Islamic Law in Early Modern Iran

Sharīʿa Court Practice in the Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries

Zahir Bhalloo

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9783111239934
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History

Historical studies on the practice of Islamic law (shar??a) tend to focus on practice in a Sunni setting during the Mamluk or Ottoman periods. This book decenters Sunni and Mamluk and Ottoman normativity by investigating the practice of shar??a in a Twelver Shi?i Persian-speaking milieu, in early modern Iran between the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. Drawing on documentary evidence and narrative sources, it reconstructs who the practitioners of Islamic law were, how they authenticated, annulled, and archived legal documents, and how they intervened in the resolution of disputes over religious endowments (waqf). The study demonstrates that following Iran's conversion to Twelver Shi?ism under the Safavids, the dominance of U??l? Shi?i legal theory, which conferred judicial authority on scholars recognized as Shi?i jurists (mujathids), affected both the practitioners of Islamic law and the procedures of shar??a court practice in Iran. Shi?i jurists in Iran, as a result, would come to exercise by the end of the nineteenth century a judicial monopoly over valid shar??a court practice thus laying the foundation for Ayatollah Khomeini's extension, during the Iranian revolution, of the authority of the Shi?i jurist over political affairs.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Note on Transliteration and Dates
• Introduction Documenting Sharīʿa Court Practice in Iran, ca. 1501–1925
• Chapter 1 Sharīʿa Courts in Iran before the Qajar Period
• Chapter 2 The Sharīʿa Court of the Tammāmī Shaykh al-Islāms in Shiraz
• Chapter 3 The Sharīʿa Court of Āqā Sayyid Ṣādiq Ṭabāṭabāʾī Sangalajī in Tehran
• Chapter 4 The Validity of the Waqf of Luṭf ʿAlī Khān Turshīzī
• Chapter 5 Resolving a Land Dispute in Astarābād
• Chapter 6 Reviving the Waqf of Mīrzā Aḥmad Kafrānī
• Conclusion: Assessing Judicial Decentralisation
• Index of Places
• Index of People
• Index of Technical Terms