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This chapter introduces and explains the analytic purchase of considering Sharīʿa as Rule of Law. The chapter addresses in inductive fashion various features of premodern Islamic law (e.g. curriculum, minstitutions of adjudication, and interpretive theories). It contrasts those features with the contemporary elements that contribute to the legal culture of modern states, and thereby contributes a historical dimension to the Rule of Law analytic framework developed in the Introduction and this chapter.

Chapter 2 gives an overview of the various institutions, actors and practices that made up Ottoman Cairo’s legal system. It discusses the sharīʿa courts, the Ottoman governor’s tribunal (al-Dīwān al-ʿĀlī), the Imperial Council (Dīvān-i Hümāyūn), the market inspector (muḥtasib), Janissary Āghā and associated officials, policing and punishments, Christian and Jewish courts, and the practice of mediation (ṣulḥ). The chapter portrays Cairo’s legal system as a complex network of overlapping forums and practices, in which jurisdictional boundaries were often obscure, and which offered litigants the ability to choose.

Chapter 3 examines in detail two institutions which represented the direct involvement of the empire’s executive authorities in the mundane administration of justice: the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn (Imperial Council) and the Dīwān al-ʿĀlī (Ottoman governor’s tribunal). The chapter demonstrates considerable overlap in the jurisdictions and caseloads of these institutions and the sharīʿa courts. It then seeks to understand the relationship between these institutions by focusing on the role of particular officials within them. In particular, it explores the role of the qāḍī, arguing that the qāḍī’s essential role was the determination of facts through the application of procedure, and that he performed this role within or on behalf of all of these institutions. Rather than representing an alternative form of justice, in line with some theories of maẓālim and siyāsa, the Dīvān-i Hümāyūn and the Dīwān al-ʿĀlī shared the same essential attitude towards evidence and proof as the sharīʿa courts.

Chapter 6 examines how Cairene litigants navigated the multiplicity of forums and practices with overlapping jurisdictions that constituted Cairo’s legal system. Moving away from the state-centric orientation of much Ottoman historiography, this chapter adopts the perspective of the legal consumer in order to discover how legal institutions were used, rather that the role the state intended them to play. The chapter emphasizes the lack of formal hierarchies or defined relationships between the different legal forums, and argues that this jurisdictional imprecision offered litigants opportunities to manipulate the system’s pluralism to their own advantage.

This introduction sets out the scope of the book’s argument and explains why Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī is such an interesting figure in the history of Islamic legal thought. It describes the reception of al-Suyūṭī’s work at home in Cairo and abroad as well as his lasting legacy. It outlines the analytical framework and the importance of interdisciplinary methods, including discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, anthropology, history, religious studies, and literary criticism to the argument of the book. An explanation of how al-Suyūṭī’s life can inform our understanding of the current situation in modern Egypt is followed by a review of the secondary literature and a full outline of each chapter.

The response to a speech made by Egypt’s President ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ al-Sīsī in January 2015 on the occasion of the Prophet Muḥammad’s birthday celebrations that asked for “religious revolution” demonstrates the continuing importance of examining discursive trends in Islamic thought. The strategies of a fifteenth-century scholar, al-Suyūṭī, who framed his own identity as a jurist in his legal writing casts light on how contemporary scholars are using his legacy to define who they are in a time of crisis and upheaval in modern Egypt. Understanding how Islamic thinkers justify their interpretation of Sharīʿa can inform a positive response to the geopolitical realities that the Muslim world faces today.

This chapter discusses hermeneutic theory and practice theory, situating them with respect to the work of Geertz and Asad. It then clarifies precisely how hermeneutic theory and practice theory can be brought together in the analysis of cultural, legal, and religious traditions, giving special attention to the Islamic tradition. One of the chapter’s central claims is that knowledge of Sharīʿa rules can be conceptualized as knowledge of a mind (i.e., God’s mind). Moreover, knowledge of a mind can be inferred from signs/effects of that mind. In the Islamic tradition, these signs/effects include: (1) the Qurʾan, (2) the reported actions of the Prophet Muḥammad (Sunna), (3) the reported actions of religious scholars from the past, and (4) the observed actions of present-day religious scholars.

This chapter combines ethnography and textual analysis to examine the key concepts of Sharīʿa, Sunna, and ethics. It argues that these concepts can best be understood in terms of the relationship between mind and action, drawing on insights from hermeneutic theory and practice theory. Building on anthropological work in practice theory, the chapter explains how Islamic ethics is a type of virtue ethics. It also explains the place of the Sharīʿa and Sunna in Islamic ethics. Furthermore, it discusses the view of Muslim scholars that proper legal reasoning depends upon ethical living.

This chapter examines the overall structure of Islamic legal thought, and explains how it relates to the pedagogical practices characteristic of Islamic learning. Here the chapter develops hermeneutic ideas using insights from “planning theory,” an influential approach in recent philosophical and legal scholarship. This allows for a new perspective on an entire range of Islamic legal concepts including: maṣlaḥa, taʿabbud, Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa, qiyās, istiṣlāḥ, istiḥsān, ijmāʿ, ijtihād, taqlīd, and madhhab. The chapter links its analysis to ideas and practices found at al-Azhar University, al-Azhar mosque, and the Dār al-ʿUlūm. Among the topics discussed are planning theory and instrumental rationality, including how intentions/rules are partially instrumentally rational and partially arbitrary/non-rational; how new circumstances can prompt the abandonment and reformation of intentions/rules; language and the principles of Islamic legal interpretation.