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Water Communities in the Plain of Palermo. A Neglected Islamic Document from Norman Sicily
-
Theresa Jäckh
and
Hossameldin Ali
Published/Copyright:
April 3, 2025
Abstract
The Archivio Storico Diocesano di Palermo conserves a unique Arabic-Islamic document dating to 526/1132 that allows for insights into the legal practices of small-scale water management in the fertile countryside of Sicily’s capital city Palermo. Almost entirely neglected by previous scholarship, this article offers the first analysis of the document’s legal content and situates it within the wider context of Mālikī law, landscape engineering, and Muslim communal practices in medieval Sicily at a time when Latin-Christian elites came to dominate the possession of resources in Palermo’s hinterland.
Keywords: Water; Mālikī law; Islamic documents (muʿāwaḍa); Palermo; Norman Sicily; Muslims under Christian rule
Published Online: 2025-04-03
Published in Print: 2025-04-01
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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- Walter Edward Young, The Dialectical Forge: Juridical Disputation and the Evolution of Islamic Law, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 9, ed. Shahid Rahman, Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017, xiv + 643 pages, appendices, glossary, index, ISBN 978-3-319-25522-4 (hardback).
Keywords for this article
Water;
Mālikī law;
Islamic documents (muʿāwaḍa);
Palermo;
Norman Sicily;
Muslims under Christian rule
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Werner Ende
- Articles
- Who are the Sābiqūn? From the Companions of the Tree to the Muhājirūn: The Story of a Controversy and its Implications for the Umma (1st–2nd/7th–8th Century)
- Al-ʿAwtabī’s Kitāb al-Ansāb: Challenges in Attribution and Composition
- Eleven Islamic Tombstones from Egypt: A Window into the Histories of Early Islamization and of Modern Dislocation
- Water Communities in the Plain of Palermo. A Neglected Islamic Document from Norman Sicily
- Thinking Through Smell: Theories of Olfaction in Early Modern Ottoman and Islamic Culture
- Odes to a Rūmī Qāḍī in Greater Syria and Egypt: Literary Networks Surrounding Zekeriyāzāde Yaḥyā Efendī (1561–1644)
- The Reception of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) in Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī’s (d. 1101/1690) Works
- The Turkic Inscription at the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf
- Reviews
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- Norman Cigar, The Historical Chronicle of Abū ʿAdballāh Maḥammad Ibn Ibrāhim al-Dukkālī: Fes in the Mid-18th Century (1149/1736–1179/1766), Brill, 2023, 348 pages, ISBN 978-90-04-52514-6.
- Étienne de la Vaissière, Asie Centrale 300–850. Des routes et des royaumes, Paris (Les Belles Lettres) 2024, 638 pp., Zahlreiche Karten und Illustrationen, ISBN 978-2-251-45521-1.
- Ahmed El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics. How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition, Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020, 242 pp. + bibliography and index, ISBN: 9780691174563.
- Mohammad Gharaibeh (ed.), Beyond Authenticity: Alternative Approaches to Hadith Narratives and Collections, Islamic History and Civilization, Studies and Texts, vol. 203, Leiden: Brill, 2023, ix, 457 pp., index, illustrations, ISBN 978-90-04-52907 (hardback), 978-90-04-52908-3 (e-book).
- George Dimitri Sawa, Ḥāwī l-Funūn wa-Salwat al-Maḥzūn, Encompasser of the Arts and Consoler of the Grief-Stricken by Ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān. Annotated Translation and Commentary, Leiden: Brill 2021, 353 pp., 1 Abb., Notenbeispiele, Appendix, Indices, ISBN 978-90-04-46547-6.
- Walter Edward Young, The Dialectical Forge: Juridical Disputation and the Evolution of Islamic Law, Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning 9, ed. Shahid Rahman, Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017, xiv + 643 pages, appendices, glossary, index, ISBN 978-3-319-25522-4 (hardback).
