Islamic Law at MESA 2023! (A PIL Guide)

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The Program in Islamic Law (PIL) has curated a list of panels from the Middle East Studies Association‘s (MESA) 2023 Annual Meeting schedule that are related to Islamic law and history, and data science. MESA’s fifty-seventh annual meeting will be held between November 2-5, 2023. The full 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

This year, PIL is participating in MESA’s Annual Meeting as part of the SHARIAsource Lab!

Presenters: Dr. Mathew Barber, Dr. Jonathan Parkes Allen, Prof. Sarah Bowen Savant, Ms. Irene Kirchner, Dr. Mai Zaki, Eid Mohamed, and Dr. Intisar Rabb. Below are the panels that are related to Islamic law and history and data science.

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–Presenters:

–Dr. Massimo Ramaioli, Islamic Gramscian Intellectuals: ‘Ulama, New Religious Intellectuals and the Dynamics of Political Modernity;

–Ali Ekber Cinar, Is “Islamic Law” Really Islamic “Law”? Reading Islamic Legal Tradition through the Lens of Hartian Concept of Law;

–Mr. Gaber Mohamed, Interrogating Two Concepts in Islamic Criminal Jurisprudence: Victim’s Family vs. Offender’s Family.

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Presenters: Dr. Mathew Barber, Dr. Jonathan Parkes Allen, Prof. Sarah Bowen Savant, Ms. Irene Kirchner, Dr. Mai Zaki, Eid Mohamed, and Dr. Intisar Rabb.

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  • Images in Islam: Past and Present – November 3, 2023 @ 8:30 a.m: Organized by Dr. Laura Thompson and Mr. Ali Asgar Alibhai. “This panel will take a historical and legal anthropological approach to the question of image-making and image-display among Muslims, related to humankind, the Prophet Muhammad, and the divine.”

Presenters:

–Mr. Ali Asgar Alibhai, Image-Making in Fatimid Society: An Interdisciplinary Discourse in Jurisprudence, Material Culture, and Social History;

–Dr. Laura Thompson, Contemporary Blasphemy Prosecutions in Tunisia: The Case of Al Abdellia and Nessma TV;

–Dr. Han Hsien Liew, Al-Māwardī’s Commentaries on the Anthropomorphic Qurʾānic Verses;

–Dr. Fayrouz Ibrahim, Reimagining Islamic Images: A Historical and Contemporary Analysis of Images in Islamic Politics and Art.

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  • Varieties of Slavery and Unfreedom in Medieval Islamic History – November 3, 2023 @ 8:30 a.m: Organized by Dr. Philip Grant. “Slavery in the first Islamic centuries is the object of renewed scholarly attention. While studying the normative sources (Qurʾān, ḥadīth) and the development of jurisprudence remains vital, a wide range of other sources — literary, historical, biographical — may be analyzed for the traces left by this complex and variegated phenomenon.”

Presenters:

–Dr. Philip Grant, What Is a “Slave Revolt”? Comparative Perspectives on the Zanj Rebellion (255-269/869-883);

–Dr. Brian J. Ulrich, Portrayals of the Slave Trade in the Book of the Wonders of India;

–Dr. Elizabeth Urban, Freedwomen in Early Islamic History.

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  • Materiality & Documentary Culture in the Early Islamic World – November 3, 2023 @ 11:00 a.m: Organized by Dr. Kyle Longworth and Tobias Scheunchen. “The papers in this panel showcase aspects related to the production, circulation, consumption, and preservation of the rich material and documentary culture in the early Islamic world (e.g., papyri, archeological finds, coins, etc.). “

Presenters:

–Dr. Kyle Longworth, Monetary Liquidity & Political Propaganda: The Mint in Marv during the Second Islamic Civil War (62/681-73/692);

–Tobias Scheunchen, To Sue, or Not to Sue – Muslims and Christians Going to Court in Late Antique Egypt: The Documentary Evidence;

–Theresa Grabmaier, The Life of the People in the Fayyūm: A Network Analysis Approach to the Berlin Arabic Papyri Collection;

–Mr. Raashid Goyal, Turning Documents into History, and History into Documents: The Dhimma of God and His Messenger in the First Islamic Century. 

