Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-2l2gl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-27T00:35:25.664Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Islamic law: history and transformation

from PART I - RELIGION AND LAW

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2011

By
Wael Hallaq
Edited by
Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Get access

Summary

Introduction

If we must refer to the sharῑʿa as ‘Islamic law’, then we must do so with considerable caution. The latter expression bears a connotation that combines modern notions of law with a particular brand of modern politics, both of which were largely – if not entirely – absent from the original landscape of the sharῑʿa we are considering here. Throughout the last three or four centuries European modernity has produced legal systems and legal doctrines that are almost exclusively the preserve of the equally modern nation-state. Intrinsic to its behaviour, the modern state is systemically and systematically geared towards the transformation and homogenisation of both the social order and the national citizen, features that have a direct bearing on law. To accomplish these goals the state engages in systemic surveillance, discipline and punishment. Its educational and cultural institutions, among others, are designed to manufacture the citizen who is respectful of law, submissive to notions of order and discipline, industrious and economically productive. Without the law and its tools of surveillance and punishment, no state apparatus can exist. Ergo the centrality, in the definition and concept of the state, of the element of violence, and of the state’s exclusive right to threaten its use.

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 142 - 183
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

al-Shahῑd, Ḥusām, Māza, Ibn, Sharḥ Adab al-qāḍῑ lil-Khaṣṣāf, Beirut, 1994.Google Scholar
Alon, Y., ‘The tribal system in the face of the state-formation process: Mandatory Transjordan, 1921–46’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 37 (2005) –40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
An-Na’im, Abdullahi, Islamic family law in a changing world, London, 2002.Google Scholar
Anderson, B.Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism, 2nd edn, London and New York, 2006.Google Scholar
Anderson, J. N. D., ‘Law reform in Egypt: 1850–1950’, in Holt, P. M. (ed.), Political and social change in modern Egypt, London, 1968 –30.Google Scholar
Anderson, Michael, ‘Legal scholarship and the politics of Islam in British India’, in Khare, R. S. (ed.), Perspectives on Islamic law, justice, and society, Lanham, MD, 1999 –91.Google Scholar
Anderson, Michael R., ‘Legal scholarship and the politics of Islam in British India’, in Khare, R. S. (ed.), Perspectives on Islamic law, justice, and society, Lanham, MD, 1999 –91.Google Scholar
Asad, T., Formations of the secular, Stanford, 2003.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal, ‘Conscripts of Western civilization’, in Gailey, Christine W. (ed.), Civilization in crisis: Anthropological perspectives, Gainesville, 1992 –51.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal, Formations of the secular, Stanford, 2003.Google Scholar
Bājῑ, Abū al-Walῑd, Iḥkām al-fuṣūl fῑ aḥkām al-uṣūl, ed. Turkῑ, ʿAbd al-Majῑd, Beirut, 1986.Google Scholar
Bravmann, M. M., The spiritual background of early Islam, Leiden, 1972.Google Scholar
Calder, N., ‘Law’, in Nasr, S. H. and Leaman, O. (eds.), History of Islamic philosophy, London, 1996 –98.Google Scholar
Calder, N., ‘al-Nawawῑ’s typology of muftῑs and its significance for a general theory of Islamic law’, Islamic Law and Society, 3, 3 (1996) –64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha, ‘Colonialism, nationalism, and colonized women: The contest in India’, American Ethnologist, 16, 4 (1989) –33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, B., Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: The British in India, Princeton, 1996.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard, Colonialism and its forms of knowledge: The British in India, Princeton, 1996.Google Scholar
Coulson, N. J., A history of Islamic law, Edinburgh, 1964.Google Scholar
Dimashqῑ, Abū Zurʿa, Tārῑkh, ed. al-Qawjānῑ, Shukr Allāh, 2 vols., n.p., 1970.
Dirks, Nicholas B., The scandal of empire: India and the creation of imperial Britain, Cambridge, MA, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
El-Nahal, G. H., The judicial administration of Ottoman Egypt in the seventeenth century, Minneapolis and Chicago, 1979.Google Scholar
