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

336 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 3 cm, 0.82 kg

'Mahmood Kooria's Islamic Law in Circulation is the definitive account of how one school of Islamic law came to dominate the Indian Ocean rim, not through state conquest or sponsorship, but via cross-cultural negotiations among mobile scholars and merchants from Africa, Arabia and Asia. This landmark study of transregional texts and contexts is an indispensable guide to the shared educational syllabi and religious resonances one encounters from Mombasa to Mindanao. A remarkable achievement.' Engseng Ho, Duke University

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 Sh?fi??sm, one of the four Sunn? 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]