Introduction

Modern histories of Islamic law tend to foreground colonialism as a pivotal moment of transformation. According to the standard narrative, colonial modernity ushered in a process of secularization which transformed Islamic Law from a jurists’ law into a state law, restricted sharia to matters of personal law, and introduced new understandings of law, ethics, and family.¹ In a summary assessment by a leading scholar in the field, colonial modernity signaled nothing less than the “demise” of traditional sharia throughout the Muslim world.²

This paper complicates the secularization narrative by looking at a region that has often been overlooked in scholarly debates, the Arab sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf. The sheikhdoms were incorporated into the political and legal structures of the British Raj in the course of the nineteenth century through a number of maritime and peace treaties. While the sheikhdoms never became formal British colonies, they were part of Britain’s “informal empire” for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.³ In exchange for protection, rulers recognized the British government as the ultimate arbiter of disputes in the region, ceding sovereignty in matters of foreign policy and key areas of “strategic interest” including oil concessions. In the aftermath of World War ii, the sheikhdoms became “protected states”. They achieved full independence in 1971 following Britain’s unilateral decision to withdraw from the region.⁴

The British informal empire in the Gulf was an “empire by treaty” backed up by the exercise of force and the military might of the British Navy.⁵ British authorities in the Gulf operated by “influence in internal affairs” rather than through direct “internal control”.⁶ Although British officials avoided the term “colonial” out of sensitivity to local Arab sentiment,⁷ they often treated the region as just another colony. While the British ability to shape legal developments varied significantly from one sheikhdom to another, the protectorate set in motion wide-ranging legal transformations in the region.

The legal trajectory of the Gulf sheikhdoms under British protection underscores the necessity of accounting for different types of imperial domination – formal and informal, direct and indirect – when assessing the impact of European colonialism upon Muslim legal structures.⁸ Beyond the specificities of British rule and legal reform in the sheikhdoms, the modern legal history of the Gulf suggests that secularization stories may sometimes concede too much to the past, and foreclose too much in the present. These stories are not only built on assumptions about the pre-modern Muslim legal field (or the authority of the ʿulamāʾ) which may be hard to substantiate in some contexts.⁹ They also appear to take for granted modern self-understandings about institutional differentiation and clearly demarcated spaces which cannot be easily proven.¹⁰

This article contributes to a body of scholarship which has sought to capture dimensions of legal processes that are hidden from view in the teleological and institutionalist narratives that dominate the field through an in-depth study of key Muslim actors.¹¹ It focuses on the case of Qatar and considers specifically the work of a sharia scholar from Najd, ʿAbdallāh b. Zayd Āl Maḥmūd (1911–97), who acted as Qatar’s most senior judge for three decades during the British era and almost three decades after it. During more than half a century at the helm of Qatar’s sharia judiciary, Ibn Maḥmūd (as he was known in the Arabian Peninsula) lived through momentous transformations: the economic recession and depopulation caused by World War ii and the collapse of the pearling industry in the 1940s, followed by the exploitation of oil, the development of state institutions and civil courts, rapid population growth, and the influx of new wealth, consumption practices, and lifestyles.¹² Until his death in 1997, Ibn Maḥmūd was the public face of the sharia courts. He is considered the main force behind the establishment of a powerful sharia judiciary in Qatar in the course of the twentieth century. While Qatar’s national mosque is named after the founder of the Wahhabi movement, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, the most popular Islamic center in downtown Doha bears the name of the Najdi judge: a testimony to Ibn Maḥmūd’s standing in contemporary Qatari society.¹³ His Friday sermons are broadcast on local radio stations, his publications freely distributed by the Ministry of Religious Endowments, and his legacy discussed in television talk shows. The renowned “global mufti” Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī described Ibn Maḥmūd as Qatar’s leading Muslim judge, jurist, and preacher.¹⁴

Despite Ibn Maḥmūd’s prominent role in Qatar’s twentieth-century religious and legal fields, his contribution has been almost totally overlooked in European-language scholarship.¹⁵ Discussions regarding sharia in Qatar refer primarily to constitutions and laws adopted by the state, ignoring the rich material produced by sharia judges and religious scholars. This article contributes to fill this glaring gap. It draws primarily on Ibn Maḥmūd’s texts, publications by the Presidency of Sharia Courts, and Arabic scholarship on Ibn Maḥmūd’s career.¹⁶ It also uses British archival sources, Qatar laws and government reports, and regional media to complement these accounts. This multipronged methodological approach allows me to overcome the limitations inherent in any single type of source, and to offer an integrated history of Islamic law in the context of Qatar’s twentieth-century jurisdictional politics.

I argue that the career of Ibn Maḥmūd complicates conventional understandings of the relation between Islamic law, modern state power, and British imperialism. The Gulf is often depicted as a “traditional” region which became “westernized” in the course of the twentieth century. Qatar is seen an example of a country in the Arabian Peninsula where “considerable Western influence” reshaped the legal system during this period.¹⁷ According to this narrative, the Westernization of Qatar’s legal sphere starts with the 1916 Treaty signed between Shaykh ʿAbdallāh b. Jāsim Āl Thānī and the British Political Resident and continues until the present. This period is characterized by the expanding role of civil courts and codified laws, initially under the British and then, after 1971, under the authority of the sovereign emir.¹⁸

Ibn Maḥmūd’s judicial tenure falls within a stage of Qatar’s legal development supposedly marked by Western legal dominance. As the paper demonstrates, however, modern state bureaucracy and oil wealth expanded rather than curtailed the scope of sharia law in Qatar in the course of the twentieth century. During this period, sharia scholars and institutions under Ibn Maḥmūd’s leadership reinforced the rule of law, replaced commercial courts and alternative modes of dispute resolution, contributed to minimizing the role of customary norms in society, and helped establish an autonomous legal sphere separate from political power.¹⁹

In making these arguments, I extend Jill Crystal’s important insights regarding the modern nature of current political and economic arrangements in the Gulf to the legal sphere.²⁰ Rather than seeing the strength of the sharia judiciary in Qatar in the late twentieth century as a remnant from the distant past, I emphasize instead the transformative impact of oil wealth in opening up new spaces and opportunities for sharia scholars and institutions. Islamic revivalist ideas disseminated through the state education system from the 1950s onwards played a key role in this transformation.

The paper starts by describing the pluralistic legal landscape of the Gulf sheikhdoms in the first half of the twentieth century. It situates Ibn Maḥmūd’s arrival in Qatar in 1941 in the context of the jurisdictional politics unfolding in the sheikhdom in anticipation of oil wealth. The paper then highlights some milestones of a judicial career spanning six decades. Finally, it examines Ibn Maḥmūd’s contribution in two key areas: the critique of customary practice and the expansion of Islamic commercial law.

