Chibli Mallat

Introduction to Middle Eastern law

Tables of Cases, legislation, Verses and Hadiths 1. Introduction: The Autonomy of Middle Eastern Law I HISTORY 2. The Formation of Middle Eastern law II PUBLIC LAW 3. The Contemporary Middle East: A Historical Primer 4. Constitutional Law: the Specificity of Middle Eastern Constitutionalism 5. Constitutional Review: the Spread of Constitutional Councils and Courts 6. Judicial Review: Criminal and Administrative Law III PRIVATE LAW 7. Introduction: From the Age of Codification to the Age of Case-Law 8. Civil law: Style and Substance 9. Commercial Law: Globalization and Tradition 10. Family Law: The Search for Equality IV CONCLUSION 11. Epilogue: Justice and Lawyering in the Middle East Bibliography Index

Readings of the Qur՚ān in London and Najaf: John Wansbrough and Mu ammad Bāqir al- adr

Muḥammad Bāqir al-Ṣadr read the lectures which were published after his death under the title al-Madrasa al-Qur՚āniyya a few months before his arrest and execution, without trial, by the authorities in Baghdad. John Wansbrough, it is said, received threats following the publication of Quranic studies and The sectarian milieu . These two episodes of the late 1970s, in places as far apart as London and Najaf, show how fraught discussion of the Qur՚ān might be by the late twentieth century. That discussion of the literature of the sacred has always been a delicate exercise may be a truism, but at least there is solace in placing the writings of authors such as ?adr and Wansbrough in the long perspective of such threats to creativity. It provokes the soothing thought that even in this domain, the creative contribution will, sooner rather than later, establish itself against the hostility of ‘ la betise au front de taureau’. Such comfort may be drawn from the famous precedent of a cause celebre in which creative novelty found itself on trial: