Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:27:22.786Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Islamic Law in Action: A Historical Discussion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Boğaç A. Ergene
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This review essay engages Kristen Stilt's recent book, Islamic Law in Action: Authority, Discretion, and Everyday Experiences in Mamluk Egypt (2011), in a fashion that highlights its contributions to the study of Islamic law. In particular, it underlines the methodological arguments made in the book that might help us think about Islamic legal practice in sophisticated and historically grounded ways. As elaborated in the article, these arguments have important implications for modern as well historical settings. Specifically, Stilt's discussion of “Islamic law in action” reveals the inherent flexibility of Islamic legal practice to accommodate political change. The article also discusses how further research on the topic could benefit from specific approaches and orientations.

Type
Review Essay
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , Fall 2013 , pp. 1041 - 1057
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2013 

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

Akgündüz, Ahmet. 1990. Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlileri, vol. 1. Istanbul: FEY Vakfı Yayınları.Google Scholar
Akgündüz, Ahmet. 1988. Şer'iye Sicilleri: Mahiyeti, Toplu Kataloğu ve Seçme Hükümler, 2 vols. Istanbul: Türk Dünyası Araştırmaları Vakfı.Google Scholar
Antoun, Richard. 1980. The Islamic Court, The Islamic Judge, and the Accommodation of Traditions: A Jordanian Case Study. International Journal of Middle East Studies 12:455–467.Google Scholar
Antoun, Richard. 1990. Litigant Strategies in an Islamic Court in Jordan. In Law and Islam in the Middle East, ed. Dwyer, Daisy H. New York: Bergen and Garvey Publishers.Google Scholar
Arjomand, Said A. 2007. Islamic Constitutionalism. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 3:115–140.Google Scholar
Barkan, Ömer Lütfi. 1943. XV ve XVIıncı Asırlarda Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Zirai Ekonominin Hukuki ve Mali Esasları: Kanunlar. Istanbul: Burhaneddin Matbaası.Google Scholar
Barkan, Ömer Lütfi. 1952. Kanunnameler. Islam Ansiklopedisi 6:185–195.Google Scholar
Bowen, John R. 2003. Islam, Law and Equality in Indonesia: An Anthropology of Public Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, N. 1997. Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity. International Journal of Middle East Studies 29:359–376.Google Scholar
Brown, N., and Sherif, A. O. 2004. Inscribing the Islamic Sharia in Arab Constitutional Law. In Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity, ed. Haddad, Yvonne Y. et al., 55–80. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.Google Scholar
Coşgel, Metin M., and Ergene, Boğaç A. 2013. “Law and Economics” Literature and Ottoman Legal Studies.” Islamic Law and Society 20 (4).Google Scholar
Coşgel, Metin M., Ergene, Boğaç A., Etkes, Haggay, and Miceli, Thomas. 2013. Controlling Corruption in Law Enforcement: Incentives, Safeguards, and Institutional Change in the Ottoman Empire. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 43 (3): 353–376.Google Scholar
Feldman, Noah. 2008. Why Shariah? New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/magazine/16Shariah‐t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&sq=sharia&st=cse&scp=2 (accessed August 6, 2013).Google Scholar
Feldman, Noah. 2010. Islamic Constitutionalism in Context: A Typology and a Warning. University of St. Thomas Law Journal 7:436–451.Google Scholar
Gerber, Haim. 1994. State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Hallaq, Wael B. 2004. Can the Shari'a be Restored? In Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity, ed. Haddad, Yvonne Y. et al., 21–53. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.Google Scholar
Heyd, Uriel. 1967. Kānūn and Sharī'a in Old Ottoman Criminal Justice. Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities Proceedings 3.Google Scholar
Hill, Enid. 1979. Mahkama! Studies in the Egyptian Legal System: Courts & Crimes, Law & Society. London: Ithaca.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Susan. 1998. Pronouncing and Persevering: Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Imber, Colin. 1997. Ebu's‐Su‘ud: The Islamic Legal Tradition. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Jennings, Ronald. 1978. Kadi, Court and Legal Procedure in 17th Century Ottoman Kayseri. Studia Islamica 48:137–138.Google Scholar
Johansen, Baber. 2003. Apostasy as Objective and Depersonalized Fact: Two Recent Egyptian Court Judgments. Social Research 70:687–710.Google Scholar
Johansen, Baber. 2012. The Future Contests of Islamic Law and Politics. http://cslr.law.emory.edu/fileadmin/media/PDFs/Lectures/Johansen.Future_of_Jewish__Christian__and_Islamic_Legal_Studies.The_Future_contests_of_Islamic_Law_and_Politics.pdf (accessed August 6, 2013).Google Scholar
Layish, Aharon. 2004. The Transformation of the Sharī‘a from Jurists' Law to Statutory Law in the Contemporary Muslim World. Die Welt des Islams 44:85–113.Google Scholar
Marcus, Abraham. 1989. The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mir‐Hosseini, Ziba. 2000. Marriage on Trial: Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco. London: IB Tauris.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura. 2009. Law and Frontiers of Illegalities. In The Power of Law in a Transnational World, ed. Franz, von Benda‐Beckman, , von Benda‐Beckman, Keebet, and Griffiths, Anne. New York: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Otto, Jan M. 2010. Sharia Incorporated: A Comparative Overview of the Legal Systems of Twelve Muslim Countries in Past and Present. Leiden, the Netherlands: Leiden University Press.Google Scholar
Özsu, Umut. 2010. “Receiving” the Swiss Civil Code: Translating Authority in Early Republican Turkey. International Journal of Law in Context 6:63–89.Google Scholar
Peters, Rudolph. 2005. Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty‐First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Powers, David S. 2002. Law, Society and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rosen, Lawrence. 1984. Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rosen, Lawrence. 1989. Anthropology of Justice: Law as Culture in Islamic Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Samuels, Warren. 1998. Law and Economics: The Early Journal Literature. London: Pickering & Chatto Publishers.Google Scholar
Semerdjian, Elyse. 2008. Off the Straight Path: Illicit Law, Sex, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Shahar, Ido. 2006. Practicing Islamic Law in a Legal Pluralistic Environment: The Changing Face of a Muslim Court in Present‐Day Jerusalem. PhD diss., Ben‐Gurion University of the Negev.Google Scholar
Stiles, Erin. 2006. Broken Edda and Marital Mistakes: Two Recent Disputes from an Islamic Court in Zanzibar. In Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and Their Judgments, ed. Masud, M., Peters, R., and Powers, D., 95–116. Leiden/Boston: Brill.Google Scholar
Stilt, Kristen. 2004. Islamic Law and the Making and Remaking of the Iraqi Legal System. George Washington International Law Review 36:695–756.Google Scholar
Stilt, Kristen. 2011. Islamic Law in Action: Authority, Discretion, and Everyday Experiences in Mamluk Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vogel, Frank. 2000. Islamic Law and Legal System: Studies of Saudi Arabia. Leiden, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ze'evi, Dror. 2006. Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar