Bibliograph

Sharīa scripts, an historical anthropology : Yemen under the last imams, Brinkley Messick

Type

Label

Sharīa scripts, an historical anthropology : Yemen under the last imams, Brinkley Messick

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Sharīa scripts

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Brinkley Messick

Sub title

an historical anthropology : Yemen under the last imams

Summary

A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Sharī{u02BF}a Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. There-while colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the sharī{u02BF}a, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance-the Zaydī school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway. Brinkley Messick uses the richly varied writings of the Yemeni past to offer a uniquely comprehensive view of the sharī{u02BF}a as a localized and lived phenomenon. Sharī{u02BF}a Scripts reads a wide spectrum of sources in search of a new historical-anthropological perspective on Islamic textual relations. Messick analyzes the sharī{u02BF}a as a local system of texts, distinguishing between theoretical or doctrinal juridical texts (or the "library") and those produced by the sharī{u02BF}a courts and notarial writers (termed the "archive"). Attending to textual form, he closely examines representative books of madrasa instruction; formal opinion-giving by muftis and imams; the structure of court judgments; and the drafting of contracts. Messick's intensive readings of texts are supplemented by retrospective ethnography and oral history based on extensive field research. Further, the book ventures a major methodological contribution by confronting anthropology's longstanding reliance upon the observational and the colloquial. Presenting a new understanding of Islamic legal history, Sharī{u02BF}a Scripts is a groundbreaking examination of the interpretative range and historical insights offered by the anthropologist as reader

Target audience

adult

resource.variantTitle

Yemen under the last imams

Classification