‘Islamic law’ in the British post-colonial world, as an example, is neither simply the shari’ah codified, nor the autonomous domain of Muslim elites, but occupies a middle ground constructed by the interaction of multiple circulations of law, actors, ideas and institutions. This middle ground seems at one and the same time to be a marginal legal space and a central symbolic and political space. This paper takes as its point of departure the travels of British colonial law: it traces the path of laws concerning Islam and Muslims from the United Kingdom to India, Egypt and Malaya in the late nineteenth century, following colonial agents as they attempted to define state, criminality, private property, and social order. Upon arrival, though, these officials negotiated the content, scope and meaning of law with local elites, whose interventions had enormous importance for the eventual domestication of law. These elites at times drew from other circulations of law in which they were active participants, such as laws taken from the Ottoman system. British colonial concerns for stability, private property, order and justice required accommodations with some local elites who saw opportunities for the furtherance of their own varied interests. Rather than a monolithic Arab export, therefore, Islamic law is a product of negotiations (at many time and in many places) both local and transregional, negotiations that themselves had multiple outcomes. The most important of these, for the purposes of this project, were the transformation of local elite Muslim identity, the increased role of the state in the administration of Islamic law, and the construction of a limited space within which Islamic law could be administered.