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Modern studies of Ibn Khaldūn (d. 808/1406) have covered several aspects of his thought including historiography, pedagogy, philosophy, economy, urbanism and, most recently, mysticism. However, there remains conspicuously little on the place of the law within his intellectual enterprise despite the fact that the law had played a central role in his career as scholar, teacher, and statesman. This paper reconstructs two expressions of his relationship with the law: his conceptualization of it as a scholar, and his practice of it as a justice administrator. It first examines Ibn Khaldūn's legal training, writings and performance, with close attention to his role as a Mālikī chief judge in Mamlūk Egypt. Then, it probes his perspective on the development of Islamic law and its institutions through a systematic analysis of his account of fiqh and uṣūl al-fiqh in the Muqaddima. The paper concludes that Ibn Khaldūn's narrative fulfills two main tendencies: to contribute a critical analysis of the history of Islamic law, and to represent this history in a novel fashion through his theory of society and culture (ʿilm al-ʿumrān). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fetva collections are important sources for Islamic legal history. However, few scholars have considered a particular collection of fetvas or the fetvas of an individual jurist as specific areas of legal and historical exploration. Instead, most researchers use fetvas selectively and instrumentally, that is in (at best) small groups, and in their explorations of various other topics. This article proposes computational methodologies that could characterize the contents of a 6,000-fetva corpus by an important Ottoman jurist, Şeyhülislam Ebussuud Efendi (d. 1574), to reveal its substantive composition and range. The article conceptualizes a previously uncharted textual space in a way similar to how a map depicts a geographical one. By doing so, it also provides insights into Ebussuud's jurisprudential legacy and the major socio-legal concerns and anxieties in the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The past is the most important element in the meanings of Islam and its law, but the existing literature has rarely addressed the ways in which Muslims make sense of their past. How and why does the past matter so much for Muslims? Within their past, is it the seventh century that matters for them the most, once it comes to Islamic law, or is it some later period? If the latter, why is that so? This article addresses these questions through an ethno-historical study on the Shāfiʿī Muslims of the Indian Ocean littoral. I argue that a textual longue-durée of Islamic law is what matters to the Muslims more than the scriptures from seventh-century Arabia, or even than the foundational texts of Islamic law from the eighth or ninth centuries. This textual longue-durée is a product of millennium-long legalistic engagements by Muslims not only from Arabia, but also from 'peripheral' places like India and Indonesia. Through juridical and ethical discourses and debates in religious spheres, a rich reservoir of premodern texts is constantly invoked in the mosques, madrasas, markets, and mass media in order to better sustain religious piety and the legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disparity of human intellects dictum imposes an a priori limit of thinking and imagining that partially precludes the emergence of democratic thought in the Iranian commonsense. This paper presents three exemplary accounts of the disparity dictum in Perso-Islamicate philosophical and mystical traditions – by Ghazzali, Sadra and Molavi. The goal is to see how, despite varying verbalism, these thinkers share the view that human beings are not ultimately unified – and, accordingly, that humans cannot have equal rights to political power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When dealing with Ottoman judicial authorities, Frankish merchants, diplomats, and even slaves encountered unexpected difficulties. One of the obstacles these foreigners came up against was the Ottoman witness system, privileging the word of Muslims, and more generally, Islamic notions of proof and evidence. In this article I report the story of a Venetian who fell bankrupt in Syria in the 1520s, and analyze how his default was dealt with by Ottoman judges. A trader in diamonds and luxury items, Marco Priuli's heirs and associates proved to be unfamiliar with the legal practices sponsored by the Ottomans, and with the court's requirements for proof and evidence. By approaching Priuli's case, I describe how, shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Syria and Egypt, judges and officials started to deviate from previous legal practice regarding non-Muslims and mixed cases, promoting their own practices for producing evidence. For the Ottomans, the new approach to proof and evidence served as a means to differentiate themselves as a political community, and to mark out their vision of the Ottoman sovereign as guarantor of the rule of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on International Institute of Islamic Thought's (IIIT) conference, Summer Institute for Scholars annually in Herndon, Virginia from August 8-13, 2016 that addresses topics related to Islamic thought and secular modernity. Topics explored in the conference includes Islamic traditions, notions of Jihad, and role of religion in politics. The conference also discussed Islamism and Islamic law.

