of Research Companions. Although there was no paucity of introductions to Islamic law preceding it, nor will this one be the last, we felt that an approach like the one we envisaged was altogether missing. We proposed to Ashgate to present classical Islamic law through a historiographical introduction to and analysis of the Western scholarship and key debates that have formed the field and continue to provoke new ways of thinking about long-standing issues in this increasingly relevant and popular discipline. By teaching the basics of the history of Islamic law through a linear study of the research that unearthed it, we wanted to provide for both the student and advanced scholar a real research companion, in the very sense of the word. Our Companion is meant to open their eyes to the challenges posed by past, sometimes flawed scholarship, to the magnitude of milestones that have been achieved in reinterpreting and revising at one time current ideas, and ultimately to a thorough conceptual understanding of the subject at hand. Chapter 1 comprises an introduction that defines the nature of the Sharia in comparison and contrast to Western law, explaining the moral, religious, and cultural aspects that stand in the way of Islamic law being seen as a veritable legal system in the family of laws. It is followed by seven historiographical chapters that survey secondary literature on the biggest questions that have animated the field of Islamic law since its beginnings—Chapter 2 treats the question of its origins; Chapter 3, its divine sources, their authenticity and historicity; Chapter 4, the singular Islamic school of jurisprudence (madhhab) and its development; Chapter 5, the emergence and genre of legal theory (u??l al-fiqh); Chapter 6, the role of the Islamic judge and jurist; and Chapters 7 and 8, the relationship between the state and Sharia, in early and Ottoman times respectively. Combined, these seven chapters present an introduction to the history of the Islamic legal system and to the imperfect or pioneering studies that unearthed it, uncovering and resolving the dichotomies of applied vs ideal, secular vs religious, human vs divine that characterize the last century of thinking in the field (and can still be found fallaciously today). Following the historiographical first section, the next six chapters delve into an exposition of the substantive law. The rules relating to legal status, family law, socio-economic justice, penal law, constitutional authority, and the law of war are presented and discussed in the context of premodern juristic thinking. This section is followed by three chapters that treat the appropriation of Sharia after the advent of the colonial enterprise—a chapter on the colonial state, one on the nation state, and a final one on the re-Islamization process of national legal systems, as ongoing in, for example, northern Nigeria today. A final section contains four chapters devoted to contemporary debates on the relevance and role of Sharia relating to finance, Muslims living in non-Muslim-majority countries, modern governance, and the sphere of medical ethics, bringing the reader up to the present day.