Sharī ʿa and the Dilemma of Modern Legislation: The Shīʿī Jurists’ Reception of Qānūn in the Late-19th and Early-20th Centuries

Abstract

This dissertation, Sharīʻa and the Dilemma of Modern Legislation: The Shīʿī Jurists’ Reception of Qānūn in the Late-19th and Early-20th Centuries, investigates the emergence of the concept of positive law (qānūn) in Iran during the mid-19th to early-20th centuries, how law was developed as a method of reformism to ultimately limit the political authority of the Qajar kings, and finally how the Shīʿī ʿulamaʾ both in Iran and in Ottoman Iraq reacted to the transformation in the meaning of law from sharīʿa to statutory law. The present study contextualizes the call for reform in Iran based on qānūn from the mid-19th century to the end of the Constitutional Revolution (1906-1911) by putting historical events in Iran in conversation with the literature on Islamic revival.

My research reexamines the periodization of modernity in Iran, arguing that the call for reform based on modern law emerged decades before the Constitutional Revolution, largely due to the influence of the European codification movement, which influenced Middle Eastern legal systems in the 19th century. As part of this discussion, this dissertation also examines how Ottoman legal reformism influenced the development of law in Iran during the 19th and early-20th centuries, challenging the prevailing perspective in studies of sectarianism in Islamic law, which often portray Sunni and Shīʿī law as independent and frequently rival legal systems. Finally, this dissertation examines the debates among the Shī‘ī ulama regarding qānūn and constitutionalism. To address this issue, I examine the broader context of Shīʿī jurisprudence and provide a genealogy of concepts used by Islamic jurists both in support of and opposition to secular law.