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Chapters on nominate contracts (endowment, sales, options, barter/ mu‘āwaḍa, hire and lease, partnerships -shirka, muzāra‘a, musāqāt, muḍāraba-, reward/ju‘āla, deposit, fungible and non-fungible loan, agency, financial and personal guaranty, assignment, settlement, pledge, gift), shuf‘a, wills, inheritance, marriage and divorce, mahr, and alimony took almost all of its substance from prominent Shi’i fiqh treatises. Other chapters (classification of properties, easement, usufruct, general rules of obligations and contracts, nationality, registration of civil status, domicile, engagement, guardianship, and evidence) are mainly influenced by Swiss and French Civil Codes and Swiss Code of Obligations.

Chapters on nominate contracts (endowment, sales, options, barter/ mu‘āwaḍa, hire and lease, partnerships -shirka, muzāra‘a, musāqāt, muḍāraba-, reward/ju‘āla, deposit, fungible and non-fungible loan, agency, financial and personal guaranty, assignment, settlement, pledge, gift), shuf‘a, wills, inheritance, marriage and divorce, mahr, and alimony took almost all of its substance from prominent Shi’i fiqh treatises. Other chapters (classification of properties, easement, usufruct, general rules of obligations and contracts, nationality, registration of civil status, domicile, engagement, guardianship, and evidence) are mainly influenced by Swiss and French Civil Codes and Swiss Code of Obligations.

َMain chapters include: 1- Merchant and Commercial Transaction Defined, 2- Commercial Register Books and Commercial Registration Offices, 3- Commercial Companies, 4- Bills of Exchange, Promissory Notes, Checks, 5- Bearer Instruments, 6- Brokerage, 7- Commission Agency, 8- Transportation Contract, 9- Commercial Deputy and Commercial Agents, 10- guaranty, 11- Bankruptcy, 12- Criminal Bankruptcy, 13- Reorganization, 14- Trade Name, 15- Legal Entities, 16- Other Provisions.

Articles 21-93 of this Code, regarding joint stock companies, was repealed and replaced by the Joint Stock Companies Act (1969).

This 'ratified bill' replaced articles 21 to 93 of the Commercial Code pursuant to the legislation enacted on December 10, 1964.

Some significant changes hereby made in the law of joint-stock companies are:

1- Public and private joint-stock companies are distinguished;

2- All directors may, under specified circumstances, be held jointly liable for the acts of any one of them;

3- The fact that directors, in transactions they made with third parties on behalf of the company, have been in breach of the trust or duties delegated to them does not generally excuse the company against third parties from performing those transactions

4- Directors cannot make transactions on their owns’ behalf which involve competition with the company

5- Shares cannot be issued before the company is registered, and bearer shares cannot be issued until all their nominal value be paid by the shareholder.

6- Provisions are introduced on subjects not previously dealt with: executive officer, capital increase and reduction, liquidation, and savings bonds.

A procedural law, containing provisions governing the organization of registry system, the processes of delimitation and registration of real properties, registration of deeds, notary services, administrative enforcement of official deeds, offenses and penalties and the service fees. It, nonetheless, includes one important modification in substantive contract law as well, which is one of the first socially-motivated deviations from the system of ‘freedom of contracts’ as conceived in Shi’i fiqh:

Sale had long been used as a fictional guise for the unlawful intention of the parties to make an interest-bearing loan. This gave the buyer/borrower the additional advantage of appropriating the item of sale/collateral in case of seller/lender’s default, even if the value of collateral be much higher than the price/ loan sum. The Registry Act changed this situation: Regardless of the title the parties give to their contract, whenever the real function of the transaction is to provide security for a debt, the creditor can take only a portion of the collateral equal to the value of the debt, and needs to do this always through judicial or administrative enforcement procedure.

This document is a beyānnāme, or declaration, sent by the Ottoman reʾīsül-kuttāb (chief scribe) to Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, justifying the Ottoman declaration of war on Russia by explaining Russia's violation of treaty obligations. The document gives insight into eighteenth-century Ottoman attitudes to international law and its relationship with Islamic law. Its use of the phrase naḳż-ı ʿahd (breaking the treaty), which has its origins in a specifically Qurʾānic context illustrates one way in which war was legitimized within the Ottoman Empire. Other phrases used in the beyānnāme demonstrate how Ottoman legal plurality functioned within a martial context. 

