Overlapping jurisdictions [Ressource électronique] : confessional boundaries and judicial choice among Christians and Jews under early Muslim rule / Uriel I. Simonsohn ; Adviser Mark Cohen

Ph. D. : Near Eastern studies : Princeton University : 2008

Bibliogr. p. 316-345

This study examines the legislative responses of Christian and Jewish religious elites to the problems posed by the appeal of their coreligionists to judicial systems outside their communities. Focusing on the late seventhearly eleventh centuries in the region between Iraq in the east and present-day Tunisia in the west, the project explores the multiplicity of judicial systems that coexisted under early Muslim rule in order to reveal the complex array of social obligations that bound individuals across confessional boundaries. By examining the incentives for appeal to external judicial systems on the one hand and the response of minority confessional elites on the other, the thesis fundamentally alters our conception of the social history of the Near East in the early Islamic period. Contrary to the prevalent scholarly notion of a rigid social setting, strictly demarcated along confessional lines, a comparative study of Christian and Jewish legal behavior under Muslim rule exposes a considerable degree of fluidity across communal boundaries. The transcendence of religious affiliations threatened to undermine the position of traditional religious elites. In response, these elites acted vigorously to reinforce communal boundaries, censuring recourse to external judicial systems and even threatening transgressors with excommunication.