Languages of law:Islamic legal cosmopolis and its Arabic and Malay microcosmoi

In premodern monsoon Asia, the legal worlds of major and minor traditions formed a cosmopolis of laws which expanded chronologically and geographically. Without necessarily replacing one another, they all coexisted in a larger domain with fluctuating influences over time and place. In this legal cosmopolis, each tradition had its own aggregation of diverse juridical, linguistic and contextual variants. In South and Southeast Asia, Islam has accordingly formed its own cosmopolis of law by incorporating a network of different juridical texts, institutions, jurists and scholars and by the meaningful use of these variants through shared vocabularies and languages. Focusing on the Shafi i School of Islamic law and its major proponents in Malay and Arabic textual productions, this article argues that the intentional choice of a lingua franca contributed to the wider reception and longer sustainability of this particular legal school. The Arabic and Malay microcosmoi thus strengthened the larger cosmopolis of Islamic law through transregional and translinguistic exchanges across legal, cultural and continental borders.</p

Encounters of Indic-Abrahamic religions with matriliny in premodern Southern India

This article engages with the matrilineal communities of the Indian Ocean littoral with a focus on the southern Indian context. The matrilineal system was one of the most convenient features in the context of the Indian Ocean trade. In their transregional journeys, maritime itinerants stayed in one place for months or even a year, depending on the variations in monsoon. During this period, they married into the local communities. These marriages were enabled through the existing matrilineal practices, in which men could and should come and go while the women stayed at home and owned the property. From Southeast Asia to Southeast Africa, the matrilineal system has been prevalent in several Islamic communities, but in southern India it historically existed among Hindus and Muslims, and to some extent among Jews and Christians, too. Although the adherence to the system varied historically, we can observe certain features shared among the communities. On the basis of fragmentary but significant evidence between ca. 800 and 1800 CE among Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities, I explore the nuances of conversion and incommensurability across religions. I investigate how the system benefited the oceanic mercantile culture in the region as well as the dispersal of Abrahamic religions, which are often interpreted as significant domains of patriarchy and patriliny.</p

Regimes of diplomacy and law:Bengal-China encounters in the early fifteenth century

This article examines the Bengal-China connections between the Ilyās Shāhī and Ming dynasties in the early fifteenth century across the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea. It traces how law played a central role in the cultural geography and diplomatic vocabulary between individuals and communities in foreign lands, with their shared understanding of two nodal points of law. Diplomatic missions explicate how customary, regional and transregional laws were entangled in inter-imperial etiquette. Then there were the religious orders of Islam that constituted an inner circle of imperial exchanges. Between the Ilyās Shāhī rule in Bengal and the Ming Empire in China, certain dimensions of Islamic law provided a common language for the circulation of people and ideas. Stretching between cities and across oceans the interpolity legal exchanges expose interesting aspects of the histories of China and Bengal.</p

Does the Pagan King reply? Malayalam documents on the Portuguese arrival in India

This article is a response to Sebastian Prange's essay in Itinerario 41, no. 1 (2017): 151-173 wherein he presented a 'virtually unknown manuscript' on the Portuguese arrival in India as an Indian voice, unheard in the existing historiography. Prange had consulted the English translation of a Malayalam text by John Wye, that the former had assumed to be lost. However its original palm-leaf manuscript (ōla) is kept at the British Library. This ōla, entitled Kērala Varttamānam, brings to light some remarkable omissions and a few discrepancies in Wye's translation. Closely reading different manuscripts in Malayalam, Arabic, and English I argue that this ōla is in fact a translation of a sixteenth-century Arabic text, Tuhfat al-mujāhidīn, well known among scholars of its place and period. Taking it a step ahead, I argue that the very existence of this text points towards the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic interactions between the Arabic and Malayalam spheres of premodern Malabar. The ōla demonstrates one of the first instances of Malayalam literature's engagement with a secular and historical theme as the arrival of the Portuguese. In addition, Malayalam works such as Kēralōlpatti and Kērala-palama are clear voices from Malabar on the Portuguese arrival and consequent episodes.</p

