ABSTRACT

No legal tradition begins or exists in a vacuum. 1 Islamic law, like any other legal tradition, began as (and continues to be) a fusion of legal traditions. Thus, the story of Islamic law begins before Islam began, in the legally pluralist environment of its beginning. This legal environment will be explored in two overlapping geographic spaces. First, I will focus on the Arabian Peninsula, the proximate surrounding of the Islamic movement’s beginnings. Second, I will refer to the diverse legal traditions of ‘Near Eastern’ 2 legal culture, of which Arabian legal traditions were a part. 3 As for the temporal scope, I will concentrate on the early seventh century, specifically, the decades that immediately preceded the Islamic movement; thus, I will not include ancient ‘Near Eastern’ legal traditions (such as the laws of Hammurabi). 4 The basic premise of this chapter is that late antique Muslims built and modified their legal traditions while adapting their antecedent (pre-Islamic) and their neighboring legal traditions. Pre-Islamic laws became Islamic and fused with new laws in a process that may be likened to a craft: the artwork of Islamic legal recycling. 5