Roundtable on Islamic Legal Genres

We are excited to announce our upcoming Roundtable on Islamic Legal Genres, happening on Wednesday, December 1, 2021 9:00am-12:30pm EST / 3:00pm-6:30pm Germany / 5:00pm-8:30pm Turkey via Zoom. This Roundtable will conclude our Monthly Lectures on Islamic Legal Genres, convened by Professors Hakki Arslan, Necmettin Kizilkaya, and Intisar Rabb, in which a group of scholars of Islamic law and history have been giving monthly lectures that explore the form and function of popular genres  in Islamic law. These monthly lectures will now culminate in an online discussion on how the development of different genres accompanied diverse functions and content to match the evolving needs of Islamic law and society.

This Roundtable features two panel discussions that interrogate genre as a tool for understanding Islamic law and relationships between theory and practice. The first panel, titled “Genre as a Tool for Understanding Islamic Law: Theoretical and Practical Approaches,” will be held at 9:00am-10:45am US EST / 3:00pm-4:45pm Germany / 5:00pm-6:45pm Turkey, followed by the second panel, titled “Genre as a Tool for Understanding Relationships between Theory and Practice (uṣūl and furūʿ): Internal Perspectives,” at 11:00am-12:30pm US EST / 5:00pm-6:30pm Germany / 7:00pm-8:30pm Turkey. Professors Bilal Aybakan, Issam Eido, Omar Farahat, Robert Gleave,  Evgenia Kermeli, Serdar Kurnaz, Norbert Oberauer, Elias Saba, and Delfina Serrano will serve as panelists. The panels will then be opened up to a larger group of scholars who will join the panelists for a dynamic discussion on the topics.

You can watch previous lectures here and read their summaries on our blog. Registration is required. 

On Saturday, October 30, 2021, Professor Intisar Rabb will participate in a one-day virtual symposium titled “Lift Every Voice: The Life and Legacy of Professor Lani Guinier ’74.” The symposium will highlight the extraordinary life and work of Harvard Law (Emerita) Professor Lani Guinier, the special intersectional barriers she faced and shattered, and the paths of those shaped by the trail she blazed. The symposium will provide the law school community, former students, collaborators, and colleagues of Professor Guinier, the opportunity to engage with her scholarly work and set a forward-looking agenda for scholarship, practice, and pedagogy. A goal of the symposium is to provide a dynamic platform and ongoing opportunities to build on and innovate Professor Guinier’s foundational ideas.

Registration is required.

On Tuesday, November 9, 2021 12:00-1:00PM US EST via Zoom, Dr. Katharina Ivanyi (University of Vienna)will speak on her new book, Virtue, Piety and the Law: A Study of Birgivī Meḥmed Efendī’s (d. 981/1573) al-Ṭarīqa al-muḥammadiyya (Brill, 2020). In this book, Ivanyi examines a major work of pietist exhortation and advice composed by the sixteenth-century Ottoman jurist, Ḥadīth scholar, and grammarian, who articulates a style of religiosity that had considerable reformist appeal into modern times. It outlines how Birgivī played a significant role in the negotiation and articulation of early modern Ottoman Ḥanafī piety by linking he cultivation of individual virtue to questions of wider political, social, and economic concern. Professor Yavuz Aykan (Université Paris- Panthéon-Sorbonne) will comment on the talk. This event will be moderated by PIL Research Fellow, Dr. Hedayat Heikal.

Registration is required.

On Wednesday, October 27, 2021 at 12:00-1:00PM US EST via Zoom, Professor Marion Katz (New York University), will speak on the form, function, and historical development of the ṭabaqāt al-fuqahāʾ literature as part of our ongoing monthly lecture series. Prof. Katz is a Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at NYU, where she has been teaching since 2002. Her research revolves around issues of Islamic law, ethics, gender, and ritual. She received a BA from Yale and a PhD from the University of Chicago.

Registration required. 

On Tuesday, October 19, 2021 at 12:00-1:00PM US EST via Zoom, with Dr. Yusuf Celik, will speak about redefining the hermeneutical circle in the age of data science. Dr. Celik is currently the inaugural Data Science Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. He has previously served as a lecturer and researcher at the University of Utrecht. His research centers on philosophical hermeneutics in the Islamic tradition and on Continental philosophy. He  has also been active for years in the field of software engineering and is currently exploring ways to synthesize insights from philosophical hermeneutics with deep learning and other new technologies. Dr. Celik received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2020.

Registration is required. 

On Wednesday, September 29, 2021 at 12:00-1:00PM US EST via Zoom, Professor Anas Sarmini, will speak on the form, function, and historical development of ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ as a genre as part of our ongoing monthly lecture series. Dr. Sarmini is an Assistant Professor at the Istanbul 29 May University. His research focuses on ḥadīth, uṣūl al-fiqh (jurisprudence), and Arabic. He completed his doctoral degree on ḥadīth and sunna from the University of Jinan in 2015, and a master’s degree on Arabic literature in 2013, and a second master’s degree from the University of Damascus in ḥadīth studies.

Registration is required.

On Tuesday, September 14, 2021 12:00-1:00PM US EST via Zoom, Professor Rachel Scott (Virginia Tech) will speak about her new book, Recasting Islamic Law: Religion and the Nation State in Egyptian Constitution Making (Cornell University Press, 2021). In this book, Scott examines the intersection of Islamic law, state law, religion, and culture in the Egyptian nation-building process, highlighting how the sharia, when attached to constitutional commitments, is reshaped into modern Islamic state laws. This event will be moderated by PIL Research Fellow, Dr. Hedayat Heikal.

Registration is required. 

On Wednesday, August 25, 2021 12-1:30pm EST, Professor Walter Edward Young (McGill University) will present “Form, Function and Historical Development of Genres of Juristic Dialectic (ʿilm al-jadal and ‘ilm al-khilāf),” This lecture is next in our ongoing  Monthly Lectures on Islamic Legal Genres, which is convened by Professors  Hakki Arslan, Necmettin Kizilkaya, and Intisar Rabb,  a group of scholars and students of Islamic law and history have been meeting monthly to explore the form and function of genres popular in Islamic law from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. The working group hypothesizes that the development of different genres accompanied different functions and diversity of content to match the evolving needs of Islamic law and society. 

You can watch previous lectures here and read their summaries on our blog.  Subscribe to our lists for the latest on this ongoing workshop.

On Wednesday, July 28, 2021 12-1:30pm EST, Professor Christian Muller (CNRS – Paris) will present “Siǧill-s and transformations of the cadi documents in Islamic law (10th-16th centuries),” This lecture is next in our ongoing  Monthly Lectures on Islamic Legal Genres, which is convened by Professors  Hakki Arslan, Necmettin Kizilkaya, and Intisar Rabb,  a group of scholars and students of Islamic law and history have been meeting monthly to explore the form and function of genres popular in Islamic law from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. The working group hypothesizes that the development of different genres accompanied different functions and diversity of content to match the evolving needs of Islamic law and society. 

You can watch previous lectures here and read their summaries on our blog.  Subscribe to our lists for the latest on this ongoing workshop.