Islamic law and empire in Ottoman Cairo
By: James E. Baldwin
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.
Published: 2017
Place of publication: Edinburgh
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9781474403092; 9781474403108; 9781474419079
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Islamic law; Law; Administration of Justice; History
Description: What did Islamic law mean in the early modern period, a world of great Muslim empires? Often portrayed as the quintessential jurists' law, to a large extent it was developed by scholars outside the purview of the state. However, for the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, justice was the ultimate duty of the monarch, and Islamic law was a tool of legitimation and governance. James E. Baldwin examines how the interplay of these two conceptions of Islamic law - religious scholarship and royal justice - undergirded legal practice in Cairo, the largest and richest city in the Ottoman provinces. Through detailed studies of the various formal and informal dispute resolution institutions and practices that formed the fabric of law in Ottoman Cairo, his book contributes to key questions concerning the relationship between the shari'a and political power, the plurality of Islamic legal practice, and the nature of centre-periphery relations in the Ottoman Empire.
Notes: Based on author's thesis (Doctoral - New York University, 2010), issued under title: Islamic law in an Ottoman context : resolving disputes in late 17th / early 18th-century Cairo.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 210-228) and index.

English, with some Arabic text and English translation in Appendix.
Table of contents: title: A brief portrait of Cairo under Ottoman rule; title: Cairo's legal system : institutions and actors; title: Royal justice : the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn and the Dīwān al-ʻĀlī; title: Government authority, the interpretation of fiqh, and the production of applied law; title: The privatization of justice : dispute resolution as a domain of political competition; title: A culture of disputing : how did Cairenes use the legal system?; title: Conclusion : Ottoman Cairo's legal system and grand narratives; title: Appendix : examples of documents used in the study; title: Map of Cairo in the eighteenth century; title: Glossary.