Cover Stories: A Genealogy of the Legal Public Sphere in Yemen

  • Brinkley Messick
Chapter
Part of the Culture and Religion in International Relations book series (CRIR)

Abstract

Compared with most countries of the Middle East and North Africa, the background of modern legal change in Yemen is unusual in several key respects. First, is the absence of a period of Western colonial rule, at least for the northern highlands. This meant that legal transformations generally came later and were markedly different than in most other countries. There was no restriction of existing Islamic legal applications to the sphere of personal status law, or family law, which was typical under colonial rule, and there also was no imposition of Western law in such characteristic areas as criminal and commercial law. Caveats to this non-colonial history, however, are the ramifying legal influences of British rule in Aden (1830–1967) and also the nearly 50-year period of Ottoman rule in the highlands around the turn of the 20th century.

Keywords

Civil Society Cover Story Property Regime Court Judge Court Judgment 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. al-‘Alimi, Rashad Muhammad. 1989. Al-Taqlidiyya wa-l-hadatha fi-nizam al-qanuni al-yamani. San‘a’: Dar al-kalima.Google Scholar
  2. al-‘Amrani, Muhammad Isma‘il. 1984. Nizam al-qada’ fi-l-islam. Damascus: Matba‘at al-katib al-‘arabi.Google Scholar
  3. al-‘Ansi, Ahmad b. Qasim. 1993 [1938]. Al-Taj al-mudhhab li-ahkam al-madhhab, 4 vols., San‘a’: Dar al-hikma al-yamaniyya.Google Scholar
  4. Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
  5. Bowen, John R. 1999. “Legal Reasoning and Public Discourse in Indonesian Islam.” In New Media in the Muslim World. ed. Dale F. Eickelman and Jon W. Anderson, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 80–105.Google Scholar
  6. Calder, Norman. 1996. “Law.” In History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, London and New York: Routledge, 979–98.Google Scholar
  7. Dresch, Paul, and Bernard Haykel. 1995. “Stereotypes and Political Styles: Islamists and Tribesfolk in Yemen.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, 4: 405–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. al-Ghurbani, Muhammad ‘Ali. n.d. ‘Ilm usul al-hadith, unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
  9. Habermas, Jürgen. 1989 [1962]. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
  10. Messick, Brinkley. 1983. “Prosecution in Yemen: The Introduction of the Niyaba.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15: 507–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Messick, Brinkley. 1993. The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
  12. Messick, Brinkley. 1996. “Media Muftis: Radio Fatwas in Yemen.” In Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas, ed. Muhammad Khalid Masud, Brinkley Messick, and David Powers, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 310–20.Google Scholar
  13. Messick, Brinkley. 1997a. “Genealogies of Reading and the Scholarly Cultures of Islam.” In Cultures of Scholarship, ed. Sally C. Humpheys, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 387–412.Google Scholar
  14. Messick, Brinkley. 1997b. “On the Question of Lithography,” Culture and History (Copenhagen) 18: 158–76.Google Scholar
  15. Messick, Brinkley. 1998a. “L’ écriture en procès: les récits d’un meurtre devant un tribunal shari‘a.” special section of Droit et Société, ed. Baudouin Dupret, 39: 237–56.Google Scholar
  16. Messick, Brinkley. 1998b. “Written Identities: Legal Subjects in an Islamic State.” History of Religions 38, 1: 25–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Messick, Brinkley. 2002. “Evidence: From Memory to Archive.” Islamic Law and Society 9, 2: 231–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Mutahhar, Muhammad Yahya. 1985. Ahkam al-ahwal al-shakhsiya. 2 vols., Cairo and Beirut: Dar al-kutub al-islamiyya.Google Scholar
  19. Salvatore, Armando. 1997. Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press.Google Scholar
  20. Salvatore, Armando. 2001. “After the State: Islamic Reform and the ‘Implosion’ of shari‘a.” In Muslim Traditions and Modern Techniques of Power, vol. 3 of Yearbook of Sociology of Islam, ed. Armando Salvatore, Hamburg: Lit; New Brunswick: Transaction.Google Scholar
  21. Schacht, Joseph. 1964. An Introduction to Islamic Law. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
  22. al-Shamahi, ‘Abdallah. 1937. Sirat al-‘arifin ila idrak ikhtiyarat amir al-mu’minin. San‘a’: Matba’at al-ma’arif.Google Scholar
  23. Würth, Anna. 1995. “A Sana‘a Court: The Family and the Ability to Negotiate.” Islamic Law and Society 2, 3: 320–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Würth, Anna. 2000. Ash-Sharia fi Bab al-Yaman. Recht, Richter und Rechtspraxis an der familienrechtlichen Kammer des Gerichts Süd-Sanaa, (Republik Jemen) 1983–1995. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.Google Scholar
  25. Ziadeh, Farhat. 1968. Lawyers, the Rule of Law, and Liberalism in Modern Egypt. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Armando Salvatore and Mark LeVine 2005

Authors and Affiliations

  • Brinkley Messick

There are no affiliations available

Personalised recommendations