Guest Bloggers

By Mohamed Aidarus Noor The Swahili coast, with its rich historical, cultural, and religious tapestry, presents a compelling backdrop for analyzing the textual legal practices of the Shāfiʿī school. This … Continue reading Minhāj al-ṭālibīn: The Canon and Fiqh Texts on the Nineteenth-Century Swahili Coast

By Eirik Hovden The Zaydī imāms[1] styled themselves as rulers of all Muslims and upheld that the imamate was the only legitimate form of sovereign government. The Zaydī imamate consisted … Continue reading Sharʿī Legislation in 17th Century Yemen: The Chosen Rules of Imām al-Mutawakkil Ismāʿīl (r. 1054/1644, d. 1087/1676)

By Mahmood Kooria Introduction Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) is one of the most famous intellectuals in Islamic history. His legacy in philosophy, theology, logic, metaphysics, and mysticism has been … Continue reading “If Ghazālī is a Prophet, the Wajīz is His Miracle”: Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Codification of Shāfiʿī Law

By Mahmood Kooria and Eirik Hovden Islamic law, as it evolved over more than a millennium, appeared messier with the passage of time, even to an informed observer. The number … Continue reading Standardization of Islamic Law

Mahmood Kooria is Lecturer in the History of the Indian Ocean World at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, UK. Earlier he held teaching and research positions at Leiden University (the Netherlands), University … Continue reading Welcome to our August Guest Bloggers: Mahmood Kooria, Eirik Hovden, and Mohamed Aidarus Noor

By Paolo Sartori The collectivization of agricultural land (1929–1940) was one of the major transformative projects pursued by the USSR both in terms of scale and results. This project entailed … Continue reading … And Zakāt for All! Islamic Taxation in a Dagestani Kolkhoz (1950s)

By Paolo Sartori In 2018, the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Dagestan published a collection of fatāwā (Islsamic legal opinions) crafted between the 1950s and 1980s by the cleric Muḥammad … Continue reading Qāḍī by Necessity: Muḥammad al-Khartikunī against the “Wahhabis” in 1980s Dagestan

By Paolo Sartori In 1956 rumors spread in Socialist Kyrgyzstan that the apocalypse was imminent, and it would happen in the early summer of that year.[1] A date was set … Continue reading Apocalypse in the Tian Shan: Or the Story of a Wasted Fatwā

By Paolo Sartori Female suicides plagued Soviet Central Asia at least since the 1950s,[1] but their number increased significantly in the 1980s, during which period they became a matter of … Continue reading Saving Lost Souls: Fatwās Against Suicide in Socialist Uzbekistan

After the completion of a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies (History and Philology) at the University of Rome ‘la Sapienza” (2006), Paolo Sartori was a Volkswagen Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Martin-Luther … Continue reading Welcome to our July Guest Blogger: Paolo Sartori