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1 UCLA J. Islamic & Near E. L. 47 (2001-2002)
On Dating Malik's Muwatta

handle is hein.journals/ucjicneal1 and id is 53 raw text is: ON DATING MALIK'S MUWATTA Wael B. Hallaq* Dedicated to Hermann Landolt Modem scholarly discourse on the early development of Islamic law is almost exclusively rooted in what may be termed the founding texts of the discipline, said to have been written during the second/eighth century and the early part of the third/ninth.' This discourse assumes these texts to have originated in the periods when their putative authors lived. Thus, Shaybani's works, for instance, are believed to have been authored sometime before 189/ 804, the year this jurist died.2 Similarly, the Muwatta, assumed to be the actual work of Malik, is traditionally dated to the period before the latter's death in 179/795. Indirect, internal evidence points to no later than the year 150/767 as a date of composition - that is, if we go by conventional wis- dom. However, in a book published in 1993, Norman Calder challenged the conventional dating of these juristic works, arguing that the heavy editorial and redactional processes they had undergone rendered these texts the prod- uct of much later periods, in some cases a century or more after their as- sumed date of composition.3 Calder's argument, stated somewhat categorically, poses a set of formi- dable questions that must be addressed by Islamicist legal historians, for it rests upon a thesis that can be either accepted or rejected, but surely not ignored; since acceptance of Calder's new, but drastically different, dating will perforce dictate significantly different findings about this important pe- riod. To date, however, there has been virtually no support for Calder's * Professor of Islamic Law at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. I Among the most important of these are ABU YUsuF YAQUB, KITAB AL-KHARAJ (Ihsan Abba ed., 1985); MUHAMMAD B. AL-HASAN AL-SHAYBANI, KITAB AL-ASL AL-MA'RUF BIL- MABSUT (Abu al-Wafa al-Afghani ed., 1990); MUHAMMAD B. AL-HASAN AL-SHAYBANI, AL- JAMI AL-KABIR (Abu al-Wafa al-Afghani ed., 1937); MUHAMMAD B. IDRIS AL-SHAFII, AL- UMM (Mahmud Matarji ed., 1413/1993); Ibrahim al-Muzani, 9 Mukhtasar, in AL-UMM (Mah- mud Matarji ed., 1413/1993); IBN SA'ID AL-TANUKHI SAHNUN, AL-MUDAWWANA AL-KUBRA (Ahmad Abd al-Salam ed., 1415/1994). 2 See generally, AL-SHAYBANI, supra. 3 NORMAN CALDER, STUDIES IN EARLY MUSLIM JURISPRUDENCE (1993). 47

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