Preface

The thoughts collected in this book belong to different periods of time and reflect different angles from which I have investigated Islamic contract law over the years.

Some of these thoughts (especially those in Chapter 3) date back directly to my Ph.D.

Within this multidisciplinary frame, the manuscript develops around a sin­gle topic and three themes; namely, the meaning of the ‘aqd as manifestation of the revelation of Islam; as an aspect of cultural and intellectual history in the legal tradition; and as a fundamental element of market interaction in the socio-economic reality. More precisely, by carrying the ‘One Ring’ of non­identity (Chapter 1), the ‘aqd becomes, in this book, a means for comparing how law and religion interact in the East and the West (Chapter 2); Muslim jurisprudence (fiqh) within Sunni orthodoxy provides the pathways to explore its meaning as a medium of legal tradition (Chapter 3); the continuity-in- change of this meaning - contextualized in the realities of the Muslim world, from medieval trade to the process of codification, and later, global finance - offers clues of socio- and anthropological reflections that complete the study (Chapter 4).

To cover all these interrelated dimensions, multiple layers of research have overlapped in the volume, for which I am indebted to many people and institutions.

In particular, in chronological order, I would like to acknowledge Prof. Francesco Castro (1936-2006), who first introduced me to Islamic legal stud­ies at the University of Rome Tor Vergata in (the now distant) 2003, and to whose memory, for this reason, the volume is dedicated; the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London, where I met Prof. Werner Menski in 2008 (our engaging conversations about legal pluralism have continued over the years, from the time of my Ph.D. to the present), Nicholas H.D. Foster, and Dr Jonathan Ercanbrack; the Saudi Spanish Centre for Islamic Economics and Finance (IE Business School, Madrid), under the passionate guidance of Prof. Celia de Anca (with whom I have been in contact from 2011); the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies of the University of Oxford (2013-2014); the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (2017), where I received generous intellectual support and precious advice from Prof. Marie-Claire Foblets; the Kate Hamburger Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities ‘Law as Culture’ in Bonn (2018). I also owe some of the contents of this book to my friends Anna and Doralice: their knowledge of mythology, the anthropology of the ancient world, and the history of religion have given special intellectual sustenance to my legal research.

This monograph has come into existence in inspiring research environ­ments: the British Library in London; the Bodleian Library, the Sackler Library (where I could hide till late evening - a priceless benefit for a night owl), and the Middle East Centre (MEC) Library at St. Antony’s College in Oxford, where I found in Maria Luisa temporary help and permanent friend­ship. Federica and Taidgh gave me accommodation many times in London, for which I am in debt. I also wish to thank Alison Kirk for her precious edito­rial assistance at Routledge Law and her patience in allowing me extra time to complete the manuscript, as well as Anna Gallagher, for her help in the final phases of production of this monograph.

The most special thanks go to my parents Agnese and Battista: without their constant support to my research work, this book could not exist.

At the same time of publication of this volume, another work on the con­tract in the Islamic legal tradition has become available to the public (Ban- tekas, I., Ercanbrack, J. et al. (2023) Islamic Contract Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press). Due to this concurrence, I could not have access to its con­tents and, for this reason, the work is only mentioned as a general reference in the Introduction. I trust that the reader will have the opportunity to take benefit from this reference, especially in relation to the topics covered in Chapter 3 of this book.