Islamic Law across the Indian Ocean: Shafi‘i Debates from Egypt to Indonesia

What is Islamic law? How does it work? And who decides what is and isn’t legally permitted? In this episode, we’ll be exploring these questions with regard to the followers of one of the four Sunni law schools, the Shafi‘i school. Named after its founder, Imam al-Shafi‘i (who died in Cairo in 820), over the following centuries the Shafi‘i school (or madhhab) was exported eastwards by teachers and traders around the Indian Ocean. From the late medieval period, it had spread from Egypt and Yemen to East Africa, southern India, Sri Lanka, and the islands of what are today Indonesia and the Philippines. As the school put down roots in so many different regions, the legal principles of its founder were used to debate a series of new questions that emerged from local lifestyles. The outcome was a conversation that continued for centuries based around the shared use of Arabic and the common framework of Shafi‘i legal methods. Nile Green talks to Mahmood Kooria, author of Islamic Law in Circulation: Shafiʿi Texts across the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

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