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Chapter 19 - Settling Disputes among Nomads

Four Fatwās from Early Nineteenth-Century Mauritania

from Part III - Legal Opinions (Fatwās)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

By
Ismail Warscheid
Edited by
Omar Anchassi  and
Robert Gleave
Omar Anchassi
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
Robert Gleave
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

This chapter explores four legal opinions (fatwās) of the Mauritanian jurist al-Qaṣrī b. Muḥammad (d. 1235/1819) from the Nawāzil al-Qaṣrī. Islamic law has typically been an urban discourse produced by scholars based in cities, but from the 17th century onwards, the emergence of nomadic groups specialising in religious studies fostered the spread of Islamic literacy and law in the trans-Saharan region. This rural juristic activity, produced away from the cities and among pastoralist and other non-sedentary groups, differed from that of the urban jurists, and is available in the form of ‘case collections’ (nawāzil), responsa (ajwiba) and archival documents that allow us to write the cultural and social history of pre-colonial West Africa from an insider’s perspective.

Keywords

Legal opinion (fatwā)Case collections (nawāzil)Responsa (ajwiba)Trans-Saharan regionPastoralistsNomadsCustomary law.
Type
Chapter
Information
Islamic Law in Context
A Primary Source Reader
 , pp. 204 - 213
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Primary Sources

al-Bartilī al-Walātī, al-Ṭālib Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr al-Ṣiddīq. Fatḥ al-Shakūr fī Maʿrifat Aʿyān ʿUlamāʾ al-Takrūr, ed. Ḥajjī, Muḥammad and al-Kattānī, Ibrāhīm (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1981).Google Scholar
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Warscheid, Ismail. ‘The West African Jihād Movements and the Islamic Legal Literature of the Southwestern Sahara (1650–1850)’, Journal of West African History 6 (2020), 33–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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