Berkel and friends on legal sources and Muslim societies

Maaike van Berkel, Radboud University, Léon Buskens, Leiden University, and Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Leiden University have edited the collection, Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies with Brill. From the publisher:

This volume is a tribute to the work of legal and social historian and Arabist Rudolph Peters (University of Amsterdam). Presenting case studies from different periods and areas of the Muslim world, the book examines the use of legal documents for the study of the history of Muslim societies. From examinations of the conceptual status of legal documents to comparative studies of the development of legal formulae and the socio-economic or political historical information documents contain, the aim is to approach legal documents as specialised texts belonging to a specific social domain, while simultaneously connecting them to other historical sources. It discusses the daily functioning of legal institutions, the reflections of regime changes on legal documentation, daily life, and the materiality of legal documents. 

Contributors are Maaike van Berkel, Maurits H. van den Boogert, Léon Buskens, Khaled Fahmy, Aharon Layish, Sergio Carro Martín, Brinkley Messick, Toru Miura, Christian Müller, Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Mathieu Tillier, and Amalia Zomeño.

Contents after the break:

Introduction
Ch.1. Rudolph Peters and the History of Modern Egyptian Law Khaled Fahmy

Part 1: Regime Change and Legal Institutions

Ch.2. The Qadis' Justice according to Papyrological Sources (seventh-tenth centuries CE) Mathieu Tillier
Ch.3. Delegation of Judicial Power in Abbasid Egypt. Petra M. Sijpesteijn
Ch.4. The Mahdi's Legal Opinion as an Instrument of Reform. Issues in Divorce, Inheritance, False Accusation of Unlawful Intercourse and Homicide. Aharon Layish

Part 2: Practices of Recording and Verifying

Ch.5. Identifying the 'udūl in fifteenth-century Granada. Sergio Carro Martín and Amalia Zomeño
Ch.6. Crimes without Criminals? Legal Documents on fourteenth-century Injury and Homicide cases from the Haram Collection in Jerusalem. Christian Müller
Ch.7. From Trash to Treasure. Ethnographic Notes on Collecting Legal Documents in Morocco. Léon Buskens
Ch.8. Notes for a Local History of Falsehood. Brinkley Messick

Part 3: Daily Life

Ch.9. Waqf Documents on the provision of water in Mamluk Egypt. Maaike van Berkel
Ch.10. Ottoman Amān. Western Ownership of Real Estate an the Politics of Law prior to the Land Code of 1876. Maurits H. van den Boogert
Ch.11. A Comparative Study of Contract Documents. Ottoman Syria, Qajar Iran, Central Asia, Qing China and Tokugawa Japan. Toru Miura

Further information is available here.