Tārīkh al-Tashrī' (the history of sharia affairs) is a relatively new genre of Islamic historiography and very popular among students of Islamic Law. Despite its popularity, academics of Islamic historiography seem not interested in studying it. There is hardly any academic paper seriously studied the literature. This paper is a first effort to explore the Tārīkh al-Tashrī' literature through a historiographical analysis. As an initial exploration, it argues that Tārīkh al-Tashrī' is the latest development of Islamic historiography, developed in the 19th century, but it is a genre of the old Islamic historiography with some new elements. The new elements are influenced by both modern Western historiography and the need to re-open the supposedly closed gate of ijtihād. The paper studied books of Tārīkh al-Tashrī' available during the research between 2013-2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reconstructs a debate between Hanafi jurists who operated throughout Ottoman Greater Syria (and beyond) from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries concerning the evidentiary status of the Ottoman imperial registers (defters). At the centre of the jurists' debate is the permissibility of using imperial registers as independent, uncorroborated evidence. It was a debate about who had the right to regulate and determine what constituted an authentic evidential document: while some jurists argued that it was almost exclusively the privilege of the jurists, others were willing to concede this authority, at least in part, to the Ottoman dynasty and its bureaucracy. Furthermore, the article contends that the debate about the evidentiary validity of the defters captures the complex relationship between Ottoman dynastic law and the Hanafi fiqh discourse. Finally, the debate sheds light on the legal "defterization" of other types of documents and texts, such as a chronicle (taʾrīkh) and court records (sijill). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at a Persian-language documentary form called the mahzar-nama that was widely used in India between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries to narrate, represent, and record antecedents, entitlements, and injuries with a view to securing legal rights and redressing legal wrongs. Mahzars were a known documentary form in Islamic law and used by qazis (Islamic judges) in many other parts of the world, but in India they took a number of distinctive forms. The specific form of Indian mahzar-namas that I focus on here was, broadly speaking, a legal document of testimony, narrated in the first person, in a form standardized by predominantly non-Muslim scribes, endorsed in writing by the author's fellow community members and/or professional or social contacts, and notarized by a qazi's seal. This specific legal form was part of a much broader genre of declarative texts that were also known as mahzars in India. I examine the legal mahzar-namas together with the other kinds of mahzars, and situate them in relation to Indo-Islamic jurisprudential texts and Persian-language formularies. What emerges is a distinctive Indo-Islamic legal culture in contact with the wider Islamic and Persianate worlds of jurisprudence and documentary culture, but responsive to the unique socio-political formations of early modern India. I also reflect on the meanings of law, including Islamic law, for South Asians and trace the evolution of that understanding across the historical transition to colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes how Islamic and Frankish legal devices complemented each other and were even combined to settle disagreements in the late medieval Middle East. For this purpose, it focuses on two legal institutions that provided responses to the biases of Islamic law against non-Muslims and to the prejudices of Franks against the local law. The first are the notaries sent to the Mamluk cities by the Venetian government to draw up legal documents and to support the transactions of Venetian merchants. The second are the new royal or siyāsa courts implemented by the sultans, where justice was dispensed by government officials instead of by traditional judges, or qāḍīs. Specifically, the article discusses, in a comparative manner, what constituted proof for Christians and Muslims, whether minorities could bear testimony or not, and how notaries and judges dealt with unbelievers. A common notarial culture, together with the expansion of siyāsa jurisdiction over the affairs of foreigners, brought about a much deeper legal interplay than has previously been understood. Ultimately, it is argued that Mediterranean medieval societies had evolving attitudes toward justice and diversity, and approached their own legal traditions in ways compatible with the conflict resolution, while constantly borrowing legal concepts about difference from each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I examine the networks and activities of transnational Shāfi'ī scholars in reformulating the madhhab and