Law in the Sheikhdoms

Popular representations of life in the Gulf before oil tend to depict a homogeneous world where human affairs were regulated entirely by sharia law. In a 1982 interview, Saʿīd b. Sālim al-Badīd al-Mannāʿī described Qatar’s legal field in the first half of the twentieth century in the following terms: “All the courts were Islamic (sharʿī), they applied sharia law in matters of criminal law (qatl) as well as in religious affairs (dīn)”.²¹

This representation, which is found in popular and scholarly accounts of the Gulf’s pre-oil legal history, reflects a partial ḥaḍarī (settled) perspective on law. It stems from a widespread conflation of custom with Islam. It overlooks the centrality of the emir and the tribal shaykh in traditional modes of dispute resolution. It partakes in a nostalgic longing for a world of domesticity thwarted by oil wealth, migratory flows, and the effects of accelerated globalization.²²

The evidence suggests that, in the first half of the twentieth century, Qatar – like the other Gulf states – was characterized by a deep and messy legal pluralism. Scholars have identified four types of law operating in the Gulf during this period: tribal law, sharia law, commercial law, and British law.²³ Legal practices were institutionalized in specific forums: the Emir’s court, Sunni and Shīʿī sharia courts, marine courts known as Sālifa, tribal councils, Joint Courts run by members of the ruling family and British political agents, and British legal institutions in the Gulf and in India. In the early twentieth century, actors in the Gulf also had recourse to Ottoman institutions and to the customary courts used by Indian merchants to settle commercial disputes.²⁴

In this pluralistic legal context, where lines of jurisdictional authority were often blurred, both customary and Islamic law appear to have been considered normative. Sharia scholars worked with Sālifa judges to settle disputes in the pearl trade, the region’s most important economic activity, by administering oaths and dividing the property of deceased sailors.²⁵ Modern schools taught students the mathematical skills necessary for calculating the value of pearls and for dividing inheritance shares according to Islamic law.²⁶ Until the emergence of forms of Islamic revivalism in the pearling towns in the first half of the twentieth century, it is questionable whether the inhabitants of the Gulf sheikhdoms conceptualized customary and Islamic law as distinct or in tension.

Individuals exercised legal agency by choosing a legal forum and by moving from one forum to another. Since there were no fixed guidelines determining who has jurisdiction over which field, the choice of legal forum relied on social capital, customary practice, and strategic usage. The relevance of sharia law for dispute resolution varied from one sheikhdom to another and depended on a number of factors, including the politics of the ruler, the charisma of the local sharia judge, and the strength and mobility of the tribal confederations.

The legal field was weakly institutionalized and legal proceedings rather informal. Parties in a dispute were as likely to appeal directly to the emir as they were to resort to sharia judges, respected merchants, or tribal leaders. The emir exercised both political and legal authority, but this authority was negotiated rather than enforced. Justice was one of the three main services ruling shaykhs provided to their subjects, together with protection and assistance.²⁷ It has been argued that the ruler’s capacity to enforce the law and carry out legal punishment distinguished him from other tribal chiefs.²⁸ Nevertheless, the emir’s ability to enforce legal decisions was often limited. The disorderly situation in the sheikhdoms explains why all the major regional powers in the Gulf – the Ottomans, the British and the Saudi Wahhabis – used “the rule of law” as an imperial motif and justification for their presence.

The informality of Bahraini legal proceedings was a general feature of law in the Gulf sheikhdoms. In Qatar, the authority of the emir was further weakened by the ability of dissident members of the ruling family and other tribal groups to contest the ruler’s decisions and appeal to neighboring Saudi authorities.

Within the particular configuration of the pre-oil sheikhdoms, sharia was invoked in myriad ways: when rulers publicly banned alcohol and prostitution³⁰; when pearl divers sought redress against fraudulent merchants³¹; or when boat owners claimed compensation from theft or collision. The qāḍī was also called upon occasionally to enforce law and order by procuring men to serve as night watchmen.³² He sometimes settled financial claims between Indian traders and local Arabs.³³

Nonetheless, the place of sharia within the legal structure of the Gulf sheikhdoms before oil appears to have been clearly circumscribed. In Bahrain, sharia judges ruled over matrimonial issues. They were called in to arbitrate civil and criminal cases only when both parties agreed. Sharia judges could be called upon to judge criminal cases and to settle conflicts over property according to Islamic Law, but this does not seem to have been systematic.³⁴

Disagreements between divers, boat captains and pearl merchants were typically settled by pearl merchants officiating as judges in the Sālifa court. Camel and other thefts across tribal and jurisdictional lines represented complex affairs which were often solved according to the customary rules of the Bedouin tribes (“the law of ʿarafa”).³⁵ Disputes regarding homicide, theft, adultery, the payment of dowries and the use of wells would have likely been adjudicated by the tribal chieftain rather than by a formally trained sharia judge.³⁶ Some towns did not have a qualified sharia judge.³⁷ In The Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Lorimer provides several examples of dispute resolution involving tribal chiefs rather than sharia judges.³⁸

As Onley and Khalaf have pointed out, the ʿulamāʾ in the sheikhdoms were limited in their ability to influence decision-making processes.³⁹ The main legal actor in the Gulf was the local ruler, who was called upon to settle disputes, negotiate between contending parties, and, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, coordinate efforts with the British authorities. The ruler’s authority was nevertheless negotiated, and his decisions the result of compromises which more often than not reflected the power differentials of the litigants.

It is in this context that one must situate British efforts to monitor and reform the legal systems of the sheikhdoms.⁴⁰ A series of agreements signed with the chiefs of the Arab sheikhdoms in the course of the nineteenth century had enshrined the British Political Resident stationed in Bushire as the “final arbiter of all disputes” in the region. In 1868, Qatar’s Muḥammad b. Thānī (1788–1878) joined the other sheikhs in recognizing British sovereignty. In the 1868 Treaty, Qatar’s ruler promised not to engage in maritime warfare and to “invariably refer” to British authorities any “disputes or misunderstanding” that may arise.⁴¹ Financial claims and political disagreements between Arab sheikhs were now – in theory, if not always in practice – adjudicated by the Political Resident. Muḥammad b. Thānī’s successor, Shaykh Jāsim (r. 1878–1913), tried to resist British encroachment, but he, too, was forced to accept British authority in legal matters ranging from pearling disputes and maritime hostilities to violence against Indian traders in Doha. In 1916, after Shaykh Jāsim’s death, Shaykh ʿAbdallāh b. Jāsim Āl Thānī (r. 1913–49) signed a new treaty with the British Government committing himself to the abolition of the slave trade, the suppression of piracy, and the prohibition of arms sales unauthorized by the British. The emir also undertook to entertain no relations with foreign powers other than the British, to offer British traders preferential tariffs, to allow the establishment of a British Agent, Post Office, and Telegraph. In exchange for these concessions, the emir was promised protection against attacks from the sea and the “good offices” of the British Government in case of unprovoked land aggression.⁴²

The treaties distinguished between internal and external affairs. Nevertheless, the region’s interconnected tribal federations and commercial interests (and, one might add, the logic of empire) often blurred the distinction. British control over the sheikhdoms’ foreign affairs thus inevitably threw British agents into the role of conflict mediators, allowing them to penetrate deeply into the social and political fabric of the Gulf shaykhdoms.

