The Mistaken Prayer Direction

Abstract

AbstractThirteenth-century Shāfiʿī scholars considered their school predecessors to be working towards doctrinal resolution. They saw each generation as consolidating the divergent positions of past generations and slowly inching towards canonization. But the final disputation between al-Shīrāzī and al-Juwaynī suggests that jurists of the 11th century were unruffled by doctrinal indeterminacy. The two jurists tackled a question that had divided Shāfiʿīs since the time of their school eponym: If a person has prayed facing the wrong direction and then realized her mistake, is she obligated to repeat her prayer? While the two jurists took opposite positions and debated with elaborate subtlety, in the end, neither sought resolution in the disputation or in their books of substantive law. Rather, other evidence suggests that both Shāfiʿīs held a preference for retaining doctrinal indeterminacy over questions considered particularly difficult to resolve. The chapter pushes back against claims that doctrinal resolution was the objective of classical jurists’ labours.