Dynamics of Muslim Legal Pluralism Under Colonial Rule

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1 programme and abstracts Dynamics of Muslim Legal Pluralism Under Colonial Rule I n t e r n a t i o n a l w o r k s h o p funded by volkswagen stiftung orientalisches institut halle / saale

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3 Orientalisches Institut der Martin Luther Universität Halle Wittenberg convenors Paolo Sartori, Jürgen Paul hosting institution Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg venue Institute of Oriental Studies Mühlweg Halle / Saale contact paolo.sartori@orientphil.uni-halle.de

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6 p1 thursday, 9 december 2010 panel 1 colonies / post - colonies a pluralistic state law? reception and registration 9.30 h greetings Jürgen Paul ( Halle ) h chair Jürgen Paul ( Halle ) Paolo Sartori ( Halle ) State Law from a Relational Perspective: Forgery, Intrigue, and Complicity in Russian Turkestan h Francesca Petricca ( Halle ) Filling the Void: Shari a in Mixed Courts Jurisprudence h Ido Shahar ( London ) Legal Pluralism Incarné: Pluralistic Legal Environments as Producers of Pluralistic Courts h coffee break h commentators Franz / Keebet von Benda-Beckmann ( Halle ) Ron Shaham ( Jerusalem ) h Discussion h Lunch at the Institute h

7 thursday, 9 december 2010 panel 2 p2 from Ottoman to colonial legal cultures Chair Johann Büssow ( Halle ) Eugenia Kermeli ( Ankara ) Legal Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire and the Role of Custom h Iris Agmon ( Beer - Sheva ) From Ottoman to British Rule: Muslim Legal Pluralism and the Shari a Courts in Palestine h Randi Deguilhem ( Aix - en - Provence ) Nationalizing Waqf in French Mandate Syria: Between Shari a and Colonial Law h Claudia Gazzini ( Florence ) When Jurisprudence Becomes Law: How Italian Colonial Judges in Libya Turned Shari a, Urf, and Adat into Binding Legal Precedents h coffee break h commentators Avi Rubin ( Beer - Sheva ) Zouhair Ghazzal ( Chicago ) h Discussion h Dinner at Chateau & Co h

8 p3 friday, 10 december 2010 panel 3 adapting shari a to colonial and post-colonial challenges Chair Björn Bentlage ( Halle ) Elke E. Stockreiter ( lowa City, l. )»The Law of the Land «: Legal Practice in Zanzibar s Orientalized and Imperialized Judiciary 9.30 h Rebecca Shereikis ( Evanston, ll. ) Islamic Divorce in Colonial Courts: A Case Study from French Soudan (Mali) 9.55 h Philip Ostien & Abdul-Fatah Kola Makinde ( Ile - Ife ) The Independent Shari a Panels of Lagos h coffee break h commentators Franz Kogelmann ( Bayreuth ) Stefan Reichmuth ( Bochum ) h Discussion h Lunch at the Institute h

9 friday, 10 december 2010 panel 4 p4 Russian /Soviet rule and the customization of law Chair Paolo Sartori ( Halle ) Botakoz Kassimbekova ( Berlin ) Soviet Qadis in Tajikistan (1920s and 1930s) h Svetlana Jacquesson ( Halle ) Unjust Ways for Achieving Just Claims: Murders in Nomadic Muslim Regions of Colonial Central Asia h Vladimir Bobrovnikov ( Moscow )» We Stand on Our Ancestors Land! «: Custom, Shari a and State Courts in Settling Land Disputes of Village Communities in Daghestan (1860s-1920s) h coffee break h commentators Jürgen Paul ( Halle ) Michael Kemper ( Amsterdam ) h Discussion h Concluding session Franz and Keebet von Benda-Beckmann ( Halle ) The Struggle over Inheritance Law in Colonial West Sumatra: Reflections on the Past for the Understanding of the Present h Discussion h Farewell dinner at Zanzibar h

