Mairaj Syed, “Experiments in Searching for Islam’s Universal Canons on the CnC-Qayyim Platform” – SHARIAsource Lab 2022

On Wednesday, October 26th, Professor Mairaj Syed (UC Davis) presented “Experiments in Searching for Islam’s Universal Canons on the CnC-Qayyim Platform” as part of our Courts and Canons (CnC) Working Group. Professor Syed recently pursued the question of “What role do qawāʿid works play in delineating the spread of legal maxims?” by utilizing Qayyim’s ability to detect the citation of “universal canons”—groups of maxims that all fiqh questions can be supposedly reduced to—across different qawāʿid works. Examples of later references to such universal canons include al-Ashbāh wa’ l-Naẓāʾir of al-Suyūtī (d. 911/1505) and other scholars such as Ibn Nujaym (d. 969/1563) and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī (d. 769/1359). These scholars also cite Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature as scriptural justification for the authority of such maxims. Read about his presentation on our blog or watch the video today!