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This volume surveys the diversity of Islamic legal thought and practice, a 1500 - year tradition that has been cultivated throughout the Islamic world. It features translations of Islamic legal texts from across the spectrum of literary genres (including legal theory, judicial handbooks, pamphlets) that represent the range of temporal, geographic and linguistic contexts in which Islamic law has been, and continues to be, developed. Each text has been chosen and translated by a specialist. It is accompanied by an accessible introduction that places the author and text in historical and legal contexts and explains the state of the relevant field of study. An introduction to each section offers an overview of the genre and provides a useful bibliography. The volume will enable all researchers of Islamic law - established academics, undergraduate students, and general readers - to understand the tremendous and sometimes bewildering diversity of Islamic law, as well the continuities and common features that bind it together.
About the author
Omar Anchassi is a scholar of Islamic intellectual history with a focus on the disciplines of law (fiqh), theology and Qur'an commentary. He has published on violence, slavery, gender and sexuality in Islamic thought and practice in prestigious venues including Islamic Law and Society, and Edinburgh and Cambridge University Presses. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, and was previously an Early Career Fellow in Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. For three years, he served as Treasurer of BRAIS (the British Association for Islamic Studies).Robert Gleave is Professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. He teaches and researches in Arabic and Islamic Studies with a focus on Islamic law and legal theory, Shi'ite Islam and techniques of exegesis in Islamic intellectual history. He is author of Inevitable Doubt (Brill, 2000), Scripturalist Islam (Brill, 2007) and Islam and Literalism (EUP, 2011). He edited the Violence in Islamic Thought series (EUP, 2016 to 2021). Islamic law in Context is one of the outputs of the Understanding Sharia project (funded by the HERA consortium), of which he was Principal Investigator.
Summary
This book gathers 30 texts from across the Muslims world, exemplifying the diversity of Islamic legal thought and practice. It introduces a variety of types of legal literature any researcher in Islamic Law will need to use in order to gain a rounded picture of the historical and societal context of Islamic legal thought and practice.