reviving the legal tradition of the Shāfi'ī school of law for contemporary Muslims. The discussion builds on recent debates in two overlapping fields. The first field argues that new modern communications media and technology have greatly fragmented the authority relationship in Islamic law; the second field centers on the perceived dissolution of the madhhab as a result of the widespread rejection of the authority of classical jurists. I argue that the same new media technology also provides a rationale and an instrument that enable Muslims to reformulate legal doctrines and revive the structure of legal authority as reflected in the school's tradition. By shifting the operation of the madhhab into cyberspace, these Shāfi'ī scholars have creatively responded to changes in communication technology and have effectively reformulated and refashioned the legal tradition of the madhhab as a practical reference for present-day Muslims. The ongoing presence of the madhhab, in this case, does not necessarily represent a zero sum game in the encounter with the legal reality of the modern nation-states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article considers the evolution of the institution of waqf among the Kazan Tatars in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Basing on an analysis of different sources and secondary literature, the author tries to point out the fallacy of some approaches claiming that the institution of waqf had legal status for the Kazan Tatars. On the contrary, an attempt is made to demonstrate that the interior policy of the Russian authorities aimed to oust the rules of Muslim law from the legal framework. Numerous attempts on the part of the Kazan Tatars to restore the institution of waqf proved unsuccessful owing to the resistance of the Russian authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of the institution of fatwa can be traced back before the independence of Malaysia. In the beginning, a Mufti was placed under the respective Islamic Councils. To a certain extent, a Mufti was also a judge (kadi) and presided over cases in the Shari'ah courts. Legally, a Mufti's views are not considered as fatwas. Only fatwas issued by the respective States' Fatwa Committees are regarded as fatwas. A fatwa is binding upon Muslims of the state where it is issued after being consented to by the Sultan and later gazetted. The problem is that more often than not, conflicting fatwas at state and national levels do occur, and this has led to confusion and problems. This article attempts to analyse the problems surrounding the conflicting fatwas. It suggests that the standardisation of fatwas at state and federal levels could be done by requesting the respective States' Fatwa Committees to abide by the fatwas issued by the National Fatwa Committee. It is also suggested that fatwas issued by the respective States' Fatwa Committees should be brought up to the National Fatwa Council for standardisation. It is also suggested that a Grand Mufti should be appointed on rotational basis like the selection of the Yang Di Pertuan Agong, after being consented to by the Council of Rulers. However, the position of Gand Mufti will not supersede the position of the respective States' Muftis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians and anthropologists are confronted with a persistent problem for which there is no clear solution: the conceptual tools which we use to attempt to understand cultures are themselves products of (often) the very cultures we are attempting to understand. Take “religion”. Boyarin ([2004]. “The Christian Invention of Judaism: The Theodosian Empire and the Rabbinic Refusal of Religion.”Representations85: 21–57) has argued that the very concept of “religion” as we know it was a product of the fourth and fifth centuries, as bishops and emperors constructed Christianity as a religion (the true one, of course), and in counterdistinction constructed “Judaism” and “Hellenism” (or paganism) as “false” religions. For Boyarin, Judaism only becomes a “religion” when Christian authorities define it as one. The same could be said for the jumble of texts, beliefs and rituals that the English, upon arriving in India, lump together under the name “Hinduism”, which they turn into a religion. Building, defining and policing borders between confessional groups has been an important part of constructing identities—or visions of community—in various societies, in particular those ruled by Christians or Muslims, from the time of the fourth-century Christian Roman emperors. In this article, I examine how Christian and Muslim jurists of the fourth to eleventh centuries use law to define and police confessional boundaries, in particular how they attempt to limit interactions that could transgress or blur those boundaries: shared meals, sexual contact, syncretic practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines ("CMPL") was established in 1977 as part of an effort to quell longstanding violence between Christians and Muslims in the [...]

