IJTIHĀD. The Arabic word ijtihād, which in ordinary usage means "strenuous endeavor," has become in the Muslim scholarly tradition a technical term for the endeavor of an individual scholar to derive a rule of divine law (sharīʿah) directly from the recognized sources of that law without any reliance upon the views of other scholars. Since these sources consist preeminently of texts, namely the Qurʾān, the ḥadīth (narratives recording the divinely sanctioned custom of the Prophet), and dicta expressing the consensus of Muslim scholars, ijtihād is a fundamentally text-related activity embracing two principal tasks: the authentication of texts and the interpretation of texts. These entail not only deliberation upon actual texts but also the working out of appropriate methodological principles. In carrying on ijtihād, a scholar, while not relying for final answers upon other scholars, does interact with...