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11 A b s t r a c t s

12 p1 panel 1 thursday, 10:30 Paolo Sartori State Law from a Relational Perspective: Forgery, Intrigue and Complicity in Russian Turkestan John Griffiths notorious distinction between strong and weak legal pluralism assumes the existence of multiple regulatory agencies, which act beyond the scope of states legal jurisdictions. As many have pointed out, this view leads to conclude that state legal pluralism lacks social-significance. Hence, Griffiths notion of legal pluralism challenges anyone, who sets out to evaluate the social implications of the interrelation of a plurality of bodies of law in a colonial setting. There are two implicit assumptions, however, that make the application of Griffiths concept of legal pluralism rather problematic. First, as Woodman ( 1994 ) has already pointed out, Griffiths conceives state legal pluralism as a legal order, in which diverse sets of rules are coherent, nested and stacked. Second, Griffiths notion implies that, within such ( presumed ) legal order, the subaltern subjects of a colonial polity are obliged to comply to forms of legal behavior, which were envisaged for them by the colony. Thus, subsumed by the overarching authority of» state law «, the locals appear not to display any regulatory agency. In sum, the application of Griffiths notion of legal pluralism leads to take colonial states claims of legal authority at face value. By drawing empirical evidence from very different fields, Lauren Benton, Simona Cerutti and Ido Shahar have shown that the application of a relational perspective may help detecting the social implications of a pluralist legal system though state centered. These authors have shown that legal behavior and legal institutions were shaped by the interplay of different forces:» rampant boundary crossing «and» jurisdictional jockeying «make state legal pluralism look less a static order than a complex web of negotiations, dispensations, and loopholes. In this paper I attempt at inquiring the legal setting of Russian Turkestan from a relational perspective. My aim is to show that, regardless state s claim of legal sovereignty and monopoly over justice, state law was not a monolithic and a stable entity bounded to a centralized legal system. In fact, state law was crafted not only by jurists and lawyers, but by administrators and military officials who pursued different goals other than justice. The bureaucratization of the colonial state, the production of a discourse on justice and the juridification of the public favored a strategic alliance between colonial bureaucrats and Muslims appellants. Both forged evidences to discredit qadis. The outcome of the interplay of these two actors was a hybrid legal culture, which contributed to shape colonial state law.

13 panel 1 thursday, 10:55 Francesca Petricca p1 Filling the Void: Shari a in Mixed Courts Jurisprudence ( ) Mixed Courts were conceived as an internationally staffed bench whose existence was the result of diplomatic alliances between capitulary powers and Egyptian government. Their main function was the resolution of civil and commercial disputes between Egyptians and foreigners resident in the country. Decisions delivered by the courts were based on the so called» mixed codes «, drafted to serve in the courts and usually presented as an adaptation of the Code Napoleon. This is however an over-simplification. There are two aspects in particularly that deserve a deeper analysis: Codes numerous gaps, and strategies applied to fulfill them. The codes were in fact often very imprecise on relevant matters as law of property and land tenure. These voids however cannot be imputed to Legislator inaccuracy, as many have claimed, but rather to a specific strategy adopted during the drafting process: Mixed Courts were supposed to be a five-year experiment, therefore legislation applied was intended to be transitory as well, furthermore the variety of actors pleading before the courts and the cases cross-cultural connotations required the adoption of specific solutions that could not be easily translated in a code. Anyway during their seventy-four-year s life mixed codes gaps were not much of a concern. First of all the Courts disposed of an internal Legislative Assembly that could amend the codes, secondly the Legislator expressly indicated the application of Equity/Natural law and Muslim normative principles to fill enacted law voids ( Art. 11 R.O.J.M. Règlement d Organisation Judiciaire Mixte ). Recurring to Muslim principles was particularly recommended in cases socially relevant. The fact that the codes were not emended nor extended significantly from 1876 to 1949 might mean that gaps had been efficiently filled. With the help of a case study, concerning a donation ( hiba ), we ll see how European actors appealed to shari a principles in case of silent legislation and how judges belonging to very different judiciary backgrounds and not necessarily acquainted with Muslim normative tradition were applying it to non-muslim plaintiffs in a colonial institution alleged to be Civil Law bulwark in Egypt.

14 p1 panel 1 thursday, 11:20 Ido Shahar Legal Pluralism Incarnè: Pluralistic Legal Environments as Producers of Pluralistic Courts This paper argues that in situations of legal pluralism, especially in post-colonial contexts, we often find courts and tribunals that enact more than one body of law and operate within more than one legal-institutional environment. These courts constitute, in a sense,» legal pluralism incarné «: they embody in their very identity, practices and norms the pluralistic character of their legal environment. This dimension of legal pluralism has not been examined to date by the literature on legal pluralism, which tends to neglect the organizational and institutional levels of analysis. I contend that we can gain better insight into the dynamics of legal pluralism by studying such» pluralistic courts «their hybrid legal cultures, their responses to contradictory institutional pressures exerted on them by their multiple institutional environments, and their maneuvering between multiple bodies of law and multiple administrative systems.

