SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law In Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought (Columbia University Press, 2023), Hayrettin Yücesoy (Saint Louis University) argues that "the … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup
A Murder in a Cordoban Family: The Intertwining of the Theory and Practice of Criminal Law in al-Andalus
By Mohammed Allehbi The history of Islamic criminal justice is not written by its enforcers. In fact, the jurists, judges, and other legal scholars who left us most of the … Continue reading A Murder in a Cordoban Family: The Intertwining of the Theory and Practice of Criminal Law in al-Andalus
Diplomas for Crime and Punishment
By Mohammed Allehbi Despite the lack of surviving archival records from the medieval Islamic world, scribes and other officials would preserve inshāʾ, or administrative documents from the chancery, which they … Continue reading Diplomas for Crime and Punishment
Mirrors for Criminal Magistrates
By Mohammed Allehbi In the medieval Islamic world, shurṭa were overseers of criminal justice, but, paradoxically, the majority were not scholars of the law. The shurṭa was made up of … Continue reading Mirrors for Criminal Magistrates
Detective Stories and Crime Reports
By Mohammed Allehbi Between the eighth and twelfth centuries, military and administrative elites oversaw a complex criminal justice system in the great cities of the Islamic Near East and Mediterranean. … Continue reading Detective Stories and Crime Reports
Weekend Scholarship Roundup
SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law In "On The Historical Potential of Zaydi Legal Sources" (Leiden Arabic Humanities Blog, June 16, 2023), Najam Haider (Barnard College) observes that Zaydī sources have … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup
Weekend Scholarship Roundup
SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law In "Celebrating Maimonides in Cairo (1935): Jewish historiography, Islamic philosophy and the nahḍa" (Contemporary Levant 2023), Lucia Admiraal (University of Groningen) "focuses on representations of … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup
Weekend Scholarship Roundup
SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law In "Islam has become less rational since its medieval Golden Age. What went wrong?" (Big Think, June 4, 2023), James Hannam (Royal Historical Society) argues … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup
Weekend Scholarship Roundup
SCHOLARSHIP ROUNDUP On Islamic Law Ari Schriber (University of Toronto) reviews Jocelyn Hendrickson's (University of Alberta) Leaving Iberia Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa (Harvard University Press, … Continue reading Weekend Scholarship Roundup
Tax Receipts and Rent for a Mill: The Multiple Normative Orders of Medieval Islamic Societies
By Lev Weitz My last essay in this series showed how Arabic documentary sources can extend our view of the practical operation of Islamic law from urban centers into medieval … Continue reading Tax Receipts and Rent for a Mill: The Multiple Normative Orders of Medieval Islamic Societies