CALL FOR PAPERS: Law, Colonialism and Gender in the Muslim World (Amsterdam: UvA, 19-20 DEC 2024); DEADLINE 1 JUL 2024

(Allard Pierson Mouseum; image source: Wikimedia CommonsWikimedia Commons)

This conference aims to bring together scholars working on the legal history of the Muslim world who focus on the colonial period and are interested in ‘gender-coded law’ (i.e. all legal domains that automatically invoke connotations of gender). Several scholars have implied that imperialism did not affect gender relations in the Muslim world, since family law remained relatively untouched by the colonial powers (Anderson, Buskens, Peters). There are, however, several examples in colonial legal history that point to the influence of imperial powers on gender relations through law. The interdiction of homosexuality in British India (Radics) and the ban on interreligious marriage in the Dutch East-Indies (De Hart) are only two examples of the imperial footprint on gender laws. Moreover, nineteenth-century Western imperialism affected the thinking about gender in the Muslim world (Massad, Cuno, Khouloussy, Surkis). This suggests that contemporary gender-coded laws in Muslim-majority countries cannot be understood without studying the legislation issued by the imperial powers. Academics who work in the field of legal history, gender history and/or social history (or a combination of these) are invited to share their research on the laws that were introduced in the Muslim territories during French, Dutch, British, Russian, or other colonial rule that touch upon gender. Proposals may concern various periods and topics, ranging from property law and land tenure to criminal law and family law. 

The conference will be held at the University of Amsterdam on December 19 and 20, 2024. It will be a small (max. 15 participants) research seminar/workshop. Applications for participation, including 250-word abstracts and a 100-word brief biography should be sent to m.voorhoeve@uva.nl by July 1, 2024. If selected, the conference organization provides for travel and accommodation. The conference will be held at the historical building of the Allard Pierson Museum in the city centre of Amsterdam, which is close to Central Station. 

Suggested paper topics include, but are not limited to: 

• The participation of colonial bureaucrats and local (religious) elites to the formation of colonial gender-coded law 

• Debates on gender-coded law in the press and other sources such as colonial law magazines 

• The circulation of law between the ‘homeland’ and the colonies as between various colonies and empires 

• Crosspollination and circulation of ideas about law and gender within the Muslim world during the Age of Empire/Nahda period 

Contact Information 

dr. Maaike Voorhoeve, Amsterdam School of Historical Studies, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Contact Email m.voorhoeve@uva.nl

More information here.

Source: H-Law.

ROUND TABLE: "What’s Secular About Religious Law? Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Perspectives” with Rushain Abbasi, Orit Malka, and Atria Larson (March 31, University of Stanford, ONLINE)

(Image source: Wikipedia)

The Stanford Center for Law and History and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies are hosting a panel conversation on March 31, “What’s Secular About Religious Law? Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Perspectives.” The hybrid event will feature a discussion between Rushain Abbasi (Stanford Religious Studies), Orit Malka (Taube Center Stanford) and Atria Larson (Saint Louis University).

The panel will be a hybrid event held in-person (Stanford Law School Room 320D) and via Zoom on Thursday, March 31 from 4pm - 5pm (Pacific). As a reminder, we ask that you RSVP for each of our events in advance so that we can provide the Zoom link and for food ordering purposes for those of you who wish to join us in-person.

Current guidelines do not allow us to bring food into events. For those who attend in-person, however, food will be provided at 3:40PM, 20 minutes before the session at a table in Crocker Garden to the left of Room 190 entry doors.

To RSVP, click here. Those who confirm their attendance will receive a separate email containing the link to the event.

ABSTRACT

What makes a legal system “religious” or “secular”? How are the legal traditions of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity distinct from law as it is understood and practiced today? These are some of the questions which will be probed during this scholarly roundtable. In examining the relevance of the idea of the “secular” to premodern “religious” law, this panel aims to interrogate the very idea of “law” through a historical exploration of how law was conceptualized and applied within three distinct premodern religious traditions spanning the Late Antique and late medieval contexts. By bringing these distinct faith traditions into conversation, it is hoped that a more robust understanding of the place of law in history and its function within society may be obtained.

