Islamic Legal Records and Social Histories of Muslims in Ethiopia and Eritrea

Islamic (shari’a) court records and other legal documents are critical sources that historians draw on to reconstruct the social, economic, and cultural histories of societies in the Middle East and the wider Islamic world. Such records contain a wealth of material on diverse subjects such as the family, women, social stratification, slaves, property transfers, trade, urban–rural relations, urban space, crime, and many other aspects of social and economic life. After offering general critical observations about the advantages and limitations of such sources, I briefly survey the contribution of a number of studies that have drawn on Islamic legal records to reconstruct aspects of the histories of Muslim societies in Western and Eastern Africa. The remainder and larger part of the essay is devoted to a discussion of Islamic legal records as a source for the study of Muslim societies in Ethiopia and Eritrea. First, I present the Qadi/Diwan records of Harar and briefly discuss the work that has already made use of them. I then draw on my own experience to offer critical observations related to the Massawa court records. For both sets of sources I propose further propitious avenues to be taken in future work. I close the essay with a short description of two still unstudied sets of Islamic legal sources: a legal register containing the records of the Akils Court in Jigjiga (1942–43) and seven registers that I found in the functioning Islamic court in Massawa, covering various years between 1938 and 1996.