Conclusion

The intermixing of pre-Islamic legal traditions constituted the legal starting point for Islamic law’s flourishing. Rather than investigating specific legal doctrines in order to measure the pre-Islamic content of Islamic law, we should focus our attention on how the Islamic legal tradition reveals the shape of pre-Islamic legal cultures and socio-historical situations.

Notes

1 I differentiate between ‘legal tradition' and ‘legal system'.

2 The ‘Near East' is a British colonial term; I use it in this chapter for the sake of convenience, but with quotes to indicate that it is problematic.

3 On Arabian law as ‘Near Eastern', see Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 93 (‘To some extent law in Arabia would thus appear to have been Near Eastern law'); David S. Powers, ‘The Islamic Inheritance System: A Socio-Historical Approach', in Islamic Family Law, ed. Chibli Mallat and Jane Connors. Arab and Islamic Law Series (London: Graham & Trotman, 1990), 15 (‘Near Eastern Provincial Law'); Robert Roberts, The Social Laws of the Qordn: Considered and Compared with Those of the Hebrew and other Ancient Codes (London: Curzon Press, 1971), 2 (‘There are many customs which are common to all Eastern nations and cannot be traced to the code of any particular peo­ple'). See also Wael B. Hallaq, ‘Review: The Use and Abuse of Evidence: The Questions of Pro­vincial and Roman Influences on Early Islamic Law'. Journal of the American Oriental Society 110(1) (1990): 79-91.

4 Samuel A. Jackson, A Comparison of Ancient Near Eastern Law Collections Prior to the First Millennium BC (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2008).

5 I introduced this metaphor in my book, Lena Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

6 Lena Salaymeh, ‘Every Law Tells a Story: Orthodox Divorce in Jewish and Islamic Legal Histories'. UC Irvine Law Review 4(1) (2014): 19-63; Lena Salaymeh, ‘“Comparing” Jewish and Islamic Legal Traditions: Between Disciplinarity and Critical Historical Ju risprudence'. Critical Analysis of Law, New Historical Jurisprudence 2(1) (2015): 153-72; Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law; Lena Sa­laymeh and Zvi Septimus, ‘Temporalities of Marriage: Medieval Jewish and Islamic Legal Debates', in Talmudic Transgressions: Essays in Honor of Daniel Boyarin, ed.

7 The case studies are the even-numbered chapters in Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law.

8 I began exploring distinctions within areas of Islamic law in ibid.

9 Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law, Chapter 6.

10 Historical circumstances explain many of the similarities observed by Janos Jany, Judging in the Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian Legal Traditions: A Comparison of Theory and Practice. Cultural Diversity and Law Series (Oxford: Routledge, 2012), 200.

11 As I have explained elsewhere, my use of the term ‘state' does not refer to the modern nation-state. Instead, ‘[t]he state, or pattern of rule, is the contingent product of diverse actions and political struggles informed by the beliefs of agents rooted in traditions'. Mark Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes, The State as Cultural Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 99. I explored some of the state-based dimensions of the Islamic legal tradition in Lena Salaymeh, ‘Taxing Citizens: Socio- Legal Constructions of Late Antique Muslim Identity'. Islamic Law and Society 23(4) (2016): 333-67.

12 For a more thorough examination of this scholarship, see Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law.

13 For a concise overview of this body of scholarship, see Knut S. Vikor, ‘The Origins of the Shari’ah’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Islamic Law, ed. Rudolph Peters and P. J. Bearman (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014).

14 See Chapters 5 and 6 of Salaymeh, The Beginnings of Islamic Law.

15 Patricia Crone and Adam Silverstein ‘The Ancient Near East and Islam: The Case of Lot-Casting'. Journal of Semitic Studies 55(2) (2010): 432.

16 Walter Young, ‘Stoning and Hand-Amputation: The Pre-Islamic Origins of the hadd Penalties for zina and sariqa (Master's thesis, McGill University, 2005), 7.

17 Ibid., 8.

18 For example, Hjerrild suggests that Imami Shi'i acceptance of temporary marriage reflects Sasanian precedents. Bodil Hjerrild, ‘Islamic Law and Sasanian Law', in Law and the Islamic World: Past and Present, ed.

For a summary of this scholarship, see Vikor, ‘The Origins of the Shari'ah’. For a more specific ex­ample, see Jokisch's claims about Islamic legal ‘borrowings' from Roman law in Benjamin Jokisch, Islamic Imperial Law: Harun Al-Rashid's Codification Project, ed. Lawrence I. Conrad. Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients Series (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2007).

