Contract session (Majlis al-ʿAqd) in Islamic law of obligations (The case of the Hanafi school)

The aim of this study, titled "Contract Session (Majlis al-ʿAqd) in Islamic Law of Obligations (The Case of the Hanafi School)," is to develop a comprehensive theory of the contract session by collecting and systematizing the dispersed rulings related to it in the classical literature of the Hanafī school. The need for such a study underscores its significance. Due to the breadth of the subject the scope of the study has been limited to the field of the law of obligations and the Hanafī school. The study employs the document analysis method as its data collection technique and follows a theory-building pattern one of the qualitative research methodologies. In this context, a total of 22 contracts found in classical Hanafī sources were examined and among their conditions of formation (in'iqād), validity (ṣihha), enforceability (nafādh) and bindingness (luzūm) those related to the contract session were identified. Drawing on the impact of the session on these contracts, a theoretical framework was constructed. According to this theory, the contract session may encompass a two-stage process. The first stage consists of the period between offer and acceptance during which the contract is formed and which constitutes the core of the session. The second stage is where certain validity conditions that must be fulfilled within the session are met, or where invalidating elements that render the contract defective (fāsid) are rectified thereby restoring its validity. Moreover, based on the findings of this study, a new classification of contracts in terms of their connection with the session may be proposed. According to this classification, contracts can be divided into four categories: those in which a validity session is generally present, those in which a validity session exists only in the case of exchange, those in which the validity session exists solely for the purpose of rectification and those in which no validity session is required.