Ibn Maḥmūd’s Arrival

The legal landscape of the Gulf sheikhdoms was transformed under the shadow of the British protectorate in ways that may confound expectations. A recent commemorative volume on Shaykh ʿAbdallāh b. Jāsim Āl Thānī stresses the ruler’s contribution to the institutionalization of law in Qatar in the first half of the twentieth century. The establishment of legal courts (muʾassasat al-qaḍāʾ) is depicted as “a civilizational achievement” (min injāzāt al-ḥaḍāriyya) to be credited to the third ruler of the modern Qatari state.⁴³ Shaykh ʿAbdallāh b. Jāsim Āl Thānī’s accomplishment was directly connected to Ibn Maḥmūd’s efforts. The Najdi scholar is known as “the founder of Qatar’s sharia judiciary” (muʾassis al-qaḍāʾ al-sharʿī).⁴⁴ He was the first judge in Qatar to adjudicate cases in a purposely built court and to keep records of his decisions. His predecessor, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Māniʿ [Ibn Māniʿ], judged cases in the school where he taught.⁴⁵ Previous judges operated in their home, in the mosque, or in the marketplace.⁴⁶

The circumstances of Ibn Maḥmūd’s arrival in Qatar in January 1941 shed light on the forces and processes which shaped the Gulf’s twentieth-century jurisdictional politics.⁴⁷ In December 1940, during the pilgrimage to Mecca, Shaykh ʿAbdallāh Āl Thānī and his son Ḥamad met with King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl Saʿūd to request a service from the Saudi monarch. Since Ibn Māniʿ’s departure to Mecca in 1937, Qatar was left bereft of qualified sharia judges. In order to resolve this issue, Shaykh ʿAbdallāh asked the King to nominate a qāḍī to officiate in the emirate. After consulting Ibn Māniʿ, King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz’s choice fell on Ibn Maḥmūd, a young Najdi preacher whose eloquence was beginning to capture the attention of the public in Mecca’s religious circles. The choice must have seemed a natural one: from approximately 1933 to 1937, Ibn Maḥmūd studied with Ibn Māniʿ in Qatar’s first institute of higher religious education, the Madrasa Athariyya (est. 1918). Ibn Maḥmūd had then followed his teacher to Riyadh when the latter was put in charge of the Saudi state’s educational curriculum.⁴⁸ Ibn Maḥmūd’s nomination continued a tradition of Ḥanbalī judiciary appointments in Qatar that went back to ʿAbdallāh b. Dirham (d. 1917).⁴⁹ Ibn Maḥmūd’s connections to Qatar extended beyond the circuits of religious knowledge. His uncle worked in the pearling industry there, one of thousands of Najdis who earned a living in the pearling towns of the Gulf during the summer.⁵⁰

Although Ibn Maḥmūd accepted the nomination only “after some hesitation”, he stayed in his post as Qatar’s senior judge for almost six decades, establishing the Presidency of Sharia Courts in 1958 and overseeing its activities until the latter was incorporated into the Ministry of Awqāf and Religious Affairs founded in 1993.

The story of Ibn Maḥmūd’s nomination to the judgeship in Qatar, popularized by Ibn Maḥmūd’s family in a recent biography, is more complex than it appears at first sight. The 1940 Hajj meeting between the Emir of Qatar and the Saudi King took place in the context of the regional struggles over sovereignty and jurisdictional authority set in motion by Saudi hegemonic ambitions and British attempts to establish “law and order” in the “unruly” shaykhdoms of the Arabian Peninsula.

British Legal Reform in Qatar

In anticipation of the discovery and exploitation of oil in Qatar, British authorities sought from 1935 onwards to legally define the boundaries of jurisdictional authority.⁵¹ Since the Arab sheikhdoms were not formal British territories, jurisdictional authority required the negotiation of agreements with local rulers (“jurisdiction grants”) – a feature of the legalism that characterized British imperial policy in the Gulf and beyond.⁵² The British sought jurisdictional authority over British subjects and oversight over the oil industry: two demands the Emir of Qatar was prepared to accept. But the messiness of imperial rule could not fit seamlessly into neat legal categories. Tricky questions involving the relation between religion, nationality and jurisdiction in the British legal order in Eastern Arabia swiftly emerged. Particularly important for the Emir of Qatar was the status of non-British foreigners, as well as that of British subjects of Muslim faith. In the late 1930s, the emir ʿAbdallāh Āl Thānī asked for clarification regarding his jurisdictional authority over non-Qatari Muslim subjects residing in Qatar. The issue had been a point of contention between the Bahraini ruling family and the Saudi monarchy in the 1920s.⁵³

The report shows how British authorities strategically encouraged Muslim rulers to draw on Islamic law to navigate the complex political dynamics of the twentieth-century Gulf. The Qatar Order in Council, adopted in November of the same year, accordingly defines a Qatar subject as “a subject of the Sheikh of Qatar, or any Moslem person, not being a British subject”.⁵⁵ The Orders in Council passed by British authorities in the Gulf were part of an imperial project to order the messy legal pluralism that characterized the legal field of the sheikhdoms. The Orders focus specifically on subjects under British protection. Their provisions, however, went beyond these cases. The Orders did not abolish the plurality of legal forums, nor did they diminish the uncertainty regarding legal outcomes. Rather, they sought to consolidate a hierarchical legal structure under the ultimate authority of the British Political Resident. Despite their official tone, these documents were often legal fictions ignored by local rulers. The application of these Orders against the wishes of the emirs was politically costly. Whenever this was the subject of British political calculation, the result usually militated against coercive enforcement. In many instances, British authorities simply did not insist on a strict application of the Order.

The 1938 Qatar Order in Council purports to define the conditions of judicial appointment and the jurisdictional authority of Muslim judges in cases involving British subjects.⁵⁶ The qāḍī is to be “appointed by the Sheikh of Qatar and accepted by the Political Agent”.⁵⁷ The Political Agent may order a criminal case involving British subjects to be tried by a qāḍī if both parties are Muslims and agree to the procedure. Even in those cases, however, a representative of the Political Agency should attend the proceedings. The qāḍī’s decisions cannot be carried out until they are ratified by the Political Agent.⁵⁸

The Political Agent may also refer a civil case involving Muslims under British protection to the qāḍī, notably for the administration of an oath, in the same way that he may refer a commercial case to a group of important local merchants.⁵⁹ Even the qāḍī’s distribution of the property of deceased persons is supposed to take place “under the general supervision” of British authorities.⁶⁰

Regardless of the Order in Council’s claims, British authorities appear to have played no role in the appointment of Qatar’s new qāḍī in 1940 – or in the ruler’s subsequent choice of legal personnel. From Qatar’s perspective, a sharia judge brought from Saudi Arabia deflated possible conflict over newly adopted legislation. It also ensured that Qatar would establish “the principles of justice recognized in Mohammedan law”, as recommended by the British official.

The request of Emir ʿAbdallāh to King ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz highlights one dimension of Qatari-Saudi relations overlooked by the British agencies and absent from the British archives. Although Sheikh ʿAbdallāh assumed jurisdiction over Saudi (and other Muslim) foreign residents, as recommended by the British authorities, he sought to appease the Saudi King by having him nominate a judge that would oversee the Islamic legal affairs of Qatar’s entire Muslim population.

