Towards A Genealogy of Islamic Finance: A Preface The last three decades saw the birth and a meteoric growth of what is now known as Islamic Banking. From a marginal presence in the late 60s and early 70s, Islamic financial institutions are now operating in over 70 countries and hold assets valued over 200 billion dollars. One of the major debates that surround the growth of this phenomenon is whether such banking is “Islamic” or not. While this may be a worthwhile debate, it is not the object of this paper. This paper seeks to examine whether it is possible to trace a history of change in the way this new body of knowledge is being produced. It looks at two phenomena that may provide clues to answering this question. The first is the rise of a new type of Islamic financial expert. To this end, I examine the shifts of authority that have led to what I argue is a bureaucratization or democratization of fatwa issuing by sharia boards of financial institutions. I try to come up with a better understanding of disciplining mechanisms that govern this process. The second phenomenon is the emergence of an evolving taxonomy of Islamic financial terms in the hope of endowing them with precise legal meaning (such as mudaraba, murabaha, musharaka). I ask whether there is an emerging consensus on what these terms mean and whether the creation of a taxonomy of Islamic financial tools contributes to forming a unified theory of Islamic finance. Investigating these questions will hopefully build towards the creation of a genealogy of Islamic banking. This paper is merely a preface for such a larger project. My paper relies on seminal works by Ibrahim Warde, Clement M. Henry and Monzer Kahf addressing the politics and history of Islamic Finance. I employ Foucauldian concepts of discipline, power, and knowledge to analyze the shifts in authority and terminology formation in the field. Finally, I draw on primary sources recently made available by Islamic Institutions such as the Faisal Bank on the net including lengthy and detailed documents of financial fatwas and guidelines of management and sharia board member composition and selection. I briefly examine the materiality of these new documents and other texts of Islamic finance literature. These reflections provide further evidence of the shift in discourse surrounding Islamic finance. This last step is guided by Brinkley Messick’s inspiring work on textual domination.