Continuity and Transformation in Islamic Law

Episode 345
with Will Hanley hosted by Taylor M. Moore
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In this episode, Will Hanley transports us to the gritty, stranger-filled streets of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria, as we discuss his book, Identifying with Nationality: Europeans, Ottomans, and Egyptians in Alexandria. We explore how nationality—an abstract tool in the pages of international legal codes—became a new social and legal category that tangibly impacted the lives of natives and newcomers to Alexandria at the turn of the twentieth century. We consider how nationality brought together the previously impersonal, stranger networks using an array of paper technologies, vocabularies, and legal practices that forged bonds of affiliations between the individuals and groups that inhabited the city. Finally, we discuss how Egyptians and non-European foreigners, such as Algerians, Tunisians, and Maltese, benefited or were disenfranchised from a legal hierarchy that privileged white, male Europeans.
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with Aurelie Perrier hosted by Sam Dolbee This episode is part of a series on Women, Gender, and Sex in Ottoman history
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The association of Algeria with sex figured prominently in the artwork and literature that was critiqued so famously by Edward Said in Orientalism. In this episode, Dr. Aurelie Perrier discusses the practical backdrop of this argument beyond the level of discourse by exploring illicit sex in 19th century Algeria under both Ottoman and French rule. Beginning with the fluid boundaries of Ottoman-administered sex work, she describes the transformations that accompanied French colonialism beginning in 1830. Contextualizing the sex trade in both eras with flows of labor migration, Perrier also illuminates the spatial dynamics of the French approach to prostitution, namely the birth of red-light districts and brothels. At once centralizing and segregating sex work, this new politics of space was intimately connected to the boundaries of race and class that were the premise of colonialism in the first place. Yet it appears in many cases these boundaries were transgressed, undermining the credibility of the colonial state. Moreover, even as the state claimed unprecedented control over the intimate lives of its citizens/subjects, people still managed to use the system for their own purposes, or evade it altogether. Still, the undeniable encroachment of the state left an indelible mark on Algeria's history with distinctly gendered implications.
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Hadi Hosainy ile 17. yüzyıl İstanbulu'nda kadın mülkiyet hakları üzerine konuştuğumuz bu podcastımızda kadınların hukuki yollara başvurarak nasıl kendilerini koruduklarına ve Osmanlı toplumunun şeri hukukun kadını dezavantajlı bir konuma iten kurallarının nasıl arkasından dolandığına değindik. Toplumsal cinsiyetin hukukun işleyişine etkilerini tartıştık.
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with Zoe Griffith hosted by Chris Gratien and Kalliopi Amygdalou
Inheritance and the transfer of property across generations connects the history of families to a broader analysis of political economy, particularly in societies where wealth and capital are deeply rooted in the earth. In this episode, Zoe Griffith provides a framework for the study of family history through the lens of the mulberry tree and its produce in a study of Ottoman court records from Tripoli (modern-day Lebanon).
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Zoe Griffith is a doctoral candidate at Brown University studying the early modern Mediterranean (see academia.edu) Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. (see academia.edu) Kalliopi Amygdalou is a doctoral candidate in the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College in London working on the relationship between national historiographies and the built environment in Greece and Turkey (see academia.edu)
Episode No. 130
Release date: 18 November 2013
Location: Kurtuluş, Istanbul
Editing and Production by Chris Gratien
Bibliography courtesy of Zoe Griffith
Citation: "Mulberry Fields Forever: Family, Property, and Inheritance in Ottoman Lebanon," Zoe Griffith, Chris Gratien, and Kalliopi Amygdalou, Ottoman History Podcast, No. 130 (November 18, 2013) http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2011/11/ottoman-lebanon-property.html.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abu Husayn, Abdul Rahim. Provincial Leaderships in Syria, 1575-1650. Beirut: American University in Beirut, 1985.
Cuno, Kenneth. The Pasha’s Peasants: land, society and economy in Lower Egypt, 1740-1858. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Doumani, Beshara. “Introduction.” In Beshara Doumani, ed. Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003: 1-19.
--- “Adjudicating Family: The Islamic Court and Disputes between Kin in Greater Syria, 1700-1860.” In Beshara Doumani, Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003: 173-200.
Ergene, Boğaç. Local Court, Provincial Society, and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: legal practice and dispute resolution in Çankırı and Kastamonu (1652-1744). Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Fay, Mary Ann. “Women and Waqf: toward a reconsideration of women’s place in the Mamluk household.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997): 33-51.
Ferguson, Heather. “Property, Language, and Law: Conventions of Social Discourse in Seventeenth-Century Tarablus al-Sham.” In Beshara Doumani, ed. Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003: 229-244.
‘Imad, ‘Abd al-Ghani. Mujtama’ Trablus fi zaman al-tahawwulat al-‘uthmaniya. Tripoli, Lebanon: Dar al-Insha’ lil’Sihafah wa’l-Tiba’ah wa’l-Nashr, 2002.
Imber, Colin. “The Status of Orchards and Fruit Trees in Ottoman Law.” Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi, 12 (1981-82): 763-774.
Mundy, Martha and Richard Saumarez-Smith. Governing Property, Making the Modern State: law, administration, and production in Ottoman Syria. London: I.B. Taurus, 2007.
Tezcan, Baki. The Second Ottoman Empire: political and social transformations in the early modern world. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Music: Wadi al-Safi - Ya al-Tut al-Shami

with Julie Stephens
hosted by Chris Gratien and Tyler Conklin Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud
During the 1920s, a publisher in Lahore published a satire on the domestic life of the Prophet Muhammad during a period of religious polemics and communal tension between Muslims and Hindus under British rule. The inflammatory text soon became a legal matter, first when the publisher was brought to trial and acquitted for "attempts to promote feelings of enmity or hatred between different classes" and again when he was murdered a few years later in retaliation for the publication. In this episode, Julie Stephens explores how this case highlights debates over the meaning of religious and political liberties, secularism, and legal transformation during British colonial rule in South Asia. In doing so, she challenges the binary juxtaposition between secular reason and religious sentiment, instead pointing to their mutual entanglement in histories of law and empire.
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