Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 November 2025
Chapter 3 focuses on Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s theorization of maṣlaḥa, one of the two core features of his legal philosophy. I first sketch the evolution of maṣlaḥa in the Shāfiʿī school in the centuries before Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām and then analyze his own theory of maṣlaḥa, its underlying moral philosophy, its legal normativity, and its debt to Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s Khurasani Shāfiʿī predecessors. The chapter also considers the challenges to the law’s rationality and morality in the Damascene milieu that likely motivated Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s development of his theory of maṣlaḥa.
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