{"title":"Applied Legal Hermeneutics in 18th-Century Fes: Al-Tāwudī’s Treatise on the Effect of Long Duration in bayʿ al-thunyā Transactions","authors":"Norbert Oberauer","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10060","url":null,"abstract":"The present study is an analysis of a treatise (<jats:italic>risāla</jats:italic>) by the 18th-century Mālikī al-Tāwudī in which he discusses a doctrinal detail regarding <jats:italic>bayʿ al-thunyā</jats:italic>, a common stratagem to circumvent the prohibition of interest. I use al-Tāwudī’s text as a lens to reconstruct the hermeneutical perspective of a Muslim jurist of the late premodern era. In the first section, I show that al-Tāwudī’s legal reasoning is strongly informed by the legacy of Mālikī discourse on <jats:italic>bayʿ al-thunya</jats:italic>, which is one of constant disagreement over the acceptability of the institution. In the course of this conflict, various doctrinal compromises were negotiated, only to be challenged again by the invention of new stratagems or by rigorist backlashes. Al-Tāwudī’s treatise must be understood as part of this doctrinal tug of war. In the second section, I analyze al-Tāwudī’s epistemological premises. I show that his legal reasoning is strictly exegetical, except that the object of this exegesis is not Qurʾān and Sunna, as proposed in classical <jats:italic>uṣūl al-fiqh</jats:italic>, but the school’s literary corpus. This corpus, in turn, is hierarchically structured. It consists of many layers of texts, accumulated over centuries and tightly interwoven by intertextual references, with certain texts enjoying a particularly authoritative status. Against this background, reasoning becomes a game of artful referencing. Successful argumentation requires claiming a maximum of authority within the school tradition in support of one’s position.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142209940","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Controversy over the Law Schools (lā madhhabiyya) in Twentieth-Century Syria","authors":"Itzchak Weismann","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10054","url":null,"abstract":"The validity of the established schools of law (sing. <jats:italic>madhhab</jats:italic>) is a major bone of contention between contemporary Salafis and Traditionalists. The controversy reached its peak around 1970 in a famous exchange between Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī, who called for direct reliance on authenticated hadith, and Muḥammad Saʽīd Ramaḍān al-Būṭī, who favored the jurists’ legal expertise. In this essay, I chart the course of the <jats:italic>lā madhhabiyya</jats:italic> debate in Syria by analyzing the polemical writings of three generations of Syrian ulama from 1870 to 1970. I argue that the seeds of the controversy were sown in the late Ottoman period in the Salafi challenge to <jats:italic>taqlīd</jats:italic>. I also uncover the central role of the Indian Ahl-i Hadith in mediating the anti<jats:italic>-madhhabī</jats:italic> position to the core Arab lands, and the part of Syrian Ḥanafī-Naqshbandī ʽulamāʼ in defending the <jats:italic>madhhab</jats:italic>s. Finally, I allude to the political split among the Traditionalist ʽulamāʼ between the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the Baʽth regime.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"79 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140887133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Squandering Marital Movables: On Family and Criminal Law in Egypt","authors":"Kazuaki Takemura","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10055","url":null,"abstract":"This essay focuses on the trousseau inventory (<jats:italic>ayma</jats:italic>) created by Egyptian Muslims at the time of marriage. Though not a legal requirement, creating the <jats:italic>ayma</jats:italic> is widespread as it proves the husband’s receipt of the wife’s property. After divorce, he must return the items listed in the inventory to her, and if he fails to do so, she may sue him for “squandering marital movables” (<jats:italic>tabdīd manqūlāt zawjiyya</jats:italic>), as stipulated in the Penal Code. In July 2022, when an Egyptian man posted a message suggesting that the <jats:italic>ayma</jats:italic> had been abolished, his post caused a huge outcry. In this essay, I address the social debate triggered by the post, introduce the case of an Egyptian woman who filed a <jats:italic>tabdīd</jats:italic> lawsuit to secure a divorce, and discuss judgments issued by the Court of Cassation on <jats:italic>tabdīd</jats:italic> cases. I argue that Egyptians use criminal law and courts to solve family disputes.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"59 13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140887299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modernization and Legal Reform: Muslim Minors and Freedom of Marriage in India","authors":"Prashant Iyengar","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10058","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a regional study of the mechanics of modernization and liberalization of Muslim law in India. I explore these themes by focusing on how Indian courts, over nearly two centuries, interpreted the Islamic doctrine of <jats:italic>khiyār al-bulūgh—</jats:italic>the right of a minor to repudiate her marriage upon attaining majority. I also revisit the legislative debates that occurred during the codification of this doctrine into the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939. I identify two paradoxes from this history: first, that the liberalization of religious laws has been achieved at least as reliably and stably through judicial failures—errors, amnesia, indolence and ineptitude—as through deliberate legislative and judicial interventions; and second, that the recent overlaying of religious laws with “liberal-secular” laws in India has resulted in the consolidation and intensification of patriarchal authority over adolescent sexuality—an authority that had been scattered and loosely articulated under the regime of “purely religious” laws.