Shari'a: Theory, Practice, Transformations

Wael B. Hallaq is a historian of Islamic law, and this Cambridge University Press book is his scholarly study of shari'a in theory, historical practice and its transformation under modern state codification. Its strength is that Hallaq is a leading specialist in Islamic legal history whose work is widely cited, and the book traces the actual mechanics of how colonial and modern states restructured shari'a's operation, arguing that personal status law is largely what survived that transformation intact. Its limit is that Hallaq's account is also an argument, contested by some other legal historians on points of interpretation, so a claim resting on his more contested conclusions should be checked against the wider scholarly debate rather than treated as unanimous.