Herein, Ibn Rushd I (d. 520/1126) reviews the prohibition of cross-confessional testimony. He clarifies that cross-confessional testimony is specifically forbidden between Christian and Jews, due to the historical presence of enmity between the groups, but is generally permissible in other cases such as among Zoroastrians. In Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, Ahmed El Shamsy surveys Ibn Rushd as a springboard to discussing the admissibility of testimony which might be prohibited on a case-by-case basis if enmity is known to exist.   

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.  

In this text Abū Bakr al-Jaṣṣāṣ (d. 370/980) and Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/933) documents the Hanafī position—upheld by al-Shāfiʿī’s (d. 204/820) teacher Mālik (d. 179/795)—which maintained stricter criteria for the qualification of witnesses. Mālik held that the testimony of witnesses who displayed any degree of heresy should be rejected automatically. In Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts Ahmed El Shamsy contrasts Mālik’s position with that of his student Shāfiʿī who had more leniently maintained that heretical beliefs can only disqualify a witness if they have no precedent and have no basis in any possible interpretation of revelation.

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.  

In this excerpt from his legal treatise, the Hanafī jurist al-Sarakhsī relays how the imperial grand judge Yaḥyā b. Aktham (d. 242/857) upheld the Ḥanafī position regarding the eligibility of non-Muslims to serve as witnesses. Yaḥyā was said to have permitted non-Muslim testimony against any other non-Muslims. He explained his position, writing that, “consulting the opinions of the earliest jurists, I have found no one forbidding the testimony of the protected people, except two [conflicting] opinions attributed to Rabīʿa.” Further, Sarakhsī relays the Ḥanafī criterion for witness eligibility which developed in a specific hierarchical framework. Muslims were placed above non-Muslims and, within that, locals above outsiders (dhimmī vs. ḥarbī). As Ahmed El Shamsy notes in Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts, this framework equates the right to give testimony with the right to demonstrate legal authority (wilāya) over another.

This source is part of the Online Companion to the book Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (ILSP/HUP 2017)—a collection of sources and other material used in and related to the book.  

This document is a beyānnāme, or declaration, sent by Recāī Efendi, the Ottoman reʾīsül-kuttāb (chief scribe), to Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. It justifies the Ottoman declaration of war on Russia by explaining Russia's violation of treaty obligations, and gives insight into eighteenth-century Ottoman attitudes to international law and its relationship with Islamic law.

This is an enactment of May 1, 1952, "to amend the law relating to the constitution and powers of the civil and criminal courts." It reconstitutes Brunei's court system, making certain revisions to the Courts Enactment of 1908 (but retaining the same basic structure). See Section 17(2) (p.37) for the Religious Council, unmentioned in the Enactment of 1908. The Enactment names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This enactment of May 1, 1952, "establish[es] a code of criminal procedure." It appears to have borrowed certain material from a "corresponding Code in the Colony of Sarawak." It names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This enactment of May 1, 1952, "establish[es] a code of criminal procedure." It appears to have borrowed certain material from a "corresponding Code in the Colony of Sarawak." It names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This enactment of April 25, 1951, "regulate[s] the application in the State of the Common Law of England, the doctrines of equity and statutes of general application." It says that the common law of England, doctrines of equity and statutes of general application will be in force in the State, but subjects them to "such qualifications as local circumstances and native customs render necessary." It names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This enactment of May 1, 1952, "establish[es] a code of criminal procedure." It appears to have borrowed certain material from a "corresponding Code in the Colony of Sarawak." It names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This enactment of May 1, 1952, "establish[es] a code of criminal procedure." It appears to have borrowed certain material from a "corresponding Code in the Colony of Sarawak." It names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This enactment of May 1, 1952, "establish[es] a code of criminal procedure." It appears to have borrowed certain material from a "corresponding Code in the Colony of Sarawak." It names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This enactment of May 1, 1952, "establish[es] a code of criminal procedure." It appears to have borrowed certain material from a "corresponding Code in the Colony of Sarawak." It names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This enactment of May 1, 1952, "establish[es] a code of criminal procedure." It appears to have borrowed certain material from a "corresponding Code in the Colony of Sarawak." It names neither the Sultan nor the British Resident, and does not specify an author or enacting authority.

This agreement between Great Britain and Brunei announces that Brunei "shall remain an independent state, under the protection of Great Britain." It confers certain powers over Brunei's internal administration on the British government, and entitles British citizens in Brunei to certain rights. It is signed by Hugh Low, British Resident at Perak, and bears the seal of the Sultan of Brunei.