'Abd al-Rahman b. 'Amr al-Awza'i

(Hardback)

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Abd al-Rahman b. Amr al-Awzai (c.707774) was Umayyad Syrias most significant jurist. He was part of a generation of scholars who began the process of creating legal and other structures for the preservation and dissemination of religious knowledge. Despite being intimately associated with the Umayyad regime, he not only survived the Abbasid revolution, but continued to exert an influence on legal and theological matters in the new era. In this he was unique. Examining al-Awzais pre-revolutionary success and post-revolutionary legacy, Steven C. Judd sheds light on this often overlooked figure and, in so doing, challenges the prevailing narrative that focuses on the Abbasids and Iraq to the detriment of Umayyad Syria. The immediate impact of al-Awzai may have been short-lived, but his influence on aspects of Islamic law, particularly the laws of war, endures to this day.

Reviews

Despite the fragmentary evidence at his disposal, Judd has given us a nuanced and well-rounded portrait of the life and teaching of an important but largely neglected jurist and theologian of the formative period of Islamic legal thought.

-- R. Stephen Humphreys, Professor Emeritus of History and Islamic Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Author Bio

Steven Judd is Professor of Middle East History at Southern Connecticut State University. He has been studying early Islamic law and theology, especially during the Umayyad period, for over twenty years, and is the author of Religious Scholars and the Umayyads. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.