On contemporary propagandizing against Islamic law and the tripartite trope of violence, women and minorities, see Lena Salaymeh, ‘The Politics of Inaccuracy and a Case for “Islamic Law”', The Immanent Frame (7 July 2011), http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2011/07/07/the-politics-of-inaccuracy- and-a-case-for-islamic-law (accessed 24 July 2018); Lena Salaymeh, ‘Commodifying “Islamic law” in the U.S. Legal Academy'. Journal of Legal Education 63(4) (May 2014): 640—6; Lena Salaymeh, ‘Propaganda, Politics, and Profiteering: Islamic Law in the Contemporary U.S.', Jadaliyya (2014), http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/19408/propaganda-politics-and-profiteering_islamic-law-i (accessed 24 July 2018).

On continuity in political administration, see H. M. T. Nagel, ‘Some Considerations Concerning the Pre-Islamic and the Islamic Fou ndations of the Authority of the Caliphate', in Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society, ed. G. H. A. Juynboll. Papers on Islamic History Series (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982); Petra Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State: The World of A Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Sadik Kirazli, ‘Conflict and Conflict Resolution in the Pre-Islamic Arab Society'. Islamic Studies 50(1) (2011): 25-53.

On pre-Islamic arbitration, see Muhammad Yusuf Guraya, ‘Judicial Institutions in Pre-Islamic Arabia'. Islamic Studies 18(4) (1979): 341-5.

Ibid., 330.

Ibid., 333.

Murad Mas'fldam. Tarikh al-qada ’ 'inda al-'arab: min al-'asr al-jahili hattd al-'asr al-'abbasi al-islami. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-'Ilmiyah, 2014).

On the confessional affiliations of the Arabian Peninsula's inhabitants, see Robert G. Hoyland, Ara­bia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (London: Routledge Press, 2001), 146. Gordon Newby, A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse under Islam (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1988), 54.

This claim is in contrast to Lecker's comments, in Michael Lecker, ‘A Note on Early Marriage Links between Qurashis and Jewish Women'. Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987): 17-39. Newby, A History of the Jews of Arabia, 77.

Eastern Christians included Orthodox, Miaphysites (also known as Monophysite), Nestorians, and Maronites. These groups generally adhered to the Apostolic canons, the Corpus Canonum. Trim- ingham explains that ‘[a]t the time of the rise of Islam, all the northern Arabs of Syria and Mes­opotamia, cultivators and nomads alike, were not merely monotheists but offered some measure of allegiance to Jesus Christ'. John Spencer Trimingham, Christianity among the Arabs in Pre-Islamic Times (London: Longman Group Limited, 1979), 6. Hoyland identifies Christian tribes in eastern, southern, and northern parts of the Peninsula. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, 147.

Ghada Osman, ‘Pre-Islamic Arab Converts to Christianity in Mecca and Medina: An Investigation into the Arabic Sources'. The Muslim World 95(1) (January 2005): 67-80.

Lev E. Weitz, Between Christ and Caliph: Law, Marriage, and Christian Community in Early Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)

Michael Lecker, ‘The Levying of Taxes for the Sassanians in Pre-Islamic Medina (Yathrib)'.

Michael G. Morony, ‘Religious Communities in Late Sasanian and Early Muslim Iraq'. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 17(2) (1974): 115.

Jany, Judging in the Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian Legal Traditions.

Janos Jany, ‘The Four Sources of Law in Zoroastrian and Islamic Jurisprudence'. Islamic Law and Society 12(3) (2005): 304.

Ibid.

Ibid., 326.

Janos Jany, Criminal Justice in Sasanian Persia. Iranica Antiqua XLII (2007): 347—86 (349).

Ibid., 352.

Ibid., 371.

Ibid., 360, 384. The overlap between state ideology and confessional affiliation may also explain mass conversions from Zoroastrianism to Islam. On the relationship between citizenship and Mus­lim identity, see Salaymeh, ‘Taxing Citizens'.

Morony, ‘Religious Communities in Late Sasanian and Early Muslim Iraq', 119.

Jany, ‘Criminal Justice in Sasanian Persia', 370.

The Sasanian Empire authorized and recognized rabbinic courts. Uriel I. Simonsohn, A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 51.

Ibid.

Ibid., 47.

See Irfan Shahid, Rome and the Arabs: A Prolegomenon to the Study of Byzantium and the Arabs (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1984).

On ‘Roman Provincial Law' as the hybrid form of Byzantine law in the region, see Crone, Roman, 13-15.

George Mousourakis, Roman Law and the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2015), 215.

Ibid.

David Wagschal, Law and Legality in the Greek East: The Byzantine Canonical Tradition, 381—883. Oxford Early Christian Studies Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 280.

On Byzantine taxation, see Angelo Segre, ‘Studies in Byzantine Economy: Iugatio and Capitatio'. Traditio 3 (1945): 101-27. On the possibility that the Byzantines did not collect a poll tax, see Petra M. Sijpesteijn, ‘The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Beginning of Muslim Rule', in Egypt in the Byzan­tine World, 300—700, ed. Roger S. Bagnall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 445. Solomon Grayzel, ‘The Jews and Roman Law'. The Jewish Quarterly Review 59(2) (October 1968): 93-117.

