In this Shari’a Workshop we will discuss the chapter “Siyāsa, the Forgotten Code” in Khaled Fahmy’s book Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt.

This paper provides insight into the largely unstudied legal history of the three most prominent Gujarati Muslim commercial castes. The assumption that a hallmark of their history has been their legal exceptionalism - the notion that they stood apart from other Indian Muslims by virtue of their place in the colonial legal system or their apathy towards sharia – is rejected. Unaware of this longer genealogy, historians have rooted both the ersatz Muslim identity of the Gujarati Muslim commercial castes and their economic prowess in this supposed legal exceptionalism.

Dr. O'Sullivan’s paper introduces a variety of topics, including the production of the first Islamic legal treatises in Gujarati; the role of the jamaat council in each community as an interpreter and enforcer of 'sharia'; and competing interpretations of Islamic commercial law in three groups conspicuous for their economic success.

In the case of the Memons, he is interested in the relationship between individual jamaats and the ideas of law propounded by the rival Sunni masalik; in the case of the Bohras, the place of medieval Ismaili jurisprudence in the scholarly culture of the jamaat; and in the case of the Khojas, debates between Ismaili and Twelver Khojas over matters of law, hadith, scripture.

Through engagements with Islamic jurists and contemporary scholarship on both the Shari’a and modern state law, this paper is an invitation to raise four questions: (i) What does it mean to study acts of worship (‘ibadat) as an integral part of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh)? (ii) What does their omission tell us about assumptions regarding the categories of law and Shari’a in contemporary scholarship? (iii) To what extent does the inclusion of acts of worship in their relation to social interactions (mu’amalat) entail revisiting the thesis of the Shari’a’s demise in present times? (iv) How have contemporary Islamic scholars revisited the relationship between acts of worship and social interactions as a response to the constitution of “the present” as an epistemic problem for Islamic legal knowledge?

Roundtable Discusson: The Ḥawza and the Sharia

Roundtable Discusson: New Work in Sharia

Tribal Villages in Mamluk Palestine: Exploring the Haram Al-Sharif Documents

With Ibrahim Khaled El Houdaiby (PhD Candidate, MESAAS) and Aseel Najib (PhD Candidate, Religion Department).

Islamic Legal Studies: A Critical Historiography

with guest convener Omar Farahat, Assistant Professor of Law at McGill University

Local Tradition and Imperial Law in Umayyad Fustāt: The Evolution of the Early Egyptian Legal School

Islamic Legal Canons as Interpretive Precedent: The Curious Case of Bughaybigha, 661-882

Intisar A. Rabb is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a director of its Islamic Legal Studies Program. She also holds an appointment as a Professor of History at Harvard University and as Susan S. And Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Ottoman Venality, or Tax Farming of Judicial Offices in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1700-1839

Jun Akiba specializes in Ottoman history during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with a focus on the judiciary, judicial administration and related educational institutions. His current projects include a book on Ottoman sharia courts and, with Cemal Kafadar, a study of Ottoman self-narratives. Forthcoming articles treat girls schools and female teachers in pre-Tanzimat Istanbul and sharia judges in the nizamiye system.

Working for the government in Early Islamic Jurisprudence

Rob Gleave is Professor of Arabic Studies and Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam (CSI), IAIS, University of Exeter.  Gleave is currently Principal Investigator of 2 major projects: Understanding Shari’a: Past Present Imperfect Present (www.usppip.eu) and Law and Learning in Imami Shi’ite Islam (LAWALISI). We will discuss his precirculated paper. To receive a copy, contact amb49@columbia.edu. 

Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History. Beshara Doumani, Professor of History and Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University, will discuss his new book Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean. Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies and History, will introduce Doumani. Commentary by Baber Johansen, Professor of Islamic Religious Studies, Harvard Divinity School, and Brinkley Messick, Professor of Anthropology and MESAAS and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia, will follow the talk.