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"169 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140887501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Magian Position: Legal Consequences for Creedal Ignorance in the Far Maghrib, 8th/14th-11th/17th c","authors":"Caitlyn Olson","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10056","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyzes a series of legal opinions from the Far Maghrib between the 8th/14th and 11th/17th centuries in which the authors promote a remarkable position: that members of the Muslim community deemed ignorant of creedal doctrine should be accorded the legal status of Magians (<jats:italic>ḥukm al-majūs</jats:italic>). The primary consequence of categorizing people as Magians – meaning here something different than Zoroastrians – was the annulment of their marriages. After discussing the sources and offering comments on the social, political, and religious circumstances that may have conditioned this position (Section 1), I explain its intellectual architecture. I show that while the concepts animating the concern with creedal ignorance were rooted in Ashʿarī theology (Section 2), the tools of enforcement came from Mālikī law (Section 3). The “Magian position” thus sheds light on historical interactions between Islamic theology and law, as well as on the functioning of orthodoxy in Muslim societies.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140570165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Status of Music in Islamic Law: Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s (d. 974/1567) Treatise Against Recreation in its Polemical Context","authors":"Fitzroy Morrissey","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10053","url":null,"abstract":"<p><em>Kaff al-raʿāʿ ʿan muḥarramāt al-lahw wa-l-samāʿ</em> is an influential treatise on the legal status of music and other recreational activities written by the Shāfiʿī Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d. 974/1567) in 958/1551. This article offers the first analysis of this “treatise against recreation”. Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī argues for the impermissibility of most musical activities on the basis of the Qurʾan and Hadith, the consensus of the <em>ʿulamāʾ</em> (particularly from his Shāfiʿī school), and the incompatibility of recreation (<em>lahw</em>) and piety. These arguments are forged in response to claims found in more permissive texts by the Ẓāhirīs Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064) and Ibn al-Qaysarānī (d. 507/1113) and the Mālikī Muḥammad al-Shādhilī al-Tūnisī (d. 882/1477). I suggest that it is Ibn Ḥajar’s negative attitude to <em>lahw</em> that underlies his restrictive views on music, highlight the gendered element in this attitude, and observe that attitudes to recreation are not interchangeable with affiliation to Sufism.</p>","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140035407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Islamic Apocalyptic Jurisprudence","authors":"Ali Rod Khadem","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10052","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces Islamic apocalyptic jurisprudence (theories of final law that will govern humanity in the End Times) to academic study. Section 1 considers why the topic has remained unexamined and suggests a basic taxonomy. Section 2 exposes the apocalyptic jurisprudence of two case studies, representing the “reversionist” and “progressivist” poles of Sunni discourses: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (“<jats:sc>isis</jats:sc>”), and Dāwūd and his “Awaited Mahdī” movement in Egypt. Section 3 considers two further case studies, representing the “revanchist” and “idealist” orientations in Shi‘i discourses: the Islamic Republic of Iran, and al-Ṣadr, a theorist of the Iraqi Ṣadrist movement. Throughout, the following aspects of the final legal system are considered: sources of law; conflicts between Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and international laws; the jurist’s role; changes to classical Islamic legal theory, including qiyas and ijtihad; the legitimacy of legal schools; and new positive laws, policies, and rules of evidence.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"145 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140035887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spousal Harm in the Mālikī Law School: Evidence and Procedure","authors":"Tesneem Alkiek","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10049","url":null,"abstract":"The Mālikī law school grants a wife the right to judicial divorce if her husband harms her. Mālikīs distinguish between harm that is legally actionable and harm that is non-actionable. A husband causes actionable harm (<jats:italic>ḍarar</jats:italic>) when he violates his wife’s rights, which Mālikī scholars define broadly. By establishing <jats:italic>ḍarar</jats:italic> as grounds for divorce, Mālikīs demonstrate their willingness to limit a husband’s marital authority and increase opportunities for a woman to leave her marriage. In this study, I highlight the types of evidence and procedures Mālikī jurists use to establish <jats:italic>ḍarar</jats:italic> and facilitate judicial divorce by examining four cases that deal with emotional, sexual, and physical harm. Through a substantive approach to law, Mālikīs offer several ways for a woman to collect evidence, prove her claim of harm, and receive a divorce.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138540701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Islamic Law of the Sea: Freedom of Navigation and Passage Rights in Islamic Thought, written by Hassan S. Khalilieh","authors":"Mahmood Kooria","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10050","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136015699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The First Public Murder in the Tanzimat Era: Life, Trial and Execution of Emine Hanım","authors":"Murat R. Şiviloğlu","doi":"10.1163/15685195-bja10046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685195-bja10046","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In 1860, Emine Hanım killed her husband Ferik İbrahim Pasha. In this article, I use her murder trial to examine the interrelation between slavery, the private lives of the Ottoman ruling class, and the complexities of the judicial system during the Tanzimat period (1839–1876). I identify the limitations of nineteenth-century legal reforms and the discrepancy between the reformist ideals and the real-world complexities experienced by individuals. By paying close attention to legal issues in the Ottoman Empire during the Tanzimat era, such as siyaseten katl (administrative death penalty) and the inconsistent application of kısas (retaliation in kind), I argue that Emine’s story contributes to a better understanding of the Ottoman legal system during the reform era.","PeriodicalId":55965,"journal":{"name":"Islamic Law and Society","volume":"90 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136360167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}