#jurisprudence #legal_pluralism #nomocracy

«В основе, правовой централизм является политической доктриной, а не правовой. Он появился как следствие формирования современного Национального Государства с его монополией на закон и распределение прав. Как метко подмечает Джордж Гурвич, «правовой монизм соответствует конкретной политической ситуации, в частности созданию широких в своем охвате современных Государств [States] между шестнадцатым и девятнадцатым веками». Помимо самого закона, эти новые национальные государства по всей видимости подмяли под себя и саму юридическую профессию, как минимум в том смысле, что юристы и прочие работники этой сферы стали рассматривать право как естественную и эксклюзивную вотчину Государства. Этот взгляд усваивается на уровне юридического образования и продолжает влиять на юриста на протяжении всей его карьеры.

[…] юристы регулярно смешивают политическую реальность права как ревностно охраняемой вотчины Государства с самой природой права. Это производит неочевидный эффект, в результате которого появляется некая телеологическая призма, сквозь которую главной составляющей права видится не «народ», а Государство.

Несмотря на то, что сторонники правового централизма, особенно в западных обществах, могут считать эти ценности настолько базовыми, что невозможно представить функционального юридического (а также политического) порядка, который не возводит их в статус основополагающих принципов, нам не стоит вестись на соблазн нелогичного вывода о том, что монополия Государства над законом — это единственный возможный формат. Истории известны примеры как номократий*, так и номократических культур, которые придерживались всех этих правовых принципов, но делали это без приверженности некой правовой философии, которая рассматривает Государство как начало и конец всего права. Ислам является идеальным примером этого.»

📚 Jackson, Sherman A. “Legal Pluralism Between Islam and the Nation-State: Romantic Medievalism or Pragmatic Modernity?” Fordham International Law Journal, vol. 30, no. 1, 2006.

*номократия — буквально, «власть закона». Политический строй, при котором политическая элита руководствуется правом как основополагающим принципом.

#jurisprudence #legal_pluralism #poli_sci

«В исламском мире проблема начинается с того факта, что исламское право исторически предшествует Государству и превосходит его. Это означает, что существует целая вселенная юридических прав и обязанностей, имеющих вес и находящих отклик в сердцах и умах людей, но полностью независимых от Государства. Политическая теория, лежащая в основе современного Национального Государства, не имеет инструментов для решения этой проблемы. Следовательно, современные мусульманские Государства склонны либо к попыткам кооптировать религиозное право, либо к его подавлению. Результат почти всегда принимает форму той или иной формы исламского «фундаментализма», который по своей сути не имеет ничего общего с «буквальными интерпретациями» (54), а является выражением конфликта монополии современного Государства на право с признанием большими сегментами населения других источников права, предшествующих и, по их мнению, «превосходящих» государственное. Учитывая общую распространенность логических основ Национального Государства, обе стороны исходят из убеждения о нормативности «правового монизма», т. е. представления о том, что может быть только один закон, универсально применяемый ко всем. При таком понимании современные мусульманские общества превращаются в настоящие пороховые бочки, где контроль над Государством считается необходимым условием контроля над правом, и где каждая сторона хочет гарантировать, что если будет существовать только один закон, это будет её закон». (55).

📚 Jackson, Sherman A. “Legal Pluralism Between Islam and the Nation-State: Romantic Medievalism or Pragmatic Modernity?” Fordham International Law Journal, vol. 30, no. 1, 2006.

"Но что уравнивает аналогию и силлогизм? Ибн Таймия понимает аналогию в более развитом смысле, чем Аристотель и другие греческие логики. Ко времени его жизни предмет аналогии уже породил одну из самых глубоких и тонких дискуссий, которые когда-либо знала исламская правовая теория — и, если уж на то пошло, история мысли в целом, — и, благодаря этому, обсуждения аналогии достигли беспрецедентного уровня. К тому же, и это действительно важный момент, Ибн Таймия был прежде всего прочего теоретиком и практиком права, и его мировоззрение было в значительной мере окрашено характерным юридическим мышлением.

