The Program in Islamic Law (PIL) has curated a list of papers from the American Society for Legal History‘s (ASLH) 2023 Annual Meeting schedule that are related to Islamic law and history, and data science. ASLH’s annual meeting will be held between October 25-28, 2023. The full (preliminary) program is available here. Register here. Is there a session missing that you’d like to see here? Send us a note at pil@law.harvard.edu
***
- Material Community in Medieval Cairo: Documentary Practices of Coptic Christians at Islamic Courts by Tamer el-Leithy, Institute for Advanced Study and American University Cairo – October 25 @ 10:45 a.m. Moderator: Karl Shoemaker, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Commentator: Carolin Berhmann, Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
***
- Storytelling and Islamic Law by Jocelyn Hendrickson, University of Alberta – October 25 @ 2:45 p.m. Moderator: Reyhan Dumarz, University of Pennsylvania; Commentator: Emanuele Conte, University of Roma Tre.
***
- Converting the Land: Property and Religious Difference in the Iberian Fueros by Rodrigo García-Velasco, University College London – October 25 @ 2:45 p.m. Moderator: Reyhan Dumarz, University of Pennsylvania; Commentator: Emanuele Conte, University of Roma Tre.
***
- Who Does the Qur’an Think Will Enforce Its Laws? by Joseph Lowry, University of Pennsylvania – October 25 @ 4:30 p.m. Moderator: Sara McDougall, John Jay College/City University of New York Graduate Center/New York Public Library Fellow; Commentator: Alice Taylor, King’s College London.
***
- The Uncharitable Foundations of Mamluk Endowment by Omar Abdel-Ghaffar, Harvard University – October 26 @ 9:00 a.m. Faculty Directors: Bhavani Raman, University of Toronto and Daniel Sharfstein, Vanderbilt University; Conveners: Chao Ren, University of Michigan and John Wertheimer, Davidson College.
***
- Mixed Courts and the Materials of Law in Colonial Indonesia by Sanne Ranvensbergen, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – October 26 @ 9:00 a.m. Convener: Christopher Schmidt, Illinois Institute of Technology.
***
- Panel: Documents and Islamic Law in the Early Modern World: “Citing” the Law and the “Site” of the Archive: Preservationist Practices in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire by Heather Ferguson, Claremont McKenna College; How to Say Law in Verses? Making a Case for Popular Poetry as an Archive of Islamic Law in Premodern South Asia by Dipanjan Mazumder, Vanderbilt University; Anthologies, Islamic Law, and Masculinity Between Safavid Iran and Mughal India by Du Fei, Cornell University – October 27 @ 10:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Chair and Commentator: Faisal Chaudhry, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.
***
- Death Divides: The Legal Limits of Family, Citizenship, and Property in the Twentieth-Century Persian Gulf by Robyn Morse, University of Virginia – October 27 @ 10:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Chair: Kalyani Ramnath, University of Georgia; Commentator: Will Hanley, Florida State University.
***
- Panel: Uncovering the Other Side of Sudanese Legal History: A Collection of Rare Findings from Archival Sources: British Mohammedan Law and Courts in Sudan under the Joint British-Egyptian Rule: Applications and Limitations, 1902-1914 by Melike Batgiray Abboud, Max Planck Institute; When Turks became Infidels: Transformations in Shari’a and Qanun in Ottoman Sudan by Hengameh Ziai, SOAS, University of London; The Making of the Citizen in Time of Colonial Decline, 1944-1957 by Eloïse Girard, CEDEJ-K – October 27 @ 1:15pm – 2:45 p.m. Chair and Commentator: Owen Miller, Bilkent University.
***
- Panel: Shari’a and Colonial Futures: Visions of Islamic Law in the Late-Colonial Polity (Nigeria, Morocco, and Egypt: Legitimating “Modern” Islamic Law: Decolonization and the Making of Northern Nigeria by Rabiat Akande, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University; A Hierarchy of Islamic Law: Reimagining Judicial Review in Colonial-Era Moroccan Shari’a Courts by Ari Schriber, University of Toronto; Islamic Law as National Genius: Law as a Language in Early Twentieth-Century Egypt by Samy Ayoub, University of Texas, Austin – October 27 @ 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Chair and Commentator: Mohammad Fadel, University of Toronto.
***
- Suicide and the Transformation of Public Prosecution in Modern Egypt by Mina Khalil, University of Pennsylvania – October 28 @ 2:15 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. Chair: Amy Dru Stanley, University of Chicago.
***
- Strategizing Law: Human Rights Practice and Governance in Urban Nigeria, 1987-1997 by Emmanuel Osayande, Columbia University – October 28 @ 2:15 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. Chair: Amy Dru Stanley, University of Chicago.
***
- Panel: Secular Work and Ritual Duties in Islamic Law and Ethics: Rural Labor and State Law in the Abbasid Empire: The Case of the Muʿtaḍidī New Year by Luke Yarbrough, University of California, Los Angeles; Worship as Work: Proxy Pilgrimage Contracts in Islamic Legal Thought by Marion Katz; Sacred Labor: Religious Duties as Work in Medieval Islamic Law by Adnan Zulfiqar; Lawful Work in the West: Exit, Voice, and Loyalty in Salafist Thought by Leor Halevi, Vanderbilt University – October 28 @ 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. Chair: Felicitas Opwis, Georgetown University; Commentator: Fahad Bishara, University of Virginia.