Chapter 10 - Languages of Law : Islamic Legal Cosmopolis and its Arabic and Malay Microcosmoi

Summary

Abstract

In premodern Monsoon Asia, the legal worlds of diverse traditions formed a cosmopolis of laws that expanded chronologically and geographically. Without necessarily replacing one another, they all coexisted in a larger domain with fluctuating influences over time and place. In this legal cosmopolis, each tradition had its own aggregation of juridical, linguistic and contextual variants. In South and Southeast Asia, Islam has accordingly formed its own cosmopolis of law by incorporating a network of different juridical texts, institutions and scholars and by the meaningful use of these variants through shared vocabularies and languages. Focusing on the Shāfiʿī School of Islamic law and its major proponents in Malay and Arabic textual productions, this chapter argues that the intentional choice of a lingua franca contributed to the wider reception and longer sustainability of this particular legal school. The Arabic and Malay microcosmoi thus strengthened the larger cosmopolis of Islamic law through transregional and translinguistic exchanges across legal, cultural and continental borders.

Keywords: Islamic law; Shāfiʿī school; Malay; Arabic; textual productions

Law was one of the most important realms that set frameworks for transregional interactions among individuals, communities and institutions in the premodern world. It synchronised structures of exchange through commonly agreed practices and expectations. The written legal treatises, along with unwritten customs, norms and rituals, prescribed ideal forms of social, cultural, economic and political relations to maintain order, peace and affinity in the societies in which they operated. These written and unwritten laws influenced each other in the long run, both internally and externally, through spatial and temporal concurrences. While the unwritten laws of the premodern world may be inaccessible, the written texts provide a rich archive to understand the ways in which the communities struggled towards constructing an ideal world through the active and passive conversations of individual communities and institutions. In Monsoon Asia, the legal worlds of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, along with several minor traditions indigenous to specific lands and times, formed a cosmopolis of laws which expanded chronologically vertically and geographically horizontally. In the premodern period no tradition replaced another entirely. Instead, they all coexisted in a larger domain with fluctuating influences over time and place.