ʿInda al-Muḥaddithīn fī al-Qarn al-Thālith al-Hijrī — ʿAbd al-Majīd Maḥmūd
6. Fiqh tārīkh al-Fiqh — Haytham ibn Fahd al-Rūmī

English Works

1. A Theory of Early Classical Hanafism — Sohail Hanif
2. “A Tale of Two Kufans: Abū Yūsuf’s Ikhtilāf Abī Ḥanīfa wa-Ibn Abī Laylā and Schacht’s Ancient Schools” — Sohail Hanif
3. The Early Development of Islamic Fiqh in Kūfah — Zafar Ishaq Ansari
4. The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence — Joseph Schacht
5. The Origins of Islamic Jurisprudence: Meccan Fiqh before the Classical Schools — Harald Motzki
6. On Schacht’s Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence — Muṣṭafā al-Aʿẓamī
7. How Subjectivity Became Wrong: Early Islam and the Formation of Legal Objectivity — Hassan Shahawy
8. The Ḥanafī School: A Study of Its Legal and Social Dimensions — Salman Younis
9. Rule-Formulation and Binding Precedent in the Madhhab-Law Tradition — Talal al-Azem
10. Authority, Continuity, and Change in Islamic Law — Wael B. Hallaq
11. The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West — George Makdisi
12. The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th–10th Centuries C.E. — Christopher Melchert
13. Muslim Studies — Ignaz Goldziher
14. The History of an Islamic School of Law: The Early Spread of Ḥanafism — Nurit Tsafrir
15. The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History — Ahmed El Shamsy
16. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence — Samy Ayoub
17. Mālik and Madīnah: Islamic Legal Reasoning in the Formative Period — Umar Faruq Abdullah
18. Salafism and Traditionalism: Scholarly Authority in Modern Islam — Emad Hamdeh
19. The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Ḥanafī School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire — Guy Burak

This reading list does not imply endorsement of the views or conclusions of every author included. Many academic works are written from particular methodological, historical, or ideological perspectives, and readers should be aware of both their contributions and their limitations. Before engaging extensively with modern academic literature, we recommend first watching our Introduction to Western Academia series and/or completing our Research Methodology course. These resources will help readers identify underlying assumptions, and engage with academic research from an informed perspective.