BOOK: Talal AL-ZALEM, Rule-Formulation and Binding Precedent in the Madhhab-Law Tradition. Ibn Quṭlūbughā’s Commentary on The Compendium of Qudūrī (Leiden: Brill, 2016). ISBN: 978-90-04-32283-7, €110.00

(Source: Brill)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Series: Islamicate Intellectual History, Volume: 2

In Rule-Formulation and Binding Precedent in the Madhhab-Law Tradition, Talal Al-Azem argues for the existence of a madhhab-law tradition’ of jurisprudence underpinning the four post-classical Sunni schools of law. This tradition celebrated polyvalence by preserving the multiplicity of conflicting opinions within each school, while simultaneously providing a process of rule formulation ( tarjīḥ) by which one opinion is chosen as the binding precedent ( taqlīd). The predominant forum of both activities, he shows, was the legal commentary. Through a careful reading of Ibn Quṭlūbughā's (d. 879/1474) al-Taṣḥīḥ wa-al-tarjīḥ, Al-Azem presents a new periodisation of the Ḥanafī madhhab, analyses the theory of rule formulation, and demonstrates how this madhhab-law tradition facilitated both continuity and legal change while serving as the basis of a pluralistic Mamluk judicial system. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Talal Al-Azem, DPhil (2011), University of Oxford, is the Mohammed Noah Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. His research focuses on traditions of law and learning in the medieval and early modern Muslim world.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1 
Chapter 1 Authors 23 
A The compendium author: Qudūrī . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 
B The commentator: Ibn Quṭlūbughā . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 
Chapter 2 History 51 
A Ibn Quṭlūbughā’s sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 
B Periodisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 
Period 1: Foundational ‘Ḥanafī’ opinions (ca. 150–200) . . . 57 
Period 2: Formative transmission (ca. 200–300) . . . . . . 58 
Period 3: Classical consolidation (ca. 300–400) . . . . . . 60 
Period 4: Tarjīḥ (ca. 400–650) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 
Period 5: Taṣḥīḥ (ca. 650–870) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 
Who are the ‘latter-day jurists’ (al-muta’akhkhirūn)? . . . . 87 
C Historical geographical patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 
D Periodisation and the typologies of jurists (ṭabaqāt al-fuqahā’) 96 
Chapter 3 Theory 105 
A Ibn Quṭlūbughā’s introduction to al-Taṣḥīḥ wa-al-tarjīḥ . . 108 
B Analysis of the topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 
1 Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 
2 The procedures of rule-determinacy . . . . . . . . . . 125 
3 Judicial discretion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134 
C Arguments for binding precedent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 
1 The ethico-religious argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 
2 The argument from legal-system consistency . . . . . 139 
3 The argument from legal-system coherence . . . . . . 143 
4 The argument from strengthened decision-making . . 145 
5 The argument from predictability . . . . . . . . . . . 145 
viii CO N T E N T S 
6 The argument from historical determinism . . . . . . 146 
D Historical developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 
1 Target audiences: muftis and muftis . . . . . . . . . . 149 
2 Rule-determination (tarjīḥ) vs. rule-review (taṣḥīḥ) . . 150 
3 From monist to pluralistic legal systems . . . . . . . . 153 
4 Madhhab-law: tradition, system, concurrent jurisdictions 154 
E The (lack of) definition of ẓāhir al-riwāya . . . . . . . . . . 157 
Chapter 4 Practice 163 
A Ibn Quṭlūbughā’s practice of rule-review . . . . . . . . . . 163 
B The functional relationships of commentary . . . . . . . . 166 
To resolve a juristic dispute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 
To clarify a point of ambiguity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 
To identify the opinion or the transmission used in the rule formulation 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 
To further expand upon the passage . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 
To identify an editorial problem in the passage itself . . . . 187 
C Employed legal rhetorical reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 
1 Arguments of juristic evidence (dalīl) . . . . . . . . . 190 
2 Arguments of transmission (riwāya) . . . . . . . . . . 192 
3 Arguments of language and logic . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 
4 Arguments from revelation and the early Muslim community 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 
5 Arguments from scholarship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 
6 Justifications from juristic considerations . . . . . . . 202 
7 Justifications from context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 
8 Justifications from exigencies of change and necessity . 209 
9 Justifications of lifting difficulty and facilitating ease . 212 
10 Justifications of preceding juristic authority . . . . . . 214 
D Operative principles of rule-determination . . . . . . . . . 218 
E The degree of congruence between theory and practice . . 229 
Conclusion 235 
Appendices 243 
A The Writings of Qudūrī 245 
B Jurists cited by Ibn Quṭlūbughā 249 
C Works cited by Ibn Quṭlubughā 255 
CO N T E N T S ix 
Works Cited 259 
Index 271

More information with the publisher.

