Tawaqquf in Islamic Legal Theory

Abstract

This study examines the place and role of tawaqquf in the Islamic intellectual tradition in general and in Islamic legal theory in particular. While tawaqquf appears across a range of disciplines, it has remained largely neglected and has not received an independent treatment in studies of Islamic intellectual history or in the academic literature on Islamic legal theory. Starting with a conceptual mapping of tawaqquf and an exposition of its occurrences across various disciplines and showing the extent to which it was held and sustained, the study goes on to examine how tawaqquf was adopted and contested within Islamic legal theory. For this purpose, it focuses on two central questions of Islamic legal theory in which tawaqquf was most extensively debated among scholars of Uṣūl al-Fiqh, the questions of the significations of the imperative mood and general expressions. By taking two representative figures from the formative period of Uṣūl al-Fiqh—the Ashʿarite theologian cum Mālikī jurist Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013) and the Ẓāhirī jurist Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064)—the study examines both a defense and a critique of tawaqquf. The study points to the presence of a considerable space within the Islamic intellectual tradition in which uncertainty and non-determinate positions were accommodated. At the same time, the study brings out a distinctive feature of Uṣūl al-Fiqh, where commitments to or rejections of tawaqquf were shaped by broader assumptions about the nature of language, law, and theology, yet were articulated within a shared argumentative space provided by language.

Date of Award	2026
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	HBKU College of Islamic Studies