This paper will demonstrate that the Twelver Shīʿī positive law was elaborated from legal materials common to its Sunnī counterpart. In previous research, E. Kohlberg and H. Modarressi, who contributed much to the study of formative periods of Shīʿī jurisprudence, just as H. Motzki did with regard to that of the Sunnīs, made it clear that the two legal systems developed along parallel courses in Ḥijāz and Iraq, the two early learning centers of Islamic law. However, they never discussed the positive law itself. Thus, it remains unclear how the Twelvers, the majority party among the Shīʿīs, elaborated their body of law and how it relates to the Sunnī positive law fi nally articulated by the four schools of law. In an attempt to answer this question, we focus on early debates on khiyār al-majlis, i.e. the option either of the contracting parties has to cancel a contract so long as they have not left the place where it was concluded. The view in favor of the option originated in Medina and found support among the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth (traditionalists), with whom the Shāfi ʿīs and the Ḥanbalīs sided, as against the Ḥanafīs and the Mālikī majority. Twelver Shīʿī jurisprudence was possibly influenced by both sides, but the overwhelming majority followed the Medinese view as attributed to the Imāms (the sixth Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in particular) by Kufan Shīʿī or pro-Shīʿī traditionalists, who seemed to have owed much to Sunnī ḥadīth materials, as do the only two prophetic ḥadīths in “the Four Books”—both related by al-Ṣādiq. It appears that a Twelver Shīʿī element regarding the khiyār of the purchaser of animals was upheld by al-Ṣādiq himself, as opposed to his Sunnī Medinese contemporaries who limited the seller’s liability to defects in slaves.

This paper aims to examine the blue-painted pottery from all sites across Egypt and Egyptianized cities outside the Nile valley, and to discuss how its production centers were developed in the New Kingdom. The examination shows that, from the reign of Amenhotep II in mid-Eighteenth Dynasty through the Amarna Period in the late Eighteenth Dynasty, the find-spots of blue-painted pottery were essentially restricted to royal residential centers, such as Memphis, Amarna and Thebes. These provenances suggest that they were manufactured particularly in a few royal workshops. While, in subsequent periods, the fi nd-spots became widespread across Egypt, and spread out to neighboring regions. From the Post-Amarna Period at the end of Eighteenth Dynasty to Nineteenth Dynasty, the blue-painted pottery was still found from the main administrative centers or royal residential cities, such as Qantir, Memphis and Thebes, but they also became known from local administrative centers, including Groub, Asyut, Abydos and Elephantine. Furthermore, the locally made blue-painted pottery appeared from the Syro-Palestinian region and the area on Egypt’s Libyan border. If we compare fabrics, forms and designs of blue-painted pottery from these sites, some marked diff erences can be recognized, and they indicate that the blue-painted pottery was manufactured in workshops at each site. Hitherto, little is known about the development of blue-painted pottery manufacturing centers during New Kingdom, since the previous studies had been conducted by using fi nds from diff erent sites and periods separately. The present study, dealing with materials from the entire country and its outer regions, reveals that the blue-painted pottery production centers came to increase just after the Amarna Period which is well known as a signifi cant epoch of history, society, religion and art in New Kingdom Egypt.