Image: An excerpt from Sharḥ Shamsīyah maʻa arbaʻ nusakh, Garrett no. 349L. Courtesy of Princeton University Library.
This project examines the Islamic legal principle of rukhṣah (legal concession), exploring how Muslim jurists from the medieval through the early modern periods conceptualized and applied legal concessions in response to hardship, ignorance, coercion, and moral constraint. Moving beyond the published legal canon, the study draws on largely understudied manuscript collections from Central Asia, a major center of Ḥanafī jurisprudence between the fifth/eleventh and twelfth/eighteenth centuries. These sources illuminate regional contributions to Islamic legal thought and practice, enabling the project to investigate how jurists defined and classified rukhṣah, linked it to questions of moral responsibility, assessed the distinctive role of Central Asian Ḥanafī scholars in these debates, and translated these principles into legal opinions (fatāwā). During his trip to Princeton University supported by the Mosafer fellowship, Hasan conducted research on unpublished Central Asian manuscripts housed in the Garrett Collection.