The article examines whether or not several important provisions of Pakistan's Punjab Pre-emption Act of 1991 are in conformity with the Injunctions of Islam. Topics discussed include several changes to the law of pre-emption since the presidency of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and the constitutional scheme of Islamization in the country. Also discussed are cases related to the law of pre-emption that were decided during the 1980s and the early 1990s.

The article discusses a study which examined traditionalist Shafi'ite mystic-legists who wrote in Arabic-script Malay in the southern Thai province of Patani. Topics discussed include the influence of such Patanian Malay intellectuals on ethnic nationalism, pan-Islamic jihad and Islamic modernism in the region. Information is also presented on several notable writers of such a tradition including Shaykh Dawud Bin Abdallah al-Fatani who lived from 1769 to 1874.

The article discusses the teaching of Islamic Law in American law schools and a reported trend involving legal scholars who reportedly add Islamic components to their employments resumés (CVs) as a means of attracting potential employers and enhancing their professional standing as of May 2014. According to the article, some law schools seek to add Muslims for reasons related to identity politics. Islamic legal history, Shari'ah law, and Muslim legal cultures are also examined.

As the dynamic cognitive part of the Shari'ah, fiqh is inclined to adapt to new challenges by adopting new methodologies and approaches. One such approach that has emerged recently is 'applied Islamic ethics'. This new ethical approach is essentially based on the principles of the higher objectives of Shari'ah (maqasid al-shari'ah) and attempts to anchor Islamic jurisprudence in its ethical dimension, which has been significantly neglected for some time. This article attempts to analyse the new approach by surveying its historical developments, its possible methodologies, the benefits emanating from its application and the possible challenges it needs to face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the extent to which reliance on DNA analysis for paternity verification conflicts with the Islamic law of paternity. More particularly, it seeks to examine the extent to which DNA testing can be equated with the classical method of physiognomy (qiyāfa) as its modern equivalent. Depending on whether such a relationship can be drawn, Sharīʿa ruling on the former will be no different from its ruling on the latter. Although the majority opinion of modern Muslim jurists recognizes DNA testing as a reliable scientific method that can be used, to varying degrees, for paternity verification, such recognition is made by appeal to Islamic legal methodology and within the boundaries defined by it. The paper thus illustrates not only the extent to which DNA analysis is legitimized but also the efforts of Muslim jurists to enable the Islamic law of paternity to cope with modern scientific challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article proposes a comparative analytical framework to study changes in Islamic law during the post-Mongol period, particularly the rise of the official school of law (or state madhhab). Taking as my case study the Ottoman adoption of a particular branch within the Sunni Hanafi school of law, I suggest that this adoption marks a new chapter in Islamic legal history. In earlier periods, while rulers appointed judges and thus regulated the adjudication procedures, they did not intervene, at least theoretically, in the structure and doctrine of the schools of law, which remained the relatively autonomous realm of the jurists. The Ottoman adoption of the school, by contrast, was not merely an act of state patronage, since the dynasty played an important role in regulating the school's structure and doctrine. To this end, it employed a set of administrative and institutional practices, such as the development of an imperial learned hierarchy with standardized career and training tracks and the appointment of jurisconsults (muftis). Some of these practices were found in other polities across the eastern Islamic lands in the post-Mongol period, but these similarities have not been treated comparatively in modern historiography. They suggest that the Ottoman case was part of a broader legal culture that spanned several polities across the region. This article outlines a framework that will enable historians of Islamic law to treat these similarities in a more coherent manner. The framework raises key issues in the historiography of Islamic law and its nineteenth-century modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses slavery in Islamic countries during the Middle Ages. An overview of the impact that Islamic law (fiqh) and the Qur'an had on slavery, including in regard to Muslims' treatment of women slaves, is provided. The manumission, or emancipation, of slaves in Muslim countries is discussed.

Issues concerning the political history of Anglo-Muhammadan law in South Asia since the late 17th century are examined, focusing on the aspects of the jurisprudence system that combine political, cultural, and legal forces into an interpretive experience. Topics include the role of the British East India Company in the Muslim culture, apparent deference to Islamic culture, colonial codes of law, and the impact of British practices on South Asian culture.