BOOK: Carolyn BAUGH, Minor Marriage in Early Islamic Law (Leiden: Brill, 2017). ISBN: 978-90-04-34483-9, €99.00

(Source: Brill)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Series: Studies in Islamic Law and Society, Volume: 41

In Minor Marriage in Early Islamic Law, Carolyn Baugh offers an in-depth exploration of 8th-13th century legal sources on the marriageability of prepubescents, focusing on such issues as maintenance, sexual readiness, consent, and a father’s right to compel. Modern efforts to resist establishment of a minimum marriage age in countries such as Saudi Arabia rest on claims of early juristic consensus that fathers may compel their prepubescent daughters to marry. This work investigates such claims by highlighting the extremely nuanced discussions and debates recorded in early legal texts. From the works of famed early luminaries to the “consensus writers” of later centuries, each chapter brings new insights into a complex and enduring debate. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carolyn G. Baugh, Ph.D. (2011), University of Pennsylvania, is Assistant Professor of History at Gannon University. In addition to scholarly articles, she has translated Ibn Khaldūn’s treatise on Sufism, Shifāʾ al-sāʾil fī tahdhīb al-masāʾil for the Library of Arabic Literature.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part One: The Early Formative Era 

Chapter One: Contextualizing and Conceptualizing Minor Marriage 

Chapter Two: The Early Compendia 

Chapter Three: Early Ḥanafī Thought 

Chapter Four: Early Mālikī Thought 

Chapter Five: Al-Shāfiʿī 

Part Two; Consensus, Consensus Writing, Post-Formative Era Writing, and Whether Consensus Matters 

Chapter Six: Consensus 

Chapter Seven: Writing Consensus 

Chapter Eight: Post-Formative Era Thought on Minor Marriage 

Conclusion: Does Consensus Matter? 

Appendix: Excerpts from the Early Compendia 

Bibliography 

Index 

More information with the publisher.

BOOK : Samy A. AYOUB, Law, Empire, and the Sultan, (Oxford, 2020) ISBN: 9780190092924, £75.00

                                     (Source : Oxford University Press)

 

Law, Empire, and the Sultan Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Hanafi Jurisprudence

ABOUT THE BOOK:  

-Reconsiders fundamental premises about Ottoman sultanic authority.
-Gives a new perspective on the later development of the Hanafi school of Islamic law in the Ottoman Empire.
-Explains how legal revisions by Muslim jurists of the period were not temporary strategies but rather involved the use of built-in mechanisms to reinterpret Islamic law and keep it relevant to the changing social, political, and economic circumstances of the Ottoman Empire.
-Provides detailed analysis and fresh insights on a wide range of legal issues through careful reading of understudied sources, uncirculated manuscripts, and extensive references to authoritative Hanafi texts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

-Samy Ayoub specializes in Islamic law, modern Middle East law, and law and religion in contemporary Muslim societies. He focuses on issues concerning the interaction between religion and law, and the role of religion in contemporary legal and socio-political systems within a global comparative perspective.

BOOK: Nurit TSAFRIR, Collective Liability in Islam The ‘Aqila and Blood Money Payments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). ISBN 9781108498647, $ 99.99

(Source: CUP)

Cambridge University Press is publishing a new book on the Aqila in the history of Islamic law.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Offering the first close study of the ʿAqila, a group collectively liable for blood money payments on behalf of a member who committed an accidental homicide, Nurit Tsafrir analyses the group's transformation from a pre-Islamic custom to an institution of the Shari'a, and its further evolution through medieval and post medieval Islamic law and society. Having been an essential factor in the maintenance of social order within Muslim societies, the ʿAqila is the intersection between legal theory and practice, between Islamic law and religion, and between Islamic law and the state. Tracing the history of the ʿAqila, this study reveals how religious values, state considerations and social organization have participated in shaping and reshaping this central institution, which still concerns contemporary Muslim scholars.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nurit Tsafrir, Tel-Aviv University

