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Origins of Muḥammadan jurisprudence

Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence

Publisher

Oxford At The Clarendon Press

Publication Year

1950 AH

LEGAL MAXIMS IN TRADITIONS 189

Medinese; but we find no traces of the opposite process. This shows the prevalent role of the Iraqians in the early period of Muhammadan jurisprudence. The legal maxims reflect a stage when legal doctrine was not yet automatically put into the form of traditions.1

1 I do not exclude the possibility that some legal maxims may be older than the second century A.H., or may even go back to the pre-Islamic period, but this cannot be assumed but must be positively proved in each case, as R. Brunschvig has done for the maxim al-walā' lil-kubr (in Revue Historique de Droit Français et Étranger, 1950, 23-34).

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