The development and institutionalization of Islamic law in Qatar must therefore be placed in the context of British imperialism and fraught Saudi-Qatari relations. Seen in this light, the 1940 request for a judge suggests that Shaykh ʿAbdallāh considered Islamic law a tool for state formation and regional diplomacy. Jurisdiction over foreign residents would continue to trouble Qatari politics until at least the 1950s.⁶¹ The particular conditions of Ibn Maḥmūd’s appointment help to explain why many Saudi judges and officials relied on his legal advice during the second half of the twentieth century.⁶² Ibn Maḥmūd’s ties to the Saudi ruling family enhanced his authority locally owing to the alignment of Qatar’s policies with Saudi Arabia. Ibn Maḥmūd’s relatively liberal views made him appealing to Saudi reformers and controversial in Wahhabi religious circles.

Relations between British authorities and Qatar’s sharia scholars became more hostile in the second half of the twentieth century. India’s independence led to the transfer of British administration of the Gulf sheikhdoms to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. British authorities started to consider the task of legal reform in the Gulf as an “urgent one”. In an era of worldwide decolonization, officials in London and in the Gulf considered legal reform a more stable guarantor of British interests in the long-run than the protectorate, which was perceived as increasingly “abnormal”.⁶³ The British sought to reduce the scope of sharia to family law, following a well-worn pattern.⁶⁴ They attributed the lack of progress in legal matters to “political and psychological reasons”.⁶⁵ Qatar was perceived to be a particularly “backward” country,⁶⁶ partly owing to the influence of the chief qāḍī. Ibn Maḥmūd, simply referred to as “the Qadhi” in colonial reports, was depicted by one British official as Qatar’s “enfant terrible” owing to his opposition to British reforms.⁶⁷ In 1954, a British official found the qāḍī “quite unsuited to try criminal cases”.⁶⁸ “Sentences of lapidation and lashes may be, and sometimes are, imposed by the local Qhadi”, another commented.⁶⁹ While the British attempted to focus on those areas which they perceived to lay outside the scope of sharia (traffic, taxation),⁷⁰ they came into conflict with Ibn Maḥmūd and his colleagues in the sharia courts, who held more expansive visions of Islamic legal authority. British officials noted with dismay Ibn Maḥmūd’s popularity: his “influence over the deeply religious Wahabis is very great”, Sir John Whyatt quipped in 1965.⁷¹

Ibn Maḥmūd’s Career

Ibn Maḥmūd acted as Qatar’s chief sharia judge under five different rulers: ʿAbdallāh b. Jāsim (r. 1913–49), ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh (r. 1949–60), Aḥmad b. ʿAlī (r. 1960–72), Khalīfa b. Ḥamad (r. 1972–95) and Ḥamad b. Khalīfa (r. 1995–2013). The qāḍī enjoyed privileged relations with the emirs and other members of the ruling family. They visited each other during the festivals and sat on each other’s majālis.⁷²

Ibn Maḥmūd officiated as a judge in widely changing conditions, from the economic crisis and widespread poverty of the 1940s and 1950s to the beginning of the oil boom in the 1970s and 1980s. According to a prevalent periodization of Qatari history, Ibn Maḥmūd started his tenure during the time of “traditional society” of the 1940s. He then worked through the “transition stage” from the 1950s to the 1970s, and in the post-independence age of “development and modernization“ which lasted until the mid-1990s.⁷³

Ibn Maḥmūd participated actively in Qatar’s jurisdictional battles alongside members of the ruling family, tribal sheikhs, merchants, new legal professionals, British officials, and Egyptian advisors. He won and lost a number of key battles.

Ibn Maḥmūd’s authority and prestige was perhaps greatest under Shaykh ʿAlī (r. 1949–60) and Shaykh Khalīfa b. Ḥamad (r. 1972–95). Shaykh ʿAlī was known for his piety, generosity, and commitment to religious scholarship. Ibn Maḥmūd was part of a narrow circle of religious scholars close to the ruler.

The chief judge also maintained close personal relations with Shaykh Khalīfa since the 1960s, when he helped the then deputy-ruler determine the authority of emerging state bodies and procedures.⁷⁴ Ibn Maḥmūd offered early political support to Shaykh Khalīfa after the 1972 deposition of Shaykh Aḥmad and may have been rewarded for his loyalty.⁷⁵ Although Shaykh Khalīfa established the civil court system in parallel to the sharia judiciary (a move resented by Ibn Maḥmūd and his peers), sharia scholars achieved a number of victories during Shaykh Khalīfa’s reign.

During Shaykh ʿAlī’s reign, Ibn Maḥmūd arguably started the process of separation of political power from legal authority, decades before judicial autonomy was enshrined in the constitutional documents of the 1970s.

Ibn Maḥmūd focused initially on expanding the work of the sharia courts and on developing the religious infrastructure of the sheikhdom, using his legal authority to clear any obstacles that might come in the way of the maintenance and expansion of mosques. Ibn Maḥmūd responded to requests from villages for purpose-built places of worship.⁸¹ He personally liaised with individuals who wished to finance the building of a mosque, setting up agreements in Qatar and acting as their agent in neighboring regions.⁸² He cleared legal obstacles confronting the maintenance and expansion of mosques. In 1958, he issued a fatwa prohibiting a woman from residing on an empty piece of land adjacent to a mosque which was used by worshippers for parking.⁸³ Later, in 1966, Ibn Maḥmūd used his connections in Mecca to facilitate the building of a mosque financed by a member of Qatar’s ruling family.⁸⁴ He remained in contact with his teacher and predecessor, Ibn Māniʿ, who asked him to manage cases involving guardianship and endowments.⁸⁵ A question in Ibn Maḥmūd’s fatwa collection regarding the performance of Friday prayer when living far from the allocated mosque highlights the inadequate network of worship sites in the Peninsula for much of the twentieth century.⁸⁶

The legal work of the sharia court revolved around family issues and property cases. In the late 1950s, the press reported a rise of cases in Qatar’s sharia courts linked to increasing disputes around property.⁸⁷ Soon after his arrival in Qatar, Ibn Maḥmūd acquired a reputation locally for sparing no effort in resolving often-intricate and long-standing property disputes. He developed a record of property ownership and transactions. Until the 1980s, Ibn Maḥmūd defended the rights of individual property owners against the developmental ambitions of the state.⁸⁸

In the 1950s, Qatar’s sharia courts were modest institutions operating with a meager budget. There was little investment in developing the infrastructure. Ibn Maḥmūd adjudicated cases in the premises of al-Madrasa al-Athariyya in al-Jisra, Doha. The school, which no longer functioned, had been converted into a majlis. The judge and the plaintiffs sat on the floor.⁸⁹

In 1954, Ibn Maḥmūd was one of only forty-two employees paid directly by the Qatari government.⁹⁰

The budget of the sharia courts was equivalent to that of the civil courts under British supervision despite the fact that the latter served the foreign population. The service requirements of sharia courts were also much more modest than those of the civil courts,⁹¹ perhaps because sharia judges relied primarily on confessions and oaths and refused to introduce new forms of evidence.⁹²

Ibn Maḥmūd relied on his personal networks to bring sharia judges to Qatar. Although he favored the Ḥanbalī school, Ibn Maḥmūd worked with Shāfiʿī and Mālikī judges.⁹³ The Shāfiʿī Shaykh Aḥmad b. Ḥajar al-Būṭāmī al-Binʿalī [Ibn Ḥajar] (1915–2002) accepted Ibn Maḥmūd’s invitation to officiate as a judge in 1958, when a second sharia court was established in Doha. Ibn Ḥajar moved from Raʾs al-Khayma to Doha, refusing an offer from the Saudi state, in order to work with Ibn Maḥmūd and help “spread the sunna” in a land where the sunna was “foreign” (gharība). He officiated as a judge in Doha until his retirement in 1991.⁹⁴ He was particularly popular among the Arab families who migrated to Qatar from Persia.

