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On March 23, 2021, Issam Eido (Vanderbilt University) presented in our Islamic Law Speaker Series. In his talk titled “Early Ḥanafī Approaches to Islamic Legal Interpretation, 3rd/9th – 4th/10th Century,” Eido lectured on ʿĪsā b. Abān – a 9th-century Ḥanafī legal scholar who studied with and influenced leading Ḥanafī scholars of his period. He studied with Abū Ḥanīfa’s student Al-Shaybānī, and the well-known jurist Jaṣṣāṣ quoted him extensively in ways that offer further insight into the shape of early Ḥanafī law than has previously been reported. Most notably, amid the contested debates about the validity of ḥadīth as a reliable source of law, Ibn Abān constructing new criteria for measuring the authenticity of ḥadīth based on legal canons (qawāʿid fiqhiyya), and analogical reasoning (qiyās) as valid bases for legal interpretation and derivation. This talk exploreed those concepts.

He was be joined by Professor Ahmed El Shamsy (University of Chicago, Associate Professor, Division of the Humanities, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations).