This dissertation makes three central contentions about the shari'a in modern Muslim society, in an attempt to provide a corrective to the fascination of many current scholars on medieval texts whose relevance to the legal order of the modern world is largely overstated, or at l…
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This dissertation studies the use of legal institutions provided by the Islamic state in the resolution of intracommunal disputes and in the registration of legal transactions among Christians and Jews in late seventeenth century Istanbul. While being the capital city of an Isla…
How did medieval Muslim jurists deal with popular devotional practices that lacked an explicit source in the Qur'an and Hadith? Most contemporary scholars---both Western and Muslim---assume that jurists uniformly rejected all innovations (bida' ; sing., bid'ah ) in devotional la…
This dissertation explores the development of the concept of custom in the Islamic legal tradition. Within this tradition the concept has been associated with the two terms of `urf and `adah. After a review of modern scholarship on the subject, the dissertation examines the root…
The subject of women in Islam is an emerging area of study that has only taken shape in the last decade. Muslim women's studies go beyond existing academic disciplines and involve, but are not limited to, scholarly works on law, religion, gender and history, challenging existing…
This dissertation examines the history, function, and debates surrounding legal maxims ( qawa'id fiqhiyya ) and concepts of doubt and ambiguity in Islamic law. Legal maxims are succinctly stated principles that jurists use as key interpretive tools when applying texts and settle…
This dissertation studies the concept of s[dotbelow]ulh[dotbelow] , i.e. peacemaking or amicable settlement, in Islamic law. Through a survey of exegetical and legal works dating from the 8th to the 13th centuries C.E., I trace its development as one of the nominate contracts of…
Shurayh[dotbelow] b. al-H[dotbelow]arith al-Kindi, the Successor and qad[dotbelow]i is, without a doubt, the most famous Kufan jurist prior to Ibrahim al-Nakha`i (d. 95/713). But neither Shurayh[dotbelow] nor his Kufan contemporaries left any books or written records. All inform…
Arab countries are attempting to broaden their engagement in the multilateral trading system in a manner that has many implications. Not only have some Arab countries either acceded or are in the pipeline of acceding to the World Trade Organization (WTO), but their new commitmen…
This dissertation takes up the issue of ijtihad , creative legal reform, as defined and upheld by contemporary `ulama (traditionally educated Muslim religious scholars). It centers in on a particular issue--women's right to divorce--within a particular context--early 20th centur…
This study aims to analyze how Hanafi law defined sharecropping and tenancy agreements, and tenant/landlord rights and obligations in the context of Ottoman Syria from the late sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. With the increasing prevalence of sharecropping arra…
In the last two decades of the twentieth century, crucial processes of political and economic liberalizations transformed the political landscape in much of the post-colonial world. The reigning theory of modernization which was pegged in the era of political emancipation to nat…
This dissertation presents an analysis of the legal thinking of two modern Muslim religious reformers, particularly their usage of a concept in Sunni Islamic legal theory known in Arabic as maqas[dotbelow]id al-shari`a . The religious reformers who are the subjects of this disse…
Islamic law has changed radically in the last 150 years this project focusses on the dramatic transformation of Islamic law during the British colonial period in three cases: India, Malaya and Egypt, and its effects in the post-colonial state. It argues that colonial and local e…
While Islamic law proves vital for Muslims, its implementation in the United States and the West has proved challenging. In part, challenges stem from the intersection between the Muslim system of religious law and secular legal institutions. In this work, this inter-relationshi…
This dissertation investigates the development of legal institutions in the Far Maghrib during its unification with al-Andalus under the Almoravids (434-530/1042-1147). It posits that political unification occurred alongside urban transformation and argues that legal institution…
This study examined Islamic Law from a unique perspective that has not been utilized before now. It was not a religious analysis on the value of Islam nor did it place a value judgment on Islam as a religion; rather, this study utilized a management systems perspective to analyz…
Islam is an ever-present reality in the political, economic and social life throughout the Arab-Islamic world. In this region, there exists a pervasive notion that Islam should be an integral part of all economic and political aspects of the state. At present, many nations acros…
Unraveling the complex dynamics that created and sustained the hegemony of the four principal schools of Sunni Islamic law necessarily requires an appreciation of the schools' historical genesis. This dissertation provides the first comprehensive account of the emergence and ear…