Ibn Maḥmūd appointed a deputy to deal with pressing legal cases in al-Khawr (north of Doha). The post was occupied by Shaykh Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbdallāh al-Anṣārī and later Ibrāhīm b. Yūsuf al-Sāda, a Qurʾānic teacher who also officiated as a judge.⁹⁵ He trained ʿAbd al-Qādir Muḥammad al-ʿAmmārī (1935–2021), who was officially appointed as a sharia judge in 1969 and served until the early 2000s. Other judges operating in the sharia courts under Ibn Maḥmūd’s supervision included Shaykh Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Jābir,⁹⁶ Badr Khalīfa al-Sayyid, and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ṣāliḥ al-Khulayfī (b. 1955).

One of Ibn Maḥmūd’s long-time assistants, Qāsim b. Muḥammad al-Nājim, remembers this period as one when proceedings were simple, litigants few, and the sharia court often idle.⁹⁷ Ibn Maḥmūd taught advanced classes of Arabic language and Islamic law to students from the Arabian Peninsula. During this decade, Ibn Maḥmūd became involved in a number of controversies related to his views on the performance of the hajj rituals.⁹⁸

In the 1950s, under Shaykh ʿAlī’s reign, Ibn Maḥmūd was put in charge of a committee for the administration of public endowments including mosques, schools, water facilities, and shelters for the poor. Ninety houses around Doha were thus provided to old people, widows, and others. The committee was tasked with the preservation of buildings, the collections and investment of rents, and the safeguarding of the rights of those entitled to them.⁹⁹

The management of the endowments was then transferred to the Presidency of Sharia Courts, established in 1958 under the leadership of Ibn Maḥmūd, at a time when the first state institutions were starting to emerge. The establishment of the Presidency was a landmark moment in the history of Islamic law in Qatar. As Dulaymī has argued, the Presidency was established in order to meet the demands of a changing society in the aftermath of oil, population growth, and modernization.¹⁰⁰

In 1960, under Shaykh Aḥmad b. ʿAlī, Ibn Maḥmūd established a Department of Endowments and Bequests (dāʾirat al-awqāf wa-l-tarakāt) within the Presidency of Sharia Courts. This department assumed responsibility over the construction and running of mosques and the maintenance and investment of orphan wealth.¹⁰¹ Ibn Maḥmūd guided the work of the department, issuing guidelines and adjudicating competing goals as they emerged in the course of the department’s work.

Ibn Maḥmūd personally oversaw the expansion and institutionalization of Islamic legal authority in Qatar. The work of sharia scholars at the time extended far beyond modern understandings of the concept of religion. Supported by Shaykh ʿAlī, Ibn Maḥmūd allocated pensions to widows, the elderly, and the destitute. He also helped to provide water to the inhabitants of the northern villages. Around 1957, people in the North complained to the sheikh of the unequal treatment they faced in comparison to the inhabitants of the capital in relation to water provision. Ibn Maḥmūd acted swiftly to provide those villages with potable water.¹⁰² The Presidency added the provision of free potable water to deprived villages in the Shamal area to its mandate.

These actions explain why the sharia judge is described as a precursor who established the premises of Qatar’s welfare system.¹⁰³ The weakness of the state placed an added onus on the sharia judiciary. According to Ibn Maḥmūd’s biography, “protection of the rights of the weak from exploitation by the powerful was particularly pronounced in the absence of state bodies”.¹⁰⁴ In a context where social life routinely transgressed political boundaries, religious scholars drew on their extensive informal networks to settle cases across borders. This was particularly pronounced in family law and commercial transactions. Ibn Maḥmūd coordinated efforts with qāḍīs in other localities to determine the number of relatives who could claim a share of a deceased person’s estate.¹⁰⁵

The ability of Ibn Maḥmūd to implement ḥadd punishments was constrained by British pressure and local kinship networks. In the early 1960s, the qāḍī sentenced an adulterous married woman to death by stoning and the guilty man to one hundred lashes (because he was not married). The woman’s sentence was not carried out, according to British officials, “partly because she was pregnant and partly because her relatives intrigued on her behalf”, but the man’s was.¹⁰⁶

In the second half of the twentieth century, the progressive integration of Qatar into a global political and economic order placed demands on its legal system and personnel which Ibn Maḥmūd alone could not (or was unwilling to) accommodate. In order to develop nationality laws, renegotiate deals with oil companies, and settle boundary disputes, the rulers relied on allied merchant families (the Darwīsh), Egyptian legal advisors (Ḥasan Kāmil), and the offices of international legal firms (Deloitte, Plender and Griffiths; Norman Roy Fox-Andrews, K. C.). These demands laid the basis for the establishment of Qatar’s legal codes and civil judiciary.

In the 1960s, Ibn Maḥmūd and his peers faced new challenges associated with the emergence of new legal professionals, procedures, and institutions. The legal reforms of the 1960s were the product of the Qatari oil industry’s integration into a regional labor market and a global capitalist economy. The reforms were also shaped by political developments, including the global wave of decolonization, the popularity of Arab nationalism in the region, and searing popular discontent with the empire in Britain.

A new era of legal formalism/ professionalism was inaugurated with the establishment of the Official Gazette (al-jarīda al-rasmiyya) in 1961.¹⁰⁷ The state passed a series of laws to regulate commercial life and establish modern financial institutions. These laws were justified in relation to the imperatives of national development. They provided the legal infrastructure necessary for the establishment of a national economic sector.¹⁰⁸

New civil courts emerged during this decade. A Labor Court was established in 1962 to adjudicate cases linked to the oil industry.¹⁰⁹ In 1969, a Court of Municipal Affairs came into being. The following year, a Criminal Court came into existence.

The evidentiary regime of Islamic courts was challenged by practices in the civil judiciary. Ibn Maḥmūd was asked to consider the evidentiary status of photos, audio recordings, and police dogs.¹¹⁰ The evidentiary value of photographs became politicized in the 1960s, in the context of struggles for jurisdictional authority over traffic cases involving Muslim subjects. The traditional inadmissibility of photographs in sharia courts, upheld by Ibn Maḥmūd, was depicted by British authorities as a sign of the superiority of “modern Traffic courts” and of the inability of sharia courts to rule over such cases.¹¹¹

Despite concerns over the subversive effects of Egyptian influence, Shaykh Aḥmad and Shaykh Khalīfa appear to have relied increasingly on Ḥasan Kāmil, the Egyptian legal advisor hired in 1960, and on Egyptian legal personnel to codify law and staff the new courts.¹¹²

Ḥasan Kāmil advised the ruler Aḥmad b. ʿAlī to establish a three-tiered structure for the payment of blood money (diya) according to social class.¹¹³ Ibn Maḥmūd argued forcefully – and successfully – that one cannot discriminate between the lives of believers. The mufti’s emphasis on equality regardless of class proved persuasive.¹¹⁴ The ruler rejected Ḥasan Kāmil’s proposal and maintained an equal amount of blood money for every male citizen.

