Islamic Law in Circulation
Shafi'i Texts across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean

An exploration of the spread and survival of Islamic legal ideas and commentaries in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean regions in the second millennium CE.

Mahmood Kooria (Author)

9781009098038, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 March 2022

468 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 3 cm, 0.82 kg

'… a wonderful and important book that should be read not only by scholars of Islam, but by anyone interested in Indian Ocean studies and in the methodology of global legal and intellectual history.' Torsten Tschacher, International Quarterly for Asian Studies

Analysing the spread and survival of Islamic legal ideas and commentaries in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean littorals, Islamic Law in Circulation focuses on Shāfiʿīsm, one of the four Sunnī schools of Islamic law. It explores how certain texts shaped, transformed and influenced the juridical thoughts and lives of a significant community over a millennium in and between Asia, Africa and Europe. By examining the processes of the spread of legal texts and their roles in society, as well as thinking about how Afrasian Muslims responded to these new arrivals of thoughts and texts, Mahmood Kooria weaves together a narrative with the textual descendants from places such as Damascus, Mecca, Cairo, Malabar, Java, Aceh and Zanzibar to tell a compelling story of how Islam contributed to the global history of law from the thirteenth to the twentieth century.

Introduction
Part I: 1. Circulation networks
2. Circulatory texts
3. Architecture of encounters
Part II: 4. The code
5. The commentary
6. The autocommentary
7. The supercommentary
8. The translations
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Islam [HRH], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1], European history [HBJD]