This article examines the role of petitions to the Sultan concerning private disputes in the legal system of Ottoman Egypt during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Previous studies have seen petitioning as a means for subjects to complain about abuses carried out by Ottoman officials: few scholars have engaged with the many petitions involving private disputes between subjects. Based on both original petitions and Ottoman bureaucratic records, this article consists of two parts and an appendix. Part 1 describes the petitioning process, including the procedure followed by the imperial palace when handling petitions. Part 2 analyses the various ways in which sending a petition could affect the outcome of a dispute. The appendix features a reproduction and transcription of a petition which has been annotated by several palace officials, illustrating its progress through the palace bureaucracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

At the end of the second century ah al-Shāfi'ī (d. 204/820) advocated stoning as the sole penalty for adultery instead of an earlier rule that combined flogging with stoning. Al-Shāfi'ī's innovative doctrine was barely noticed by the jurisprudents, exegetes and ḥadīth collectors during the first half of the third century ah, but apparently provoked a legal debate shortly thereafter. This article explores the development of the third-century dual- vs. single-penalty dispute and its implications for the chronology of al-Shāfi'ī's Risāla. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mixed courts were an internationally staffed bench that represented the diplomatic alliances between capitulary powers and the Egyptian government. Decisions delivered by these courts were based on the so-called 'mixed codes,' which provided parties to a dispute with substantial scope for legal maneuvering. On the basis of a case study concerning a mortgage on a waqf (charitable endowment), I shall explain how legal actors, in spite of the state strong presence as regulatory agent, took advantage of the loopholes in the mixed-court system. Far from being an obstacle in the quest of justice, legal vagueness became an opportunity for anyone able to expand his own legal horizons beyond the limits imposed by the colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we will analyze the characteristics of the notion of wajib during the first six century of the history of Islamic law in terms of its existence, mukallaf, application and results. We will point that the wajib is based on Allah's will and the Prophet can not change it spontaneously. Wajib, which all Muslims obliged to believe it, is not built on fear. None of the human act in essence, does not express compulsion. Acording to Islamic Law, wajib; with its complementary elements; is the highest degree of obligation but also it can be abrogated. According to its structure, it can not be abondoned, it must be implemented. There are requirements for wajib. Wajib is built on facilitation, who leaves it, would be punished, also who implements it, would be rewarded. Primarily, administrators are responsible for its implementation. And also intent must be compliant with deeds in the implementation of wajib. On the basis of this characteristics, we will examine the types of wajib. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the constitutional problems, moral and societal impact of the legislation presented by the Oklahoma ban on Islamic Shari'a law in the U.S. It presents information on the anti-Shari'a movement, and examines the way that fits Shari'a in the U.S. legal system. It recommends that the government should schedule legislative hearings on Islam and Shari'a to provide a forum for the public to voice their concerns, and provides information on the history of Shari'a law.

The concept of sovereignty has posed important challenges in the ongoing debates and discourses on Islam and international law. This essay illustrates how sovereignty reflects competing ideas about legitimate authority by examining and exploring distinct debates in Islamic thought, all of which share a concern about the nature, scope, and contours of legitimacy and authority. This article does not offer a prescriptive argument for a robust notion of sovereignty in Islam, nor does it attempt to judge the Islamic past pursuant to contemporary strands of political theory. Rather, it explores various strands of historical Islamic intellectual debate that traverse the realms of theology, law and politics in order to reflect on the conditions of different sovereignties and their relationship to one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the etymology of the Islamic legal term 'shāhadat al-istikshāf,' which relates to reports given to a judge in legal cases from informants. The article describes the history of the role of a judge in Islamic law, a report circulated in 1995 by Israeli lawmaker Qadi Ahmad Nāṭūr, and Ḥanafī jurisprudence. The author analyzes the term as it was used historically by the Ottoman empire and in cases from the 1990s.

An essay is presented on group rights in democratic societies and legal pluralism in 2011, focusing on a historical overview of religious rights in the world, the role of the United Nations, and Islamic Sharia law. The rights of indigenous peoples around the world are also examined, including the application of legal pluralism in an indigenous population.

An essay is presented on the relationship of religious norms and human rights concerns in 2011, focusing on the rights of women and children, as well as a discussion of normative and legal pluralism. The intersection of religion and the law is examined as well as the family law norms of the Islamic Sharia law.