Fadel, M., ‘The social logic of taqlῑd and the rise of the mukhtaṣar’, Islamic Law and Society, 3, 2 (1996) –233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feener, Michael, ‘Indonesian movements for the creation of a “national madhhab”’, Islamic Law and Society, 9, 1 (2002) –115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glenn, P., Legal traditions of the world, Oxford, 2000.Google Scholar
Glenn, P., ‘Groundwork of the moral law: A new look at the Qurʾān and the genesis of sharῑʿa’, Islamic Law and Society, 17, 1 (forthcoming, 2010).Google Scholar
Glenn, P., A history of Islamic legal theories: An introduction to Sunnῑuṣūl al-fiqh, Cambridge, 1997.Google Scholar
Glenn, P., ‘The qāḍῑ’s dῑwān (sijill) before the Ottomans’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 61, 3 (1998) –36.Google Scholar
Glenn, P., ‘The quest for origins or doctrine? Islamic legal studies as colonialist discourse’, UCLA Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, 2, 1 (2002–3) –31.Google Scholar
Glenn, P., ‘Was al-Shafiʿi the master architect of Islamic jurisprudence?’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 25 (1993) –605.Google Scholar
Glenn, P., ‘Was the gate of ijtihad closed?’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 16 (1984) –41.Google Scholar
Glenn, P., (ed.), The formation of Islamic law, The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 27 (gen. ed. Conrad, L.), Aldershot, 2003.Google Scholar
Hallaq, Wael B., Authority, continuity and change in Islamic law, Cambridge, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallaq, Wael B., ‘Model shurūṭ works and the dialectic of doctrine and practice’, Islamic Law and Society, 2, 2 (1995) –34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallaq, Wael B., The origins and evolution of Islamic law, Cambridge, 2005.Google Scholar
Hallaq, Wael B., ‘Qāḍῑs communicating: Legal change and the law of documentary evidence’, al-Qanṭara, 20, 2 (1999) –66.Google Scholar
Hallaq, Wael B., ‘What is sharia?’ Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, 2005–2006, vol. XII, Leiden, 2007 –80.Google Scholar
Hallaq, Wael B., Sharia: Theory, practice, transformations (Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hallaq, Wael B., ‘Was al-Shafiʿi the master architect of Islamic jurisprudence?’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 25 (1993)Google Scholar
Hélie-Lucas, Marie-Aimée, ‘The preferential symbol for Islamic identity: Women in Muslim personal laws’, in Moghadam, Valentine (ed.), Identity politics and women: Cultural reassertions and feminisms in international perspective, Boulder, 1994 –96.Google Scholar
Hooker, M. B., Legal pluralism: An introduction to colonial and neo-colonial laws, Oxford, 1975.Google Scholar
Hoyland, R. G., Seeing Islam as others saw it: A survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam, Princeton, 1997.Google Scholar
Hurvitz, Nimrod, The formation of Ḥanbalism: Piety into power, London, 2002.Google Scholar
Ibn Ḥibbān, M., Kitāb al-thiqāt, Hyderabad, 1968.Google Scholar
Ibn Abῑ Shayba, M., al-Muṣannaf, 9 vols., Beirut, 1995.Google Scholar
al-Ḥājib, Ibn, ʿUmar, Jamāl al-Dῑn ibn, Jāmʿi al-ummahāt, ed. al-Akhḍarῑ, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Damascus and Beirut, 1421/2000.Google Scholar
al-Najjār, Ibn, al-Dῑn, Taqῑ, Muntahā al-irādāt, ed. al-Khāliq, ʿAbd al-Mughnῑ ʿAbd, 2 vols., Cairo, 1381/1962.Google Scholar
Qāḍῑ Shuhba, Ibn, al-Dῑn, Taqῑ, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya, 4 vols., Hyderabad, 1978.Google Scholar
Taymῑya, Ibn, al-Dῑn, Taqῑ, Istiḥsān, in Makdisi, G., ‘Ibn Taymῑya’s autograph manuscript on istiḥsān: Materials for the study of Islamic legal thought’, in Makdisi, G. (ed.), Arabic and Islamic studies in honor of H. A. R. Gibb, Cambridge, MA, 1965 –79.Google Scholar
Jammāʿῑlῑ, ʿAbd al-Ghanῑ ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, al-ʿUmda fῑ al-aḥkām, ed. ʿAṭāʾ, M., Beirut, 1986.Google Scholar
Johansen, B., The Islamic law on land tax and rent, London, 1988.Google Scholar
Johansen, B., ‘Legal literature and the problem of change: The case of the land rent’, in Mallat, Chibli (ed.), Islam and public law, London, 1993 –47.Google Scholar
Jones, William, al-Sirajiyah or the Mahomedan law of inheritance, Calcutta, 1861.Google Scholar
Kolff, D. H. A., ‘The Indian and the British law machines: Some remarks on law and society in British India’, in Mommsen, W. J. and Moor, J. A. (eds.), European expansion and law: The encounter of European and indigenous law in 19th- and 20th-century Africa and Asia, Oxford, 1992 –35.Google Scholar
Kugle, Scott A., ‘Framed, blamed and renamed: The recasting of Islamic jurisprudence in colonial South Asia,’ Modern Asian Studies, 35, 2 (2001) –313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebesny, H., Law of the Near and Middle East, Albany, 1975.Google Scholar
