Islamic Law (RLE Politics of Islam)

Social and Historical Contexts

This book underlines the mutability of Islamic law and attempts to relate its substantive and institutional varieties and transformations to social, political, economic and other historical circumstances. The studies in the book range from discussion of the received wisdom in Islamic law to studies of legal institutions and the theoretical means employed by Islamic law for the accommodation of changing historical circumstances. First published in 1988.

The division of primary heirs into ranked classes based upon categories of
ascendants, des— cendants, and lateral relations which succeed in turn is, as we
haw2seen, not without parallel in the legal systems of late Antiquity. It bears a
certain ...