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Waqf, a non-definition -- State, law, and the "Muslim community" -- The intent of charity -- Charity and the family -- The "Waqf's benefit" and public benefit -- Conclusion -- Appendix A. Main Ottoman Mutūn and their main commentaries and glosses -- Appendix B. Umari mosque expenditures and appointments.
Beshara B. Doumani uses a variety of local sources to examine everyday family life throughout the Ottoman Empire.
Empires and their aftermaths were massive planning institutions; in the past two hundred years, the natural and social sciences emerged—at least in part—as modes of knowledge production for imperial planning. Yet these connections are frequently under-emphasized in the history of science and its corollary fields. The Planning Moment explores the myriad ways plans and planning practices pervade recent global history. The book is built around twenty-seven brief case studies that explore the centrality of planning in colonial and postcolonial environments, relationships, and contexts, through a range of disciplines: the history of science, science and technology studies, colonial and postco...
An exploration of the thirteenth-century law code known as Siete Partidas Conceived and promulgated by Alfonso X, King of Castile and León (r. 1252-1282), and created by a workshop of lawyers, legal scholars, and others, the set of books known as the Siete Partidas is both a work of legal theory and a legislative document designed to offer practical guidelines for the rendering of legal decisions and the management of good governance. Yet for all its practical reach, which extended over centuries and as far as the Spanish New World, it is an unusual text, argues Jesús R. Velasco, one that introduces canon and ecclesiastical law in the vernacular for explicitly secular purposes, that embrac...
Giving to God examines the everyday practices of Islamic giving in post-revolutionary Egypt. From foods prepared in Sufi soup kitchens, to meals distributed by pious volunteers in slums, to almsgiving, these acts are ultimately about giving to God by giving to the poor. Surprisingly, many who practice such giving say that they do not care about the poor, instead framing their actions within a unique non-compassionate ethics of giving. At first, this form of giving may appear deeply selfish, but further consideration reveals that it avoids many of the problems associated with the idea of “charity.” Using the Egyptian uprising in 2011 and its call for social justice as a backdrop, this beautifully crafted ethnography suggests that “giving a man a fish” might ultimately be more revolutionary than “teaching a man to fish.”
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Ways of Seeking, Emily Drumsta traces the influence of detective fiction on the twentieth-century Arabic novel. Theorizing a “poetics of investigation,” she shows how these novels, far from staging awe-inspiring feats of logical deduction, mock the truth-seeking practices on which modern exercises of colonial and national power are often premised. Their narratives return to the archives of Arabic folklore, Islamic piety, and mysticism to explore less coercive ways of knowing, seeing, and seeking. Drumsta argues that scholars of the Middle East neglect the literary at their peril, overlooking key critiques of colonialism from the intellectuals who shaped and responded through fiction to the transformations of modernity. This book ultimately tells a different story about the novel’s place in the constellation of Arab modernism, modeling an innovative method of open-ended inquiry based on the literary texts themselves.
The powerful story of how the War on Terror created the conditions for the emergence of a novel theory of jihad On March 7th, 2007, three Muslim university students left their small city on the Canadian Prairies, seemingly without a trace. In the ensuing months, their disappearance raised fears among Canadian and US security agencies that the men had become “radicalized,” posing a grave threat to national security. From presidential briefings and targeted drone assassinations to a politically charged trial in a Brooklyn courtroom, the men’s story sheds new light not only on the figure of the “radical,” but also on the “moderate” Muslim, represented by a community forever change...
What is the value—religious, political, economic, or altogether social—of getting on a bus in Tehran to embark on an eight-hundred-mile journey across two international borders to the Sayyida Zainab shrine outside Damascus? Under what material conditions can such values be established, reassessed, or transgressed, and by whom? Zainab’s Traffic provides answers to these questions alongside the socially embedded—and spatially generative—encounters of ritual, mobility, desire, genealogy, and patronage along the route. Whether it is through the study of the spatial politics of saint veneration in Islam, analysis of cross-border gold trade and sanctions, or examination of pilgrims women...
A study of the Saudi Arabian monarchy’s efforts to construct and disseminate a historical narrative to legitimize its rule. The production of history is premised on the selective erasure of certain pasts and the artifacts that stand witness to them. From the elision of archival documents to the demolition of sacred and secular spaces, each act of destruction is also an act of state building. Following the 1991 Gulf War, political elites in Saudi Arabia pursued these dual projects of historical commemoration and state formation with greater fervor to enforce their postwar vision for state, nation, and economy. Seeing Islamist movements as the leading threat to state power, they sought to de...
Divorcing Traditions is an ethnography of Islamic legal expertise and practices in India, a secular state in which Muslims are a significant minority and where Islamic judgments are not legally binding. Katherine Lemons argues that an analysis of divorce in accordance with Islamic strictures is critical to the understanding of Indian secularism. Lemons analyzes four marital dispute adjudication forums run by Muslim jurists or lay Muslims to show that religious law does not muddle the categories of religion and law but generates them. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted in these four institutions—NGO-run women's arbitration centers (mahila panchayats); sharia courts (dar...