Islamic Law and Culrure, 1600-1840.

AuthorSTEWART, DEVIN
PositionReview

Islamic Law and Culrure, 1600-1840. By HAIM GERBER. Studies in Islamic Law and Society, vol. 9. Leiden: BRILL, 1999. Pp. 156.

Its grand title notwithstanding, this work is primarily an analysis of two collections of Hanafi legal opinions, al-Fatdwa al-khayriyah fi-naf al-bariyah by Khayr al-Din al-Ramli (1585-1671), a jurisconsult who lived in Ramlah, and Radd al-muhtar ala al-durr al-mukhtar by the jurists Hamid al-Iroadi (1692-1757) and Muhammad Amin Ibn Abidin (1784-1836), both Ottoman-appointed jurisconsults in Damascus. Additional sources that the author draws on include the collections of legal opinions by Ebu Suud al-Imadi, the famous shaykh al-islam of Istanbul during the latter part of the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman's reign, and a treatise on the role of "custom" in legal interpretation by Ibn Abidin. The study is restricted to the Levant and to the Hanafi madhhab. It does not cover the period 1600-1840 in a regular or comprehensive manner, nor does it treat Islamic law, society, or culture in general. In its analysis of these two texts, the work attempts to grapple with a host of important issues in the history of Islamic la w, legal theory, and the judicial system. Both aspects of the book suffer from this dual attention. In attempting to answer the broad questions it raises about the history of Islamic law, the judicial system, and other tangential issues, it is doomed to failure without recourse to a vast amount of additional source material. As a presentation and analysis of the two fatwa collections and the legal methods they embody, it still leaves something to be desired.

The study includes an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. The first three chapters relate to the historical context of the fatwa collections. Chapter one provides historical background, chapter two treats the relationship between al-Ramli's fatwa collection and actual legal problems, and chapter three treats Islamic law and the state. The next four chapters treat methods of legal reasoning. Chapter four focuses on ijtihad. Chapter five deals with istihsan and innovations. Chapter six treats urf "custom." Chapter seven treats the structure of the legal argument. The conclusion discusses more general issues, including a comparison of Islamic and modern Western law, civil society, and democracy. Basic elements are missing from the introduction and first three chapters, so that the context is inadequately defined. The discussions of the authors of the...

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