The Legal Efficacy of taqiyya Acts in Imāmī Jurisprudence: ‛Alī al-Karakī ’s al-Risāla fi l-taqiyya
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/alqantara.2013.015Keywords:
Imāmī Shī‛a, Dissimulation, Taqiyya, Shī‛ī jurisprudence, ‛Alī al-KarakīAbstract
The Imāmī Shī‛a are particularly associated with the doctrine of dissimulation (taqiyya). Generally speaking, Imāmi jurists allowed believers to act in contravention to the (true) Sharī‛a in circumstances of taqiyya. For these permitted transgressions there was no punishment, sinfulness or required repetition or compensation, provided the legal actors stayed within some stipulated boundaries. In the tenth/sixteenth century, the famous Arab jurist ‛Alī al-Karakī introduced an innovation in the Shī‛ī legal rules of taqiyya, devising a large category of taqiyya generated acts for which there may be no sin, but there was still a legal transgression, and hence the possible requirement to repeat or compensate for the acts’ commission. In this article I translate and provide an explanatory commentary on his “Treatise on Dissimulation”, and analyse some of the reactions to it in later Shī‛ī jurisprudence.
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