Shari'a Scripts (eBook)

Shar??a Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. Brinkley Messick uses the writings of the Yemeni past to offer a comprehensive view of the shar??a as a localized and lived phenomenon in a groundbreaking examination of the interpretative range and insights offered by the anthropologist as reader.

MessickBrinkley: Brinkley Messick (PhD, Anthropology, Princeton) is Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of The Calligraphic State (California, 1993), which won the Albert Hourani Award from the Middle East Studies Association, and Shar??a Scripts: An Historical Anthropology (Columbia, forthcoming) and the coeditor of Islamic Legal Interpretation (Harvard, 1996). I chose him as a reader for his interests in the theory and practice of Islamic law.Brinkley Messick is professor of anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies as well as the director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. He is the author of The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (1993) and a coeditor of Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas (1996).

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A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Shari?a Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. There-while colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the shari?a, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance-the Zaydi school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway.Brinkley Messick uses the richly varied writings of the Yemeni past to offer a uniquely comprehensive view of the shari?a as a localized and lived phenomenon. Shari?a Scripts reads a wide spectrum of sources in search of a new historical-anthropological perspective on Islamic textual relations. Messick analyzes the shari?a as a local system of texts, distinguishing between theoretical or doctrinal juridical texts (or the "e;library"e;) and those produced by the shari?a courts and notarial writers (termed the "e;archive"e;). Attending to textual form, he closely examines representative books of madrasa instruction; formal opinion-giving by muftis and imams; the structure of court judgments; and the drafting of contracts. Messick's intensive readings of texts are supplemented by retrospective ethnography and oral history based on extensive field research. Further, the book ventures a major methodological contribution by confronting anthropology's longstanding reliance upon the observational and the colloquial. Presenting a new understanding of Islamic legal history, Shari?a Scripts is a groundbreaking examination of the interpretative range and historical insights offered by the anthropologist as reader.