Skullduggery, Literature, and the Legal Imagination

By Matthew L. Keegan How do we imagine the law? What shapes our sense of how the legal system operates? In a culture saturated with television narratives, one clear avenue … Continue reading Skullduggery, Literature, and the Legal Imagination

Moral Registers in Islamic Law, Adab, and Ethics

By Matthew L. Keegan Islamic law is one among several Islamic discourses and normative discourses that intermingled with Islamic epistemes and ecumenes in the pre-modern world. In Marion Holmes Katz's … Continue reading Moral Registers in Islamic Law, Adab, and Ethics

Riddles, Influence, and Borrowing from Rival Legal Schools

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 … Continue reading Riddles, Influence, and Borrowing from Rival Legal Schools

Why Study Islamic Legal Riddles?

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 … Continue reading Why Study Islamic Legal Riddles?