Islamic Law in the Indian Ocean World: Texts, Ideas and Practices

Description

This book explores the ways in which Muslim communities across the Indian Ocean world produced and shaped Islamic law and its texts, ideas and practices in their local, regional, imperial, national and transregional contexts. With a focus on the production and transmission of Islamic law in the Indian Ocean, the chapters in this book draw from and add to recent discourses on the legal histories and anthropologies of the Indian Ocean rim as well as to the conversations on global Islamic circulations. By doing so, this book argues for the importance of Islamic legal thoughts and practices of the so-called "peripheries" to the core and kernel of Islamic traditions and the urgency of addressing their long-existing role in the making of the historical and human experience of the religion. Islamic law was and is not merely brought to, but also produced in the Indian Ocean world through constant and critical engagements. The book takes a long-term and transregional perspective for a better understanding of the ways in which the oceanic Muslims have historically developed their religious, juridical and intellectual traditions and continue to shape their lives within the frameworks of their religion. Transregional and transdisciplinary in its approach, this book will be of interest to scholars of Islamic Studies, Indian Ocean Studies, Legal History and Legal Anthropology, Area Studies of South and Southeast Asia and East Africa. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of illustrations List of contributors Introduction: Islamic law in the Indian Ocean world Chapter 1 Zones of origins: The formation of Islamic law in the Indian Ocean littoral, c. 615–1000 CE Chapter 2 Legal diglossia, lexical borrowing and mixed juridical systems in early Islamic Java and Sumatra Chapter 3 Borrowing adat and bargaining Islam: The creation and Islamisation of customary law in Mandar Chapter 4 Sharīʿa translated: Persian documents in English courts Chapter 5 Possibilities and pitfalls of cosmopolitanism: Two treaties from northern Somalia in the late nineteenth century Chapter 6 Islamic legal crossings and debates in Cambodia: Evidence from fatāwā and French colonial archives in the early twentieth century Chapter 7 The interplay of two Sharīʿa penal codes: A case from Gayo society, Indonesia Chapter 8 Post-colonial nostalgia, conspiracy theories and uneasy quiescence: Newspaper commentary on the debate on kadhis’ courts in contemporary Tanzania Index