The grammars of adjudication

Most studies on Islamic, Arab, and Ottoman societies and civilizations are trapped into the evidentiary role of the texts that researchers have at their disposal, considerably reducing the role of text and language to a mimetic description of what happened. This book argues that an understanding of social relations primarily implies taking into consideration the textual production of society in terms of the meanings that could be ascribed to the texts themselves, and, second, that the analysis of texts, whatever their societal and institutional contexts, should look at its sources as discursive practices, in order not to reduce them to their preliminary role of bearers of factual evidence. Drawing from a large variety of Ottoman “legal” texts from nineteenth-century Beirut and Damascus, this book avoids ascribing such texts to the normative values of “Islamic law,” by documenting instead how various discursive practices concretely operate within a particular terrain. Different levels of practises therefore emerge, all of which documented by the social actors that made their existence possible.
La plupart des études sur les sociétés islamiques, arabes et ottomanes se contentent du rôle de témoignage que peuvent jouer les textes à disposition des chercheurs, réduisant ainsi le rôle du texte et du langage à une description mimétique des événements passés. Il s’agit ici de montrer que toute compréhension des relations sociales implique, d’abord, de considérer la production textuelle d’une société en interrogeant le sens assignable aux textes eux-mêmes. Elle suppose également que l’analyse des textes, quel que soit leur contexte sociétal et institutionnel, doit considérer ses sources en tant que pratiques discursives, afin de ne pas les réduire à leur fonction préliminaire de témoignage factuel. S’appuyant sur une grande variété de textes « juridiques » ottomans produits à Beyrouth et Damas au XIXe siècle, ce livre évite de lier ces textes aux valeurs normatives du « droit islamique », mais documente au contraire la manière dont des pratiques discursives opèrent concrètement sur un terrain spécifique. Émergent alors différents niveaux de pratiques, toutes documentées par les acteurs sociaux qui ont rendu possible leur existence même.
Informations
- Collection :
- Études contemporaines
- Éditeur :
- Institut français du Proche-Orient
- Mots clés :
- économie, droit, justice, waqf, droit islamique
- Date de parution papier :
- janvier 2007
- Mis en ligne en :
- juillet 2009
- Lieu de parution :
- Beyrouth
- Année de parution :
- 1er septembre 2007
- ISBN :
- 978-2-35159-052-2
- Nombre de pages :
- 745 p.
- Format :
- 17x24 cm
- Prix :
- 20 euros
Liens et téléchargements
Sommaire
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The blank point in contemporary historical research • Adjudication in light of judicial decision making • How court narratives work: the benefits and limits of case analysis • Significance of the general rules • Organization of the book
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Chapter 1: The discursive origins of the fiqh in light of the mounting fiction of the madhhab [Texte intégral]Beginnings • The coherence of speech and the fiction of an unfolding madhhab • The ambiguity of pre-modern discourses • “Customary law” and the fiction of legal change • Custom within the perspective of law and economics • Change with the make-belief that it all conforms to tradition • The linguistic roots of custom • From customs to fatwas and beyond • The marginalization of law • Custom becoming law
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Chapter 2: Repetition and the reaffirmation of the ideal: The enterprise of judging and the “idealization of the absent” [Texte intégral]The enterprise of judging between cases and texts • The procedural fictions conundrum • The culture of judges • The diwan of the qadi and his sijills
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Chapter 3: Why status matters: Contractual settlements and propertyrights in light of their transaction costs [Texte intégral]The predominance of status contracts in agrarian societies • Limitations of Hanafi contracts • The economics of contracts • What an economics of contracts implies • A typical contract of sale • A general theory of contracts? • Can prices be fair? • The language of contracts • Bypassing the rigidity of tenancy contracts • The benefits of sharecropping • Sharing the rent • Rent and its self-correcting practices • Excursus on marriage • Tenancy from the canonical texts to the court practices • Towards an objectivism in contractual practices • The insidiousness of low rents
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Counterfactual juristic discourse • Judicial decision making and procedural fictions • The self-transcending power of discourse • Looking for signs of landownership: the ambiguities of rent and tax • Genealogy of a legal fiction • Keeping one’s hand over a property • Rebutting a case • Interpreting the past: “Feudal” variations
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The Maronitism of the Shihabs • Maronite law • Representations of non-Muslims • Family disputes • The wives of Bashir II • Women, property, and murder • The litigants and their representatives • The “debt” • The inheritance • Analysis and syntax • The outside • Two litigations into one single case • A specific ruling • Unchallenged narratives
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The economics of waqfs • Validating waqfs through routinized procedural fictions • The origins of the “three-founders” technique • Debts, contracts, and the status of waqfs
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Chapter 7: Fatwas at the rescue of hard cases [Texte intégral]Unlawful usurpation and property restitution • How fatwas work • Excursus: English common law
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Chapter 8: The language of judges and the performance of speech acts [Texte intégral]The grammars of waqfs • A ratio decidendi? • What the founder said • Property rights versus contractual rights • The grammars of “privacy” and filiations • An older case • Property claims and rights • A legitimate narrative • The use of language • How “cases” are constructed • Status and authority of the text
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A plea for mercy • Family intrigues • Which labor laws? • When courts and councils met
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Chapter 10: Hanafi practice and sultanic ordinances: Which normative rules did finally prevail? [Texte intégral]Usury without name • The technique of equalization
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Chapter 11: The phantom of the victimand the triangle of debt [Texte intégral]Fiction is the perfect crime • The tool-of-killing as corpus delicti • Findings of fact • The body, its parts, and their value • Weapon determines intent • Value of the body and its parts • Kinship settlements • Blood-money payments • The perfect crime • Pre-trial settlements • Crime settlements metamorphosing into contracts • The murderous triangle and the cycle of debt • Hard cases • The murderer, his kin, and blood money • The victim vanished • The “public” jurisdiction of the regional councils over criminal procedures • The economics of crime • The objectivism—or formalism—in decision making • The phantom of the victim and the cycle of debt
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Epilogue: Society as text: the infernal cycle of credit and debt [Texte intégral]
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Annexes
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Acknowledgments
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VOL. 1: religious rituals • VOL. 2: mostly religious rituals • VOL. 3: marriage and divorce • VOL. 4: punishments and pecuniary transactions • VOL. 5: pecuniary transactions • VOL. 6: transactions & homicides • VOL. 7: transactions • VOL. 8: transactions
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Part one • Part two
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Bibliographical essay [Texte intégral]
À propos de l'auteur
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Zouhair Ghazzal is professor of historical and social sciences at Loyola University Chicago. He has published a monograph on the political economy of Damascus in the nineteenth century (Damascus: IFEAD, 1993), and contributed to a collective project on contemporary Syria (Paris: Actes Sud, 2007). He is now working on contemporary Syrian legal practices, and on communal forms of life in modern urban settings.


