Baghdad Booksellers, Basra Carpet Merchants, and the Law of God and Man: Legal Pluralism and the Contemporary Muslim Experience

45 Pages Posted: 5 May 2008 Last revised: 3 Oct 2014

See all articles by Haider Ala Hamoudi

Haider Ala Hamoudi

University of Pittsburgh - School of Law

Date Written: 2008

Abstract

There is a crisis in our law schools in the study of Islamic law and the law of the Muslim polities. The current approaches either focus exclusively on national codes to the derogation of other vitally important influences on the legal order, most importantly the body of norms and rules derived from Islamic foundational texts known as the shari'a, or they regard as secondary, and at times irrelevant, the actual legal order of the societies in favor of an academic construction of the theories of medieval Muslim jurists. Neither of these approaches reflects with a necessary degree of accuracy the actual form of legal order in any Muslim society. Adopting a legal pluralist model, this Article relays the actual workings of commercial order in two industries in Shi'i Iraq in order to demonstrate that in understanding the operation of law, and in particular commercial law, in at least parts of the modern Muslim world, both the ever present reality of the national law and contemporary manifestations of the shari'a need to be taken into account.

Keywords: Iraq, Iraqi commercial law, Iraqi commerce, Islamic Law, Islamic commerce, Islamic finance

Suggested Citation

Hamoudi, Haider Ala, Baghdad Booksellers, Basra Carpet Merchants, and the Law of God and Man: Legal Pluralism and the Contemporary Muslim Experience (2008). Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Law (Inaugural Issue), Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008, U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2008-14, Islamic Law and Law of the Muslim World Research Paper Series at New York Law School 08-26, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1128293

Haider Ala Hamoudi (Contact Author)

University of Pittsburgh - School of Law ( email )

3900 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
United States
412-624-1055 (Phone)

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