Encyclopedia of Islam

Crusades

  

175  J

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Further reading: Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of 

the Crusades (Berkeley: University of California Press, 

1984); P. M. Holt, The Age of the Crusades: The Near East 

from the Eleventh Century to 1517 (New York: Longman, 

1986); Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes.

Translated by Jon Rothschild (London: Al Saqi Books, 

1984). Reprint, Cairo, Egypt: The American University 

in Cairo Press, 1990); Kenneth Setton, ed., A History of 

the Crusades. Vols. 1–6 (Madison: University of Wiscon-

sin Press, 1969).

customary law

 

(Arabic: 

ada, urf; also adat)

Customary law in Islam consists of traditional 

customs and practices on the local level that are 

not directly based on the q

Uran

 and 

hadith

 but 

that still have legal weight. Before the modern era, 

it was largely unwritten and uncodified. Custom-

ary law pertains to matters of marriage, 

divorce

,

inheritance, murder, honor crimes, the status of 

Women

, and land tenure.

Historically, when a town, country, or region 

fell under Muslim rule, the unwritten local laws 

and customs were never completely swept away 

and replaced by those of the 

sharia

, or Islamic law. 

Rather, they coexisted alongside Islamic law, or 

they were assimilated and continued to be honored 

in the new Islamicate society. Historians of Islamic 

law have noted that local traditions were not as a 

rule formally recognized as one of the sources of 

law (Quran, 

sUnna

, 

ijmaa

 [consensus], and qiyas

[analogy]), but Muslim jurists did discuss them 

and legitimate them as sunna or ijmaa. On the 

other hand, a custom or practice that conserva-

tive ulama determined to be blatantly un-Islamic 

could be condemned as an illegal 

bidaa

 (innova-

tion). Customary law was also invoked in advisory 

opinions, or fatwas. By such means, local custom 

contributed to the formation of the major Islamic 

legal traditions. Thus, the m

aliki

  l

egal

  s

chool

embodied the local customs of Medina, while the 

h

anaFi

 l

egal

 s

chool

 embodied those of southern 

Iraq, a much more cosmopolitan region than the 

Arabian Peninsula. Western scholars, moreover, 

have maintained that both the Quran and the 

sunna embody customary laws present in the Hijaz 

prior to the appearance of Islam. If their theory 

is correct, therefore, what eventually became the 

universal sharia originated in the local customary 

law of western Arabia and was later continuously 

shaped by the indigenous legal traditions of the 

wider Middle East and beyond. Muslims of conser-

vative outlook may refute this theory by claiming 

that Islamic law is based more on revelation from 

God, but they must still account for the differences 

between the Islamic legal schools and the variety 

of local customs that have acquired legal legiti-

macy in different parts of the Muslim world.

In the Middle East and perhaps even more so 

in Africa and Asia, customary law has coexisted 

with religious law. Before the modern era, it may 

even have surpassed it on the level of the locality, 

especially among tribal populations and settled 

communities living in remote areas. During the 

19th and 20th centuries, Dutch colonial officials 

attempted to use customary law (adat) as a way 

to weaken the authority of Muslim jurists and 

the influence of the sharia in Indonesia. Modern 

Islamic reform movements and Islamic revivalism 

do not yet appear to have directed their ener-

gies against customary law in most countries, 

however. They are more directed against colonial 

and postcolonial Western laws and institutions. 

Customary law appears to still be widely valued as 

part of the indigenous cultural heritage.

See also 

adUltery

; 

aUthority

; 

crime

 

and

 

pUn

-

ishment

; 

FatWa

; 

fiqh

.