Article The reign of the emperor Heraclius (610 –641) is often perceived as a distinctive transformative phase in the history of Byzantium marked by external and internal threats to the state on a military, political and ideological level (J. Haldon, Byzantium in the seventh century. The transformation of a culture. Cambridge; J. Koder, “Zeitenwenden”. Zur…

Article Definitions It is well known that Twelver Shiʿite legal doctrine entertains several fundamental ideas, which stand in sharp contrast to the Sunnite system as a whole and cannot be explained merely by a divergent theological approach to legal matters. On the divergences between the two systems see overview in Coulson 1964, 109‒119. One of…

Article Introduction Many scholars have maintained that some Arab groups in the Arabian Peninsula practiced circumcision before the advent of Islam (J. Wellhausen 1897, 174–175; M. Stern 1974, 3–4; R. G. Hoyland 1997, 82, 540–541; K. Kueny 2003, 162–164; P. Sijpesteijn 2013, 165–167; L. Salaymeh 2016, 109–110; A.S. Jacobs 2012, 35, 207 n. 115; M.…

Previous scholarship (with some contributions by myself) has recognized the link between Leviticus and the early Christian purity regulations (See for example Friedrich Avemarie, Neues Testament und frührabbinisches Judentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 773–800; Isaac Oliver, Torah Praxis after 70 CE: Reading Matthew and Luke-Acts as Jewish Texts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013); William Loader, The…

The first five of my ten propositions offer a more etic perspective on the continuity of the law as expressed, in the first four propositions, by distinct legal decrees or, in the fifth one, as conveyed by the literary forms which these decrees take in the Bible and in the Qur’an.The Biblical Basis of Law…

Map of Arabia in the 5th/6th centuries A simplified view of major continuities in law and ethnicity, from the Bible to the Qur’an, at the exclusion of “direct” continuities between the Bible and the Qur’an as well as between rabbinic, East Syrian, and Byzantine law and the Qur’an Women a man is prohibited to marry,…

Introduction For Romans the family was the nucleus of society, the producer of citizens and soldiers and preserver of ancestral cults and wealth. The familia was an autonomous unit headed by the paterfamilias, on whom Roman law and mores had bestowed remarkably extensive control over all under his potestas (power): his slaves, his legitimate children,…

In a series of homilies delivered around 400 C.E., John Chrysostom lectured his flock on the foundations of Christian marriage (John Chrysostom, Propter fornicationes, De libello repudii, and Quales ducendae sint uxores. PG 51: 207–242. On Chrysostom’s preaching, see Allen and Mayer 1993 and now Maxwell 2006, esp. 157–161). In Chrysostom’s vision, Christian matrimony was…

Article Introduction Over the past decades, there has been substantial research on the economy of the GraecoRoman world during Classical Antiquity (Ian Morris. The Measure of Civilization: How Social Development Decides the Fate of Nations. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, United States, 2013. 2). Point estimates for the urbanization rates of the regions of…

Article Introduction Political and social crises in Syria in the late Mamluk period helped the Druze fuqahāʾ (jurists), especially those from powerful local families (mainly the Banū Buḥtur) (Salibi 1961, 74–97), to gain visibility and attract disciples (Halawi 2018, 470–500). These jurists formulated new legal teachings to organize their community around strict religious and moral…