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Goodbye to the Despot: Feldman on Islamic Law in the Ottoman Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Molly Greene
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Abstract

Noah Feldman's 2008 book, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, provides a sweeping review of the constitutional history of the Islamic polity that connects the past to developments in the Middle East today. The Ottoman Empire is vital to his argument. This essay critically evaluates Feldman's treatment of the Ottoman period, within the larger context of Islamic history, and in so doing considers the understudied constitutional history of the empire. Without denying the importance of the ulema and the shari'a, it argues that the empire was a hybrid of many different traditions and the centrality of Islamic law should not be overstated.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Winter 2010 , pp. 219 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2010 

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