ILSS: Agisheva

On Tuesday, April 4, 2023 at 12:00-1:00PM US EST via Zoom, Dilyara Agisheva (Harvard Law School) presented “The Entangled Legal Formations and the Russian annexation of Crimea in the 18th century” as part of our Islamic Law Speaker Series. Based on Agisheva’s dissertation research, the presentation examines the legal structures in the Crimean Peninsula after its annexation by the Russian Empire in 1783. Her research relies on two primary sources: the Crimean Sharīʿa sicils (Islamic court records) and the court records of Russian legal venues introduced in Crimea after the annexation. Using the methodological approaches found in the studies of entangled histories, law and empire, and colonialism, Agisheva suggests a conceptual framework she calls “entangled legal formations” to explain legal transformations in Crimea at the end of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.