Everything from reviews of recent publications and cases to reflections on the book-writing and tenure process for scholars in Islamic law. Junior and senior scholars known in the field of Islamic legal studies are invited to become guest editors of the blog for one-month terms. The posts do not undergo editorial review, and offer room for these scholars to content and context on Islamic law, and more.
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
Guest Blog Editors Mahmood Kooria, Eirik Hovden, and Mohamed Aidarus Noor.
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
Thank you, Paolo Sartori, for joining us as guest blog editor in July. In case you missed his essays, here they are: Saving Lost Souls: Fatwās Against Suicide in Socialist … Continue reading Thank you, Paolo Sartori!
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
Thank you, Edmund Hayes, for joining us as guest blog editor in June. In case you missed his essays, here they are: Was There an Early Imāmī Shīʿī Legal System? … Continue reading Thank you, Edmund Hayes!
By Edmund Hayes A great body of Twelver legal doctrines is expressed through the Twelver ḥadīth corpus. A large body of these reports, like Sunnī ḥadīth, take the narrative form … Continue reading Servicing the Needs of a Community: Imamic Agency versus Local Demands
