NOTES ON ZAYN AL-DI ¯ N AL-62MILI ¯ ’S MUNYAT AL-MURI ¯ D FI ¯ 2D2B AL-MUFI ¯ D WA-L-MUSTAFI ¯ D DEVIN J. STEWART Emory University Significant numbers of Twelver Shi 6i scholars throughout the pre-modern period studied under Sunni teachers, participated in Sunni scholarly circles, and made use of Sunni scholarship on the religious sciences, including law, theology, and other doctrinally marked fields. The strong historical relationship between Twelver jurists and the Shafi6i madhhab, for example, is evident from the biographies of prominent figures in this tradition, including al-6All:ma al-Eill; (d. 726/1325), al-Shah;d al-Awwal (d. 786/1384), and al-Shah;d al-Th:n; (d. 965/1558) and particularly from references in their works and ij:zas. For example, 6A@ud al-D;n al-I ¯ j;’s (d. 756/1355) commentary on the MukhtaBar of Ibn al-E:jib (d. 646/1249), on uB<l al-fiqh, which became a standard textbook in the Twelver legal tradition, something evident from the large number of commentaries on the work by Twelver scholars. In addition, both medieval and modern scholars have claimed that specific Twelver works derive from, or draw extensively on, specific Sunni works. 1 A detailed comparison of Twelver Shi 6i and Sunni legal manuals has not yet been undertaken to evaluate the extent and contours of this influence in particular cases, though a cursory investigation of the evidence tends to confirm many of the claimed relationships. The present essay, investigating the sources of al-Shah;d al-Th:n;’s Munyat al-mur;df; :d:b al-mufid wa-l-mustaf;d, the most influential manual of pedagogy in the Twelver tradition, provides one example of this larger phenomenon of intellectual borrowing and adaptation across what were often viewed, and continue to be viewed, as rigid sectarian boundaries. Such instances of borrowing are of course not limited to the sixteenth century, to legal literature, or to the Twelver tradition, but were probably widespread in many genres of Islamic literature writ broadly and in many periods, regions, sects, and schools of thought since the explosion 1 Devin J. Stewart, Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shi 6i Responses to the Sunni Legal System (Salt Lake City: Utah University Press, 1998), 61–109. ß The Author (2010). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org Journal of Islamic Studies 21:2 (2010) pp. 235–270 doi:10.1093/jis/etq002