This book deals with an Ayyūbid-Mamlūk Egyptian jurist's attempt to come to terms with the potential conflict between power, represented in the state, and authority, represented in the schools of law, particularly where one school enjoys a privileged status with the state. It deals with the history of the relationship between the schools of law, particularly in Mamlūk Egypt, in the context of the running history of Islamic law from the formative period during which ijtihād was the dominant hegemony, into the post-formative period during which taqlīd came...

This important book critically examines the traditional interpretation of riba (translated as usury of interest) and the attempts of modern Islamic banks to put that interpretation into practice. The first part of the book examines the prohibition and interpretation of riba in Islam, as well as the controversies surrounding it. The second part examines the alternatives to interest-based financing utilised in Islamic banking and the problems associated with such alternatives with particular focus on mudaraba, musharaka and marabaha. The book questions the legalistic...

This book focuses on the Hanafite school of fiqh which originated in the eight century and is, geographically, the most widespread and, numerically, the most important representative of Muslim normativeness. The fiqh consists of liturgical, ethical and legal norms derived from the Islamic revelation. The introduction outlines the main boundaries between fiqh and theology and follows the modern debate on the comparison between the fiqh and the secularized law of the modern Occident. The core of the book is dedicated to the way in which the fiqh, in the period...

This important new study describes and analyzes the response of Egyptian society, as reflected in court decisions, to legal reform pertaining to matters of personal status and succession during the first half of the twentieth century. The main issues in this regard are the extent to which traditional law and legal reform are implemented or circumvented in daily practice, and the role of the judges in this process. Family and the Courts in Modern Egypt contains three parts: marriage, divorce, and intergenerational relations. Scholars and the general reader will find its main...

In the final phase of its pre-modern period of existence, Islamic Law is based mainly on the fatwa collections of two prominent Arab jurists and one Turkish jurist from this period.
The book re-examines the basic methodological structure of Islamic law (including its complex relations with the state) and poses the question as to whether Islamic law became increasingly closed and rigid. It was found that no such closure ever took place. Flexibility and openness remained vital, via terms such as istihsan, ijtihad and 'urf. Unheralded innovation was also common.
The book will be of...

This study focuses on judicial practice in the Andalusian metropolis of Cordoba during the years 456/1064 to 464/1072. The author analyses the writings of councils of the judiciary, who commented, often controversially, on cases heard by courts pertaining to different judiciary systems. These texts offer new insights into the organization of the city's judiciary and its social and economic life. They allow for a precise definition of the relation between the qadi and governmental jurisdiction. By examining both realms, the author demonstrates -for the first time in a pre-Ottoman context- that...

Pre-modern Western sources generally claim that European mercantile communities in the Ottoman Empire enjoyed legal autonomy, and were thus effectively immune to Ottoman justice. At the same time, they report numerous disputes with Ottoman officials over jurisdiction ("avanias"), which seems to contradict this claim, the discrepancy being considered proof of the capriciousness of the Ottoman legal system. Modern studies of Ottoman-European relations in this period have tended uncritically to accept this interpretation, which is challenged in this book.

Dispensing Justice is designed to serve as a sourcebook of Islamic legal practice and qadi court records from the rise of Islam to modern times, drawing upon court records and qadi judgments, in addition to literary sources. In the first chapter, we survey the state of the field, sketching the history, structure, and modern transformation of the qadiship. The twenty chapters that follow are grouped thematically in four sections: (1) the nature and functions of the judgeship and its development over time; (2) the structure of the judicial apparatus; (3) the application of juristic...

The Risāla of al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), the earliest preserved work of Islamic legal theory, has been understood in previous scholarship as either the elaboration of a hierarchy of sources of law (Qurʾān, Sunna, consensus, and analogical reasoning) or an extended defense of the Sunna. Through a careful rereading of this celebrated text, this book offers a comprehensive reinterpretation of the Risāla, in which Shāfiʿī formulated an all-encompassing hermeneutic that portrays the law as a tightly interlocking structure organized...

This book focuses on the history and work of the Saudi Dār al-Iftā, one of the most central modern Islamic official religious institutions. The study was undertaken from two perspectives: (1) Dār al-Iftā creation, power structure, functions and the sociopolitical environment in which it operates; and (2) The actual work of this institution, mainly the mechanisms by which modern Saudi state muftis cope with clashes between Wahhābī idealism and the reality of an evolving society. This is a critical work which updates the readers' grasp of contemporary law and...