Law, Empire, and the Sultan: Ottoman Imperial Authority and Late Hanafi Jurisprudence

Based on author's thesis (doctoral - University of Arizona, 2014) issued under title: We're Not in Kufa Anymore: The Construction of Late Hanafism in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, 16th - 19th Centuries CE.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-181) and index.

Introduction -- Ibn Nujaym : The Father of Late Ḥanafism? -- "The Sulṭan Says" : Ottoman Sultanic Authority in Late Ḥanafī Tradition -- Ottoman Rationale for Codification : The Mecelle -- Conclusion

"This book proposes that late Ḥanafī legal scholarship in the early modern period secured a role for the Ottoman sultanic authority in the process of lawmaking. It finds the reigning arguments for an epistemic divorce between the domain of Islamic law and the authority of the Ottoman state untenable. This study demonstrates that Ḥanafī jurists sustained and expanded Ottoman sultanic authority through careful reformulations of their own school and their engagement with new notions of governance embraced by the Ottomans. This late articulation of the Ḥanafī legal tradition is not only essential to the understanding of the movement to codify Islamic jurisprudence in the late 19th century CE, and the role of the sultan in these transformations, but also to the sketching of looming contentious issues with regard to legitimate governance, lawmaking, and the future of the in modern sari'ah legal jurisdictions in majority Muslim countries"-- Provided by publisher.