Makdisi, G., ‘The significance of the schools of law in Islamic religious history’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 10 (1979) –8.Google Scholar
Makdisi, G., ‘Ibn Taymῑya’s autograph manuscript on istiḥsān: Materials for the study of Islamic legal thought’, in Makdisi, G. (ed.), Arabic and Islamic studies in honor of H. A. R. Gibb, Cambridge, MA, 1965 –79.Google Scholar
Mālik, ibn Anas, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, Beirut, 1414/1993.Google Scholar
Marghῑnānῑ, Burhān al-Dῑn ʿAlῑ ibn Abῑ Bakr, al-Hidāya: Sharḥ bidāyat al-mubtadῑ, 4 vols., Cairo, 1980 (repr).Google Scholar
Melchert, Christopher, The formation of the Sunni schools of law, Leiden, 1997.Google Scholar
Melchert, Christopher, ‘The formation of the Sunni schools of law’, in Hallaq, W. B. (ed.), The Formation of Islamic Law, The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 27 (gen. ed. Conrad, L.), Aldershot, 2003, XIII.Google Scholar
Menski, Werner, Hindu law: Beyond tradition and modernity, Oxford, 2003.Google Scholar
Moors, Annelies, ‘Debating Islamic family law: Legal texts and social practices’, in Meriwether, M. L. and Tucker, Judith E. (eds.), Social history of women and gender in the modern Middle East, Boulder, 1999 –75.Google Scholar
Motzki, H., ‘The role of non-Arab converts in the development of early Islamic law’, Islamic Law and Society, 6, 3 (1999) –317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nielsen, J., Secular justice in an Islamic state, Leiden, 1985.Google Scholar
Peirce, Leslie, Morality tales: Law and gender in the Ottoman court of Aintab, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003.Google Scholar
Peters, F. E. (ed.), The Arabs and Arabia on the eve of Islam, The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 3 (gen. ed. Conrad, L.), Aldershot, 1999.Google Scholar
Powers, D., Law, society, and culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500, Cambridge, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powers, D., ‘Orientalism, colonialism and legal history: The attack on Muslim family endowments in Algeria and India’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31, 3 (July 1989) –71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powers, D., ‘Kadijustiz or qāḍῑ-justice? A paternity dispute from fourteenth-century Morocco’, Islamic Law and Society, 1, 3 (1994) –66; repr. in Powers, D., Law, society, and culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500, Cambridge, 2002, 23–52.Google Scholar
Powers, D., ‘On judicial review in Islamic law,’ Law and Society Review, 26 (1992) –41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qalqashandῑ, Aḥmad ibn ʿAlῑ, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā fῑ ṣināʿat al-inshā, 14 vols., Beirut, 1987.Google Scholar
Rubin, U. (ed.), The Life of Muhammad, The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 4 (gen. ed. Conrad, L.), Aldershot, 1998.Google Scholar
Samarqandῑ, Abū Naṣr, Rusūm al-quḍāt, ed. al-Ḥadῑthῑ, M. Jāsim, Baghdad, 1985.Google Scholar
Shῑrāzῑ, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhῑm, Ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ, ed. ʿAbbās, I., Beirut, 1970.Google Scholar
Singha, Radhika, A despotism of law: Crime and justice in early colonial India, Delhi, 1998.Google Scholar
Spectorsky, Susan, ‘Sunnah in the responses of Isḥāq B. Rāhawayh’, in Weiss, B. (ed.), Studies in Islamic legal theory, Leiden, 2002 –74.Google Scholar
Strawson, John, ‘Islamic law and English texts’, Law and Critique, 6, 1 (1995) –38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thung, M., ‘Written obligations from the 2nd/8th to the 4th century’, Islamic Law and Society, 3, 1 (1996) –12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsafrir, N., The history of an Islamic school of law: The early spread of Hanafism, Cambridge, MA, 2004.Google Scholar
Tyan, E., Histoire de l’organisation judiciare en pays d’Islam, 2nd edn, Leiden, 1960.Google Scholar
Tyan, E., ‘Judicial organization’, in Khadduri, M. and Liebesny, H. (eds.), Law in the Middle East, Washington, DC, 1955 –78.Google Scholar
Udovitch, A. L., Partnership and profit in medieval Islam, Princeton, 1970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Creveld, M., The rise and decline of the state, Cambridge, 2000.Google Scholar
Wael, Hallaq, ‘Groundwork of the moral law: A new look at the Qurʾān and the genesis of sharῑʿa’, Islamic Law and Society, 17, 1 (forthcoming, 2010)Google Scholar
Weiss, B., The search for God’s law, Salt Lake City, 1992.Google Scholar
Zaman, M. Q., Religion and politics under the early ʿAbbāsids: The emergence of the proto-Sunni elite, Leiden, 1997.Google Scholar
Zaman, M. Q., The ulama in contemporary Islam: Custodians of change, Princeton, 2002.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×