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Chapter 33 - On Criminal Law

An Excerpt from the Khedival Textbook al-Durra al-Yatīma fi Arkān al-Jarīma (1892) of Muḥammad Raʾfat

from Part V - Judicial Manuals and Reference Books

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

By
Mina E. Khalil
Edited by
Omar Anchassi  and
Robert Gleave
Omar Anchassi
Affiliation:
Universität Bern, Switzerland
Robert Gleave
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

This chapter concerns an 1892 texbook on Egyptian criminal law by Muḥammad Ra’fat (d. ?), al-Durra al-Yatīma fi Arkān al-Jarīma. Exactly a decade before its publication, Egypt’s national (or native) legal system, as well as the political and moral philosophy underlying it, experienced important - both conspicuous and subtle - transformations whose character is much debated today. Ra’fat taught jurisprudence in the French section of the Khedival School of Law and his textbook was read by law students in late Ottoman (khedival) Egypt who were taught to understand the laws that govern their own society as commands of law (sing. qānūn) embodied in discrete articles of various applied legal codes. In this period, the Sharīʿa and the various rules of fiqh encompassed within the various Islamic schools of law (madhāhib) no longer explicitly governed Egypt’s criminal justice.

Keywords

Criminal justiceCodificationSecularisationPublic welfare (al-rāḥa al-ʿumūmiyya)Canonical punishments (sing. ḥadd)HomicideRetaliation (qiṣāṣ)Criminal intent.
Type
Chapter
Information
Islamic Law in Context
A Primary Source Reader
 , pp. 349 - 356
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Primary Sources

al-Bustānī, Amīn Ifram. Sharḥ Qānūn al-ʿUqūbāt al-Miṣrī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Maḥrūsa, 1894).Google Scholar
Raʾfat, Muḥammad. al-Durra al-Yatīma fī Arkān al-Jarīma (Cairo: Bulaq, 1892).Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Esmeir, Samera. Juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fahmy, Khaled. In Quest of Justice: Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peters, Rudolph. Sharia, Justice, and Legal Order: Egyptian and Islamic Law: Selected Essays (Leiden: Brill, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raʾfat, Muḥammad. Uṣūl al-Qawānīn (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Qāhira, 1924).Google Scholar
Wood, Leonard. Islamic Legal Revival: Reception of European Law and Transformations in Islamic Legal Thought in Egypt, 1875–1952 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Brian. A Continuity of Shariʿa: Political Authority and Homicide in the Nineteenth Century (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2023).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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