Islamic Law and the Ulama in Colonial India: A Legal Tradition No Longer Needed

Muhammad Qasim Zaman

[Princeton Studies of Muslim Politics, 2002]

"…the new "Anglo-Muhammadan law" was decidedly not the ulama's legal tradition but a hybrid of certain legal classics and English common law. Historically the most distinctive aspect of their [ulama's] vocation, the interpretation of law, was effectively being removed from them."

Certain works of law that were regarded by Muslims of India as among the more authoritative now came to be invested with almost exclusive authority as the basis of judicial practice in British courts, so far as Muslim personal law was concerned. These works included the Hidaya of al-Marghinani (d.1196-97); the Kitab al-Fara'id al-Sirajiyya of Siraj al-din Muhammad al-Sajawandi; the Durr al-mukhtar of Ala al-din al-Haskafi (d.1677) and the Fatawa-I Alamgiriyya.

A new judicial system was being put in place from the late eighteenth century onwards.

Ever since the time of William Jones the colonial officials had striven to reduce their dependence on indigeneous guides, and Jones' project of codifying law was motivated by the same concern. With a codified law, one would no longer need indigenous legal guides – the muftis and the pundits, whose position was abolished in 1864 – to help the court in its rulings. For if it was merely a matter of applying the rulings contained in certain legal classics and commentaries of "great antiquity and authority" as the Privy Council had stated in 1897, then surely anyone trained in the British legal system could do so. One did not need someone trained specifically in Islamic law.

For the ulama this development meant that there would be only a highly truncated link with the Islamic legal tradition of old: the new "Anglo-Muhammadan law" was decidedly not the ulama's legal tradition but a hybrid of certain legal classics and English common law.

Historically the most distinctive aspect of their [ulama's] vocation, the interpretation of law, was effectively being removed from them.

The ulama could continue to function as muftis, ofcourse, as they had for centuries. Indeed, in colonial India, this function registered certain important changes: from the late nineteenth century, fatwas were often given on the authority of a particular madrasa, such as the madrasa of Deoband rather than on that of a single jurisconsult.

Excerpts from: The ulama in contemporary Islam: custodians of change, Princeton University Press, 2002

Muhammad Qasim Zaman is the Robert H. Niehaus ’77 Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Religion at Princeton University, a position he has held since 2006. Prior to coming to Princeton, he taught at Brown University from 1997 to 2006. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He has been awarded a fellowship by the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, to examine various aspects of Islam in Pakistan in their interrelationship and their varied contexts. http://www.princeton.edu/~nes/faculty_zaman.html