Islamic Imperial Law: Harun Al-Rashid's Codification Project.

• Author: Peters, Rudolph
• Position: Book review

Islamic Imperial Law: Harun Al-Rashid's Codification Project. BY BENJAMIN JOKISCH. Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients, N.F. 19. Berlin: WALTER DE GRUYTER, 2007. Pp. 757. $235.

In this study Jokisch defends the thesis that the origins of Islamic law as we now know it must be sought in an imperial codification project, initiated by the 'Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786 to .809) and based on Roman law. This code was drafted by a codification commission whose membership included the jurists al-Shaybani (749-803 or 805) and Abu Yusuf (d. 798); it consisted of the six legal works ascribed to al-Shaybani and belonging to the zahir al-riwaya, i.e., the foundational Hanafi legal texts of authentic transmission. The basis of this codification, Jokisch asserts, was not the Shari'a as it existed at that time but a translation of the Greek version of the Digests then current in the Byzantine empire. Therefore, the codification contained a great deal of secular law. Later its rulings were underpinned by quotations from the Quran and Hadith. However, the use of religious sources to legitimize a secular body of law paved the way for the independent traditionalists to acquire authority in the domain of the law. As a result of the ideological struggle between the traditionalists and the state-backed jurists, the state lost its authority in religious and legal matters. After the mihna was abolished in the middle of the ninth century, the traditionalists were left in full control of the all-embracing legal system. Islamic law then evolved from imperial state law into jurists' law.

Jokisch's project is at first sight attractive: to study Islamic history and law not in isolation but in the context of what was happening in neighboring regions. Actually, Jokisch goes even further and claims that "the Islamic and Byzantine empires formed part of one and the same historical context, their theological, political, cultural and legal developments being inseparably connected with each other" (p. 617). Islamic Imperial Law is a very rich and enormously detailed book and as it would be too much to discuss here all its aspects and arguments, I will focus on the two main theses, to wit, that there was a codification of Islamic law just before the end of the eighth century and that this codification was based on Byzantine Roman law.

In my view Jokisch fails to furnish sufficient proof for these theses and to make them plausible. The main problem...