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The safe-conduct in Muslim chancery practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

John Wansbrough
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Extract

One of the several branches of Islamic law in which practice diverged most sharply from theory was the law of commerce. The divergence is especially striking in two respects: regular imposition of taxes regarded by the shariī‘a as illegal, and reliance upon written documents as legal proof of transactions for which juridical theory demanded only oral evidence of witnesses. A third problematical aspect of commercial law was the juridical status of the non-Muslim merchant in Dār al-Islām. Matters pertaining thereto were loosely subsumed by the jurists under the term amān, associated specifically with the law of war, and defined by recourse to as much precedent as could be gleaned from the Qur'ān and from the example of the Prophet and of the earliest Muslim communities. The consequences of this procedure have posed several historical problems upon which it is hoped the present paper will throw some light.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , February 1971 , pp. 20 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1971

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References

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46 Not at all impossible in the Mamlūk chancery, owing to the practice of keeping a supply of ‘alāmāt which could be used for regular correspondence, presumably without recourse to the sultan, but also for political emergencies. See BSOAS, XXVIII, 3, 1965, pp. 509–10, n. 63Google Scholar.

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49 According to Ṣubḥ, XIV, 13, Shāfī‘ī jurists insisted that a treaty, in order to be valid, must specify its duration.

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52 Thomas-Predelli, , Diplomatarium veneto-levantinum, Venezia, 1880–1899, II, doc. 176 Google Scholar. The definition of fazolato/fudūlī proposed by Heyd, , Histoire du commerce, II, p. 473 and n. 7Google Scholar, is probably to be rejected in favour of that suggested by Berg, van den, De contractu ‘do ut des’ (bai‘) jure mohammedano, Leiden, 1868, 35–6Google Scholar: namely, one disqualified from participating in commercial transactions, a definition evidently corroborated by the use of ‘fedolie’in the Mamlūk-Venetian treaty of 1442 (BSOAS), XXVIII, 3, 1965, p. 494, art. XIIGoogle Scholar.

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54 See above, p. 30, n. 41: the relationship between bilingual versions of the same text involves the application of external (linguistic) and internal (juridical) criteria, and is the subject of my study, in preparation, on lingue franche in the Mediterranean.

55 Lists of appointments to be found in ‘Reggimenti’, Ital. cl. vii, cod. 8383, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice.

56 See Schacht, J., ‘Droit byzantin et droit musulman’, in Convegno Volta, XII, Roma, 1957, 201–6Google Scholar; and for a descriptive analysis of the siyar literature, Kruse, H., ‘Die Begründung der islamischen Völkerrechtslehre’ (al-Shaybānī), SaecuÉm, V, 2, 1954, 221–41Google Scholar; and idem, ‘The Islamic doctrine of international treaties’ (al-Kashānī), Islamic Quarterly, XXVIII, 1, 1954, 152–8Google Scholar.

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