Independence

Independence from the British accelerated the legal transformations started a decade earlier. Under the authority of the Deputy-Emir Shaykh Khalīfa, Qatar recognized Islamic law as the main source (al-maṣdar al-raʾīsī) of legislation, and the Ḥanbalī school as its official madhhab. A dual legal system was institutionalized: the Islamic courts continued to function under the authority of Ibn Maḥmūd and the Presidency of Sharia Courts. But a new system of civil or justice courts (maḥākim ʿadliyya) was established at the behest of the Egyptian legal advisors who worked closely with the ruling family. Islamic courts became part of a broader legal apparatus that included Senior and Junior Criminal Courts, the Civil Court, and the Appeal Court, as stipulated by Law 13 of 1971.¹¹⁵

The last three decades of the twentieth century are marked by jurisdictional struggles between these two courts. The boundaries of jurisdictional authority were not fully fixed. Although state laws and official publications seem to limit the authority of sharia courts to family law and Qurʾānic penalties, the publications by the Presidency of Sharia Courts highlight a more expansive role of Islamic legal institutions in civil and criminal law. According to their annual reports, the Sharia Courts adjudicated five types of cases until the 1990s: criminal cases (jināyāt), cases involving Qurʾānic penalties (ḥudūd), cases involving violation of rights (ḥuqūq), marital affairs (al-shuʾūn al-zawjiyya), and divorce (ṭalāq). Nathan Brown has highlighted the “gentlemen’s agreement” that existed between judges in this dual legal system: when one case was considered in one court, the other would refuse to address it.¹¹⁶ The fact that the Police could forward cases directly to the sharia court confirms that jurisdictional authority was underdetermined by Qatar’s constitutional and legal framework. The ruler refrained from intervening in the Sharia Court out of deference to Ibn Maḥmūd and to the constituency he represented.

Ibn Maḥmūd resented the establishment of civil courts, famously describing them as “the courts of the devil”.¹¹⁷ In the 1970s, Ibn Maḥmūd felt that the Prophetic hadith applied fully to his age: holding tight to one’s religion had become like holding a piece of ember in one’s hands.¹¹⁸ Innovation grew year by year.¹¹⁹ Sufi shrines spread and became normalized across the Muslim world.¹²⁰ In 1972, he nevertheless confidently announced that Qatar had successfully banned innovating practices such as the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday.¹²¹ He was critical of rulers paying lip-service to sharia in constitutional documents but failing to seriously fulfil their commitments to the sacred law.¹²²

The lack of clear jurisdictional boundaries underlies some of the petitions regarding the mandate of the sharia courts sent to Ibn Maḥmūd. As late as 1976, local journalists were unsure whether the sharia court was responsible for the execution of the rulings issued by the Islamic judges. Ibn Maḥmūd clarified that sharia courts are not responsible for this, although they do follow up with the relevant authorities.¹²³ Ibn Maḥmūd successfully campaigned for the establishment of an office for the implementation of the rulings of the sharia courts in 1978.¹²⁴

Civil courts, and the new legal personnel that staffed them, embodied new social scientific theories and legal philosophies which threatened the hegemony of Islamic law. Conceptually and procedurally, sharia judges nevertheless had to contend with the practices and methods of the civil court system. The Presidency of Sharia Courts developed into a three-tiered structure comprising a Supreme Sharia Court, headed by Ibn Maḥmūd, and primary and secondary sharia courts operated by judges recruited from across the Arabian Peninsula.¹²⁵

The Presidency of Sharia Courts started systematically recording its decisions, mirroring practices in the civil courts, and Ibn Maḥmūd was asked to consider the evidentiary status of photos, audio recordings, and police dogs.¹²⁶

Throughout his career Ibn Maḥmūd refused to concede any legitimacy to the parallel system of civil courts, contending that the Islamic courts were both sufficient and a mercy to the people (1976).¹²⁷ The qāḍī was fully confident in the deterrent power of ḥudūd punishments, ridiculing accusations of obsolescence levelled against the sharia and pointing to the prevalence of crime in carceral societies.¹²⁸ He repeatedly praised the accessibility and expediency of proceedings in the sharia courts. His positions earned praise among religious scholars across the Arabian Peninsula.¹²⁹

In the context of widespread calls for the state application of Islamic law in the Muslim world, Ibn Maḥmūd stressed the differences between positive laws and divine rules. The superiority of the sharia in his view rests on its direct influence on the hearts and souls of people. Man-made laws, by contrast, are built upon the wishes of whimsical human communities.¹³⁰ Ibn Maḥmūd’s work underscores the different legal philosophies at stake. In a case involving the consumption of alcohol, Ibn Maḥmūd asserted that imprisonment does not serve as adequate punishment because it invites complacency. Only flogging, 40 or 80 times according to the choice of precedent, can properly work as deterrent and atonement.¹³¹

In the 1970s, the budget of the Presidency of Sharia Courts covered a wide range of activities. Ibn Maḥmūd occupied the rank of a minister. He managed the salaries of judges and imams officiating in Qatar and was empowered to give pensions to widows and relatives of the Presidency’s employees when the circumstances required it (1974).¹³²

The legislation passed by the independent state sought to limit the authority of the Sharia Court in civil and criminal law. The Criminal Code passed in 1971 circumscribed the authority of sharia law to cases involving the Qurʾānic penalties: retaliation (qiṣāṣ), blood money (diya), and ḥudūd.¹³³ The turn towards codified law and civil courts was conceptualized as attempts to “keep up” with developments in the rest of the Arab world.¹³⁴

The administration of the property of insolvent debtors and the construction and management of cemeteries moved from the Presidency of Sharia Courts to state authorities in the 1970s.¹³⁵

The Presidency maintained its independent status throughout the 1980s. Law 8 of 1987 ensured that the Presidency continued to report directly to the Emir and run its activities with minimal oversight from other government bodies. Power within the Presidency continued to rest on its chairman, Ibn Maḥmūd, who administered, supervised, and represented the institution. Ibn Maḥmūd was the only person “authorized to give an opinion and to provide guidance in all matters related to Islamic Daʿwah, Shariah affairs and Shariah verdicts”.¹³⁶

The Presidency was increasingly drawn into processes of modern state governance. In 1984, the Presidency was called upon to participate in the management of migration flows.¹³⁷ Five years later, it became involved in the regulation of cross-national marriages.¹³⁸

In the 1980s, when the waves of the so-called Islamic Revival (al-ṣaḥwa al-islāmiyya) were blowing throughout the Arabian Peninsula, the Presidency campaigned actively for the Islamization of Qatari society.¹³⁹ The dissemination of the Islamic call (al-daʿwa al-islāmiyya) became a prominent function of the institution.¹⁴⁰ Lax religious practice, failure to pray assiduously, and alcohol consumption became common targets of Ibn Mahmud’s Friday sermons and fatwas. The 1979 siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Juhaymān al-ʿUtaybī led Ibn Maḥmūd to proclaim one of his most famous and controversial opinions, that no Mahdi will come at the end of times.¹⁴¹

In the early 1980s, the Presidency of Sharia Courts spearheaded the establishment of Qatar’s first Islamic Bank.¹⁴² Under the leadership of the Āl Maḥmūd family, the Presidency became the bank’s main shareholder upon its foundation in 1982. One of Ibn Maḥmūd’s sons, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, continues to sit in the board of directors today.

