A Common Justice
DIVINATIONS: REREADING LATE ANCIENT RELIGION
Series Editors
Daniel Boyarin, Virginia Burrus, Derek Krueger
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
A COMMON
JUSTICE
The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam
URIEL I. SIMONSOHN
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2011 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Simonsohn, Uriel I., 1971–
A common justice : the legal allegiances of Christians and Jews under early Islam / Uriel I. Simonsohn. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Divinations : rereading late ancient religion)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8122-4349-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Legal polycentricity—Middle East—History. 2. Conflict of laws—Middle East—History. 3. Conflict of laws—Jurisdiction—Middle East—History. 4. Conflict of laws (Islamic law)—Middle East—History. 5. Conflict of laws (Canon law) 6. Conflict of laws (Jewish law) I. Title. II. Series: Divinations.
K236.S56 2011
340.5—dc22
2011011279
In memory of my friend Shay Green (1971–2000)
CONTENTS
PART I. LEGAL PLURALISM IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND CLASSICAL ISLAM: SURVEY AND ANALYSIS
Chapter 1. A Late Antique Legacy of Legal Pluralism
Chapter 2. Islam’s Judicial Bazaar
Chapter 3. Eastern Christian Judicial Authorities in the Early Islamic Period
Chapter 4. Rabbanite Judicial Authorities in the Late Geonic Period
Chapter 5. Christian Recourse to Nonecclesiastical Judicial Institutions
Chapter 6. Jewish Recourse to Islamic Courts
NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
The transliteration of Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic in this book follows the system of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
Aramaic and Syriac are similarly transcribed, with the following exceptions:
sh = š
Soft bgd kft letters are not indicated—thus, kh = k, th = t, etc.
Vocalization of Syriac is primarily East Syrian.
Long vowels: a = ā; u = ū; o = ō (e.g., išō ʿ)
Epsilon = ē
Hebrew follows the system of the Association for Jewish Studies Review, yet whereas Hebrew words that appear in Judaeo-Arabic texts are indicated by the transliteration of צ as ṣ, ט as ṭ, and ח as ḥ, the same consonants that appear in original Hebrew texts will occur as tz, t, and h, respectively.
The transliteration of Pahlavi follows the system of D. N. MacKenzie’s Concise Pahlavi Dictionary.
Introduction
The fragmentary remains of Christian and Jewish legal documents composed in the Eastern Mediterranean in the first five hundred years of Islamic rule reveal that Christian and Jewish religious elites were preoccupied with the fact that their coreligionists were taking legal cases outside the community