15 panel 2 thursday, 15:00 Eugenia Kermeli p2 Legal Pluralism in the Ottoman Empire and the Role of Custom Albeit the scholarly consensus that the» millet system «was a latter-day Ottoman institution cast retrospectively into the past in the form of» foundation myths «, the notion that non-muslim ottoman subjects enjoyed legal autonomy has been retained. However, the lack of their legal records led Ottomanists to challenge the existence of these venues for non-muslims. This paper aims at refuting both views. The extant body of ecclesiastical and communal records for Orthodox Christians kept from the 16th century onwards attests to their role in solving family and civil disputes. Not only Orthodox but also Muslim subjects made use of these forums, and their tools of persuasion like excommunication and the imposition of fines. It becomes, thus, apparent that the legal autonomy of the» millet system «is a parochial scheme unable to discuss the complexity of the legal behavior of ottoman subjects, Muslim and non-muslim alike. Instead, the concept of legal pluralism by focusing on the litigants allows us to understand a multifaceted system of various legal forums at the disposal of ottoman subjects chosen according to their strategies. Local Orthodox communities gradually developed their own norms ( urf, adet, as they called them ) and codified them by the end of the 17th century. This was not the result of legal autonomy as claimed by the» millet theory «but rather the outcome of Ottoman legal culture. The sultanic urf determined the development of administrative law in the Empire. Local customs were tolerated until they were challenged and conformity with the Shar`ia was sought. Their longevity ( kadım zamanindan berü ) though was the strongest argument for their recognition. This Ottoman legal culture endorsing custom allowed local communities and professional associations to have their own norms respected and accepted. It is the same legal culture that will eventually in the 19th century recognize the importance of custom in the Ottoman Mecelle.

16 p2 panel 2 thursday, 15:25 Iris Agmon From Ottoman to British Rule: Muslim Legal Pluralism and the Shari a Courts in Palestine In this paper, I intend to discuss the reformed Ottoman judicial system in terms of legal pluralism. This discussion allows me to pose questions about the judicial system which the British authorities inherited from the Ottomans when they took over Palestine in 1917, and to offer some preliminary ideas about the functioning of the shari a courts under British Rule in the pre-mandate years ( ). My research on this topic is at an initial stage. Thus, my presentation will aim at engaging the participants in a discussion on the potential of the nexus of legal pluralism and colonialism as a productive framework for exploring the passage of the shari a courts from Ottoman to British colonial rule. During the long 19th century, the Ottoman judicial system underwent profound changes. By the time the British army conquered Palestine and Syria, several judicial forums were operating in most of the Ottoman territories. These included the shari a courts, the nizamiye civil, commercial, and criminal courts. In addition, a number of semi-autonomous judicial forums operated: the courts for family matters of the non-muslim communities, customary dispute resolution forums among nomad and other periphery populations, certain mixed or consular courts that continued to function in spite of the Ottoman efforts to eliminate them. In other words, after a long period of extensive state reforms aiming at centralizing, modernizing, and unifying the Ottoman legal sphere, the resulting judicial system preserved several features typical of legal pluralism. To what extent this tendency continued under the British rule? How these developments affected the shari a courts? For centuries, these courts were the heart of the state judicial system; in the nineteenth century they became one of several judicial bodies in a multi-court system of a Muslim empire. Now they turned into family courts of a colonized Muslim community. However, for several years, prior to the foundation of the Higher Muslim Council by the British authorities, these courts functioned without a clear administrative center. What was the impact of this transitionary phase on the development of the shari a courts under British rule later on? What was the impact of this formative period on the development of the rest of the judicial system? These questions and more will be discussed in the proposed paper.

