Cows and the sharia [sharīʿah] in the Abéché Customary Court (Eastern Chad) - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société Accéder directement au contenu
Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2017

Cows and the sharia [sharīʿah] in the Abéché Customary Court (Eastern Chad)

Résumé

The records of the sharīʿah court in Abéché in eastern Chad span the twentieth century. While the legal notion of property used by the court is Islamic and thus not seen to be problematic, the content of the property relations is fluid, and difficult to fix over time. In an inherently mobile society, and one that has long been open to trans-regional exchange, this is done through reliance on guarantors and witnesses. Property thus emerges as an inherently relational and unstable category; and while in Western legal systems, legal philosophers agonise about the individual ‘state of mind’ that defines property transactions, these questions are here a matter of public opinion. Suretyship and the preponderance of property as a precondition for moral personhood might hide a nuanced approach to the notion of ‘authority’, giving us insights into the peculiar functioning of the Chadian state (and similar political formations elsewhere).
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Dates et versions

halshs-03815780 , version 1 (14-10-2022)

Identifiants

Citer

Judith Scheele. Cows and the sharia [sharīʿah] in the Abéché Customary Court (Eastern Chad). Legalism: property and ownership, 1, Oxford University Press, 2017, Legalism, 9780198813415. ⟨10.1093/oso/9780198813415.003.0002⟩. ⟨halshs-03815780⟩
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