SHARIAsource

On July 28, 1958, the colonial government of the Northern Region of Nigeria appointed a panel of jurists to examine the multiple systems of law existing in the region and to make recommendations for avoiding conflict among those plural systems. The multiple systems of law were English common law, British colonial statutory law, customary law, and Islamic law. The product of the panel’s deliberations was the Penal Code of 1960. This Penal Code abrogated the application of the sharīʿa to criminal mattes and abolished the judicial powers of the Islamic rulers. The Penal Code was based on the Sudan Penal Code of 1899, which had been enacted by the British colonial government. The Sudan Penal Code was itself derived from the Indian Penal Code, 1834. This document is the report of the Panel of Jurists.

According to the Penal Code of 1960, criminal laws purportedly based on sharīʿa ceased to exist in Northern Nigeria. In 2000, twelve states of Northern Nigeria sought to reintroduce Islamic criminal law, which had been partially in place prior to the 1960 law reforms. In pursuit of its vision to restore Islamic criminal law, the government of Bauchi state in Northern Nigeria set up a “Sharia Implementation Committee.” The Committee was charged with examining the legality and constitutionality of the proposed laws, inquiring into public opinion, and educating members of the public. To carry out this task, the Committee consulted Muslim jurists, state-trained lawyers, legal academics, and members of the public. This volume of Philip Ostien’s Sharīʿa Implementation Sourcebook contains the report of the Committee.

Resolution 16 (4-3) (“Resolution”) cites primarily to a compendium of “studies on the subject of [a]rtificial insemination” and the testimonies of “experts and physicians.” The Resolution enumerates seven known methods of artificial insemination. The first five of those seven methods are “absolutely prohibited… due to ensuing consequences manifested in confusion about parenthood and loss of motherhood and other Shari’a prohibited matters.”  The sixth and seventh methods of artificial insemination are permissible in cases of necessity. 

A translation of the Arabic Majallat al-Ahkam al-A'dlīyyah. This is a book on the principles of rules and regulations according to Muslim jurists under the Ottoman Empire. 

A book on the principles of rules and regulations, according to Muslim jurists under the Ottoman Empire. 

In his work entitled al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir, Ibn Nujaym (d. 969/1563), examines similar historical legal cases and fatwas through collecting substantive legal canons and interpretive legal canons that “distinguish, explain, and guide varied outcomes in cases with seemingly similar facts.” As a principal work authored early in the Ottoman Era collecting legal canons in Ḥanafī law, Muslim jurists of many schools frequently reference his work. For example, drafters of the Ottoman Code of 1869, also known as the Mecelle, primarily relied on this work to select 99 legal canons to preface a new commercial code based on Ḥanafī law that would both modernize and reform Ottoman law based on traditional or classical Islamic legal norms, through reference to legal canons.

For more, view the full print edition or see Intisar Rabb, Doubt in Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press 2015) and “Experiments in Tracking Canons across the Mecelle” (Islamic Law Blog, March 16, 2022).

Suyūṭī’s (d. 911/1505) al-Ashbāh wa-l-Naẓāʾir is a treatise collecting Shāfiʿī legal canons. It examines the similarities and differences between legal and interpretive outcomes in Islamic law in ways that show how and why one judgment or outcome is distinguished from another, and in the process highlights the substantive and interpretive legal canons that guide those legal outcomes. 

For more, view the full print edition and see The Legal Thought of Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti: Authority and Legacy (Oxford, 2017) by Rebecca Hernandez.

This excerpt is from Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-ʿAlāʾī's (d. 761/1359) al-Majmūʿ al-Mudhhab fī Qawāʿid al-Madhhab, which is a two-volume collection of substantive legal canons and interpretive legal canons, and the third-oldest known Shāfiʿī canons collection from the Mamlūk era. Substantive legal canons (qawāʿid fiqhiyya) are short formulas expressing fundamental principles and doctrines of Islamic law, while interpretive legal canons (qawāʿid uṣūliyya) are principles for interpreting textual sources. This excerpt provides the first few pages excerpted from the author's Introduction. 

For more, view the full print edition and read the commentary by Mariam Sheibani on the Islamic Law Blog.