Итак, юридическая аналогия, являвшаяся парадигмой, в рамках которой происходил анализ аналогии в средневековом Исламе, считалась полной — но не обязательно действительной — когда она содержала четыре элемента: первоначальный случай, ассимилированный случай, причину и суждение (122). Первоначальный случай (aṣI) представляет собой прецедент. В утверждении «Виноградное вино является запрещенным» дается как первоначальный случай, в виде виноградного вина, так и соответствующее суждение (ḥukm), а именно запрет.

Ассимилированный случай — это новый случай, по которому правовед стремится сформулировать суждение. Если ассимилированный случай оказывается эквивалентным первоначальному случаю в силу общей причины, то суждение по первоначальному случаю переносится на ассимилированный случай. Опять же, случай с вином представляет простой пример. Виноградное вино было запрещено Законодателем из-за его опьяняющих свойств. Соответственно, причиной является опьянение. Финиковое вино — это новый случай, юридический статус которого еще предстоит определить. Подобно виноградному вину, финиковое вино обладает свойством опьянения, которое мы устанавливаем через чувственное восприятие. Установив, что опьянение, являющееся причиной суждения, присутствует как в финиковом, так и в виноградном вине, мы переносим суждение, а именно запрет, на финиковое вино".

📚 Wael B. Hallaq. Ibn Taymiyya Against the Greek Logicians. Oxford University Press. 1993.

#ibn_taymiyyah #aristotle #logic #jurisprudence #hanabilah

"Empires differ from nation-states as political entities. Jane Burbank and Fredrick Cooper explain that “the concept of empire presumes that different peoples within the polity will be governed differently.” (4) Unlike state law, imperial law is negotiated, not imposed. (5)"

(4) Jane Burbank and Fredrick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 8.

(5) Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 36.

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #legal_pluralism

"[...] confining the practical aspects of Islamic law to the Ottoman judiciary (court records and registers) rests on a mischaracterization of how late Ḥanafīs viewed the process of legal practice. In contrast to common law, which is found in precedents established by courts of law, Islamic law exists in a body of writings authored by jurists and muftīs. (13) It would thus be misguided to attempt to understand juridical practice and reasoning in the Ottoman Empire without taking into account the authoritative positions of the madhhab at the time. The assumption that books of jurisprudence address theory while fatāwā and court records reflect actual practice and social reality is not indicative of the substance of the legal discourse of late Ḥanafī jurists. (14) The latter insisted that the legal and judicial norms contained in their authoritative legal works should be prioritized above fatwā collections and adopted by judges in their legal rulings. (15)"

15. Ibn Nujaym, al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq, 1:61; Ibn ʿĀbidīn, Minḥat al-Khāliq ʿalā al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq, published together with al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq by Ibn Nujaym (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-Islāmī, n.d.), 1:89. They emphasize: “It is established that what is in the mutūn should be prioritized over what is in the shurūḥ, and what is in the shurūḥ should precede what is in the fatāwā.” See also Shaykh-Zāda, Majmaʿ al-Anhur fī Sharḥ Multaqā al-Abḥur (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998), 1:341: “Al-iftāʾ bimā fī al-mutūn awlā.”

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi

"Ḥanafī legal literature from the Ottoman period draws a complex picture of the relationship between political and legal authorities. This literature recognizes a growing role for the Ottoman sultan in the making of Sunni jurisprudence. And it reveals spaces in which Ḥanafī legal doctrine was able to expand to incorporate the decisions and policies of the sultan. However, late Ḥanafī jurists did not take the contours of Ottoman imperial authority as given. They rejected, accepted, and expanded the policies and decisions made by the Sublime Porte. Ottoman sultans and their provincial deputies, such as governors, judges, and treasury officials, negotiated with Ḥanafī jurists on many issues involving political, social, and economic order in the Ottoman provinces. Their influence was mutual."

