Abstract
In this review article, I offer an overview of research undertaken thus far on early Mālikī Manuscripts, primarily the collection from Kairouan, Tunisia. Modern attention to this collection dates from the early twentieth century, as the collection itself moved from Kairouan to Tunis and back again. While access to Qurān manuscripts has been highly restricted, select scholars had been allowed to study and make copies of a limited number of legal manuscripts, primarily from the Mālikī school of Islamic law. These limitations had an effect on scholarship, making some forms of codicological and paleographic analysis difficult at best. The last part of the article addresses very recent scholarship and work that remains to be done, including network analysis and other ways of placing these manuscripts within broader social and historical contexts. I close with a reflection on the colonial history of research into these manuscripts and the responsibilities of researchers to reflect on the ethical implications of their activities into the future.
Funding source: Pennsylvania State University
Award Identifier / Grant number: Unassigned
Acknowledgments
I want to express my thanks to the anonymous reviewers and the editor of this special issue for the helpful comments and criticisms of an earlier draft. I am also grateful to the Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at Universität Hamburg, The Pennsylvania State University, and the National Laboratory in Raqqada for facilitating and supporting my research.
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Shaping the norm: Social and doctrinal development of the Mālikī maḏhab
- Aufsätze – Articles – Articles
- Early Mālikī Manuscripts: A Retrospective
- L’émergence du mašhūr mālikite (IVe-VIe/Xe-XIIe siècle): harmonisation de la norme juridique et crise de l’autorité en Occident musulman
- Coping with External and Internal Disintegration Forces: Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ and the Stabilization of Mālikīsm in the Maghrib
- Du mālikisme dans les Nukat al-maḥṣūl d’Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (m. 543/1148). Contribution à l’histoire des uṣūl al-fiqh en Occident musulman
- La validité de la prière communautaire en milieu oasien : élaboration d’une jurisprudence saharienne (ixe/xve s.)
- Who Wrote the Replies to al-Īsī? Islamization in the Sahel and Trans-Saharan Slavery in Early Modern Mālikī Fatāwā
- Judicial Practice as Islamic Law: The ʿAmal of Fez in Post-Classical Mālikī Legal Tradition
- Les dynamiques contemporaines du mālikisme francophone
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2023
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2023
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Shaping the norm: Social and doctrinal development of the Mālikī maḏhab
- Aufsätze – Articles – Articles
- Early Mālikī Manuscripts: A Retrospective
- L’émergence du mašhūr mālikite (IVe-VIe/Xe-XIIe siècle): harmonisation de la norme juridique et crise de l’autorité en Occident musulman
- Coping with External and Internal Disintegration Forces: Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ and the Stabilization of Mālikīsm in the Maghrib
- Du mālikisme dans les Nukat al-maḥṣūl d’Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (m. 543/1148). Contribution à l’histoire des uṣūl al-fiqh en Occident musulman
- La validité de la prière communautaire en milieu oasien : élaboration d’une jurisprudence saharienne (ixe/xve s.)
- Who Wrote the Replies to al-Īsī? Islamization in the Sahel and Trans-Saharan Slavery in Early Modern Mālikī Fatāwā
- Judicial Practice as Islamic Law: The ʿAmal of Fez in Post-Classical Mālikī Legal Tradition
- Les dynamiques contemporaines du mālikisme francophone
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2023
- Rechenschaftsbericht 2023