Abstract
Abstract This chapter examines women’s rights and obligations in classical legal literature (from the second/eighth to twelfth/eighteenth century) pertaining to marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The chapter summarizes the classical doctrines on these topics according to the four Sunnī legal schools and the Twelver Shīʿī (Imāmī) school and discusses the scriptural foundations, underlying assumptions, and legal logic underpinning these rules. The chapter further juxtaposes these formal rules with the legal practice of a range of Muslim societies to demonstrate how Muslims throughout history have employed legal strategies and customary practices to reshape, accommodate, and circumvent formal rules in response to sociohistorical needs. Finally, the chapter discusses how other religious discourses besides Islamic law articulate normatively binding moral and religious prescriptions that sit alongside or contradict legal obligations and court-enforceable rights. The chapter thus situates Islamic law’s marital claims, divorce procedures, and transmission of property in a complex web of judicially enforceable legal norms debated among the schools, social customs, and non-litigable moral and religious duties.
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