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi

"We glean further insight into the late Ḥanafīs’ justification of their position in spite of its divergence from school precedent from the commentary written by Ibn Nujaym’s brother ʿUmar (d. 1596), al-Nahr al-Fāʾiq. (52) Surprisingly, ʿUmar b. Nujaym argues that the late Ḥanafī position is in fact based on Abū Ḥanīfa’s ruling. He explains that the late Ḥanafī’s total ban on women’s mosque attendance is driven by the prevalence of overwhelming desires (farṭ al-shahwa). In past centuries, he contends, depraved people did not go out into the streets during maghrib prayers because they were busy with dinner, nor during fajr and ʿishāʾ because they were asleep. But in his own time, such people are out in the streets at all times, propelled by their overpowering lewdness. Therefore, women must be prevented from going out in order to shield them from the sight of the depraved. (53) This argument not only carves out a new legal authority for the late Ḥanafīs but also points to the close connection of early Ḥanafī formulations to elements of time, custom, and circumstance. Late Ḥanafī jurists successfully employ these elements to reinterpret the positions of their madhhab. Ibn Nujaym justifies the new legal opinions put forward in his commentary that contravene those of the school’s founders by arguing that they reflect “the difference of time and circumstances.” (54) He also cites al- Zaylaʿī, who emphasized that Abū Ḥanīfa’s opinions were formulated to address issues in his time, but that in al-Zaylaʿī’s own time the circumstances were very different. (55)"

52. ʿUmar b. Nujaym, al-Nahr al-Fāʾiq, ed. Aḥmad ʿIzzū ʿInāya (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya,
2002), 1:250– 51.
53. Ibid., 1:251.
54. Ibn Nujaym, al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq, 6:229.
55 From the issue of mosque attendance, Ibn Nujaym shifts the discussion to the broader question of when a woman is allowed to go out. He derives this discussion from the Transoxanian Ḥanafī text Khulāṣat al-Fatāwā, in which the author, Ṭāhir b. Aḥmad al-Bukhārī, who was educated in Egypt and died in Transoxania, enumerates purposes for which a husband ought to permit his wife to go out— to visit, take care of, or offer condolences to her parents or to visit her maḥārim (relatives that she cannot marry)— as well as purposes for which she can go out with or without permission—namely, to work as a midwife, to wash the dead, or claim her legal right from others.

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi

"In addition to embodying internal processes of legal change in the Ḥanafī school, the Mecelle points to profound changes within the late Ottoman Empire. These changes were caused by newly emerging social, economic, cultural, and legal structures and orders, and they were perceived as a crisis of tradition, not simply as a crisis of adaptation to the new institutions. These transformations originated both within and outside the Muslim experience. Internally, social, economic, cultural, and political transformations of unprecedented magnitude put tremendous strain on traditional legal institutions, values, and concepts and deeply challenged the legal tradition as a whole, not merely particular elements within it. (18) Externally, European legal hegemony began to be felt at the heart of the empire through European control of litigation of most commercial activities and disputes involving European citizens within the empire. The Ottoman Empire responded to these challenges by transforming its laws through radical centralization and bureaucratization."

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi

"Wael Hallaq, for instance, argues that “the transposition of Islamic law from the fairly independent and informal terrain of the jurists to that of the highly formalized and centralized agency of the state found manifestation in the Mecelle-ı Ahkām-ı Adliye.” (27) He recognizes that the head of the drafting committee, Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, was a sharīʿa jurist, but he nonetheless portrays the Mecelle as the result of a struggle between forces of tradition and those of westernization. Hallaq points out that Cevdet Paşa described the goal as a law that was “faithful to the cultural constitution of the Empire against the powerful Westernizer Ali Paşa who called for the adoption of the French Code of 1804 (known as the Code Napoleon).” Therefore, “one of the aims of the Mecelle was to provide, in the manner of a code, a clear and systematic statement of the law for the benefit of both the Sharia and Nizamiyye courts.” (28) He claims, erroneously, that the opinions chosen did not always reflect the authoritative doctrines in the Ḥanafī school and that they were not drawn exclusively from the Ḥanafī tradition, as some were imported from other schools after being generally approved by the later Ḥanafīs. (29) The Mecelle, for Hallaq, was “a last-ditch effort to salvage the sharīʿa as a law in force, but it was also an attempted remedy applied to a problem that had originated as a remedy.” (30)

My main quarrel with Hallaq’s narrative is its dismissal of the argument made by the drafters of the Mecelle that it constitutes an “authentic” Islamic legal genre. He reduces its significance to that of a mere experimental project to rescue Islamic law at the twilight of the Ottoman Empire and disregards the stated intentions of the drafters as well as their justification of the project as a way to streamline Ottoman administration and to expedite juridical litigation and court proceedings. Hallaq also overlooks the role of Ḥanafī jurists such as ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn Ibn b. ʿĀbidin in the formation and validation of the project. More seriously, Hallaq neither explains how the Mecelle deviates from authoritative
Ḥanafī opinions nor identifies which doctrines were borrowed from other schools of law."

