Islamic Law in “Plain English”

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The following book reviews are contributed by Ari Schreiber.

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Muhammad’s Heirs: The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities, 622-950 by Jonathan E. Brockopp (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Editor’s note: Jonathan Brockopp’s Muhammad’s Heirs sheds light on the early development of Islamic legal scholarship between its inherited tradition and its history. As a critical look at a topic long debated by scholars and practitioners alike, the work is essential reading for understanding the formation of Islamic legal thought and practice.
Publisher Summary:
Muslim scholars are a vital part of Islam, and are sometimes considered ‘heirs to the prophets’, continuing Muhammad’s work of establishing Islam in the centuries after his death. But this was not always the case: indeed, Muslims survived the turmoil of their first century largely without the help of scholars. In this book, Jonathan Brockopp seeks to determine the nature of Muslim scholarly communities and to account for their emergence from the very beginning of the Muslim story until the mid-tenth century. By analysing coins, papyri and Arabic literary manuscripts from the ancient mosquelibrary of Kairouan, Tunisia, Brockopp offers a new interpretation of Muslim scholars’ rise to positions of power and influence, serving as moral guides and the chief arbiters of Muslim tradition. This book will be of great benefit to scholars of comparative religion and advanced students in Middle Eastern history, Islamic Studies, Islamic Law and early Islamic literature (Cambridge University Press).
Published Reviews:
Abdullah Bin Hamid Ali, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 35(2) (Spring 2018): 91-94. “Brockopp’s research brilliantly discloses anachronistic projections by classical authors of biographical dictionaries and those living today who have imbibed those misapprehensions… [his] work is both valuable and controversial, but not only because it subverts the historical authority of Muslim scholars. It also diversifies and democratizes charismatic authority” Topics: Legal History, Jurisprudence, Legal Education Geography: North Africa, Tunisia, Umayyad West
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A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 by Fahad Bishara (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Editor’s note:
In A Sea of Debt, Fahad Bishara weaves together early-modern economic history of the Indian Ocean with the history of Islamic legal practice— namely instruments of debt. Covering both a region and topic that are generally understudied in Islamic studies, it makes a formidable contribution to fields of scholarship from Islamic legal studies to commercial and maritime history.
Publisher Summary:
In this innovative legal history of economic life in the Western Indian Ocean, Bishara examines the transformations of Islamic law and Islamicate commercial practices during the emergence of modern capitalism in the region. In this time of expanding commercial activity, a mélange of Arab, Indian, Swahili and Baloch merchants, planters, jurists, judges, soldiers and seamen forged the frontiers of a shared world. The interlinked worlds of trade and politics that these actors created, the shared commercial grammars and institutions that they developed and the spatial and socio-economic mobilities they engaged in endured until at least the middle of the twentieth century. This major study examines the Indian Ocean from Oman to India and East Africa over an extended period of time, drawing together the histories of commerce, law and empire in a sophisticated, original and richly textured history of capitalism in the Islamic world (Cambridge University Press).
Published Reviews:
  • Pedro Machado, The American Historical Review, vol. 123(3) (June 1, 2018): 915-16. “A Sea of Debt provides compelling evidence and arguments that challenge understandings of the intersections between Islamic jurisprudence and economic life through a focus on the everyday practices and mechanisms utilized by merchants… The nuanced examination that Bishara provides of the legal underpinnings of the structures of economic life in important arenas of the Indian Ocean, the Omani sultanate, and East Africa thus marks a vital contribution to Islamic law and jurisprudence, finance, and colonial rule, and their complicated entanglements during a period of great flux across the ocean”
  • Beatrice Nicolini, International Journal of Maritime History, vol. 30(2) (May 2018): 367–68. “This is the first time that some important aspects of the economic life of the many different communities in the Indian Ocean have been studied and explained from an inward looking perspective, and not only with (Eurocentric) capitalism in mind, but with Islamic rules and laws… Not only maritime historians will benefit from this legal history of economic life in the Indian Ocean, but it could be interesting and stimulating for simply curiosity driven scholars.”
  • J.E. Peterson, Business History Review, Vol.92(1) (Spring 2018): 182–85. “It is often too easy to consider modern national boundaries as forming the distinct lines that separated one community from another. A Sea of Debt is instructive in demonstrating how communities have intermingled and traveled across borders and seas over the course of centuries. Bishara is to be congratulated on bringing this fascinating aspect of Indian Ocean history to light and for doing so in such an authoritative and engaging manner.”
  • Topics: Legal History, Contracts & Commercial Law, Āl Bū Saʿīd
  • Geography: East Africa, India, Oman: Muscat, Zanzibar

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Islamic Law and Empire in Ottoman Cairo by James E. Baldwin (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

Editor’s Note: Islamic Law and Empire in Ottoman Cairo by James Baldwin adds to burgeoning scholarship on the Ottoman siyasa/shari’a paradigm with specific attention to the legal, social, and political history of eighteenth century Cairo.

Publisher Summary:

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 (Edinburgh University Press).

Published Reviews:

Tags: Legislation & Regulation, Legal History, Administrative Law, Islamic Government

Geography: Egypt, Ottomans (NW Anatolia, Balkans, MENA, Eritrea), late 7th c.-1342 / late 13th c.-1924

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