And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the LMU in Munich, online at

www history of philosophy. net. Today's episode, Laying Down the Law,

Ibn Hazm and Islamic legal theory.

We're almost 150 episodes into this series of podcasts, so you'd think that by now we would have

covered pretty much every branch of philosophy from aesthetics to zoology. But there's at least one that I haven't discussed much yet. Philosophy of law. We have touched on the subject of law now and again. For instance when talking about courtroom rhetoric in ancient Athens, or more recently,

when we looked at the sources of law in Judaism, and then again in Alfarabi's political philosophy.

As you might remember, he gave jurisprudence the role of extrapolating from laws laid down by an original legislator who should be a prophet philosopher, King.

Alfa Rabi was there alluding to the practices and function of Islamic jurisprudence,

which in Arabic is called FIC.

Now we're going to take a closer look at Islamic law,

which is more relevant to the history of philosophy than you might think.

Some of the figures we've already examined,

and some who are yet to come were trained in and contributed to the legal tradition alongside their philosophical accomplishments.

Besides, Islamic legal theory itself is philosophically interesting.

A genre of literature devoted to the principles of jurisprudence or

Osul al-Fich explores the sources of legal obligation and the epistemological question of how a jurist can arrive at principal decisions.

And most importantly, the topic is a rich potential source of puns.

So in this episode, which is available on a free trial basis,

we're going courting.

I plead guilty to a weakness for this sort of humour, so sue me.

Towards the end of the episode, I will call weakness for this sort of humor, so sue me.

Towards the end of the episode, I will call our first witness for the intellectual history

...