| This study attempts to explain how and why the Twelver Shi'is adopted the guild-based system of jurisprudence first developed by the Sunnis. Drawing on Sunni legal and theological works, it first outlines a theory of legal heresy in Sunni Islam based on the concept of "violating the consensus" (mukhalafat al-ijma'). The study contends that this definition of heresy threatened to exclude Twelver Shi'is from the system of legal education and scholarhsip, and that it provoked a number of reactions which are seen in Shi'i legal scholarship. Using biographical dictionaries, ijazah documents, and works on law and legal methodology, this study argues that Shi'i reactions to Sunni consensus may be seen as falling into three broad categories: rejection of consensus, conformance to consensus, and adoption of consensus. Scholarship on Shi'ism to date suggests that the first category would be the prevalent one, since Shi'ism is seen as a religion of protest inclined to reject the majority. While the rejection of the majority's legal system was a significant theme in Shi'i legal literature, and characterized in particular the Shi'i Akhbari movement, it has not been historically the most important trend. Shi'is often adopted the Shafi'i madhhab in order to participate in the system of Sunni madhhabs, and have furthermore endeavored to establish Twelver Shi'ism as a madhhab on a par with those of the Sunnis. This last trend has been of enormous importance in the history of the development of Shi'i jurisprudence, and began in the late fourth/tenth and early fifth/eleventh centuries with the Shi'i adoption of the concept of consensus. |
