"From Fiqh Books to Legal Text: A Broad Assessment of the Mecelle" with Sami Erdem

Visiting Scholar Brown Bag Series

Wednesday, April 26, 2017 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM EDT
Commerce Building, Room 2006

The Mecelle, enacted through 1869-1876 in the Ottoman Empire, is the first attempt at codification of civil law within the Islamic legal tradition. Dr. Erdem reassesses the Mecelle and argues that it carries continuity with the existing legal tradition rather than a sudden break. This presentation will contextualize and discuss the Mecelle’s impact on later attempts of codification in the Muslim world with an emphasis on its significance as an experiment in switching from an uncodified, text-based understanding of Islamic law to that of legal application based on the idea of a standard code of law.

Sami Erdem is an Associate Professor in the Islamic Law department of Marmara University’s Faculty of Theology, Istanbul and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies.