A tale of two Ahkams

Christopher Melchert in 2010 evaluated two titles "Ahkam al-Sultaniya".

The first - he argues - was by Abu Ya'la al-Farra, not to be confused with the musnad-author Mawsili. Abu Ya'la wrote a compendium of Hanbali law for caliph al-Qadir, r. 381-422 / 991-1031. He elsewhere refuted al-Ash'ari, a mainstream Sunnite. Melchert thinks Abu Ya'la may have had more time for the Mu'tazila.

By then, another Muslim jurist had already established himself: Mawardi, sixteen years senior.

Mawardi's Akham al-Sultaniya consistently parallels Abu Ya'la's - b.t.w. not by plagiary: he will say "it has been said" during these parallels, where his later tradents don't delete it for space. Mawardi although a Shafi'i himself infused Hellenistic, Iranian, and - like Abu Ya'la - Mu'tazili thought into his work; less so in his Ahkam however. This one's work piqued the interest of the Muslim world at large and has stayed in print. Indeed, his Ahkam piqued as far as the French and English worlds, since it has been translated into both. Abu Ya'la got copied, if at all, by Hanbalis; the Ahkam being among the survivors, and even that not to the West (yet).

Because Mawardi was older than Abu Ya'la, a lively debate ensued in Islam over which one wrote first, carrying on to our times among the Orientalists. I think, though, that Melchert has the best of it.