17 panel 2 thursday, 15:50 Randi Deguilhem p2 Nationalizing Waqf in French Mandate Syria: Between Shari a and Colonial Law Even though built and agricultural properties belonging to waqf had a certain mobility on the real estate market as objects of rent ( with contracts which often led to partial ownership for the renter ), exchange and even outright sale, accessibility to waqf-owned assets in Ottoman Syria was often complicated by the existence of multi-level contracts on those assets. In other words, different parties often claimed rental or proprietary rights on assets belonging to a waqf in addition to the administrators of a waqf who also claimed rights on those assets in the name of the foundation for which they were responsible. Such a complex situation continued during the Faysal period prior to the onset of the French Mandate ( ) whose priority was partly to capitalize real estate in Syria. Building upon nineteenth-century Ottoman reorganization programs based mostly on civil law ( qanun ) which increasingly ( and very haltingly ) brought the management of Muslim public waqf ( khayri ) within state jurisdiction, French authorities in Mandate Syria used these programs as a starting point for the development of their own legal structure to nationalize Muslim waqf ( non Muslim waqf did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Mandate waqf programs ) within the Mandate administration in Syria. But the French moved prudently in Syria, establishing their waqf reform programs around ulama personalities in the country who sanctioned the Mandate s nationalization policies on Muslim waqf with shari a based principles. With the memory of the strong resistance in Algeria regarding their policy of selling off foundation ( habous ) properties during the second half of the nineteenth century the French created a Higher Council of Awqaf in Syria as a consultative body very early in the Mandate years to offset such an eventuality. It was via this Council, created in March 1921 by law n 753 that the Mandate incorporated shari a within the government s institutional infrastructure with the purpose of prominent Muslim personalities endorsing the Mandate s policies of nationalizing Muslim waqf in Syria. Laws in the sector of waqf reorganization in Mandate Syria were henceforth published within the framework of this double legal system: that of the shari a and colonial law. Studying the intersection of Mandate colonial law and shari a in this context constitutes the basis of this contribution.

18 p2 panel 2 thursday, 16:15 claudia gazzini When Jurisprudence Becomes Law: How Italian Colonial Judges Turned Shari a, Urf, and Adat into Binding Legal Precedents During the Italian occupation of Libya from 1911 to 1943, colonial judges faced the problem of having to adjudicate over matters related to Islamic law or customary practice that were entirely absent from Italian legal codes. Although they accepted the general principle according to which Italy would respect local customs and principles of Islamic law, the absence of a clear and written compendium of what ought to be considered the local custom or shari a made it impossible for the colonial courts to pass judgment on such matters that referred to principles or institutions linked to shari a, urf and adat. This was especially problematic in matters related to criminal law and law of contracts, which were under the sole jurisdiction of the colonial tribunals. In order to overcome this shortcoming, from the very outset of the colonial enterprise Italian authorities established that the sentences of the Court of Appeals of Libya constituted a body of jurisprudence that had binding legal value whenever there was silence of the law. The underlying idea behind this procedural novelty was that the sentences of Libya s Court of Appeals would be the most immediate way to start sketching a new legal framework that would take into account local realities that found no correspondence in the Italian legal codes. The idea that a court ruling could become a legal norm is not without its problems, since, unlike common law, the Italian positive law rejected the formal use of court verdicts as a legal precedent. The recourse to such a system attests to the large degree of improvisation in which the colonial courts of Tripoli operated in order to make up for the absence of appropriate laws necessary to rule on customary or Islamic law matters that the Italian legislators were confronting for the first time. In this paper I propose to analyze how Italian authorities in Libya went about in using the sentences of the Court of Appeals to create legal precedents in matters related to principles of shari a, urf and adat. A general discussion of the topic will be followed by a close look at the jurisprudence of the Court of Appeals of Tripoli on four matters that illustrate well how Italian authorities sought to harmonize Islamic and customary law with their own colonial laws. These four topics are: the right of pre-emption ( shuf a ), blood money ( diya ), Muslim Treasury ( bayt al-mal ) and patronage ( wala ).

19 panel 3 friday, 9:30 Elke E. Stockreiter p3» The Law of the Land:«Legal Practice in Zanzibar s Orientalized and Imperialized Judiciary Located on the eastern fringe of the Indian Ocean, Zanzibar s legal history differed from other colonies in sub-saharan Africa. Part of the Sultanate of Oman and strategically located, it became a focus of Western imperial powers in the nineteenth century and a British protectorate in The British opted for stressing the island s Arab heritage and thus officially upheld Islamic law as» the law of the land «, reinventing it at the same time. British colonial rule created a unique system of legal pluralism, which continued the century-old tradition of Islamic jurisprudence along the East African coast, while introducing imperial legal concepts which fundamentally changed the workings of Islamic courts. After outlining colonially initiated changes in Zanzibar s judiciary, this paper will investigate how qadis, British judges and litigants experienced these legal changes. Drawing on court cases, it will seek to answer to what extent we can aptly describe Zanzibar s colonial judiciary as legal pluralism, and how litigants explored newly created legal avenues. Although shari a officially became equated with customary law, mila, in which realms of law did litigants refer to mila rather than shari a, and how did customary norms shape qadis reasoning in court?

