Pre-modern Islamic legal practice is most often considered an essentially urban phenomenon. Relying on unedited fatwa collections and other Arabic manuscripts from the oasis of Tuw t in southern Algeria, Droit musulman et societe au Sahara premoderne challenges this vision. The book explores the spread of Islamic legal institutions in the region between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, and the interaction between village communities and Muslim jurists. Ismail Warscheid investigates this process from a dialectical perspective: how were shar norms applied by local...