Codicology and the Transformation of Islamic Law: A First Assessment of the Tarjīḥāt al-bayyināt in the Princeton Garrett Collection

Abstract

In Islamic law, preponderance (tarjīḥ)—a practical method for mujtahids to resolve legal contradictions (taʿāruḍ) between proofs—has been known in the uṣūl tradition from at least the 10th-century jurist al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 370/981). Yet, it is in several 17th and 18th-century Arabic and Ottoman manuscripts of Princeton’s Garrett Collection that we encounter summary-like lists labelled “tarjīḥāt al-bayyināt” (“TB s”), which succinctly compile the complex rules of preponderance. Organized into three-columned lists, on loose leaves, as annotations in the margin or separate textual units, the TB s follow a grammatical and visual layout that made them predictable and recognizable for manuscript readers. This paper examines the TB s as a codicological phenomenon, arguing that they served as a shorthand for legal practitioners familiar with evidentiary law and that their presence suggests a broader transformative process of readers’/legal practitioners’ relationship with codices of positive law at this critical moment in the history of Islamic law.