Aria Nakissa is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies and Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Anthropology of Islamic Law is a must read for students of both
classical and modern Islamic law, Islamic ethics, Islamic
scriptural hermeneutics, religious education in the Muslim world,
and postcolonial studies concerned with the wide-ranging
institutional, epistemic, and pedagogical changes wrought by the
advent of colonial modernity in Muslim lands, as well as for
students of religious law, ethics, and scriptural hermeneutics more
generally.
*Carl Sharif El Tobgui, Journal of the American Oriental
Society*
In a strikingly original work, Aria Nakissa brings contemporary
philosophy together with deep ethnographic and textual knowledge to
convey the logic and practices of traditionalist Islamic learning.
Based on fieldwork in Cairo, the book provides the clearest account
to date of competing Islamic approaches to Sharīʿa.
*John R. Bowen, Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences,
Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis*
Professor Nakissa presents us with an erudite text. Deeply
ethnographic, historically informed, and philosophically grounded,
it draws the disparate strands of Islamic scholarship into a
provocative synthesis. Scholars of Islam would benefit greatly from
an engagement with Nakissa's arguments.
*Ali Agrama, Associate Professor of Anthropology, at University of
Chicago*
Aria Nakissa's innovative analysis of the transmission of Sharīʿa
knowledge at the venerable al-Azhar in Cairo combines a subtle
ethnography of persisting academic relations based on
teacher-student 'companionship' and emulation with astute readings
in a wide variety of related conceptualizations in the history and
present of Islamic thought.
*Brinkley Messick, Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern,
South Asian, and African Studies, and Director of the Middle East
Institute, Columbia University*
Drawing deeply on both ethnographic and textual evidence, Nakissa
bridges a deep methodological divide in Islamic studies. This
lucidly written and persuasively argued study will engage readers
across multiple disciplines.
*Marion H. Katz, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies,
New York University*
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