Ottoman majalla and Sharia

The majalla was published at the end of the 19th century and in the context of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire and its trend towards comprehensive administrative, legal and judicial reforms, and it came after many of the Ottoman states had turned into English or French colonies.

It also took ten years of work to be produced and is influenced in form by the French Civil Code. However, I point out in my book that the Majalla of Judicial Judgments should not be viewed and reduced to being a product of the influence of European legal systems. Rather, it should also be considered that those who contributed In producing it, he insisted that it was inspired by the provisions of Islamic jurisprudence, especially with regard to the jurisprudential rules of Hanafi jurisprudence. We find, for example, that the first hundred articles of the Majalla of Judicial Provisions are literally the first hundred articles of the Hanafi jurisprudential rules according to Zain al-Din bin Nujaym al-Hanafi al-Masri (d. 970 AH) in his book “Al-Ashbah wa al-Naza’ir,” and those who undertook the draft of the majalla proved that they relied on these jurisprudential rules. While it was codified in the Majalla of Judicial Provisions, the issue of codification itself is linked to the political system. As the application of Sharia rulings requires the creation of an established judicial system in which the Sharia judge works.

In any case, the idea behind the Majalla of Judicial Rulings is to make it available to all judges in the Sultanate, including those who have not studied Islamic law, so that they can be relied upon in matters to be arbitrated within the new regular courts established by the Ottomans.

Here, it must be noted that the Code of Judicial Provisions is mainly related to commercial matters, which usually depend on “custom” among merchants, as there was general acceptance that trade matters are based on local customs on the one hand, and consent and understanding on the other hand.

The matter that I discussed regarding the Majalla of Judicial Rulings in general is that it is a new product in the history of jurisprudence. The Ottomans wanted the Code of Judicial Provisions to reach universality due to their approach to the path of codification and its application within the new courts while continuing its connection with Islamic jurisprudence, so that any person, even if he was not a Muslim or an Ottoman, within the lands of the Ottoman Caliphate would be able to have the provisions of the Code of Judicial Provisions applied to him, especially in matters. Commercial law, especially since most foreigners were complaining about their inability to go to the judge in the Sharia courts because their testimony against their opponents was not accepted, so the Code of Judicial Rulings came and resolved these matters within the regular courts, where all people had the right to plead, especially since the Code of Judicial Rulings dropped the condition Islam to accept martyrdom. This effort made these provisions universal in nature, as they could be applied to everyone.

The other matter was that the Majalla of Judicial Rulings was received warmly by lawyers, judges, and sheikhs of Islam. They considered it a new product based on late Hanafi jurisprudence. The other point is that the legacy of the Majalla of Judicial Rulings still exists today in all the countries that belonged to the Ottoman Sultanate and the Sharia courts were not abolished. Whereas the echo of the Majalla of Judicial Provisions is present in both the formation, examination, and practice of the Sharia judge, whether in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, or Iraq, even in the Sharia courts within the “occupying state.” Accordingly, the Majalla of Judicial Rulings turned into an important standard jurisprudential achievement for understanding Sharia courts. Therefore, it can be said without hesitation that the Majalla of Judicial Rulings is not only related to the codification of jurisprudential rulings according to the Hanafi school, but rather it changed the form associated with the administration of regular and Sharia courts. Although Egypt did not adopt the Majalla of Judicial Rulings, they produced an Egyptian version of the content of the majalla through what was produced by Muhammad Qadri Pasha, Minister of Haqqaniya, in his book “Sharia Rulings on Personal Status”.