Arabic-Malayalam texts at the British Library:Themes, genres, and production

By the late nineteenth century, when printing press was popular across the world. In South Asia, there was increased production and dissemination of Tamil and Malayalam vernacular materials in Arabic script. This intermarriage of local languages with a cosmopolitan script was part of a larger trend of the time, and in South India those were advanced by Arabic-Malayalam and Arabic-Tamil literatures (also referred as Malabari and Arwī respectively). Hundreds of texts printed annually at the prime centres of Islamic printing on both Malabar and Coromandel coasts were circulated among mobile and immobile communities of the region across the Indian Ocean, Pacific and Atlantic littorals. The reach and impact of such vernacular printings are yet to be explored thoroughly, for these materials have been spread across several formal and informal collections and there has not been any systematic attempt to identify or catalogue them. In this article, I focus on uncatalogued Arabic-Malayalam materials at the British Library London on which I have been working on in the last few years. These materials from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries help us understand the history of the region, religion and printing. After a brief historical overview, I focus on some major features, themes, trends, places, and people in about 150 texts I consulted, and which I discuss in relation to broader histories of Arabic-Malayalam tradition

Eastern African doyens in South Asia:Premodern Islamic intellectual interactions

This article explores fragmented historical references on African itinerants in South Asia between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries who worked in the coastal regions as Islamic scholars, benefactors, and leaders. Utilizing epigraphic, architectural and textual sources on a few such personalities from Malabar and Bengal, I take a preliminary step towards debunking the exclusive association of Africans in South Asia with slavery and military labour. These historical figures are not anomalies rather they are representatives of a larger intellectual, legal, and religious network that fared between Asia and Africa. Although they are evident in historical sources, they have been systematically forgotten in contemporary memories and scholarship while this forgetfulness befits the prevalent stereotyping tendencies of Africa and Africans in South Asia.</p

Substitute Heirs in Article 185 Compilation of Islamic Law Maqashid Shariah Jaser Audah Perspective

AbstractArticle 185 KHI was established as a reaction to the unequal distribution of inheritance by giving grandchildren the right of replacement for children. In the context of Islamic law reform in Indonesia, the Compilation of Islamic Law (KHI) proposal has sparked endless debate between pros and cons. As far as the researcher observes, the debates expressed in various discussions and research have not been able to resolve this issue, including attempts to interpret Hazairin through theory of mawali. This research aims to describe and analyze maqasid sharia Jaser Audah perspective on the provisions of successor heirs and relevance maqasid sharia Jaser Audah against the benefits found in Article 185 KHI. This research uses a qualitative type that is oriented on purpose. The results of this study show that the view maqasid sharia Jaser Audah regarding the meaning of successor heir can be seen through the following six features: 1) cognitive character: positioning the results of Zayd's ijtihad as a product of ijtihad; 2) universal features: replacement of heirs applies to all parties with consideration of egalitarian principles, distributive justice and empowerment of heirs; 3) characteristics of openness: making internal factors (customary law, family structure) and external (comparative studies and equality) in the genealogy of Article 185 as tradition; 4) hierarchical structure features: the right of succession given to grandchildren philosophically contains benefits that are oriented towards maqsad (goal) which runs simultaneously; 5) include the element of justice as a philosophical value in mediating the hadith narrated by Bukhari and the results of Zayd's ijtihad; 6) the aim of the Islamic law system: granting grandchildren rights over children is an effort to realize them purpose justice, empowerment and protection of human rights

Regimes of Diplomacy and Law: Bengal-China Encounters in the Early Fifteenth Century

Abstract This article examines the Bengal–China connections between the Ilyās Shāhī and Ming dynasties in the early fifteenth century across the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea. It traces how law played a central role in the cultural geography and diplomatic vocabulary between individuals and communities in foreign lands, with their shared understanding of two nodal points of law. Diplomatic missions explicate how customary, regional and transregional laws were entangled in inter-imperial etiquette. Then there were the religious orders of Islam that constituted an inner circle of imperial exchanges. Between the Ilyās Shāhī rule in Bengal and the Ming Empire in China, certain dimensions of Islamic law provided a common language for the circulation of people and ideas. Stretching between cities and across oceans the interpolity legal exchanges expose interesting aspects of the histories of China and Bengal.</jats:p