Across Legal Lines

Marglin, Jessica M.

doi:10.12987/yale/9780300218466.001.0001

Cited by 43 publications

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“…53 For instance, Jewish jurists in Morocco from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries accommodated their co-religionists' desires to make use of Islamic courts and even, in some cases, required it. 54 Although Jews' and Christians' use of Islamic courts has become common knowledge, the assumption that they were subject to serious restrictions in doing so has been left largely unchallenged. Most scholars assume they used Islamic courts despite their inability to testify against Muslims.…”

Section: T H E H I S T O R I O G Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Written and Oral in Islamic Law: Documentary Evidence and Non-Muslims in Moroccan Shari‘a Courts

Marglin

2017

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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This article begins from the premise that the margins can shine light on the center, and uses the experience of Jews (thought of as marginal in the Islamic world) in Moroccan courts (similarly thought of as marginal in Islamic history) to tell a new story about orality and writing in Islamic law. Using archival evidence from nineteenth-century Morocco, I argue that, contrary to the prevailing historiography, written evidence was central to procedure in Moroccan shari‘a courts. Records of nineteenth-century lawsuits between Jews and Muslims show that not only were notarized documents regularly submitted in court, but they could outweigh oral testimony, traditionally thought of as the gold standard of evidence in Islam. The evidentiary practices of Moroccan shari‘a courts are supported by the jurisprudential literature of the Mālikī school of Sunni Islam, the only one prevalent in Morocco. These findings have particular relevance for the experience of non-Muslims in Islamic legal institutions. Scholars have generally assumed that Jews and Christians faced serious restrictions in their ability to present evidence in shari‘a courts, since they could not testify orally against Muslims. However, in Morocco Jews had equal access to notarized documents, and thus stood on a playing field that, theoretically at least, was level with their Muslim neighbors. More broadly, I explore ways in which old assumptions about the relationship of the written to the oral continue to pervade our understanding of Islamic law, and call for an approach that breaks down the dichotomy between writing and orality.

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Section: T H E H I S T O R I O G Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Written and Oral in Islamic Law: Documentary Evidence and Non-Muslims in Moroccan Shari‘a Courts

Marglin

2017

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Jews and Other Others

Joskowicz

2020

Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism

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Negotiating Mughal Law

Chatterjee

2020

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Based on a completely reconstructed archive of Persian, Hindi and Marathi documents, Nandini Chatterjee provides a unique micro-history of a family of landlords in Malwa, central India, who flourished in the region from at least the sixteenth until the twentieth century. By exploring their daily interactions with imperial elites as well as villagers and marauders, Chatterjee offers a new history from below of the Mughal Empire, far from the glittering courts of the emperors and nobles, but still dramatic and filled with colourful personalities. From this perspective, we see war, violence, betrayal, enterprise, romance and disappointment, but we also see a quest for law, justice, rights and righteousness. A rare story of Islamic law in a predominantly non-Muslim society, this is also an exploration of the peripheral regions of the Maratha empire and a neglected princely state under British colonial rule. This title is also available as Open Access.

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Across Legal Lines

Cited by 43 publications

References 0 publications

Written and Oral in Islamic Law: Documentary Evidence and Non-Muslims in Moroccan Shari‘a Courts

Written and Oral in Islamic Law: Documentary Evidence and Non-Muslims in Moroccan Shari‘a Courts

Jews and Other Others

Negotiating Mughal Law

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