Nurit Tsafrir is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel-Aviv University. She was previously a member of the Israel Institution for Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton University, New Jersey. A specialist in medieval Islam focusing on the Hanafi school of law, she is the author of The History of an Islamic School of Law: The Early Spread of Hanafism (2004).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I. The Contribution of Islamic Values:
1. The modern perspective and the Islamic perspective, and their application to the law of homicide
2. Major modifications of the Islamic law of homicide
3. The 'Āqila's liability for homicide restricted, and justified
Part II. The Contribution of the State Administration:
4. The Dīwān innovation in Umayyad practice
5. From Umayyad practice to Ḥanafī law
6. The Dīwān innovation in Ḥanafī law
Part III. The Contribution of the Persians:
7. The Eastern Iranian Ḥanafī views on the 'Āqila: a presentation
8. The Eastern Iranian Ḥanafī views: the general context
9. The Eastern Iranian Ḥanafī views on the 'Āqila: an examination
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

More info here

BOOK: Nesrine BADAWI, Islamic Jurisprudence on the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Leiden-New York: Brill, 2019). ISBN 978-90-04-41062-6, €154.00

(Source: Brill)

Brill is publishing a new book on the regulation of armed conflict in Islamic jurisprudence.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In Islamic Jurisprudence on the Regulation of Armed Conflict: Text and Context, Nesrine Badawi argues against the existence of a “true” interpretation of the rules regulating armed conflict in Islamic law. In a survey of formative and modern seminal legal works on the subject, the author sheds light on the role played by the sociopolitical context in shaping this branch of jurisprudence and offers a detailed examination of the internal deductive structures of these works.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nesrine Badawi, Ph.D (2011), School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, is an Assistant Professor of Public and International Law at the American University in Cairo. Her work focuses on the regulation of armed conflict in Islamic law.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

 1 How Do We Study Islamic Legal History?

 2 Indeterminacy in Islamic Jurisprudence on the Regulation of Armed Conflict

 3 Primary Concerns of Classical Jurisprudence

1 Islamic Jurisprudence in the Expansive Empire

 1 Al-Shaybānī: a Jurist-Judge

 2 Al-Shāfiʿī and the Exclusionary Project

 3 Conclusion

2 The Muslim World at the Frontiers: Al-Andalus

 Section One: Andalusī Jurisprudence

 1 Al-Andalus: Loss of Muslim Power

 2 Ibn Ḥazm and the Ṭāʿīfa States

 3 The Jurist-Judge in al-Andalus: Ibn Rushd al-Jadd

 4 Remarks on Andalusī Jurisprudence

 Section Two: the Mongol “Threat”

 5 Ibn Taymiyya and “Quasi”-Muslims

3 Mainstream Narratives

 1 Official Institutions

 2 Mainstream Independent Scholarship

 3 Mainstream Scholarship: a New Consensus?

4 Contemporary Militant Approaches

 1 The Complexity of Militant Literature

 2 al-Qāʿida Debated

 3 ISIS: the “Fear Doctrine”

 4 Militant Groups: Concluding Remarks

Conclusion: Authority and the Classical Tradition

 1 Personal Ra⁠ʾy: Employed by Its Critics

 2 Modern Projects: Eclectic Approaches to Classical Legal Authority

 3 Modern Institutions: What Can They Do?

Bibliography

Index

More info here

BOOK: Omar FARAHAT, The Foundation of Norms in Islamic Jurisprudence and Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). ISBN 9781108476768, £ 75.00

(Source: Cambridge University Press)

Cambridge University Press is publishing a new book on classical Islamic law.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this book, Omar Farahat presents a new way of understanding the work of classical Islamic theologians and legal theorists who maintained that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of the norms and values of human actions. Through a reconstruction of classical Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī debates on the nature and implications of divine speech, Farahat argues that the Ashʿarī attachment to revelation was not a purely traditionalist position. Rather, it was a rational philosophical commitment emerging from debates in epistemology and theology. He further argues that the particularity of this model makes its distinctive features helpful for contemporary scholars who defend a form of divine command theory. Farahat's volume thus constitutes a new reading of the issue of reason and revelation in Islam and breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Omar Farahat, McGill University, Montréal

Omar Farahat is Assistant Professor of Law at McGill University, Montreal.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: classical Islamic thought and the promise of post-secularism
Part I. Epistemological and Metaphysical Foundations:
1. What do we know without revelation? The epistemology of divine speech
2. God in relation to us: the metaphysics of divine speech
3. The nature of divine speech in classical theology
Part II. The Construction of Norms in Islamic Jurisprudence:
4. The nature of divine commands in classical legal theory
5. Divine commands in the imperative mood
6. The persistence of natural law in Islamic jurisprudence.

