Sharīʿa scripts : a historical anthropology

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Sharīʿa scripts : a historical anthropology

Brinkley Messick

Columbia University Press, c2018

  • : cloth

Available at  / 2 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 481-498) and index

Text in English with some Arabic

Description and Table of Contents

Description

A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Shari'a Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. While colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the shari'a, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance, the Zaydi school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway. Brinkley Messick uses the richly varied writings of the Yemeni past to offer a uniquely comprehensive view of the shari'a as a localized and lived phenomenon. Shari'a Scripts reads a wide spectrum of sources in search of a new historical-anthropological perspective on Islamic textual relations. Messick analyzes the shari'a as a local system of texts, distinguishing between theoretical or doctrinal juridical texts (or the "library") and those produced by the shari'a courts and notarial writers (termed the "archive"). Attending to textual form, he closely examines representative books of madrasa instruction; formal opinion-giving by muftis and imams; the structure of court judgments; and the drafting of contracts. Messick's intensive readings of texts are supplemented by retrospective ethnography and oral history based on extensive field research. Shari'a Scripts also ventures a major methodological contribution by confronting anthropology's longstanding reliance upon the observational and the colloquial, seeking to develop tools for the anthropologist as reader.

Table of Contents

Map of Western Yemen Introduction Part I. Library 1. Books 2. Pre-text: Five Sciences 3. Commentaries: "Write It Down" 4. Opinions 5. "Practice with Writing" Part II. Archive 6. Intermission 7. Judgments 8. Minutes 9. Moral Stipulations 10. Contracts Postscript Notes Manuscripts and Archival Materials Bibliography Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top