While most studies of epistemology and Islamic law do so through works of legal theory (usūl al-fiqh), this paper argues that the use of substantive law (furū‘ al-fiqh) has much to add to our understanding of premodern Islamic conceptions of knowledge, especially as it concerns court procedure and the testimony of witnesses. For a system of law in which evidence is equated with testimony, court procedure developed as a means of managing the uncertainty of knowledge presented by fallible, biased, socially entangled human witnesses. This relationship is especially well illustrated by early Hanafi jurists like Abu Bakr Aḥmad b. ‘Alī al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 370 AH/981 CE), among whose works we find both al-Fusūl fi al-usūl, the first extant, mature work of legal theory, as well as several furū‘ commentaries. By examining the discussion of testimony in one such text, al-Jaṣṣāṣ’s commentary of Aḥmad b. ‘Umar al-Khaṣṣāf’s (d. 261 AH/874 CE) Adab al-qāḍī, this paper will illustrate how Hanafi usūl’s “obsession” with substantive law, to use Murtaza Bedir’s characterization, provides a key means of understanding the definition of knowledge and its practical implications for the judicial process and protection of litigant rights in the early classical period.

This paper explores the social and legal history of defamation in nineteenth-century Ottoman Egypt. While defamation has usually been studied within the context of Khedival Egypt’s ruling dynasty and its complex personalities and their reputations muddled within the complexities of the Ottoman and British Empires, the reputations of everyday subjects and how they came to be understood, probed, and contested during the modern period have been underexplored. Nevertheless, how one came to stand and be valued and protected within her Ottoman province gradually changed during the nineteenth century. This gradual, yet critical transformation may be characterized by an increasingly secularizing society and protective state where social anxieties became fixated more on economic over moral harms. To explore this hypothesis, this paper focuses on and compares nineteenth-century defamation cases as they played out within local and foreign tribunals sitting in Cairo beginning in 1860s with the traditional Islamic law of qadhf—or false accusation of adultery or fornication. As similar, yet quite distinct analogues, nineteenth-century defamation and qhadf present the social historian with a new mode by which to study how Islamic law and society both changed and remained the same through the modern period. But their comparison also allows the legal historian a focal point to study how the law of negligence and the social concerns and policies underlying it emerged and evolved across this critical century from existing precedent. Relying on cases uncovered from the Egyptian National Archives, as well as British and French national archives, this paper follows the fates of individuals—locals, foreigners, rich, poor, men, women, Muslims and non-Muslims—and their communities as they unfolded in emblematic defamation cases in nineteenth-century Egypt. By doing so, this paper ultimately contributes to and fills a dearth of scholarship on the history of defamation and negligence in nineteenth-century Egypt. But more fundamentally, it serves as a social telescope by which to see how modern Egypt, its laws, and its people emerged and diverged from its past legal tradition.

Coffee culture in the Middle East experienced wide expansion throughout the region in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its early uses and functions were criticized heavily within Islamicate societies, particularly by prominent Islamic legal authorities in Mecca, Istanbul, and elsewhere. The majority of scholarship on coffee history indicates that ijmāʿ [consensus] was reached in the 16th century, marking coffee as permissible. However, a deeper dive into coffee’s history indicates that the debate about coffee’s legality in Islam continued well through the end of the 18th century, revealing that ijmāʿ regarding coffee and its consumption under Islamic law was not so straightforward. In fact, there is evidence that consumption of coffee at certain points during the Ottoman Empire was punishable by death. Today, coffee is ubiquitous throughout Islamic societies. The question remains: when was ijmāʿ about coffee universally accepted by Islamic jurists? Using content, discourse, and semiotic analyses of Islamic law manuscripts, particularly those of the 18th century, this paper will argue that the date of ijmāʿ regarding coffee consumption is, in fact, centuries later than is generally accepted by coffee historians. It will show how jurists argued both for and against the beverage for centuries, and how the politics of the time played a role in whether or not coffeehouses were banned. A treatise written by Murtada az-Zabīdī in 1758 will be particularly highlighted, revealing just how much the debate surrounding coffee was continuing in Cairo well into the 18th century. By exploring how coffee was debated, larger conclusions can be drawn about how ijmāʿ was reached in the Ottoman empire and beyond, and how its edicts were followed (or ignored) throughout their territory. Furthermore, this paper has broader implications outside of Middle Eastern studies, as the majority of coffee historians do not speak Arabic, and therefore do not have access to untranslated manuscripts regarding this issue.