More information here

BOOK: Ignacio DE LA RASILLA DEL MORAL and Ayesha SHAHID, eds., International Law and Islam (Leiden-New York: Brill | Nijhoff, 2018). ISBN 978-90-04-38837-6, €165.00

(Source: Brill)

Brill has published a book dealing with the role of Islam in the history of international law.

ABOUT THE BOOK

International Law and Islam: Historical Explorations offers a unique opportunity to examine the Islamic contribution to the development of international law in historical perspective. The role of Islam in its various intellectual, political and legal manifestations within the history of international law is part of the exciting intellectual renovation of international and global legal history in the dawn of the twenty-first century. The present volume is an invitation to engage with this thriving development after ‘generations of prejudiced writing’ regarding the notable contribution of Islam to international law and its history.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Ignacio de la Rasilla, Ph.D. (2011) Geneva, is Han Depei Chair Professor of International Law at Wuhan University, Institute of International Law. He has published extensively on international law and its history including In the Shadow of Vitoria (Brill-Nijhoff, 2017). Ayesha Shahid, Ph.D. (2008) University of Warwick, UK, is Senior Lecturer in Law at Coventry Law School, Coventry University. She has published extensively on Islamic Law and Human Rights and is the author ofSilent Voices, Untold Stories (OUP, 2010).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ignacio de la Rasilla, Islam and the Global Turn in the History of International Law

Ignacio de la Rasilla, The Protean Historical Mirror of International Law

Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, How Should International Lawyers Study Islamic Law and Its Contribution to International Law?

Ayesha Shahid, An Exploration of the ‘Global’ History of International Law: Some Perspectives from within the Islamic Legal Traditions

John D. Haskell, Subjectivity and Structures: The Challenges of Methodology in the Study of the History of International Law and Religion

Robert Kolb, The Basis of Obligation in Treaties of Ancient Cultures – Pactum Est Servandum?

Jean Allain, Khadduri as Gatekeeper of the Islamic Law of Nations?

Ignacio Forcada Barona, In Search of the Lost Influence: Islamic Thinkers and the Spanish Origins of International Law

Pierre-Alexandre Cardinal & Frédéric Mégret, The Other ‘Other’: Moors, International Law and the Origin of the Colonial Matrix

Luigi Nuzzo, Law, Religion and Power: Texts and Discourse of Conquest

Ilias Bantekas, Land Rights in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman State Succession Treaties

Haniff Ahamat & Nizamuddin Alias, The Evolution of the Personality of the Malay Sultanate States

Matthias Vanhullebusch, On the Abodes of War and Peace in the Islamic Law of War: Fact or Fiction?

Mohamed Badar, Ahmed Al-Dawoody & Noelle Higgins, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law of Rebellion: Its Significance to the Current International Humanitarian Law Discourse

More information here

BOOK: Khaled R. BASHIR, Islamic International Law : Historical Foundations and Al-Shaybani’s Siyar (London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018). ISBN 9781788113854, £90.00

(Source: Edward Elgar Publishing)

Edward Elgar Publishing has published a new book on Mohammad Al-Shaybnai’s contribution to Siyar (Islamic International Law).

ABOUT THE BOOK

Through the analysis of Al-Shaybani’s most prolific work As-Siyar Al Kabier, this book offers a unique insight into the classic Islamic perspective on international law. Despite being recognised as one of the earliest contributors to the field of international law, there has been little written, in English, on Al-Shaybani’s work. This book will go some way towards filling the lacuna.

Islamic International Law examines Al-Shaybani’s work alongside that of other leading scholars such as Augustine, Gratian, Aquinas, Vitoria and Grotius, proving a full picture of early thinking on international law. Individual chapters provide discussion on Al-Shaybani’s writing in relation to war, peace, the consequences of war and diplomatic missions. Khaled Ramadan Bashir uses contemporary international law vocabulary to enable the reader to consider Al-Shaybani’s writing in a modern context.

