SYSTEMATIZING AND ISLAMICIZING 287

Tr. IX, 34: On the question whether a Muslim may conclude contracts involving 'usury' outside Islamic territory, Auzāʿī is moved, as he was in the preceding case, by a religious and ethical consideration, but he gives also a systematic argument of sorts. Abū Ḥanīfa uses the same technically legal reasoning as in the former case; Abū Yūsuf, however, on account of traditions to which Auzāʿī had referred but which Abū Ḥanīfa had disregarded, comes back to Auzāʿī’s doctrine.¹ Shāfiʿī necessarily takes the same attitude. Nothing positive is known of Mālik’s opinion. Ibn Qāsim (Mud. x. 103) thinks that a Muslim ought not to conclude such contracts intentionally; he is still exclusively concerned with material considerations.

From this and from the preceding chapter we can draw the general conclusion that technical legal thought, as a rule, tended to become increasingly perfected from the beginnings of Muḥammadan jurisprudence up to the time of Shāfiʿī, and that material considerations of a religious and ethical kind, whether they were there from the beginning or introduced at a later stage, usually tended to become fused with systematic reasoning. In both respects, the work of Shāfiʿī represents the zenith of development, and the reader will, I hope, take it on trust that technical legal thought in Muḥammadan jurisprudence hardly ever approached and never surpassed the standard he set.² The remaining chapters are intended to complete this general picture by remarks on the reasoning of individual lawyers, concluding with Shāfiʿī.