The Evolution of Third-Party Mediation in Sharīʿa Courts in 19th- and early 20th-century Central Asia

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Sartori
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Direct Involvement

AbstractWhile in the Ottoman Empire reconciling disputing parties insharīʿacourts occurred without the direct involvement of state officials, in modern Central Asia functionaries appointed by the ruler’s chancellery acted as mediators and mediation procedures were consistent with the state’s intervention in the resolution of a conflict. This ended with Russian colonization. Conflict resolution was left to thesharīʿacourts; mediation continued to be important but state appointees were no longer officially involved in bringing it about. The Russian colonial and Soviet administrations made the community responsible for seeking amicable settlements. Only afterwards did they realize how easy this made it for local groups to circumvent the state’s supervision.

Being Soviet, Muslim, Modernist, and Fundamentalist in 1950s Central Asia

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-165
Author(s):  
Paolo Sartori ◽  
Bakhtiyar Babajanov
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Soviet Rule ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Transformative Process ◽  
Soviet Central Asia ◽  
Muslim Scholars

AbstractHow far, if at all, did the intellectual legacy of early 20th-century Muslim reformism inform the transformative process which Islam underwent in Soviet Central Asia, especially after WWII? Little has been done so far to analyze the output of Muslim scholars (ʿulamāʾ) operating under Soviet rule from the perspective of earlier Islamic intellectual traditions. The present essay addresses this problem and sheds light on manifestations of continuity among Islamic intellectual practices—mostly puritanical—from the period immediately before the October Revolution to the 1950s. Such a continuity, we argue, profoundly informed the activity of the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan (SADUM) established in Tashkent in 1943 and, more specifically, the latter’s attack against manifestations of religiosity deemed “popular,” which were connected to the cult of saints. Thus, this essay posits that the juristic output of Soviet ʻulamā’ in Central Asia originates from and further develops an Islamic reformist thinking, which manifested itself in the region in the late 19th- and early 20th-century. By establishing such an intellectual genealogy, we seek in this article to revise a historiographical narrative which has hitherto tended to decouple scripturalist sensibilities from Islamic reformism and modernism.

Casting Off Egyptian Ḥanafism: Sharīʿa, Divorce, and Legal Reform in 20th-Century Egypt

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-35
Author(s):  
Samy Ayoub
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Legal Reform ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Divorce Law ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Judicial Reasoning ◽  
The Government

AbstractThis article explores an important debate on divorce law in early 20th-century Egypt between the sharīʿa judge Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir (d. 1958) and the adjunct to the last Shaykh al-Islām of the Ottoman Empire, Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (d. 1952). The debate is centred on Shākir’s argument that triple divorce (three pronouncements of the divorce oath in one utterance, deemed irrevocable according to the Ḥanafī school) should be treated as a single revocable divorce, a position that the Ḥanafī school rejects. The Egyptian divorce law was changed on 10 March 1929 to embrace the revised position, supported by the government, that a triple divorce counts as a single divorce, thereby making it revocable. Shākir argued that the official adherence of the sharīʿa courts to the preponderant opinions (al-rājiḥ) of the Ḥanafī school was one of the key obstacles to meaningful legal reform in this case. Despite his declared following of the Ḥanafī school, Shākir dismissed Ḥanafī legal norms and authorities, and advocated an urgent break with the control of the Ḥanafī legal school on the process of judicial reasoning in the Egyptian sharīʿa courts. To further demonstrate this dynamic, I take up a close reading of a court decision on whether custody payments (ujrat al-ḥaḍāna) include housing support (sakan), or if the latter is a separate calculated expense. Shākir not only ruled in opposition to the Ḥanafī preponderant position but also rejected the late Ḥanafī authority Muḥammad Amīn ʿĀbidīn’s (Ibn ʿĀbidīn, d. 1836) effort to harmonize the school’s position on this matter. I propose that Shākir was an iconoclastic Ḥanafī.

