By Matthew L. Keegan How did scholars from different Sunnī legal schools respond to and interact with the scholarship of other schools? The answer to this question, of course, depends upon the particular historical context, the institutional strength of one school or another, the social context of education, and other factors. In some places and … Continue reading Riddles, Influence, and Borrowing from Rival Legal Schools
By Matthew L. Keegan When I first came across a chapter on legal riddles in the Kitāb al-Ashbāh wa’l-Naẓāʾir of Ibn Nujaym (d. 970/1563) in graduate school, I was immediately fascinated. I had never heard of the genre and could find little about it. The riddles themselves had a playful literariness to them, which appealed … Continue reading Why Study Islamic Legal Riddles?
Matthew L. Keegan is the Moinian Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College of Columbia University. His research program explores the intersections of Islamic law and Arabic literature. He has published articles on Islamic legal riddles, Quranic exegesis, the commentary tradition around al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt, and the prose and poetry of the … Continue reading Welcome to our May Guest Blogger: Matthew L. Keegan
Thank you, Lev Weitz, for joining us as guest blog editor in April. In case you missed his essays, here they are: Documentary Sources and Islamic Legal History: The View from the Provinces Tracing the Judicial Infrastructure of a Rural Province Tax Receipts and Rent for a Mill: The Multiple Normative Orders of Medieval Islamic … Continue reading Thank you, Lev Weitz!
By Lev Weitz For social historians, legal sources have been among the most captivating, tried-and-true means to get at the microhistorical detail of everyday life in times past. In the final essay of this series, I’ll consider what Arabic legal documents can offer as sources for medieval social history. We’ll return to the region of … Continue reading Fragments of Provincial Life
