BOOK: James E. BALDWIN, Islamic Law and Empire in Ottoman Cairo (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). ISBN 9781474432139, $29.95

(Source: Oxford University Press)

Oxford University Press has just published the paperback edition of a book on Islamic law in Ottoman Cairo.

ABOUT THE BOOK

What did Islamic law mean in the early modern period, a world of great Muslim empires? Often portrayed as the quintessential jurists' law, to a large extent it was developed by scholars outside the purview of the state. However, for the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, justice was the ultimate duty of the monarch, and Islamic law was a tool of legitimation and governance. James E. Baldwin examines how the interplay of these two conceptions of Islamic law - religious scholarship and royal justice - undergirded legal practice in Cairo, the largest and richest city in the Ottoman provinces. Through detailed studies of the various formal and informal dispute resolution institutions and practices that formed the fabric of law in Ottoman Cairo, his book contributes to key questions concerning the relationship between the shari'a and political power, the plurality of Islamic legal practice, and the nature of centre-periphery relations in the Ottoman Empire.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James E. Baldwin is Lecturer in Empires of the Early Modern Muslim World at Royal Holloway, University of London.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Abbreviations

Note on transliteration and dates

Introduction

1. A Brief Portrait of Cairo under Ottoman Rule

2. Cairo's Legal System: Institutions and Actors

3. Royal Justice: The Divan-i Hümayun and the Diwan al-Ali

4. Government Authority, the Interpretation of Fiqh, and the Production of Applied Law

5. The Privatization of Justice: Dispute Resolution as a Domain of Political Competition

6. A Culture of Disputing: How Did Cairenes Use the Legal System?

Conclusion: Ottoman Cairo's legal system and grand narratives

Appendix: Examples of Documents Used in this Study

Notes

Map: Cairo in the Eighteenth Century

Glossary

Sources and Works Cited

Index

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