Chapter 1 describes the restoration of Damascus in the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries under successive Seljuk, Zangid, and Ayyubid dynasties, with a focus on the revival of religious and intellectual life in the city through the patronage of political elites and the influx of scholars from other parts of the Muslim world. The chapter traces the formation of two competing Shāfiʿī legal traditions in Damascus. The dominant and longer-established tradition was formalist, traditionalist, and transmission-oriented, and it combined centuries-old indigenous Damascene scholarly culture with the Iraqi Shāfiʿī tradition, which had taken root in Damascus starting in the second half of the fifth/eleventh century. The second minority tradition drew on the Khurasani strand of Shāfiʿism, which had arrived in Damascus in the second half of the sixth/twelfth century, and it was more analytical, exploratory, and rationalist in orientation.

Chapter 2 examines Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s life in Damascus, with an emphasis on his intellectual formation. I reconstruct his formative influences in the Damascene milieu to show that he was a prominent representative of Khurasani Shāfiʿism who was linked to that tradition through his teachers, the works he studied and taught, and the ideas of leading Khurasani Shāfiʿīs that he adopted and transformed. Beyond shedding light on Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s life, the biographies of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām, his teachers, and his contemporaries illuminate the politics of Ayyubid state patronage and call into question the depiction of post-Abbasid scholars on the state payroll as quietist and obsequious to the political establishment.

Chapter 6 traces the influence of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s legal philosophy both during his lifetime and after his death. Its impact is visible in the scholarship of his students and in the continuing transmission, circulation, and teaching of his ideas and writings across regions and legal schools. I attribute the enduring appeal of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s legal philosophy to the novel legal concepts and forms of legal reasoning that he introduced and developed and that were subsequently taken up by his students and their intellectual descendants. These concepts have given rise to dedicated literatures that evolved into diverse genres whose genealogies, I argue, can be traced back to Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s Qawāʿid.

Chapter 5 returns to Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s biography to examine his attempts to embody, apply, and disseminate his legal philosophy among diverse classes: scholars, students of the law, and a non-specialist public in Damascus and later in Cairo, where he retired. I demonstrate that Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s public activism and frequent embroilment in political controversy are best understood as manifestations of these efforts. I outline the connections between his legal philosophy and the socioreligious goals he pursued, highlighting the continuity between his theoretical scholarship and his embodied activism.

The commentary examines 2 Peter in 7 major divisions (1:1-2; 1:3-12; 1:13-21; 2:11-11; 2:12-22; 3:1-13; 3:14-18), arranged through an analysis of rhetorical, theological, and discourse structures. The major challenge of the letter are false teachers whose denial of the return of Christ and libertinism pose threats to 2 Peter’s audience. The solution of the letter is to proclaim the surety of the judgment which God will bring on the ungodly, false teachers, included, and to urge its audience to continue pursuit of transformative communion with God in the hope of the salvation and renewal which the Day of the Lord and coming kingdom will bring. Attention is given throughout to historical, cultural, rhetorical, linguistic, and theological dimensions of the letter which help readers appreciate its message in its ancient context and its relevance for Christians today.