Browse Projects & Special Collections

SHARIAsource PROJECTS

Projects constructed at Harvard by faculty, staff, and students in collaboration with global editors.

Country Profiles offers succinct overviews and resources for each country’s legal history, institutional structures, and legal status of Islamic law (sharīʿa). Project Lead: Aslihan Bulut

The Islamic Law Teaching Project houses collections of syllabi and other teaching material for Islamic law courses taught primarily in law schools of the US and UK. Project Lead: Intisar Rabb

 

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Islamic law collections hosted by SHARIAsource, produced in collaboration with institutions or scholars of Islamic law.

The Nigeria Papers are a comprehensive collection of documentary materials and scholarly analysis on the programs of “sharīʿa implementation” undertaken by twelve northern Nigerian states beginning in 1999 and continuing today. The materials include, among much else, the various state statutes establishing Sharia Courts, Sharia Commissions, Councils of Ulama (scholars), Zakat and Endowment Boards, and ḥisba groups; Northern Nigeria Sharia Penal Codes and Criminal Procedure Codes as well as other criminal laws; select cases that have risen to international notoriety, such as the famous zinā (adultery) cases of Safiyatu Hussaini and Amina Lawal; and a great deal of information about how Northern Nigeria’s new Islamic laws are being applied and the new institutions are functioning. Lead Editor: Philip Ostien, Independent Researcher

The Online Companion to Text and Interpretation: Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq and His Legacy in Islamic Law (Harvard Series in Islamic Law, Harvard University Press 2022) accompanies the recent publication written by Hossein Modarressi. It enables readers to expand their understanding of the book by including access to a large selection of primary source materials that are referenced throughout the book, as well as its chapters. Lead editor: Hadi Qazwini (University of Southern California).

The Online Companion to the print edition of al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, the Royal Moroccan Edition: The Recension of Yaḥyā Ibn Yaḥyā al-Laythī (Harvard Series in Islamic Law) accompanies the seminal English translation by Mohammad Fadel and Connell Monette, published by PIL/HUP in 2019. The authors selected the online companion’s materials with an eye towards elucidating al-Muwaṭṭaʾ’s historical, geographical, and political context. The materials include the original Royal Moroccan Edition’s Arabic text and full English translation, biographies of historical figures, historical maps, and recent scholarly commentary. Lead editors: Mohammad Fadel (University of Toronto) and Connell Monette (American Academy of Casablanca).

The Online Companion to the print edition of “Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts” (Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School & Harvard University Press, 2017) accompanies the book, written by leading scholars of Islamic Law. This online companion features source documents from some of the chapters written by ten different scholars, in addition to the complete access to the book chapters. Lead editors: Intisar A. Rabb (Harvard Law School) and Abigail Balbale (New York University).

The Online Companion to the Journal of Islamic Law Forum on Brunei's Criminal Law Code [Vol. 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2020)], accompanies the Journal in Islamic Law Forum on a new development in Islamic legislation that has generated much international media attention but little close analysis: Brunei’s new Islamic criminal code. The two main parts of the code are the Syariah Penal Code Order (SPCO) of 2013, which took effect in 2014, and the Syariah Courts Criminal Procedure Code Order (SCCPCO) of 2018, which took effect in 2019. With a foreword by Intisar A. Rabb, the Forum features contributions from three scholars and practitioners: Mansurah Izzul Mohamed, Dominik M. Müller, and Adnan A. Zulfiqar. This Online Companion provides the text of the series of laws forming the new Code, as well as its antecedents from British law.

Islamic Constitutionalism (SHARIAsource, Harvard Law School) provides a survey instrument codifying the thirty "Islamic clauses”, i.e. those constitutional clauses that make a reference to Islam or having an Islamic underpinning, modeled after The 1978 Al-Azhar Constitution and developed by professors Dawood Ahmed and Moamen Gouda in the 2015 "Measuring Constitutional Islamization: Insights from the Islamic Constitutions Index," Hastings International and Comparative Law Review, 38(1), 1-76. The Islamic Constitutions Index (ICI) measures the degree of Islamicity of the Constitutions within the Muslim majority countries. Lead editors: Dawood Ahmed (Comparative Constitutions Project), Moamen Gouda (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies), Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago)

Islamic Law in the Age of Colonialism (The Harvard Law Library) is a collection of legal writings, compendiums, and related studies commissioned by, or in relation to, colonial empires that ruled over Muslim societies during the 19th and 20th centuries. Documents include comprehensive legal compendiums of Islamic law, in addition to tracts on family and inheritance law, contract and commercial law, as well as international and comparative law, written in English, French, Italian and German, by professors, judges, lawyers, and ministers residing within or outside colonized lands classified by seven regional divisions: British India, Dutch East Indies, East Africa, North Africa (Maghreb), North Africa (Egypt), West Africa, Ottoman Turkey (Asia Minor and the Caucasus). Lead editor: Intisar A. Rabb (Harvard Law School)

 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Editors' Picks

A curated list of resources on Islamic law and legal history (and citations guides), authored by individual SHARIAsource editors or picked by our senior editors to feature.

The Indigo Book is a citation manual published by Public Resource, Inc., that provides an "open and compatible implementation of a uniform system of citation." It is open source / public domain and unaffiliated with The Bluebook® A Uniform System of Citation®.

The Islamic Bioethics Project at Georgetown University in Qatar combines materials at the intersection of bioethics and Islamic law, and includes a database on Islamic Medical and Scientific Ethics with resources from a broad spectrum of Islamic literature on biomedical ethics.