Visions of Justice: Shari?a and Cultural Change in Russian Central Asia(24 Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 8 Uralic & Central Asian Studies)

Visions of Justice offers an exploration of legal consciousness among the Muslim communities of Central Asia from the end of the eighteenth century through the fall of the Russian Empire. Paolo Sartori surveys how colonialism affected the way in which Muslims formulated their convictions about entitlements and became exposed to different notions of morality. Situating his work within a range of debates about colonialism and law, legal pluralism, and subaltern subjectivity, Sartori puts the study of Central Asia on a broad, conceptually sophisticated, comparative footing. Drawing from a wealth of Arabic, Persian, Turkic and Russian sources, this book provides a thoughtful critique of method and considers some of the contrasting ways in which material from Central Asian archives may most usefully be read. Publication in Open Access was made possible by a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration and Nomenclature Abbreviations List of Maps and Illustrations Introduction Chapter One: The Islamic Juridical Field in Central Asia, ca. 1785-1918 Chapter Two: Native Judges into Colonial Scapegoats Chapter Three: The Bureaucratization of Land Tenure Chapter Four: Annulling Charitable Endowments Chapter Five: Fatwas for Muslims, Opinions for Russians Epilogue: The Legacy: Opportunities from Colonialism Appendixes I-IV Glossary of Islamic Terms Archival Files Consulted Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Paolo Sartori, Ph.D. (2006), is Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He specializes in the history of Islamic Central Asia (17th-20th centuries), law, imperial history and colonialism. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (Brill).

Review :
Endorsements for Visions of Justice "Visions of Justice is a remarkable depiction of Islamic justice among Central Asian Muslims under Tsarist rule. Paolo Sartori’s book tells a story that everyone interested in Islamic legal institutions and practice should hear. This meticulously researched, eloquently narrated account will generate an impact beyond the field of Central Asian studies." – Boğaç A. Ergene, University of Vermont "Based upon a wide range of legal sources written in Russian, Arabic, Persian, and Chaghatay, Visions of Justice invites readers to understand law as it was experienced by Muslims in Central Asia under tsarist rule and to explore the complex relationship between law and colonialism. This is an invitation that scholars of Islamic law will want to accept." – David S. Powers, Cornell University "Paolo Sartori’s Visions of Justice is a brilliant and pathbreaking study of Tsarist-era Central Asia, and should launch a fundamental rethinking of Central Asian history from the late 18th to 21st centuries. Focused on the encounter of Russian and local legal institutions and procedures during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the book reveals the complex adaptations and manipulations, by Central Asians, of the expanded menu of legal options that would prove to be one of the most subtly transformative aspects of Russian rule." – Devin DeWeese, Indiana University "Visions of Justice is an instant classic in the historiography of modern Central Asia. In breathtaking detail, Sartori describes the transformation of the Islamic field under colonial rule. Through a stunning variety of new evidence mined from official and private family archives across Uzbekistan, much of it bringing to life and humanizing the acute concerns of Central Asian litigants, Sartori addresses a number of significant and longstanding lacunae in the historiography." – Eren Tasar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Reviews of Visions of Justice “[...] Visions of Justice covers fundamental academic research which fills lacunas in the studies of the legal history of Transoxiana in the period of Russian colonization. It offers a complex outlook on the evolution of the Islamic judicial system in Russian Central Asia and introduces a large number of new documentary sources on the everyday consumption of the sharīʿa justice in a changing social environment. Numerous excerpts from archival material quoted throughout the book as well as full texts of exemplary documents in the Appendix provide a solid footing for the author’s argumentation and conclusions. Specialists will take advantage of transcriptions of the most important fragments from original texts occasionally supplemented with photocopies of quoted documents. What makes Visions of Justice suitable for a wider readership is that the intriguing lawsuit cases are regularly discussed as life stories in which the author gives voice to people of varied standing, be they ordinary Muslim litigants of both sexes, or high up native judges and legists, or local translators and assessors, or Russian military and administrative officials on different rungs of the imperial bureaucratic ladder.” – Mikhail Pelevin, Saint Petersburg State University, in Iranian Studies 51.6 (2018). “Every so often though a book about Central Asian Islam comes along which scholars working on other parts of the Muslim world need to take notice of—which deserves to become influential well beyond the narrow group of Central Asian specialists. [...] Paolo Sartori’s magnificent book deserves to join this short and exclusive list. [...] The major contribution Sartori has made here to the history of Central Asia is not in doubt. Why should it also be of interest to historians of other parts of the Muslim world, as I argued at the outset? One reason is the sheer level of detail that Sartori is able to provide in his case-studies (the book also contains a series of generous appendices with facsimiles and translations of archival documents) which has rarely if ever been matched by historians working on Islamic legal institutions under British, French or Dutch colonial rule. This in turn is because taken together, Central Asian archive and manuscript collections are among the largest surviving anywhere in the Muslim world—probably second only to the Ottoman archives in their significance—and yet they remain little known and little used by historians of Islam, who remain overwhelmingly focused on the Middle East. This needs to change, and Sartori’s superb book should be the catalyst.” – Alexander Morrison, New College, Oxford, in Journal of Islamic Studies 30.2 (2019). "Visions of Justice can be considered a particularly rich and valuable work. By consulting various archival resources, the book brings details about the lived realities of people of Central Asia to our attention from a micro-perspective. Building on various court cases, particularly criminal cases, the author explores the multilayered, complex systems of laws and social relations that characterize a part of the world which has usually been looked at with a more macropolitical approach. [...] This sums up this book that can only be described as seminal and inspiring due to its depth and serious creative research. He is to be congratulated." – Amira Sonbol (Qatar), in Historische Anthropologie (2021). "One of the main historiographical challenges that scholars of Islamic law (and Islam) in the Islamic East are facing is striking the balance between the multiple geographical and chronological registers. Paolo Sartori's Visions of Justice is a welcomed addition to this body of works and, more importantly, an excellent example of the enormous potential of this historiographical path." – Guy Burak, New York University, in Quaderni Storici 164.2 (2020).