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi #hallaq

27. Hallaq, Sharīʿa, 411.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 412.

"Sherman Jackson, too, emphasizes that codification is an essentially modern phenomenon in the Muslim world (an early, failed attempt by the eighth-century ʿAbbasid secretary of state, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, notwithstanding) and that the Mecelle must be considered a modern product developed under heavy European influence. In Jackson’s view, “following the settling down of the madhāhib, there lurked the possibility of the emergence of an order whose operation would produce effects similar if not identical to those of codification.” (34) Jackson thus reiterates two key points in his narrative: the role of European influence in the formation of the Mecelle and the modern nature of the Mecelle project.

Jackson’s assessment of the Mecelle is helpful in that it goes beyond debates on legal borrowing. To the Mecelle’s drafters, Ibn Nujaym’s work on legal maxims was key to the establishment of the Ottoman imperial canon, and they relied on it heavily in the process of codification. The first one hundred of the Mecelle’s articles are placed under the title “legal maxims,” and the rest of the articles are modeled on these maxims. Jackson complicates the theory of presumed Western influence on the Mecelle by calling attention to the relationship between the state and medieval Muslim jurists. He contends that the dynamics of this relationship and the growing role of the state in the legal system would have produced very similar results to codification of Islamic jurisprudence in the nineteenth century. (35)"

34. Jackson, Islamic Law and the State, xvii.
35. Jackson, Islamic Law and the State, xix.

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi

"The cover of the Mecelle declares that it contains sharʿī codes (al-qawānīn al-sharʿiyya) and juridical rulings (ahkām ʿadliyya) that are consistent with the authoritative manuals of Ḥanafī jurisprudence that were edited by a committee composed of established scholars and meticulous jurists. The cover further announces that the Sublime Porte approved the Mecelle and that an imperial edict established it as the canon, or exemplar (dastūr) to be acted on. (39) The text of the Mecelle commences with a report submitted to the late Ali Paşa, the grand vizier (al-ṣadr al-aʿẓam), on 1 Muḥarram 1286/ April 13, 1869, justifying the project and situating it among the various legal regimes in the Ottoman Empire. [...]

The report describes Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) as the locus of matters related to everyday life, divided into issues concerning personal status (munākahāt), transactions (muʿāmalāt), and criminal punishments (ʿuqūbāt). The same three categories, the report argues, underpin the laws of all civilized nations in the Islamic world as well as Europe. The category of transactions in this legal scheme constitutes the province of civil law. The report does not treat European systems as the model for the Mecelle. Instead, it declares that Islamic jurisprudential norms are sufficient to address all commercial cases that might be tried in courts. (40)"

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi

"The authority and the contributions of late Ḥanafī jurists were confirmed through their revisions of early Ḥanafī opinions and doctrines— not excluding the opinions of Abū Ḥanīfa himself. The interventions of the late Ḥanafīs were not just temporary strategies but rather involved the use of built-in mechanisms to reinterpret the madhhab and keep it relevant to the changing social, political, and economic circumstances in the early modern Ottoman Empire.

These evolving circumstances play a particularly important role in late Ḥanafī legal works, and late Ḥanafī jurists readily identify them in their commentaries. (1) Their careful treatment of the school’s preponderant, authentic, and authoritative opinions provides insights into competing legal narratives within the Ḥanafī school. Like the fatwā literature, late Ḥanafī legal commentaries should not be seen as purely “theoretical” works; rather, they offer a lens through which we can monitor social, political, and economic developments. (2) The cases and problems addressed by late Ḥanafīs in their legal commentaries are contemporary and anchored in actual practice. (3) Importantly, these legal works frequently refer to authoritative fatāwā, contemporaneous anecdotes, and specific events and dates as part of the process of legal reasoning. For instance, Ibn Nujaym frequently appeals to Egyptian custom (ʿurf al- Qāhira) to justify departures from the school founders’ opinions and to bolster the authority of the late Ḥanafīs. (4) He also acknowledges local customs in the Ottoman Empire’s other provinces, such as Anatolian ʿurf, and points to the debates they have prompted among Ḥanafīs in these regions. (5)"