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Presenters:

–Melike Batgiray Abboud, British Mohammedan Law and Courts in Sudan under the Joint British-Egyptian Rule: Applications and Limitations (1902-1914);

–Dr. Monique C. Cardinal, One Hundred Years of History of Islamic Law and Jurists in Syria (1919-2019): The Struggle to Preserve a Legal System;

–Ahmet Baris Ekiz, Making the Case for Ottoman Legal Humanism: A Reappraisal of the Ottoman Juristic Writing in the Reign of Bayezid II;

–Carly Krakow, A Totalitarianism of Our Time: International Law and Structures of Transnational Environmental Injustice in Palestine, Iraq, and the United States;

–Sila Ulucay, Political Trials in Istanbul: Spectacles of Power, Obedience, and Resistance.

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Presenters:

–Dr. Satoru Nakamura, The Perceptions of Muhammad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhāb on Takfīr and Jihād;

–Reem Shaikh, Rebellion and Legitimacy in the Hanbali School of Law;

–Ms. Azadeh Aghighi, Incorporating Contemporary Science in Qurʾānic Exegesis;

–Nadia Duvall, Sayyid Quṭb and the Decline of the Islamic Humanistic Tafsïr Traditions.

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Presenters:

–Mr. Morgan Tufan, “Otlu Sulu Yol Var Mı?” The Role of Cartographic Intelligence in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Expansion;

–Mr. Günay Kayarlar, An Ottoman Scholar’s Exile Memoirs: Karaçelebizade Abdülaziz’s Gülşen-i Niyaz;

–Şeyma Nur Temel, Between Government and Sacred: The Ottoman Sultanic Waqfs in Ebussuud’s Fatwas;

–Julia Elyachar, Making Theory with the Ottoman Sarraf: Finance and Financialization from the Middle East;

–Dr. Vefa Erginbas, A Preliminary Inquiry: Were Ottoman Darülhadis Madrasas agents of Ottoman Sunnitization?

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Presenters:

–Dr. Daniel Martin Varisco, The Microeconomics of Highland Yemeni Agriculture in the Late 13th Century;

–Dr. Sajjad Nejatie, Towards an Agrarian Empire: Agricultural Development in the Durrānī Polity (1747–1818);

–Takao Ito, Land Tenure in 15th-Century Egypt according to al-Tuḥfa al-Saniyya of Ibn al-Jīʿān;

–Mr. Anthony Quickel, Weather and Farming in Mamluk Egypt. ” This panel explores texts from Egypt, Yemen and Afghanistan that describe the nature of land tenure and use in agricultural production.”

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Presenters:

–Dr. Maya Mikdashi, Ethnographic and Transnational Approaches to Law and Legal History: A Woman Stands Before the Court in Lebanon;

–Dr. Lisa Hajjar, The Guantanamo Phenomenon: Exposing the Fragility of the Rule of Law;

–Ms. Noura Erakat, What Palestine Teaches Us about Law in the Middle East. 

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  • The Treaty of Lausanne at 100: New Research from the Lausanne Project – November 4, 2023 @ 8:30 a.m: Organized by Dr. Andrew Patrick. “On the year of the Lausanne’s centenary, this roundtable brings together several members of the Lausanne Project to discuss its findings and the implications of these findings for the study of the Middle East. It also includes an expert on the era who is unaffiliated with the project. This person will assess the Lausanne Project’s scholarly output and suggest further avenues for study.”

Presenters: Dr. Andrew Patrick, Dr. Cemil Aydin, Leonard Smith, Dr. Yigit Akin, and Dr. Aimee Genell. 

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Presenters:

–Beshouy Botros, Portraits of Transfemininity in Asyut: Supernatural Ways Beyond the Binary in Mid-Century Upper Egypt;

–Dr. Serpil Atamaz, Women’s Murders in the Early Turkish Republic;

–Sara Seweid-DeAngelis, Eunuchs, the Effendiyya, and the Making of Modern Egyptian Masculinity;

–Sean Tomlinson, Siblinghood, Marriage, Fictive Kinship, and Male Relationships between Ottoman Army Officer “Brothers” from the Mashriq in Memoirs of the Late Ottoman and Early Mandate Periods.