Ibn Maḥmūd zealously protected the religious endowments of Shaykh Jāsim against attempts by members of the ruling family to sell. Judging from the formulation of the fatwa, his views on the matter were actively sought by the Emir.¹⁴³

Oil wealth allowed Qatar to play a role in the international circuits of Islamic scholarship. Renowned Islamic thinkers, including many leading Islamists, were invited to give lectures in the emirate. Ibn Maḥmūd hosted a major international conference on the Prophetic Sunna in 1979. International conferences of this sort became a regular feature of Qatar’s religious scene.

In the 1980s, Ibn Maḥmūd integrated the imperatives of “the national economy” (al-iqtiṣād al-waṭanī) into his legal thought. A series of queries from Aḥmad Ḥasan Bilāl of Qatar’s General Foundation for Petroleum (subsequently renamed Qatar Petroleum) in 1986 shows the extent to which Ibn Maḥmūd embraced the developmental goals of the Qatari state and was willing to accommodate the demands of the management in the name of productivity. For Ibn Maḥmūd, the performance of communal prayer is generally seen as a necessary condition for proper religious practice. Those who fail to accomplish the daily prayers in congregation are considered hypocrites.¹⁴⁴ Given this principled position, his fatwas regarding praying in the off-field oil rigs seem quite remarkable. Workers in oil fields are considered travelers. Drilling operations do not need to stop during Friday prayer if doing so constitutes a health hazard. They can pray at any time and in any space that may be available.¹⁴⁵

During Ibn Maḥmūd’s life, successive Qatari emirs refrained from intervening in the affairs of the Presidency. He established a robust sharia judiciary that in the late 1990s was still seen as the only likely limitation to executive power in Qatar.¹⁴⁶ It was only in Ibn Maḥmūd’s final years, when the chief qāḍī became increasingly frail, that the Presidency was fully incorporated into the Qatari state apparatus. Poor health and old age forced Ibn Maḥmūd to retire.¹⁴⁷ In 1993, the Ministry of Religious Affairs was established by decree of Shaykh Ḥamad b. Khalīfa, then Deputy Emir.¹⁴⁸

Ibn Maḥmūd passed away in 1997 after prolonged illness, including three bed-ridden years. He is buried in Doha. His death, prefigured in visions of family members and close associates, was seen in religious circles as another sign of the coming of Judgement Day.¹⁴⁹ Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī led the funeral prayers in Doha. A funeral prayer was also offered in Mecca’s Holy Mosque.

The Āl Maḥmūd family continues to be part of Qatar’s high society. Several of Ibn Maḥmūd’s offspring have occupied ministerial positions. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān replaced his father at the helm of the sharia courts; Aḥmad became Minister of Foreign Affairs; Suʿūd was a senior figure in the Interior Ministry; Muḥammad a judge in the sharia courts; and Fayṣal, a director in the Ministry of Awqāf. ʿAlī, Ḥasan, and Khālid occupied diplomatic posts ranging from ambassador to secretary in Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Kingdom.¹⁵⁰ The range of positions occupied by Ibn Maḥmūd’s sons has been inscribed in a national frame and depicted as proof of Ibn Maḥmūd’s enduring legacy. As ʿUthmān al-Ṣāliḥ put it, while Ibn Maḥmūd was a notable religious scholar in Qatar, his sons have made patriotic contributions to the nation, [religious] science, literature, military, security, and economy.¹⁵¹

Critique of Custom

The Presidency extended the availability of sharia courts to Qatar’s population. These courts competed with, and gradually replaced, tribal councils as the citizenry’s privileged mode of dispute resolution. Tribal justice in the Arabian Peninsula involved practices such as slaughtering an animal and inviting the wronged party to the feast, and striking a culprit on the head until he bleeds (a practice known as janbiyya).¹⁵² Other customary rules included marrying young girls to their first-degree cousins and letting the latter dissolve the former’s marriage if they wished to marry them themselves. In some places, the rights of the first degree cousin (ibn ʿamm) included killing a girl who refuses to marry him without being liable to pay blood money.¹⁵³

Across the Arabian Peninsula, Islamic legal institutions were empowered in the twentieth century by rulers who sought to depoliticize tribalism. The policies enacted by the rulers frequently invoked and relied upon the resources of the Islamic tradition for social cohesion.¹⁵⁴ The struggle between Islamic law and tribal modes of dispute resolution was a central feature of this process in Saudi Arabia as well as in Qatar. The Saudi grand muftis Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm (1890–1969) and Ibn Bāz (1910–99), with whom Ibn Maḥmūd entertained close personal relations, denounced tribal arbitration not in conformity with sharia as a serious violation which may amount to heresy.¹⁵⁵ Twentieth-century Saudi scholars condemned tribal affiliation as a form of pre-Islamic ʿaṣabiyya, and opposed it to the true Islamic concepts of walāʾ and barāʾ (loyalty and disavowal).¹⁵⁶

In the early 1920s, a young Ibn Maḥmūd had worked towards the Islamization of the newly settled Bedouin population in Central Arabia. Ibn Maḥmūd moved from al-Ḥūṭa to al-Rīn to continue studying with his teacher, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Muḥammad al-Shithrī, when the latter was appointed judge there. During his stay, Ibn Maḥmūd took it upon himself to teach the basics of religion to the nomadic Bedouins who had settled in the region in the mid-1910s. This included the recitation of the fātiḥa, prayer guidelines, and rules of ablution, together with principles of creed and fiqh.¹⁵⁷

Traces of the ways in which the expansion of Qatar’s sharia judiciary undermined tribal solidarities and displaced tribal modes of dispute resolution are apparent in a 1965 question submitted to Ibn Maḥmūd by the students of the newly established Religious Institute (al-Maʿhad al-Dīnī). The question pertained to social inequality within a kinship group, and was related to the powers and socially acceptable usages of the sharia court in a changing Qatari society:

“Is the poor relative entitled to complain about a rich brother or relative in the courtroom, and would the court intervene in such matters?”, the students asked.

