The pious formulas of blessing that occur after mentions of God and the Prophet are so frequent that they can interfere with the reader’s understanding of the English translation. They often occur a dozen or more times in close proximity, and in many cases it is clear that they were not in al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s original work but have been added by later copyists. I have omitted those that follow the name of God and the name of the Prophet in the translation, but I have retained those that occur after the names of other figures such as scholars and Imams, which are much less frequent.
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1 For an accessible account of Ismaʿili Shiʿi Islam in general, and its Nizārī and Mustaʿlī branches in particular, see Heinz Halm, Shia Islam: From Religion to Revolution, 2nd ed., trans. Janet Watson and Marian Hill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 160–201. For a more substantial treatment, see Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
2 Richard J. H. Gottheil, “A Distinguished Family of Fatimide Cadis in the Tenth Century,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 27 (1906): 217–96; H. F. Hamdani, “Some Unknown Ismāʿīlī Authors and Their Works,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1933): 359–78; A. A. A. Fyzee, “Qadi an-Nuʿmān: The Fatimid Jurist and Author,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1934): 1–32; F. Dachraoui, “al-Nuʿmān,” Encyclopaedia of Islam 2, 8:117–18; Wilferd Madelung, Review of Hadi Roger Idris, La Berberie orientale sous les Zirides, Xe-XIIe siècles, Journal of the American Oriental Society 84 (1964): 424–25; S. T. Lokhandwalla, Introduction to Kitāb Ikhtilāf Uṣūli ‘l-Madhāhib of Qāḍī Nuʿmān B. Muḥammmad, Edited with a critical introduction (Simla, India: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1973); Ismail K. Poonawala, “Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Works and the Sources,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 36.1 (1973): 109–15; idem, “A Reconsideration of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Madhhab,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 37 (1974): 572–79; Wilferd Madelung, “The Sources of Ismāʿīlī Law,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 35.1 (1976): 29–40; Ismail K. Poonawala, Biobibliography of Ismaʿili Literature (Malibu, California, 1977); Wadad al-Qadi, “An Early Fatimid Political Document,” Studia Islamica 48 (1978): 71–108; Ismail K. Poonawala, “Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Ismāʿīlī Jurisprudence,” in Farhad Daftary (ed.), Medieval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 117–43; Sumaiya A. Hamdani, Between Revolution and State: The Path to Fatimid Statehood. Qadi al-Nuʿman and the Construction of Fatimid Legitimacy (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006); Agostino Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence: Law under the Fatimids. A critical edition of the Arabic text and English translation of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Minhāj al-farāʾiḍ (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 5–42.
3 Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Maḥāsin Yūsuf ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhirah fī mulūk Miṣr wa-l-Qāhirah, 16 vols. (Cairo: al-Hayʾah al-Miṣriyyah al-ʿĀmmah, 1963–71), 4:106–7.
4 Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence, 18.
5 It is also possible that al-Nuʿmān’s father was dissimulating, using adherence to the Ḥanafī legal madhhab as a cover for secret adherence to Ismaʿili Shiʿism.
6 Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, 46–48; Ismail K. Poonawala, “Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and Ismaʿili Jurisprudence,” in Farhad Daftary (ed.), Medieval Ismaʿili History and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 119–20.
7 Madelung, “The Sources of Ismāʿīlī Law,” 29–40.
8 Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ, ed. Muḥammad Kāẓim Raḥmatī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī, 2007).
9 Kitāb al-Iqtiṣār, ed. Muḥammad Wāḥid Mīrzā (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1957); ed. Tāmir ʿĀrif (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1996).
10 Al-Urjūzah al-mukhtārah, ed. Ismail Kurbanhusayn Poonawala (Montreal: Islamic Studies Institute, McGill University, 1970).
11 Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence, 29–33.
12 Introduction to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, The Pillars of Islam (Daʿāʾim al-Islam): Vol. I. Acts of Devotion and Religious Observances, trans. A. A. A. Fyzee and Ismail Poonawala (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), v. Hamdani reports that the dates 347/958 and 349/960 have been suggested. Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, 64.
13 Poonawalla, “Ismāʿīlī Jurisprudence,” 123–24.
14 al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, The Epistle of the Eloquent Clarification Concerning the Refutation of Ibn Qutaybah, ed. Avraham Hakim (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
15 Hakim, Introduction to Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, The Epistle of Eloquent Clarification, 4–6.
16 Al-Shāfiʿī’s Risālah has been translated in the Library of Arabic Literature as The Epistle on Legal Theory, ed. and trans. Joseph E. Lowry (New York: NYU Press, 2013).
17 Poonawala, “Ismāʿīlī Jurisprudence,” 127.
18 The Pillars of Islam (Daʿāʾim al-Islam): Vol. I. Acts of Devotion and Religious Observances, Vol. II. Laws Pertaining to Human Intercourse, by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, trans. A. A. A. Fyzee, completely revised and annotated by Ismail Poonawala (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002–4).
19 Ibn Shahrāshūb, Maʿālim al-ʿulamāʾ, 161.
20 Poonawala, “al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Works and the Sources,” 114–15.
21 Muḥsin al-Amīn, Aʿyān al-shīʿah, 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Taʿāruf, 1984), 10:223–24.
22 Ismail K. Poonawala, “A Reconsideration of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Madhhab,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 37 (1974): 572–79, esp. 572; Madelung, Review of Sumaiya A. Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, in Journal of Islamic Studies 18 (2007): 421–22.
23 A. A. A. Fyzee, “Shiʿi Legal Theories,” in Majid Khadduri and Herbert J. Liebesny, Law in the Middle East, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1955), 124–27.
24 A. A. A. Fyzee, Compendium of Fatimid Law (Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1969), xxvii-xxx.
25 Shamoon T. Lokhandwalla, The Origins of Ismaili Law, D. Phil. thesis, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, 1951.
26 Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, 84–86.
27 Cilardo, The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence, 22–24.
28 Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, 85.
29 See Joseph E. Lowry, “Early Islamic Exegesis as Legal Theory: How Qurʾānic Wisdom (Ḥikma) Became the Sunna of the Prophet,” in Natalie B. Dohrmann and David Stern (eds.), Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange: Comparative Exegesis in Context (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 139–60.
30 For a discussion of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s justification of the Imams’ authority in Daʿāʾim al-Islām on the basis of Qurʾanic verses, see Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, 68–70.
31 See Hamdani, Between Revolution and State, 72–74.
32 On the religious authority of the caliphs, see Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph (Cambridge: Cambridge University