20 p3 panel 3 friday, 9:55 Rebecca Shereikis Islamic Divorce in Colonial Courts A Case Study from French Soudan ( Mali ) The tribunaux indigènes ( native courts ) established by the French colonial administration in West Africa in the early twentieth century are excellent sites for exploring the dynamics of Muslim legal pluralism in a colonial context. Established by the French as part of their» civilizing mission «in West Africa, yet charged with respecting African» customary law «or Islamic law where applicable, these courts were overseen by French administrators with no legal training who sought advice from African experts. As a result, a variety of legal traditions and authority figures coexisted and competed within these institutions. This paper examines the role of Islamic legal thought in the entry-level colonial court in the town of Kayes, French Soudan ( present day Republic of Mali ), particularly in cases of women seeking divorce. The court in Kayes drew from a mixed population of Muslims and non-muslims who had lived in close contact for centuries. Analysis of over 200 cases from Kayes from the early twentieth century reveals a pattern of women seeking out the colonial court to obtain divorces by paying back the bride wealth to their husbands. This practice resembles khul in Maliki jurisprudence, although it is not named as such in the court records written in French. Yet certain court cases were recorded in Arabic and explicitly refer to this practice as khul. The paper will use the case study from Kayes to explore the importance of Islamic legal thinking in French colonial courts in West Africa and the implications for women s ability to exert control over their marital arrangements. It will also raise questions about the degree to which court records written in French ( as well as the legacy of French colonial perceptions of Islam in West Africa more generally ) might obscure this importance, and the difficulty of making clean distinctions between» Islamic «and» customary «law in this context.

21 panel 3 friday, 10:20 Philip Ostien / Abdul Fatah Makinde p3 The Independent Shari a Panels of Lagos This paper is about metropolitan Lagos under the British only a township, though long Nigeria s capital. From early in its history the percentage of Muslims living in Lagos has been high, somewhere around fifty percent. There is a long history of attempts by activists among the Lagos Muslims, none yet successful, to persuade the authorities pro tempore to establish courts for the use of Muslims, to which they could take their civil matters for adjudication under Islamic law. After briefly introducing Lagos, we describe two of these attempts, in 1894 and 2000, and their outcomes, paying particular attention to the legal environments in which they were made. We then turn to the constructive response of the activists to their failure in 2000 to persuade the authorities to set up public Shari a Courts for the use of Muslims: they set up a private Shari a court the Independent Shari a Panel of Lagos State to which they invite Muslims to bring their civil matters for adjudication under Islamic law. The workings of the ISP are discussed. Noting some problems, we conclude with some reflections on the hurdles the activists must overcome if their project is to succeed.

22 p4 panel 4 friday, 14:35 Botakoz Kassymbekova Soviet Qadis in Tajikistan ( 1920s 1930s ) The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize the mechanisms of social and political changes. In my paper I propose to look at the idea of a legal change in Tajik (A) SSR in the 1920s and 1930s. It has been argued that in a context of early state-building in Central Asia, legal pluralism took place. Soviet, qadi and regional elder courts co-existed and individuals had a choice between three systems of justice. The concept of legal pluralism presupposes mutual exclusiveness and difference, if not antagonism. Although not disagreeing with the legal pluralism argument, I would like to look at an alternative model of adaptation to changes that also took place in what is today Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The archival data shows that there was a great deal of collaboration between state officials and Muslim judges. Muslim judges did not only keep working in qadi courts still legal up to the end of the 1920s, but also applied and were accepted to positions of Soviet judges ( people s judges ). Also, Muslim clergy exercised authority that the Soviet state still lacked and thus new Soviet state had to rely on local agents. Muslim judges were also important for the new state-building as they were often the most educated and could fulfill the assignments the modern state required. For Muslim clergy new state officials were also strategic partners because they were often a source of authority and power. Until the new Soviet state could produce its own educated state workers, they had to rely on individuals available. Very often those were the Muslim clergy who were invited into the new state apparatus. This is not to ignore or diminish resistance and clash between the moral systems, but rather to draw attention to cases of adaptation that problematizes and complicates the process of change in the region at the beginning of the 20th century. What can this data and insight tell us about state building process and religious authorities? In my paper I argue that state-building should be seen as a complex process in which pragmatism on both sides of individuals representing» the government «and individuals who are supposed to be» governed «was and is an important component. Between two different moral systems Islam and Socialism there was a space for compromise and adaptation.

