Overlapping Jurisdictions: How Islamic Courts Upheld Jewish Law in Colonial Egypt

This special lecture by Samy Ayoub, and moderated by Aaron Rock-Singer, will argue that legal pluralism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt was sustained by institutional structures, procedural norms, and Islamic legal practice under Khedival rule. Far from resisting pluralism, Ottoman-era Islamic legal practice facilitated the incorporation of other legal traditions, including the adjudication of Jewish communities’ affairs, making them integral to the functioning of the legal order. This coexistence, however, was destabilized with the establishment of the secular national courts in 1883, which progressively asserted universal jurisdiction and ultimately subsumed the entire legal sphere.

Samy Ayoub (University of Texas Austin) specializes in Islamic law, modern Middle East law, and law and religion in contemporary Muslim societies. He focuses on issues concerning the interaction between religion and law, and the role of religion in contemporary legal and socio-political systems within a global comparative perspective. He has pursued training in both law and Islamic Studies in Egypt, Scotland, and in the United States.