Monthly Lectures on Islamic Legal Genres: “Fatāwā Compilations: Exploring a legal genre in the Islamic West” by Prof. Maribel Fierro

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By Omar Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar This is a summary of the lecture by Prof. Maribel Fierro entitled “Fatāwā Compilations: Exploring a legal genre in the Islamic West,” delivered on June 30, 2021 at 12 noon (EST), 6 pm (Münster) 7 pm (Istanbul) via Zoom.  The video recording of the lecture can be accessed here. Thus far … Continue reading Monthly Lectures on Islamic Legal Genres: “Fatāwā Compilations: Exploring a legal genre in the Islamic West” by Prof. Maribel Fierro

Field Guide to Islamic Law Online

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Image of yellow text with red background, which reads "A Field Guide to Digital Islamic Law Resources"

The Field Guide to Islamic Law Online, in the form of a Google document, is a collection of resource links and annotations to SHARIAsource and other Harvard resources, global online digital resources, and a robust “Digital Islamic Law Collection.” We recently added exciting resources to this list: Ketabpedia is an online collection seeking to gather … Continue reading Field Guide to Islamic Law Online

Weekend Scholarship Roundup

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In her book review of Mohammed Fadel and Connell Monette's translation of Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, Adday Hernández (ILC-CSIS) welcomes the translation and describes it as a work that will become "one of the main reference sources" in the field of Islamic legal studies. In her undergraduate thesis entitled "I Know How the Caged Bird Tweets: Online Dissent … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup

A “Jabri” madhhab of the early modern Sudan?

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By Kristina L. Richardson Given the centuries of exposure to northern African Islamic thought like Khārijism, Ibāḍism, and Mālikism, could sub-Saharan Muslims have established an indigenous, perhaps syncretic, Islamic legal school? 17th-century Ottoman explorer Evliya Çelebi claimed as much, though we may have to take his descriptions with a grain of salt. Between August 1672 … Continue reading A “Jabri” madhhab of the early modern Sudan?

Monthly Lectures on Islamic Legal Genres: “Genre as a Tool for Understanding Islamic Law” by Prof. Mohammad Fadel

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By Omar Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar This is a summary of the lecture by Prof. Mohammad Fadel entitled "Form, Function and Historical Development of Mukthasars in Post-Mamluk Islamic Law," delivered on February 24, 2021 at 11am (EST), 5pm (Münster) 7pm (Istanbul) via Zoom.  The video recording of the lecture can be accessed here. Professor Fadel’s lecture described … Continue reading Monthly Lectures on Islamic Legal Genres: “Genre as a Tool for Understanding Islamic Law” by Prof. Mohammad Fadel

Ibāḍism in the Medieval Sahel

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By Kristina L. Richardson For centuries the Sunnī Mālikī madhhab has predominated among Muslims of northern and western Africa, but before the 12th century, Shīʿī, Khārijī, and Ibāḍī legal schools vied for dominance.[1] Merchants living under the Ibāḍī Rustamids (779-909, capital in Tāhart) and in independent Khārijī states in the western Maghrib, such as the … Continue reading Ibāḍism in the Medieval Sahel

Islamic Law in the News Roundup

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Saudi Arabia announced its intention to roll out judicial reforms aimed at codifying the country's fundamental laws. A city council in Peterborough (UK) rejected an application to broadcast the call to prayer three times a day via loudspeakers, holding that it would constitute "an unwelcome intrusion on the soundscape." Archaeologists discovered a Muslim necropolis in … Continue reading Islamic Law in the News Roundup

Weekend Scholarship Roundup

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In "Innovation, Influence, and Borrowing in Mamluk-Era Legal Maxim Collections: The Case of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām and al-Qarāfī" (Journal of the American Oriental Society 140, no. 4 (October-December 2020)), Mariam Sheibani (University of Toronto Scarborough; Lead Blog Editor) shows that the renowned Mālikī jurist al-Qarāfī's contribution to Islamic legal thought was, in part, based on … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup

Why did legal scholars write the books they wrote in pre-modern Islamic societies? The case of al-Andalus

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By Maribel Fierro (Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean, CSIC-Madrid) This essay is part of the Islamic Law Blog’s Roundtable on Islamic Legal History & Historiography, edited by Intisar Rabb (Editor-in-Chief) and Mariam Sheibani (Lead Blog Editor), and introduced with a list of further readings in the short post by Intisar Rabb: “Methods and … Continue reading Why did legal scholars write the books they wrote in pre-modern Islamic societies? The case of al-Andalus

Ways for Muslims to Follow Islamic Law amid the Spanish Inquisition

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By Terrence George This post is part of the Digital Islamic Law Lab (DILL) series, in which a Harvard student analyzes a primary source of Islamic law, previously workshopped in the DIL Lab. Background In the year 711, Muslim forces invaded the Iberian Peninsula and conquered most of its defenders within a decade. The Muslim Andalusian Umayyad … Continue reading Ways for Muslims to Follow Islamic Law amid the Spanish Inquisition