Ibn Maḥmūd said yes to both, highlighting the role of the sharia court in commanding good and forbidding evil and pointing the students to the existence of fiqh discussions on family support (bāb nafaqat al-aqārib).¹⁵⁸

Tribal practices such as consanguineous marriages between cousins living under the same roof became more strictly subject to sharia norms, as Muslim judges insisted on the fulfilment of the relevant legal conditions, including the payment of a dowry.¹⁵⁹ In a 1965 fatwa, Ibn Maḥmūd insisted on the inheritance rights of the female relatives of a deceased man in the land of the Banī Tamīm against the undocumented claims of the Banī Laḥyān tribe.¹⁶⁰ The same year, Ibn Maḥmūd allowed young men to meet their prospective brides, breaking with the tribal custom which prevented future spouses from seeing each other before the wedding.¹⁶¹ Ibn Maḥmūd broke with customary practice (and Ibn Ḥanbal’s opinion) by insisting on the mature virgin woman’s consent to marriage.¹⁶² In a 1987 response, the mufti deemed the stipulation in a will of an annual animal sacrifice for the deceased an invalid clause and urged the son to give the money to the poor instead.¹⁶³ These fatwas appear to confirm that Islamic family law was not systematically applied by the tribes which roamed the Peninsula. A wide range of customary practices were castigated by Qatar’s new sharia scholars as superstitions and innovations. These include the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday,¹⁶⁴ animal sacrifice for the deceased,¹⁶⁵ the use of amulets to protect against jealousy,¹⁶⁶ the wearing of the āyat al-kursī in a gold chain around the neck,¹⁶⁷ and the belief that marrying or travelling during the month of Ṣafar or on Wednesday is inauspicious.¹⁶⁸ Ibn Maḥmūd expressed dissatisfaction with popular practices such as oaths and vows.¹⁶⁹ Ibn Maḥmūd relied on the authority of Islamic law to speedily reconcile feuding tribes in the north.¹⁷⁰ It is also likely that the independence and pragmatism of Qatar’s tribal world also shaped the approach of Ibn Maḥmūd and his colleagues, which was considerably more flexible than the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology prevailing in Saudi Arabia.¹⁷¹

Commercial Expansion

Ibn Maḥmūd and his colleagues at the Presidency of Sharia Courts not only expanded the reach of Islamic courts in the country. They also extended the scope of the sharia beyond its traditional confines, contributing to the marginalization of specialized commercial courts and other customary legal forums. If customary practice or sovereign decision had previously governed matters not traditionally addressed by sharia scholars,¹⁷² Ibn Maḥmūd and his peers set out to remedy or reduce this gap by offering new interpretations of Islamic law which extended the scope of the sacred law to areas beyond ritual practice and personal status. These interpretations then served to shape state laws and guide the work of governmental bodies. Inspired by Islamic reformist ideas, Qatar’s religious scholars developed norms to regulate emerging issues, ranging from modern medical practices and property regimes to new financial institutions.

Before the establishment of modern state institutions, the legal regulation of commercial activity rested primarily on customary courts called Sālifa and Majlis al-Tijāra.¹⁷³ These commercial courts became obsolete in the twentieth century, as sovereign states institutions gradually acquired the capacity to organize and control the legal sphere. British observers assumed that “the inherent immutability of the Sharīa militates against its suitability in the system of international commerce which man has created”.¹⁷⁴ Although some British imperial reformers recognized that the sharia could be reformed “from within”, they preferred to bank on sharia’s “inherent tendency to decay”. British authorities encouraged “reform from without” through civil courts and codified laws.¹⁷⁵ In matters of commercial law, the Egyptian legal adviser hired and empowered by the ruler, Ḥasan Kāmil, concurred.

Nevertheless, the marginalization of the traditional commercial legal forums in the course of the twentieth century helped to bolster the authority of Islamic law in the region. Ibn Maḥmūd and his peers emerged as privileged interlocutors of the emerging state institutions as the latter sought to navigate new economic practices.

In 1964, the secretary of Qatar’s Chamber of Commerce reached out to Ibn Maḥmūd with a question about the losses of a group of merchants engaged in shipping. Strong winds had forced the crew to throw some of the merchandise overboard, but not all merchants were equally affected. The Chamber of Commerce wanted to know who was responsible for the losses, and whether all partners should bear a share. The mufti condemned the greediness of the merchants who overloaded the boat and found that the losses did not have to be shared.¹⁷⁶

Over the following decades, sharia scholars helped financial institutions develop procedures in line with Islamic values. In the 1970s, Ibn Maḥmūd seems to have played a role in the formulation of Qatar’s economic policy. In 1971, Ibn Maḥmūd outlined Islamic criteria for determining majority in response to a question from the manager of Eastern Limited Bank in Doha.¹⁸¹ A 1974 letter from the Minister of Economy and Trade, Nāṣir b. Khālid Āl Thānī, appears to offer a positive response to Ibn Mahmud’s request to allow merchants to import cement. According to the Minister, 2 million sacks will arrive shortly in Qatar in order to offset the on-going crisis. The cement will be sold at a subsidized price by the government to facilitate people’s construction projects.¹⁸² The exchange highlights how the chief qāḍī mediated between the ruling family and the merchant class.

In 1983, Ibn Maḥmūd allowed working in a bank and deemed its salaries lawful.¹⁸³ In 1985, he helped Qatar Insurance Company (Sharikat Qaṭar lil-Taʾmīn) determine whether the life insurance of a Muslim should differ from that of a non-Muslim.¹⁸⁴ The Presidency of Sharia Courts thus extended the scope of the sharia in Qatar to include commercial and financial transactions.

Conclusion

The twentieth-century career of Islamic law in Qatar (and in other Gulf states) can be told in different ways. Existing accounts of modern legal reform in the Gulf tend to convey only one part of the story. These accounts focus on jurisdictional politics and tell a teleological story of legal secularization. The story is often articulated around the theme of “dualism”, with the British-led introduction of civil courts (maḥākim ʿadliyya) competing with and ultimately replacing the jurisdictional authority of the sharia.¹⁸⁵ These accounts are based primarily on British sources and seem to adopt largely the perspective of the “modernizing reformers” (British agents, Egyptian advisors, and their allies in the Gulf). The emergence of new archives connected to the qāḍīs and muftis who oversaw the transition from protectorate to state helps us complicate this story.

The career of Ibn Maḥmūd shows how Islamic authority was integral to the processes of modern state formation in Qatar. The Presidency of Sharia Courts was established in 1958, when the first modern state institutions were also emerging. These courts functioned as tools for state-building as rulings families drew on Islam to buttress their legitimacy and fend off the challenge of nationalist and dissident movements. The work of the Najdi scholar and his colleagues within the Presidency of Sharia Courts suggests that the scope of sharia law expanded in the course of the twentieth century. As this article has demonstrated, sharia scholars and institutions reinforced the rule of law, contributed to minimizing the role of customary norms in society, replaced alternative modes of dispute resolution, and helped establish an autonomous legal sphere separate from political power. Although British officials and sharia judges rarely collaborated, the British legal order in Eastern Arabia ultimately served to authorize the work of Islamic legal scholars by problematizing customary law and uncodified practices, by insisting on the necessary separation between legal and political authority, and by promoting “the rule of law”.

During Ibn Maḥmūd’s tenure, the Presidency of Sharia Courts successfully resisted a full-fledged incorporation into the bureaucratic structures of the modern Qatari state. Enabled by the oil boom and supported by mass education, the Presidency administered a vibrant network of mosques, sharia courts, endowments, and religious institutions until the mid-1990s. Its subsequent dismantling seems to have less to do with the sharia courts’ lack of efficiency or suitability for a modernizing state, than with the shifting strategies of the Qatari ruling family under Shaykh Ḥamad b. Khalīfa. After its incorporation into the newly established Ministry of Religious Affairs in 1993, the adoption of a unified court system in 2003, and the codification of family law in 2006, Qatar’s sharia scholars lost legal authority. But the fact that there have been no serious calls for “the application of sharia” in Qatar, as there have been elsewhere, suggests that the new generations of sharia scholars have been successful in transforming themselves from legal actors into society’s moral guardians.