ABSTRACT
The current status of the sharīʿah disciplines, be they ḥadīth, uṣūl al-fiqh or tafsīr, does not seem to be particularly encouraging as far as any fundamental changes to their existing paradigms are concerned. Once the sharīʿah disciplines were developed and reached their maturity in the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, they generally lost their vitality and creativity over time. Only rarely did scholars ‘test the waters’ and challenge the existing paradigm. Confrontations between tradition and reassessment of that tradition were usually won by the established order.
