News

On May 26, 2021, Samy Ayoub (University of Texas) presented “Creativity in Continuity: al-Rasa’il al-Fiqhiyya as a Genre for Legal Change.” Ayoub’s lecture expanded an ongoing conversation in the Islamic Legal Genre (ILG) lecture series about the ways in which a legal mode shapes the type of information a jurist can relay in writing. Ayoub argued that rasāʾil were a vehicle for jurists to create complex and multilayered change, and that this genre of legal writing was essential to enshrining new legal developments in the madhhab. As a vehicle for legal change, rasāʾil were particularly important to nineteenth and twentieth century Ḥanafī law, at a time when jurists were interested in debating and reforming specific aspects of the law. Read more on our blog and watch the video today.