1. Al-Laknawī, al-Fawāʾid al-Bahiyya, 134– 35.
2. See Khaled Abou El Fadl’s discussion on this issue in, “Soul Searching,” 555.
3. Ahmed El Shamsy, in his investigation of Shāfiʿī commentaries, argues that the ḥāshiya (legal commentary) led to significant narrowing of Islamic legal scholarship. He concludes that because of “the dramatic social changes affecting Muslim societies from the nineteenth century onwards, legal commentaries were not capable of furnishing the stage for discussions of social utility and social benefit that could provide principles to guide the Muslim societies in an era of rapid change.” See El Shamsy, “Ḥāshiya in Islamic Law,” 303.
4. See Ibn Nujaym, al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq, 3:175, 200; 5:251, 303, 317.
5. Ibn Nujaym, al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq, 1:191. Ibn Nujaym mentions the kirbās, a white piece of cloth worn on the feet under leather socks. The Anatolian Ḥanafīs disagreed over whether wiping over the kirbās is valid for the purposes of ritual ablution. Ibn Nujaym also identifies certain practices as unique to the people of Anatolia (ahl al- Rūm); see Ibn Nujaym, al-Baḥr al-Rāʾiq, 2:57.

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi

"The late articulations of the Ḥanafī school are particularly important because of their direct connection to the Ottoman state and their relevance to the debates on codification in the modern period. The development of Ḥanafī jurisprudence during the Ottoman period cannot be fully understood through the juxtaposition of state qānūn and jurists’ sharīʿa. This approach, which tends to view Ḥanafī legal developments through the religious versus secular dichotomy, fails to capture the inner workings of Ḥanafī jurisprudence with regard to the legal contours of Ottoman imperial power.

[...] The late Ḥanafī tradition was the point of departure for the early modern codification of Ḥanafī jurisprudence. The Ottoman Mecelle consistently adopted the opinions of the late Ḥanafīs and their revisions of the madhhab. The late Ḥanafī tradition was also the main reference for colonial administrators in their efforts to codify Ḥanafī jurisprudence. For instance, in British India, the colonial authorities relied on al-Ḥaṣkafī’s al-Durr al-Mukhtār, Ibn ʿĀbidīn’s Radd al-Muḥtār, al-Marghīnānī’s Hidāya and its commentaries, and Qāḍī Khān’s Fatāwā as codes for adjudication. (6)

The codification of Ḥanafī jurisprudence marked a paradigm shift in the understanding of fiqh and the nature of legal practice in Muslim jurisdictions. The emergence of the Mecelle should be understood not in terms of an epistemic break from premodern Islamic legal reasoning but in terms of continuation and transformation within a legal tradition. The Mecelle embodied a new role for Islamic law in a legal environment that was increasingly dominated by state institutions and that demanded answers to a range of novel questions raised shifting social realities. It also had to provide effective support for the growing Ottoman bureaucracy and to meet the need for judicial standardization. At the same time, however, the Mecelle remained faithful to the Ḥanafī legal tradition: its emergence out of the existing genre of legal maxims (qawāʿid fiqhiyya), its adherence to late Ḥanafī doctrines and opinions, and its eventual review and approval by contemporary Ḥanafī authorities made it an authentic representation of Ḥanafī legal thought.

The Mecelle was the first step in the development of a written law aimed at consistency across the Ottoman judiciary. It was also a response to the Tanzimat and the penetration of Western laws into Ottoman society. But first and foremost, the Mecelle was a Muslim response to modernity, rooted in the Islamic legal tradition and justified in its terms."

6. Abdur Rahman, Institutes of Mussalman Law, 1– 5.

📚 Ayoub, Samy A. Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Ḥanafī Jurisprudence. Oxford University Press, 2020.

#history #jurisprudence #ottoman #hanafi