SHARIAsource Lunch Talk :: Between Legal Conservatism and Legal Change: Fault Lines in Ayyūbid Damascus

Austin 102 Austin Hall, Harvard Law School, United States

Mariam Sheibani, Visiting Fellow, ILSP: SHARIAsource, Harvard Law School This paper explores the tensions between conservative and innovative strains in Islamic law in twelfth-century Ayyūbid Damascus. The newly restored refugee capital of Damascus inherited the Shāfiʿī traditions of both Khurāsān and Iraq, which had developed autonomously throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries. While formal attribution