Playing with the Canon: Ḥanafī Legal Riddles of the Mamluk Period

Abstract

The article investigates the history of the genre of Ḥanafī legal riddles (alghāz fiqhiyya) during the Mamluk period (648/1250–923/1517). It argues that legal riddles did not constitute ‘useless’ knowledge as earlier scholarship on Islamicate learned riddles had assumed. In contrast, the article shows that the Ḥanafī texts under investigation fulfilled important functions in the transmission of canonized legal scholarship, the performance of madhhab identities, the establishment and maintenance of scholarly prestige and patronage relationships, and the legitimation of political rule. The article demonstrates that in order to fully understand processes of transmission and the canonization of legal knowledge, we must broaden our focus to encompass more than the bodies of knowledge used in qāḍī courts and taught in institutions of higher learning such as madrasas. Instead, we should be open to the possibility that Islamic legal learning and its textual tradition were also shaped by institutions and practices that catered at least as much to the curiosity and aesthetic expectations of the people involved in them as to their desire for practically useful knowledge.