This book highlights a number of the major Sufi figures whose writings on legal theory were strongly shaped by their Sufism, showing how they belonged to the same tradition and developed each other’s ideas. The book focuses in particular on Ibn ʿArabī, giving a detailed analysis of his legal thought and revealing his influence on a number of major Sufi figures all the way up to the 19th century. Other key figures whose influence is explored are al-Tirmidhī , al-Shaʿrānī and Ibn Idrīs. This is the first study to give a full picture of the role that Sufi thought played in the revivalist Islamic movements of the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries. This book is not about Sufism. It is about the nature of the Sharīʿa. In the first three centuries of Islam, many scholars believed that juristic differences were rooted in the Sharīʿa’s inherent flexibility. As this pluralistic attitude began to disappear, a number of Sufis defended and developed this idea through the centuries. They aimed to preserve the leniency and simplicity of the Sharīʿa against the complications and restrictions created by many jurists.

Samer Dajani tackles one of the most controversial issues in Islamic intellectual history, the relationship between Sufism and Islamic law. Where others have found tension, he finds creative engagement over a period stretching from the formation of Islamic legal theory down to modern times. This learned and deeply researched book deserves a wide readership. -- Adam Sabra, University of California
A rich work that considerably expands our knowledge of an important yet relatively understudied facet of the thought of Ibn ʿArabī and his followers...this book is a major contribution to our understanding of the essential features and influence of Ibn ʿArabī’s fiqh and deserves a wide readership. -- Fitzroy Morrissey, University of Oxford * JAOS *

Dr Samer Dajani gained his PhD in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS in 2015, before spending a year as a Research Fellow at the Cambridge Muslim College and then working as a lecturer in both Sufism and Modern Islamic Thought at the Muslim College in Ealing, London until 2020. He then stopped teaching to focus on a major new research project, and has given talks on selected subjects from this research at The University of Cambridge, The University of Exeter, SOAS and the annual BRAIS Conference. His publications include ‘Ibn ʿArabī and the Theory of a Flexible Sharīʿa’, in the Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society (2018), ‘The Centrality of Ibn ʿArabī in Popular Ḥadīth Chains’, in the Journal of the Muhyid-din Ibn ʿArabi Society (2017) and a 2013 book, Reassurance for the Seeker: A Biography and Translation of Ṣāliḥ al-Jaʿfarī’s al-Fawāiʾd al-Jaʿfariyya, a Commentary on Forty Prophetic Traditions.