This chapter discusses the question of menstruating women and their exclusion (or otherwise) from mosques as featured in the al-Minhāj of the massively influential jurist Muḥy al-Dīn al-Nawawī (d. 676/1278), along with subsequent commentaries (sing. sharḥ) and glosses (pl. ḥawāshī) on his work. Certain religious duties (such as prayer and fasting) are not permitted during a woman’s menstrual period; sexual intercourse is also forbidden for her; more controversially, visiting (or passing through) the mosque is also (for some) forbidden (or at least discouraged). The text excerpted in this chapter explores various positions on the subject and the arguments for and against them put forward by past jurists of the school. Some space is taken up by an extended discussion of analogous cases to that of a menstruating woman entering a mosque.

This chapter explores the purity and licitness of a range of foodstuffs as discussed in the al-Mabsūṭ of the seminal Twelver jurist and theologian Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067). The chapter contextualises these discussions in terms of the author’s views on legal theory. The criteria for distinguishing clean from unclean foodstuffs, the discussion of their ritual purity and the frequent reference to considerations of custom (ʿurf), evidence an underlying concern with the need to adapt legal rulings to changing circumstances. Al-Mabsūṭ is partly an attempt to respond to Sunnī arguments that Twelver legal reasoning was unsystematic and innocent of the subtleties of legal theory. Throughout the Mabsūṭ, al-Ṭūsī does not name his sources but prefers to refer to the ‘majority’ of scholars, the ‘minority,’ ‘some’ jurists and various anonymous ‘opponents.’ This comparative aspect is an important feature of the work.