Messick Brinkley. — Sharīʿa Scripts: A Historical Anthropology

Brinkley Messick’s long-awaited book is the fruit of several decades of reflection on the practice of Islamic law, following his 1993 classic The Calligraphic State. It is set in the author’s research terrain of predilection: Yemen’s central highlands in and around the city of Ibb. This predominantly agrarian world is rather distinct, as it never experienced colonial rule directly, neither under the Ottomans nor at the hands of subsequent foreign powers. Another exceptionalism is the nature o...