Free An Introduction to Islamic Law by Wael B. Hallaq

city.Professors and colleges fell under his supervision. He was a mufti , but he had neither monopoly nor preeminence in this field, for his real powers lay in his office as supervisor of the colleges and their professors. While he would be the only Shaykh al-Islam in the city, he might be only one among several mufti s and legal scholars. Thus, in their bid to make ofIstanbul a centralizing and centralized capital, the Ottomans did with the Shaykh al-Islam what they had done with regard to creating a monopoly ofsultanic madrasa s: they made the Shaykh al-Islam of Istanbul the supreme head directly responsible for the provinces. This step in thepolicy of centralization was not only as decisive as that which led to the creation of sultanic madrasa s, but was also in fact an integral part of the overall policy to appropriate into the political realm the legal profession, utilizing it in the administration of the Empire. And that is precisely what the Ottomans managed to accomplish. Yet, in doing so, they also resolved once and for all the problem of legitimacy. In the nineteenth century, as we will see, the Ottomans were to multiply their gains, since the absorption of the legal profession into an Istanbul-centered hierarchy allowed them to decapitate it, and decapitate it they did.

Part II
Modernity and ruptures
     

7 Colonizing the Muslim world and its Sharia
     
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The British in India
     
    Until the eighteenth century in India, and the early nineteenth century in theOttoman Empire, Islamic law and local customs reigned supreme, both having long been a way of life. But during the 1600s, Britain began its penetration of India through the agency of theEast India Company (EIC), whose sole goal was commercial profit. For about a century and a half, the EIC tried gradually to increase its political and military influence, but it was not until 1757 that it asserted its almost total military dominance, henceforth embarking upon the massive project of colonizing India, both economically and juridically. In the eyes of the British, economic and commercial ambitions were intimately connected with the particular vision of a legal system structured and geared in such a manner as to accommodate an “open” economic market. The legal system was, and continued to be, the sphere that determined and set the tone of economic domination. But most importantly for the British, the avid desire to reduce the economic costs of controlling the country led them to maximize the role of law. Law was simply more financially rewarding than brute power.
    And so it was not until the appointment ofWarren Hastings asGovernor of Bengal in 1772 that a new stage in the British legal redesign of India got underway. The appointment ushered in the so-calledHastings Plan, to be implemented first in Bengal. The Plan conceived a multi-tiered system that required exclusively British administrators at the top, seconded by a tier ofBritish judges who would consult with local qadi s and mufti s regarding issues governed by Islamic law. On the lowest rung of judicial administration stood the run-of-the-mill Muslim judges who administered law in the civil courts of Bengal, Madras and Bombay. The plan also rested on the assumption that local customs and norms could be incorporated into a British institutional structure of justice that was regulated by “universal” (read: British) ideals of law.
    Hastings’tax-collectors also doubled aschief justices who applied Islamic law to Muslims andHindu law to Hindus. These Britishmagistrates are said to have been struck by both the staggering variety of opinion and the pliability of Islamic (and Hindu) law – features that led the British to phase out the indigenous experts whose loyalty was, in any event, considered suspect.
    In order to deal with what was seen as an uncontrollable and corrupted mass of individual juristic opinion, the Oxford classicist and foremost OrientalistSir William Jones (1746–94) proposed to