Program

Library of Congress Fellowships in International Studies

Project

Death, ritual, and society in the early Islamic world

Death, ritual, and society in the early Islamic world

Program

Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowships

Project

Forbidden Goods: Cross-Cultural Trade in Islamic Law

Department

History

Forbidden Goods: Cross-Cultural Trade in Islamic Law

This project examines historically Muslim legal perceptions of non-Muslim commodities, from the rise of Islam to the present day. Many experts on Islamic law earned their livelihood as merchants and thus appreciated the benefits of cross-cultural trade. Yet they worried that through such trade they would expose their bodies and communities to impurity, and so proposed ideological restrictions to regulate this commerce. This resulted in a productive tension in Islamic legal thought between an economic interest in porous communal boundaries and a religious interest in social exclusivity. As Muslim jurists reflected on non-Muslims and their worldly goods, they also sought, in different ways and in different historical circumstances, to define an Islamic social identity.