عرف، معاشرتی سیاق اور نبوی تشریعی خطاب: منتخب احادیث کا تاریخی و فقہی مطالعہ

Custom, Social Context, and Prophetic Legal Discourse: A Historical and Jurisprudential Study of Selected Hadiths

Abstract

This study examines the complex relationship between custom (ʿurf), social context, and the legal discourse of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through a historical and jurisprudential analysis of selected hadiths. Islamic law is often imagined either as an immutable corpus detached from history or, in some Orientalist accounts, as a retrospective projection of later practice onto the Prophet. This article contends that both overlook the dynamic relationship between revelation and the customary order of seventh-century Arabia: Prophetic legal discourse neither dissolved into custom nor stood aloof from it, but selectively retained, modified, or abrogated existing norms according to the criteria of justice, public interest, and the objectives of the Sharīʿa. Employing a historical-analytical and comparative methodology, the article analyses eight representative reports: the ruling on Hind bint ʿUtba’s maintenance claim, the report on the measure of Medina and the weight of Mecca, the postponed reconstruction of the Kaʿba, the zakāt al-fiṭr measures and Muʿāwiya’s reinterpretation, the adjudication on damage caused by livestock, the prohibition of garments of notoriety, the report on palm pollination, and the abolition of the usury of the Jāhiliyya. Drawing on classical authorities such as al-Qarāfī, Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Shāṭibī, Ibn ʿĀbidīn and Shāh Walī Allāh, alongside modern scholars such as Kamali, Hallaq, Johansen and Fazlur Rahman, the study develops a threefold typology of the Prophetic engagement with custom, namely affirmation (iqrār), modification (taʿdīl), and abrogation (ibṭāl), and proposes a decision framework that distinguishes normative legislation (tashrīʿ) from context-bound administration. The findings show that the maxim “custom is arbitrator” (al-ʿāda muḥakkama) is anchored in Prophetic practice itself, and that distinguishing the immutable from the variable requires attention to the text’s social horizon, whose neglect yields both rigid literalism and arbitrary modernism. The article concludes by indicating its relevance for contemporary legal reasoning.