Shari'a Scripts

A case study in the textual architecture of the venerable legal and ethical tradition at the center of the Islamic experience, Shari?a Scripts is a work of historical anthropology focused on Yemen in the early twentieth century. There-while colonial regimes, late Ottoman reformers, and early nationalists wrought decisive changes to the legal status of the shari?a, significantly narrowing its sphere of relevance-the Zaydi school of jurisprudence, rooted in highland Yemen for a millennium, still held sway.Brinkley Messick uses the richly varied writings of the Yemeni past to offer a uniquely comprehensive view of the shari?a as a localized and lived phenomenon. Shari?a Scripts reads a wide spectrum of sources in search of a new historical-anthropological perspective on Islamic textual relations. Messick analyzes the shari?a as a local system of texts, distinguishing between theoretical or doctrinal juridical texts (or the "e;library"e;) and those produced by the shari?a courts and notarial writers (termed the "e;archive"e;). Attending to textual form, he closely examines representative books of madrasa instruction; formal opinion-giving by muftis and imams; the structure of court judgments; and the drafting of contracts. Messick's intensive readings of texts are supplemented by retrospective ethnography and oral history based on extensive field research. Further, the book ventures a major methodological contribution by confronting anthropology's longstanding reliance upon the observational and the colloquial. Presenting a new understanding of Islamic legal history, Shari?a Scripts is a groundbreaking examination of the interpretative range and historical insights offered by the anthropologist as reader.