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Presenters:

–Robyn Morse, Death Divides: Citizenship, Property, and the Legal Limits of Family in the 20th Century Persian Gulf;

–Ms. Yosra Hussein, Maẓālim Courts: Between Despotic Sultans and Secular Justice;

–Omar Gebril, Modernizing Sharīʿa in Egypt: Madrasat al-Qaḍāʾ al-Sharʿī (1907 – 1930) and the Compatibility of Sharīʿa with Western Laws and Modern-State Values;

–Dr. Carl Shook, The Law and the Bordering of Iraq: An Inquiry into the Relationship Between the Tribal Criminal & Civil Disputes Regulations and State Building in the Mandate Era.

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Presenters:

–Mr. Matthew Steele, Ijtihad in the Service of Taqlid: Repurposing Critique in the Contemporary Maliki School;

–Dr. Aaron Rock-Singer, The Madhhab of the Quran and Sunna? Salafism, Textual Reasoning, and the Islamic Tradition;

–Dr. Etty Terem, Rational Religion for a Modern Age: Defining a Path to Social Progress in Interwar Morocco;

–Dr. Alexander Thurston, The Mālikī Madhhab, the Istidlāl Genre, and Contemporary Religious Authority: Tunisian and Libyan Examples;

–Nathan Spannaus, New Teaching for a New Generation: Exploring the Link between Educational and Legal Reform in the 19th Century. “This panel conceptualizes Islamic reform at the intersection of Islamic history and the ruptures of modernity. It pays particular attention to the ways in which novel modes of argumentation and new sources of authority serve to legitimate longstanding religious institutions and practices.”

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Presenters:

–Athina Pfeiffer, Holes and Threads: Sewing Legal Documents in Medieval Egypt;

–Amel Bensalim, A Notaries’ Notebook?: Assessing the Legal, Notarial, and Archival Practices of Medieval Egyptian Notaries;

–Matthew Dudley, Legal History from the Ground Up: A Survey of Islamicate Paper Instruments in the Ottoman-Era Cairo Geniza. “This panel asks how Islamic and Jewish legal documents from premodern Egypt allow scholars to reconstruct Islamic legal history from the ground up.

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Presenters:

–Dr. Camille Cole, What is a Concession? Mapping, Language, and Sovereignty in the Late Ottoman Empire;

–Nora Barakat, Peasant Ignorance, Legal Rupture, and the History of Agrarian Capitalism in Late Ottoman Syria;

–Dr. Youssef Ben Ismail, A Theory of Provincial Autonomy in the Late Ottoman Empire;

–Dr. Aimee Genell, Domesticating Autonomy in Ottoman Administrative Law;

–Lale Can, On Creating an Ottoman Siberia: Penal Reform and the Connected Histories of Exile, Hard Labor, and Colonialism in the Late Ottoman Empire. “[T]his panel examines how evolving Ottoman legal regimes in the nineteenth century reconfigured the relationship between state authority, political economy, and imperial governance, centering the Arab provinces as a way to reconsider the spaces and spatiality of imperial law.”

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Presenters:

–Dr. Rachel T. Howes, Teaching Islamicate History to Undergraduates Using Role-Playing;

–Dr. Paul E. Chevedden, Grasping the Systematicity of the Crusades: A Shared Christian and Islamic Perspective;

–Sabrina Amrane, Raid or Reign: Historical Narratives of the Algerian Bedouin;

–Dr. Arezou Azad, Internal Officialdom and Institutional Memory in the Medieval Islamic World: Correspondence amongst State Officials in the Bamiyan Papers (12th-13th Century CE);

–Dr. Arezou Azad, Internal Officialdom and Institutional Memory in the Medieval Islamic World: Correspondence amongst State Officials in the Bamiyan Papers (12th-13th Century CE).

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