La eficacia legal de actos de taqiyya en la jurisprudencia imami: al-Risāla fi l-taqiyya de ‛Alī al-Karakī

The Imāmī Shī‛a are particularly associated with the doctrine of dissimulation ( taqiyya ). Generally speaking, Imāmi jurists allowed believers to act in contravention to the (true) Sharī‛a in circumstances of taqiyya . For these permitted transgressions there was no punishment, sinfulness or required repetition or compensation, provided the legal actors stayed within some stipulated boundaries. In the tenth/sixteenth century, the famous Arab jurist ‛Alī al-Karakī introduced an innovation in the Shī‛ī legal rules of taqiyya , devising a large category of taqiyya generated acts for which there may be no sin, but there was still a legal transgression, and hence the possible requirement to repeat or compensate for the acts’ commission. In this article I translate and provide an explanatory commentary on his “Treatise on Dissimulation”, and analyse some of the reactions to it in later Shī‛ī jurisprudence.