By Athina Pfeiffer Professor Marina Rustow's note: "Having been asked twice now to contribute to the ILB, I’ve been making my way into the corpus of Islamic notarial documents preserved in Cairo Geniza. In the hope of understanding them better, I taught a PhD seminar on them in Fall 2022. Two of my students, Amel … Continue reading Documents of Sale as Living Objects
ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS "Taliban spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that overturning restrictions against women is not a priority for the group." The United Nations said that Taliban is divided on the issue. "Nine men were lashed in public in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday [January 17, 2023] as punishment for different crimes … Continue reading Islamic Law in the News Roundup
By Amel Bensalim Professor Marina Rustow's note: "Having been asked twice now to contribute to the ILB, I’ve been making my way into the corpus of Islamic notarial documents preserved in Cairo Geniza. In the hope of understanding them better, I taught a PhD seminar on them in Fall 2022. Two of my students, Amel … Continue reading Getting to know iqrārs
By Marina Rustow I came into my graduate seminar on Arabic legal documents with some experience in paleography and diplomatics, but vanishingly little knowledge of the material I was going to be teaching. I knew I wouldn’t always, or even often, have answers about how to read the sources, let alone how the judicial system … Continue reading Why I No Longer Use the Term “Qāḍī-Court Documents”
By Marina Rustow Legal documents have survived from the medieval Islamic world in considerable quantity, but the mystery of their quotidian production and use abides. The mystery concerns personnel and physical location: Who wrote documents, and where? Where did witnesses sign them? To what extent were judges involved in their production and handling? Over the … Continue reading Are Medieval Arabic Judicial Documents as Opaque as They Look?
SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law In "The Long Arm of the Provincial Law: A Custody Battle in a Qāḍī Petition from the Medieval Fayyūm" (Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)), Lev Weitz (Catholic University of America) "presents an edition, translation, and study of a short Arabic petition to a qāḍī and the rescript issued in response." In … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup
Summarized by Rami Koujah This post is part of the Roundtable on the History of Islamic International Law. It is a summary of Mathieu Tillier's contribution titled "Dispute Settlement in the Medieval Islamic World" to volume eight of the Cambridge History of International Law series, co-edited by Intisar Rabb and Umut Özsu. Mathieu Tillier’s chapter … Continue reading ::Roundtable:: History of Islamic International Law: “Dispute Settlement in the Medieval Islamic World” by Mathieu Tillier
ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS "Afghanistan’s supreme leader has ordered judges to fully enforce aspects of Islamic law that include public executions, stonings and floggings, and the amputation of limbs for thieves, the Taliban’s chief spokesman said." For more content and context on the recent developments in Afghanistan, consult our Editor-in-Chief, Professor Intisar Rabb's “Resource … Continue reading Islamic Law in the News Roundup
ISLAMIC LAW IN THE NEWS "Afghanistan had more than 300 female judges presiding over judicial departments that ranged from women’s issues to criminal and terrorism-related cases. Several hundred judges have since escaped to other countries, and some 70 female judges – if not more – are in hiding and unable to return to work." Observers … Continue reading Islamic Law in the News Roundup
By Nahed Samour Bureaucratization demands regular activities and official duties. These duties are a central aspect of a bureaucratically governed structure. Regularity is important particularly in the application and adjudication of the law so as to minimize arbitrariness.[1] Regularity can create transparency, accessibility, and accountability, and thereby add to adjudicative authority within a bureaucratically established … Continue reading Adjudication as Official Duty: Regular Activities in a Bureaucratically Governed Structure