The Islamic Nubian kingdom of Sinnār dominated the northern Nile-valley Sudan from about 1500 to 1821. During the eighteenth century the government began to issue official documents in the Arabic language. Of these, about seventy are known to exist today. The present study examines an extended dispute over landholding near the Nile confluence that generated a series of official documents. Specifically, it considers a pair of unusual early nineteenth-century records that document the invocation of the right of sanctuary by the leader of the defeated party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While in the Ottoman Empire reconciling disputing parties in Sharīa courts occurred without the direct involvement of state officials, in modern Central Asia functionaries appointed by the ruler's chancellery acted as mediators and mediation procedures were consistent with the state's intervention in the resolution of a conflict. This ended with Russian colonization. Conflict resolution was left to the Sharīa courts; mediation continued to be important but state appointees were no longer officially involved in bringing it about. The Russian colonial and Soviet administrations made the community responsible for seeking amicable settlements. Only afterwards did they realize how easy this made it for local groups to circumvent the state's supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Islam and cannibalism by focusing on a historical court case record from the Ottoman court at Sofia, (now in Bulgaria) dated 1027/1618. Islamic teachings of the Qu'ran and statements made by the prophet Muhammad regarding cannibalism are detailed which determine whether cannibalism is haram, or forbidden, unless there is darūra, or necessity. The case involved charges against a dhimmī, or non-Muslim subject, named Volka accused of having multiple sexual encounters with Muslim women as well as murdering children, butchering them, and selling their bodies at the market.

There are always discussions about the creative source of law and the origin of law on legal history. However, there are close relationships between opinions regarding the origin of law, creative source of law and law- state In this article, after we will discuss briefly relationship between law and state and different views on the origin of law, we will consider to the different meanings of the source concept and to the sociological resource and to the creative source of law in the positive law and Islamic law. Essentially, we will try to compare between Islamic law and positive law from these respects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minhāj al-Tālibīn, written by imam an-Navavī is one of the most accurate and basic books according the late scholars of the Shafi'i school. In addition, the most famous and reliable commentaries written on it are Tuhfatu'l-Muhtāj by Ibn Hajar al-Haythamī, Mughnī Al-Muhtāj by al-Sherbīnī and Nehāyet al-Muhtāj by Shamsal-Ramly. These scholars, living approximately in the same years and the same city, and their commentaries have an important role in Shāfī'i school. Although, Tuhfatu'l-Muhtājcriticized because of its difficulty in writing style and some opinions that are not prefered in the Shāfi'i school, the book and Nehāyet al-Mohtāj have sustained being themost important books of the school after an-Navavī and ar-Rāfi'ī. Accepting very well in terms of fluency and writing style Mughnī Al-Muhtāj, has become an increasingly preferred book lately, and took the first place in some countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, one of the matter of jurists is instrumentalism in law (law's instrumentality). This topic focuses on that law is not objective and judges give meanings to judicial texts in contrast to the will of lawgivers and thus fill the gaps of law. In the Islamic law, Allah is accepted as a legislator. Therefore jurists struggle in order to understand and to sentence correctly according to the law texts (the Quranic verses and hadith). However, personal tendencies affect the process of the sentence according to law texts and might have been contrary to fundamental position, with emphasis on the idea of the sect (madhhab) were sentenced to be seen. In this study, a treatise (risalah) on the Ottoman period is discussed in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most general definition that expresses the whole of the rules of law, individual rights and responsibilities to identify and ultimately, social peace and stability has to. The aim of this aspect of law and order in the appropriate style justice connects to act as human life and relationships. By this arrangement, public life go through this in peace and security can be ensured. An important feature of the financial sanction of law to provide social order is guaranteed. Law enforcement also appeared in the form of coercion and punishment. Property, a non-enforcement of the rule of law can not be considered to be valid. Law has an important place on the death penalty, since the early days of human history has taken place in almost all legal systems. In parallel, a multi-enforcement methods have been applied for the death penalty. Here, the pre-Islamic legal systems and enforcement procedures for the death penalty will be placed on the approaches outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Al-Fatāwā al-Hindiyya Al-'Ālamjīriyya is a compendium of Islamic Ḥanafi law. It was written in South Asia during the second half of the seventeenth century with the goal of filling the gap between local social reality and Islamic legal theory. In order to establish an authoritative ruling, the authors compared the views of Central Asian scholars on Ḥanafi law, like those from Balakh and Bukhārā, with the opinions held by the Iraqi scholars, in particular Abū Ḥanīfa and his two disciples. This paper argues that the South Asian scholars shared more similarities with their Iraqi colleagues than with the Central Asian branch of the Ḥanafi school of law, although the latter were closer to them chronologically than the Iraqi scholars. Furthermore, the South Asian scholars' “permissive” point of view regarding non-Muslim residents may be ascribed to the pressure of the social reality in South Asia, which pushed them to search for a compromise between the population's ruling Muslim minority and the non-Muslim majority. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses historic synthesis between the ahl al-rā'y and ḥadīth schools of Islamic jurisprudence, which emphasized reason and revelation respectively. Particular focus is given to the role of jurist Abū 'Abdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfi'ī in attempting to synthesize the two schools. According to the author, Shāfi'ī introduced methodology and notion to the idea of synthesis between the two groups, but their differences were too great for complete homogeneity. Topics discussed include the sayings and acts of the Islamic prophet Muhammad known as ḥadīth, the process of deductive analogy known as qiyās, rationalism, and traditionalism.

