Interview with PhD student Mohamed Noor

Regarding your research in the CanCode project, how do you use concepts of canonisation and codification to examine the processes of legal change and stability through the use of legal texts on the Swahili coast?

I use the canonical status of the legal text Minhāj al-ṭālibīn wa ʿumdat al-muftīn as a focal point to examine the processes of legal change and stability on the Swahili coast, particularly during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My proposition is that by the twentieth century, the Minhāj had acquired canonical status – canonical in the sense that it became authoritative through selection and validation processes by different agents and actors. In this case, I view the concept of canonisation (textual canonisation) from the prism of authorisation and transformation of specific legal texts from nondescript tomes into potent symbols of legal authority.

Do you see any conceptual differences between standardisation, canonisation, and codification?

As an abridgement (mukhtaṣar), the Minhāj possesses an interpretative character that opens an array of perspectives to illustrate theories, rules and legal opinions expounded in earlier Shāfi`īte texts while synopsising them in a condensed way and form. This trait offers the possibility of scaling down the vast body of legal themes into standardised theories and legal rules within a particular tradition of legal practitioners. Once the standardised themes are established, they become canonical and then codified when there is potential for their enforcement through instruments of power and authority. Thus, I see standardisation, canonisation, and codification as concepts that connect one end of authorisation to another – standardising being the starting point and codifying the endpoint.

What do you think were the factors that led to the canonisation of the Minhāj on the Swahili coast during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?

Answer: The Minhāj is an essential legal text in the Shāfiʿī school in general. Therefore, the canonisation of the Minhāj on the Swahili coast may have been, as a result of the formation of the Swahili world as part of the Shāfiʿī cosmopolis, and its canonisation would have cemented Shāfiʿīsm as the dominant legal school of thought. However, there are other factors that I suggest played crucial roles in aiding the canonisation process at that historical juncture, such as education (influential local scholars through the transmission of Islamic knowledge and the madrasa), political influence  (through the Qāḍī court as part of the judicial arm of the Bū Sā īdī Sultanate of Zanzibar and the British colonial administration), cultural practices such as Sufism and poetry and technology like transition from manuscripts to prints and mass printing.

What are your future plans after the completion of this project?

Answer: It will depend on the opportunities that will come up, but I would like to continue working on the different themes of Islamic textual and legal traditions in the Indian Ocean world, with a particular focus on the East and South African coasts.