Regional Authorities and Local Self-Government Bodies of the Terek Region in the Fight against Infectious Diseases and Epidemics in the Late 19th — Early 20th Century

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10 (108)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Svetlana Khubulova
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
East Central ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Mechanism Of Interaction ◽  
Regional Authorities ◽  
Regions Of Russia

The article attempts to study the causes of the spread of infectious diseases in the Terek region at the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries, as well as the activities of local authorities aimed at the localization of epidemics. The causes, nature and dynamics of these processes in different years are studied. It is revealed that the causes of epidemics of typhus, cholera, plague and other dangerous diseases for humans include both the natural and climatic conditions of the population, and the “seasonal” nature associated with active migration from the East, Central Asia and the inner regions of Russia through the territory of the Terek region. Thanks to the newly introduced archival documents, it was possible to reconstruct the mechanism of interaction between state bodies and public initiatives to improve the sanitary and epidemic situation in the region.

Ink as a Functional Marker in the Study of the Syriac and Christian Sogdian Manuscript Fragments in the Turfan Collection (Berlin) and in the Krotkov Collection (St. Petersburg)

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 12-31
Author(s):  
Chiara Barbati ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Functional Marker ◽  
Early 20Th Century

The Syriac and Christian Sogdian manuscript fragments in the Turfan Collection (Berlin) and in the Krotkov Collection (St. Petersburg) were written in black ink and, much less frequently, in brown ink. The use of red ink is very limited and not yet studied in detail. By linking the analysis of all the elements that are due or related to the scribal discourse in Christian Medieval Central Asia with a well‑established codicological tradition, this contribution is meant to outline the purposes of the use of different ink in the Syriac and Christian Sogdian manuscript fragments discovered in the early 20th century in Xinjiang (China). A broader perspective that takes into account other Eastern Christian manuscript traditions is also included.

Caravan Trade in the Late Ottoman Empire: the ʿAqīl Network and the Institutionalization of Overland Trade

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 38-72
Author(s):  
Philippe Pétriat
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractBuilding on recent works on Central Asia and using Ottoman, Arabic and European sources, this article challenges the idea that caravan trade was declining in the 19th and 20th-century Ottoman Middle East. It explores the caravan trade’s economic and political dimensions from the Gulf to Syria. This trade’s resurgence was simultaneous with the reassertion of imperial control over the steppe. In that changing context, the institutionalization of caravan trade by groups such as the ʿAqīl traders kept overland trade lively and arguably competitive.

Uncommunicative Communication: Competing Egyptian, Ottoman and British Imperial Ventures in 19th-Century Egypt

2014 ◽  
Vol 54 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 399-422
Author(s):  
Maurus Reinkowski
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
The Way

The contribution “Uncommunicative Communication: Competing Egyptian, Ottoman and British Notions of Imperial Order in 19th-Century Egypt” by Maurus Reinkowski (University of Basel) sees Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th century as a particularly illustrative case of competing imperial ventures, in particular of the Egyptian, Ottoman and British states. Whereas the Egyptian imperial venture, prominent under Muḥammad ʿAlī in the 1820s and 1830s and revived under Ismāʿīl (r. 1863–1879) in the early 1870s, quickly degenerates into bankruptcy and finally British occupation from 1882 onwards, the Ottoman-British imperial competition continues until 1914. A particularly colorful example of how the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain – in the way of uncommunicative communication – strived to maintain respectively to enforce their notion of an appropriate imperial order is to compare of Aḥmed Muḫtār Paşa and Lord Cromer. Aḥmed Muḫtār, a high-ranking Ottoman officer, was sent in 1885 as Extraordinary Commissioner to Cairo, where he stayed until 1908. Muḫtār’s semi-exile in Cairo was characterized by factual powerlessness as he was completely overshadowed by Sir Evelyn Baring, the British consul general who was the factual ruler of Egypt between 1882 and 1907. Starting from the assumption that Aḥmed Muḫtār’s status in Egypt does not only reflect his personal isolation, but also the precarious imperial status of the Ottoman Empire, this paper examines Aḥmed Muḫtār’s presence and politics in Cairo as a case of both personal self-reassurance and imperial self-representation.


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