This book will be a useful and unique resource for scholars in the field of Islamic International law, bringing together and translating a number of historical sources to form one accessible and coherent text. Scholars researching the historical and jurisprudential origins of public international law topics, such as international humanitarian law, just war, international dispute resolution, asylum and diplomacy will also find the book to be an interesting and valuable text.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Khaled Ramadan Bashir, The University of Aberdeen, UK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Reading Historical Sources 3. The Law of War 4. Rules on the Consequences of War 5. The Law of Peace 6. Conclusion Bibliography Index

More information here

BOOK: Khaled Mahmoud FAHMY, In Quest of Justice : Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018). ISBN 9780520279032, $39.95

(Source: University of California Press)

The University of California Press has published a new book on Islamic law and forensic medicine in Modern Egypt

ABOUT THE BOOK

In Quest of Justice provides the first full account of the establishment and workings of a new kind of state in Egypt in the modern period. Drawing on groundbreaking research in the Egyptian archives, this highly original book shows how the state affected those subject to it and their response. Illustrating how shari’a was actually implemented, how criminal justice functioned, and how scientific-medical knowledges and practices were introduced, Khaled Fahmy offers exciting new interpretations that are neither colonial nor nationalist. Moreover he shows how lower-class Egyptians did not see modern practices that fused medical and legal purposes in new ways as contrary to Islam. This is a major contribution to our understanding of Islam and modernity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Khaled Fahmy is Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt.

More information here

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

More information here

BOOK: Maaike VAN BERKEL, Léon BUSKENS and Petra M. SIJPESTEIJN eds., Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies : Studies in Honour of Rudolph Peters [Studies in Islamic Law and Society] (Leiden - New York: Brill, 2017). ISBN 978-90-04-34372-6, €125.00

(Source: Brill)

Last year, Brill published a book on the use of legal documents for the study of the history of Muslim societies.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This volume is a tribute to the work of legal and social historian and Arabist Rudolph Peters (University of Amsterdam). Presenting case studies from different periods and areas of the Muslim world, the book examines the use of legal documents for the study of the history of Muslim societies. From examinations of the conceptual status of legal documents to comparative studies of the development of legal formulae and the socio-economic or political historical information documents contain, the aim is to approach legal documents as specialised texts belonging to a specific social domain, while simultaneously connecting them to other historical sources. It discusses the daily functioning of legal institutions, the reflections of regime changes on legal documentation, daily life, and the materiality of legal documents.

Contributors are Maaike van Berkel, Maurits H. van den Boogert, Léon Buskens, Khaled Fahmy, Aharon Layish, Sergio Carro Martín, Brinkley Messick, Toru Miura, Christian Müller, Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Mathieu Tillier, and Amalia Zomeño.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Maaike van Berkel is professor of Medieval History at Radboud University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of medieval Muslim societies, with a particular interest in literacy, court culture and urban organization.

Léon Buskens holds a chair for Law and Culture in Muslim societies at Leiden University and is director of the Netherlands Institute in Morocco. His research focuses on Islamic law and society, and the anthropology of Muslim societies, with a particular interest in Morocco and Indonesia.

Petra Sijpesteijn is professor of Arabic at Leiden University. Her research concentrates on recovering the experience of Muslims and non-Muslims living under Islamic rule, using the vast stores of radically under-used documents surviving from the early Islamic world. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction, Maaike van Berkel, Léon Buskens and Petra M. Sijpesteijn 

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography Rudolph Peters
Rudolph Peters and the History of Modern Egyptian Law, Khaled Fahmy

I. REGIME CHANGE AND LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
The Qadis’ Justice according to Papyrological Sources (Seventh–Tenth Centuries C.E.), Mathieu Tillier
Delegation of Judicial Power in Abbasid Egypt, Petra M. Sijpesteijn
The Mahdi’s Legal Opinion as an Instrument of Reform: Issues in Divorce, Inheritance, False Accusation of Unlawful Intercourse and Homicide,Aharon Layish

II. PRACTICES OF RECORDING AND VERIFYING
Identifying the ʿudūl in Fifteenth-Century Granada, Sergio Carro Martín and Amalia Zomeño
Crimes without Criminals? Legal Documents on Fourteenth-Century Injury and Homicide Cases from the Ḥaram Collection in Jerusalem, Christian Müller
From Trash to Treasure: Ethnographic Notes on Collecting Legal Documents in Morocco, Léon Buskens
Notes for a Local History of Falsehood, Brinkley Messick

III. DAILY LIFE
Waqf Documents on the Provision of Water in Mamluk Egypt, Maaike van Berkel
Ottoman amān: Western Ownership of Real Estate and the Politics of Law Prior to the
Land Code of 1876, Maurits H. van den Boogert
A Comparative Study of Contract Documents: Ottoman Syria, Qajar Iran, Central Asia, Qing China and Tokugawa Japan, Toru Miura 

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