Jany, Judging in the Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian legal traditions, 49.

‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Abd Allah Darwish. al-Shara T al-sabiqah wa-madd hujjTyatiha fT al-sharTah al-islamiyah (Riyadh: al-‘Ubaikan, 1989), 274.

By way of example, the treaty that established the Muslim community in Medina followed tribal practices. See Michael Lecker, The ‘Constitution of Medina’: Muhammad’s First Legal Document. Stud­ies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam Series 23 (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 2004).

Kamali summarizes these three categories. Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Principles of Islamic Juris­prudence, rev. edn (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1991), 230-1.

Darwish, al-Shara T al-sabiqah, 255-6.

This example is cited in Kamali, Principles, 231. On Jewish and Islamic dietary regulations, see David M. Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

These two examples are cited in Kamali, Principles, 232. The phrase ‘eye for an eye' appears in Exodus 21:24 and the Talmudic discussion of unjust killing appears in Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5 and in Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 37a.

See Anwar Shu‘ayb ‘Abd al-Salam. Shar man qablanaabmahTyatuhu wa-hujjTyatuhu wa-nashdatuhu wa-dawabituhu wa-tatbTqatuh (Kuwait: Lajnat al-Ta’lif wa-l-Ta‘rib wa-l-Nashr, 2005); Darwish, al- Shara ’i‘ al-sabiqah.

Kamali suggests that a majority of Hanafi, Maliki, and Hanbali jurists, as well as some Shafi‘i jurists, considered pre-Islamic laws mentioned in Islamic scripture to be binding. Kamali, Principles, 232. However, I follow Darwish, who suggests a different configuration of the juristic disagreement. Darwish, al-Shara T al-sabiqah, 321-8.

Ibid., 329-33.

I am unaware of any systematic study that identifies ‘jahilT laws that were considered nullified by Islamic law.

Roberto Tottoli, ‘Origin and Use of the Term Isra’iliyyat in Muslim Literature'. Arabica 46(2) (1999): 193-210.

69 Lowin explains that, in the 14th century, isra iliyyat came ‘to designate dubious traditions which were to be rejected because of either objectionable content or its non-Muslim origin'. Shari L. Lowin, ‘Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegesis'. Religion Compass 5(6) (2011): 225.

70 ‘Abd al-Salam Jum‘ah Zaqud. Tadhib al-insan: dirasah fi it ar al-sharVah al-islamiyah wa-l-qanun al-duwali li-huquq al-insan (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Qanun wa-l-Iqtisad, 2013). Jany observes that Zoroastrian law allowed torture in criminal procedures, but Jewish and Islamic law prohibited it. Jany, Judging in the Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian Legal Traditions, 201.

71 Although I disagree with many of the details, Jany offers a useful chart comparing Islamic, Jewish, and Zoroastrian legal traditions, in Judging in the Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian Legal Traditions, 199-207.

Selected bibliography and further reading

‘Abd al-Salam, Anwar Shu‘ayb. Shar man qablana: mahiyatuhu wa-hujjiyatuhu wa-nash 'atuhu wa- dawabituhu wa-tatbiqatuh (Kuwait: Lajnat al-Ta’lif wa-l-Ta‘rib wa-l-Nashr, 2005).

Darwish, ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn ‘Abd Allah. al-Shara I" al-sabiqah wa-madd hujjiyatiha fi al-shari'ah al-islamiyah (Riyadh: Al-‘Ubaikan, 1989).

Hallaq, Wael B. The Origins and Evolution of Islamic law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Jany, Janos. Judging in the Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian Legal Traditions: A Comparison of Theory and Prac­tice. Cultural Diversity and Law Series (Oxford: Routledge, 2012).

Jany, Janos. ‘The Four Sources of Law in Zoroastrian and Islamic Jurisprudence'. Islamic Law and Society 12(3) (2005): 291-332.

Morony, Michael G. ‘Religious communities in Late Sasanian and Early Muslim Iraq'. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 17(2) (1974): 113-35.

Salaymeh, Lena. The Beginnings of Islamic Law: Late Antique Islamicate Legal Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

Salaymeh, Lena. ‘Taxing Citizens: Socio-Legal Constructions of Late Antique Muslim Identity'. Islamic Law and Society 23(4) (2016): 333-67.

Salaymeh, Lena. ‘“Comparing” Jewish and Islamic Legal Traditions: Between Disciplinarity and Critical Historical Jurisprudence'. Critical Analysis of Law, New Historical Jurisprudence 2(1) (2015): 153-72.

Schacht, Joseph. ‘Pre-Islamic Background and Early Development ofJurisprudence'. Chap. II in Origin and Development of Islamic Law, ed. Majid Khadduri and Herbert J. Liebesny (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1955), 28-56.

Simonsohn, Uriel I. A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam. Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011).

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