Between Law and Politics: Islamic Judges in the South Indian Littoral, 1808–1885
Keywords:
Qazi, South India, dar al-Islam, Shafi‘ism, legal pluralismAbstract
This article offers a fresh account of the colonial processes that upended Muslim juridical regimes in South Asia between 1808 and 1885. Based on unexplored sources in Arabic and English, the discussion is set in the South Indian coastal towns of today’s Kerala and Tamilnad, where Muslims practiced Shafi‘i law and were not subject to continuous Muslim rule at any point in history. Given their longue-durée experience of non-Muslim rule, the Shafi‘i jurists had to rethink classical jurisprudential norms to empower the learned Muslims (the ‘ulama) as alternative sources of authority, so that they could elect and dismiss Islamic law judges (qazis) as their local leaders in the coastal towns. Qazis thus emerged and operated as a bastion of Shafi‘i power and Shafi‘i religious authority in the region. Once the British Empire claimed the mantle of the Mughal Empire that practiced Hanafi law, it could not as easily bring these Shafi‘is into its imperial fold. Their juridical autonomy provoked fears of political subversion for the British Empire in the wake of the 1857 rebellion, prompting its officials to bring the Shafi‘is under direct government control and reconfigure the community-elected qazis, which were the foci of Shafi‘i leadership.
References
1
Qamar al-Din appears in colonial records as “Mahomed Abbabucker (or Aboobauker) Hafiz Kummer-ood-deen Ahmed.”
2
National Archive of India (NAI), Home Judl A. (HJA.), 7th January 1871, No. 1-3.
3
Ibid. Judgement of Mr. Justice Collett attached to Letter No: 153, from J.D. Mayne, Esq. Asst Secy to the Govt of Madras, Legislative Dept. to E.C. Bayley, Esq., CSI Secy to the Govt of India, dated Fort St. George, 13th October 1870.
4
NAI, HJA., Feb 1876, File 42-81, K.W. Letter from H. Blochmann, Esq., M.A., Asst Professor, Calcutta Madrussah to the Offg Junior Secy to the Govt of Bengal, dated Calcutta, January 25th 1871.
5
On the Hidaya and Anglo-Muhammadan law, see Scott Kugle, “Framed, Blamed and Renamed: The Recasting of Islamic Jurisprudence in Colonial South Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 35 (2001): 272–73.
6
See NAI, HJA., 19th Jan 1865, File No. 48—108. Letter from Commissioner of the Bhaugulpore Division to the Secretary to the Government of Bengal, No: 101Ct., dated 11th March 1859, 18-19 and NAI, HJA., 7th January 1871, No. 1—3. Letter No: 2223 to 2231 from the Offg. Secy. to the Government of India to the Chief Commissioner of Oudh, Central Provinces, British Burma Mysore & Coorg, as well as the Resident at Hyderabad, dated 23rd of December 1870.
7
Wael Hallaq, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 53 and 73; Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam: Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), Chapter 16, 20-21; Knut Vikør, Between God and the Sultan: A History of Islamic Law (London: Hurst & Company, 2005), Chapter 9.
8
See Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1989), Chapter 4, 151.
9
Ibid., Chapter 2.
10
See, for instance, Ibrahim Kunju, Medieval Kerala (Thiruvananthapuram: University of Kerala, 2007), Chapters 4 and 12; Binu John Mailaparambil, Lords of the Sea: The Ali Rajas of Cannanore and the Political Economy of Malabar, 1663-1723 (Brill, 2011), Chapter 2.
11
David Washbrook, The Emergence of Provincial Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1976), 14-17 and 123–24.
12
Wael Hallaq, Shari‘a: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 371–383; Iza Hussin, The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority, and the Making of the Muslim State (University of Chicago Press, 2017), 47; Nurfudzilah Yahaya, Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial Law and Arabs in Southeast Asia (Cornell university Press, 2020), Chapter 1.
13
On Shafi‘is being in control of the office, see Muhammad Abu Bakr Badhib, Ishamat ‘Ulama Hadhramawt fi Nashr al-Islam wa ‘Ulumihi fi al-Hind (Jordan: Dar al-Fath, 2014), 186–187.
14
See, for instance, Julia Stephens, Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in Modern South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2018), 51–53; Elizabeth Lhost, Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern South Asia (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), Chapter 3, 89-93; Jeffrey Redding, A Secular Need: Islamic Law and State Governance in Contemporary India (University of Washington Press, 2020), 68–69.
15
Lhost, Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern South Asia, Chapter 6.
16
Dames, M. L., (ed. & trans.), The Book of Duarte Barbosa, Vol II (London, 1921), 123–24.
17
Ibid., 26-27.
18
Elizabeth A Lambourn, “India from Aden – Khutba and Muslim Urban Networks in Late Thirteenth-Century India,” in Secondary Cities and Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm, c. 1400-1800, ed. Kenneth Hall (Lexington Books, 2008), 75; Michael Pearson, “Islamic trade, shipping, port-states, and merchant communities in the Indian Ocean, 7th-16th Centuries,” in New Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. III, ed. M. A. Cook (Cambridge University Press), 325–26.
19
Thanks to V. Kunhali (University of Calicut) and Abdur Rahman Mangad (Mappila Heritage Library) for providing this information on January 6-7, 2020, at Malappuram, Kerala. For a discussion on mohulla and Maraikkayar houses in the commercial towns of the Tamil country, see Bayly, Saints, Goddesses, and Kings, 85.
20
See Zayn al-Din ibn ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Malibari Tuhfat al-Mujahidin: A Historical Epic of the Sixteenth Century translated by Muhammad Husayn Nainar (Kuala Lampur: Islamic Book Trust, 2009), 46; Zayn al-Din al-Malibari, al-Ajwiba al-‘Ajiba ‘an al-as’ila al-ghariba (Kuwait: Dar al-Deyaa, 2012) for the functions of qazis and fatwas on a range of legal problems in sixteenth-century Malabar. This source is henceforth cited as al-Ajwiba; P.P. Mammad Koya Parappil, Kozhikkotte Muslimkalute Charitram (Calicut: Focus Publications, 2012), Chapter 13.