The legal rules of each legal system reflect their own nature and primary characteristics in both quantity and quality. Since they comprise the main structure of the system, the study of these rules, therefore, gives an idea about the mechanism of the system as a whole. An investigation of the principles behind these legal rules, which represent dominant features of several rules is a further step and gives an opportunity to understand the common points of the particular cases. These principles have different essences and historical backgrounds in every legal surrounding. The settled principles of Islamic law (al-qawā'id al-fiqhiyyah) which reflect the general characteristics of rules, were used in legal corpuses from the early ages and developed at a later stage as an independent subgenre in Islamic law. Not only the four Sunni schools of law, but also Shi'i jurists have made a considerable contribution to the development of the literature in the course of time. In the Muslim world, there are several academic works on the subject such as critical editions, theoretical stuies of the genre, and the investigations and applications of certain qawā'id in legal corpuses. Nevertheless, this significant subject of Islamic law has so far found little attention among the Western academia. This paper, aims to make a small contribution to this significant component of Islamic law. It is concentrating on al-qawā'id alfiqhiyyah, not al-qawā'id al-usūliyyah (hermeneutic principles). After dealing with the concept of qawā'id and its importance in Islamic law, the paper presents a historical overview of the development of qawā'id literature in four Sunni schools of law. The evolution of the genre is examined in three periods: the formative period second/eighth-fourth/tenth centuries), the self-contained compilation period (fourth/tenth-tenth/sixteenth centuries), and the post-compilation period (tenth/sixteenth-thirteenth/nineteenth centuries).The paper concludes with a list of traditional and modern qawā' id works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenced by Orientalist assumptions and Utilitarian ideals, and needing to enforce a system of adjudication that responded to their interests, the East India Company's officers selected among varied religious texts a set of norms and tried to apply them consistently. The decision to rely on texts rather than practice, the choice of certain precepts at the expense of others, and their rigid application ran counter to the traditional administration of justice, which had been fluid, contextual, and plural. They also distorted the meaning of Hanafi fiḳh, turning what had been an instrument of legitimation, a moral reference, and a source of social standing into a system of organized dispute settlement. The emphasis on religious textual sources and the attempt to use them as a basis for codification coincided with the idea, which gained ground in the nineteenth century among Muslim reformist movements, that political weakness could be countered by returning to a pristine scripturalist Islam, focused on its legal aspects and seen as a systematic doctrine devoid of ambiguities. These ideas can be also found in the Islamist thought that subsequently spread among urban reformist movements and in legal reforms adopted in Pakistan. A review of case studies, however, suggests that the flexibility and contextuality that characterized the enforcement of Islamic law in precolonial Islam is still to be found in legal practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]