23 panel 4 friday, 14:55 Svetlana Jacquesson p4 Unjust Ways for Achieving Unjust Claims: Murders in the Nomadic Muslim Region of Colonial Central Asia This paper stems from Kyrgyz oral accounts of murders during the colonial period. Such accounts differ from other oral accounts of a glorious past when murders were controlled and restricted by a simple rule - kanga kan» blood for blood «. Oral accounts of murders during the colonial period are marked by embarrassment; they depict the murders as condemnable but also as indispensable for the processes of community building and preservation. In my contribution to this workshop I explore then the institutional and legal environment of a colonial setting in which some murders became a communally recognized unjust way for achieving just claims. For this purpose I analyse the oral accounts of murders against the background of colonial statutes or the collections of normative laws that gave the guiding lines for the colonial administration. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that in the nomadic regions of colonial Central Asia the maintenance of two legal systems imperial one and customary one resulted first and foremost into a discriminative categorization of legal rights, of legal needs and of legal venues. Because of its unwillingness to recognize land property rights to nomads, colonial lawmakers excluded land disputes from any jurisdiction and embedded them in local self-government. Colonial rule became thus accountable for legally insolvable land conflicts. The same lawmakers, guided by their civilizing mission, divested murders of their embeddedness in communally controlled forms of violence and retaliation and put them under the jurisdiction of imperial law as crimes against the person. Murder became not only punished in ways unknown to custom but the consequences of being accused of murder or being put under investigation even on the basis of fake testimonies were relevant only in a colonially designed selfgovernment system. It is within such a legal environment that murder became a communally admitted unjust means for achieving just claims. In conclusion I dwell on the insights into the dynamics of the colonial past offered by the analysis of oral accounts as well as on the ways colonial heritage continues to shape present-day processes of community and identity building.

24 p4 panel 4 friday, 15:20 Vladimir Bobrovnikov» We Stand on Our Ancestors Land! «Custom, Shari a, and State Courts Settling Land Disputes of Village Communities in Daghestan (1860s-1920s) This paper aims at revising the history of Muslim judicial practices with regard to the mediation of land disputes between village communities in colonial and early Soviet Daghestan. Land disputes were triggered by permanent land shortage in the mountains and confiscation of communal pasture lands during the Russian conquest and the Civil war of These litigations are richly documented in pre-colonial communal agreements ( ittifaqat ), records of tsarist and early Soviet courts protocols, as well as oral testimonies. Nevertheless, numerous documents and narrative sources preserved in state and private archives remain poorly studied. This is partially due some to the Soviet» friendship of peoples «policy that for a long time prevented scholars from studying controversies between the communities inhabiting the Caucasus. In addition, post-soviet historiography has essentialized Caucasus folk law by presenting it as a everlasting pre-modern adatbased tradition. In this paper I argue against this misleading vision by providing more circumstantiated evidences with regard to the mediation of land disputes in Mountainous Daghestan and by emphasizing the processes of adaptation to changing economic and legal realities. Special attention will be paid to continuities and ruptures between the late imperial and the early Soviet periods when native Muslims of Daghestan were granted with a considerable legal autonomy at the levels of village communities ( jama at ) and rural districts, which appear to have become semi-autonomous social fields. Land disputes continued to be settled according to customary case law, but principles of Islamic land law and new imperial regulations of peasant land tenure were also employed. Mediation depended increasingly on bureaucratic procedures. Written court records flanked testimonies of local adat experts as colonial authorities failed to substitute customary case law with statutory law. Russian land surveyors charged with the delimitation of disputed lands entered the number of local mediators. As a whole, these changes reflect a colonial policy, which aimed at the establishment of a new Muslim justice in order to draw Muslim» aliens «near to the Russian peasantry.

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26 convenors Paolo Sartori, Jürgen Paul hosting institution Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg venue Institute of Oriental Studies Mühlweg Halle / Saale contact paolo.sartori@orientphil.uni-halle.de funded by volkswagen stiftung orientalisches institut halle / saale