Abstract
Recent scholarship has emphasized the contributions of the great Maliki jurist Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi (d. 684/1285) to Islamic legal thought. However, al-Qarafi's compilation of legal maxims and distinctions, al-Furug, has not yet been studied, nor has the collection of his teacher, the prominent Shafi'i jurist Ibn 'Abd al-Salam (d. 660/1262), known as al-Qawa'id al-kubra. Furthermore, the original thought of Ibn 'Abd al-Salam and his formative influence on al-Qarafi have been understated. This article compares their two works to demonstrate that al-Qarafi based his collection in large part on Ibn 'Abd al-Salam's al-Qawdid and it examines the techniques that al-Qarafi used, which included reordering, refining, and supplementing bon owed maxims, and anonymizing references to his teacher. Most salient, however, is al-Qarafi's "Malikization" of maxims, which entailed replacing Shafi'i doctrines and authorities with their Maliki counterparts and deploying maxims to defend Maliki doctrines. The article concludes by explaining al-Qarafi's authorial choices in light of his Maliki affiliation and the politics between the legal schools in Mamluk Cairo.