Tribal judicial norms – A neglected intangible heritage of the Arab World

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Center for Islamic Theology, Münster University, Germany

Abstract

Tribal judicial norms – A neglected intangible heritage of the Arab World

Summary

In the Arab world, the role of tribal customs and norms as regional cultural components and as a cultural heritage identity for the region has been neglected yet. This neglect is due to several factors, including colonial policies in the region prior to the emergence of the nation-state and the stability of tribal culture in the public imagination as a reactionary legacy and primitive lifestyle inadequate for the modern nation-state. That was thought of as a scientific fact.
However, late anthropological studies, particularly in the last twenty years, provided an opportunity to reread the legacy of tribal courts and evaluate it through theories of legal and post-colonial pluralism. These studies were not limited to research in the Arab world but extended to the tribal regions of North Africa, as in the studies of Bertram Turner or Central Asia, as is the case with Judith Bayer or in the Arab region, as in the studies of Frank Stewart, Sebastian Maisel, and Ahmed M. F. Abd-Elsalam. Their research in these regions confirmed the existence of an elaborate institutional structure for the judicial system of the Arab tribes that is inconsistent with its description of primitive or naive, or even with its description as a common legal approach.
The presented paper deals with an illustration of the main features of the tribal justice system and the importance of recognizing and preserving the heritage of tribal justice as one of the constituent parts of the intangible heritage of the Arab world.
 

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References

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