"Harmonizing Similarities" is a study of the legal distinctions (al-fur¿q al- fiqhiyya) literature and its role in the development of the Islamic legal heritage. This book reconsiders how the public performance of Islamic law helped shape legal literature. It identifies the origins of this tradition in contemporaneous lexicographic and medical literature, both of which demonstrated the productive potential of drawing distinctions. Elias G. Saba demonstrates the implications of the legal fur¿q and how changes to this genre reflect shifts in the social consumption of Islamic legal knowledge. The interest in legal distinctions grew out of the performance of knowledge in formalized legal disputations. From here, legal distinctions