The Domain of Islamic Law in the Post-Reform Ordinary Civil Courts of the Russian Empire

Abstract

This article analyzes the place of Islamic law within the post-reform ordinary civil court system of the Russian Empire. Drawing on judicial case materials, petitions, Senate rulings, and interdepartmental correspondence, the study examines how sharīʿa norms – primarily in the areas of inheritance and marital-property relations – were applied in courts that were not originally designed for religious adjudication. The author demonstrates that in several of its key domains, Islamic law was not marginalized but rather institutionalized within the judicial system as a legitimate legal foundation for Muslim subjects. The modernization and centralization of the judiciary, along with the unification of procedural rules and the development of a system of appeals, paradoxically coincided with the consolidation of domains of particularistic law, including Muslim legal norms. Challenging the prevailing historiographical view of legal pluralism as a peripheral phenomenon or an administrative compromise, the article argues that it should be understood as a stable and institutionally embedded feature of the late imperial legal order. Methodologically, the study builds on insights from legal anthropology and the “law and society” approach, combining these perspectives with empirical historical analysis. Islamic law is examined not as a closed religious system but as a set of interpretive norms operating within specific judicial and administrative contexts. The article contends that legal pluralism in the Russian Empire was not a temporary concession but a durable component of its legal regime.