Codicology and the Transformation of Islamic Law

Abstract In Islamic law, preponderance ( tarjīḥ )—a practical method for mujtahid s to resolve legal contradictions ( taʿāruḍ ) between proofs—has been known in the uṣūl tradition from at least the 10th-century jurist al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 370/981). Yet, it is in several 17th and 18th-century Arabic and Ottoman manuscripts of Princeton’s Garrett Collection that we encounter summary-like lists labelled “tarjīḥāt al-bayyināt” (“ TB s”), which succinctly compile the complex rules of preponderance. Organized into three-columned lists, on loose leaves, as annotations in the margin or separate textual units, the TB s follow a grammatical and visual layout that made them predictable and recognizable for manuscript readers. This paper examines the TB s as a codicological phenomenon, arguing that they served as a shorthand for legal practitioners familiar with evidentiary law and that their presence suggests a broader transformative process of readers’/legal practitioners’ relationship with codices of positive law at this critical moment in the history of Islamic law.