Inheritance in the Archive

Abstract Law has a strange way of dealing with the everyday. To substantiate its authority, law renders the unclear clear, makes the fuzzy precise, and turns the ordinary into the juridical. It erases context and contingency, and it privileges theory over practice. These patterns are no less prevalent in the domain of Islamic law, where prolific writings on theory have led some scholars to question the existence of practice. Intervening in the theory/practice debate, this article uses archival records from the dar-ul-ifta (fatwa-granting institute) of the Sadarat-ul-‘Aliya (Noble Secretariat) of the princely state of Hyderabad from the middle of the twentieth century to show how jurists called on legal theory to address questions of the everyday. The institute's files, showing the debates, deliberations, and investigations its employees pursued, provide evidence that jurists called upon different legal resources to answer the questions they received. The library they consulted contained classical works of fiqh (jurisprudence) but also included other references from state laws to company policies to reflections on custom and context. By extending the scope of their investigations, jurists brought theory into conversation with the everyday and demonstrated how legal practice generated new approaches to theory.