Further reading: Francesco Gabrieli, Arab Historians of
the Crusades (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984); P. M. Holt, The Age of the Crusades: The Near East
from the Eleventh Century to 1517 (New York: Longman,
1986); Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes.
Translated by Jon Rothschild (London: Al Saqi Books,
1984). Reprint, Cairo, Egypt: The American University
in Cairo Press, 1990); Kenneth Setton, ed., A History of
the Crusades. Vols. 1–6 (Madison: University of Wiscon-
sin Press, 1969).
customary law (Arabic: ada, urf; also adat)
Customary law in Islam consists of traditional
customs and practices on the local level that are
not directly based on the qUran and hadith but
that still have legal weight. Before the modern era,
it was largely unwritten and uncodified. Custom-
ary law pertains to matters of marriage, divorce,
inheritance, murder, honor crimes, the status of
Women, and land tenure.
Historically, when a town, country, or region
fell under Muslim rule, the unwritten local laws
and customs were never completely swept away
and replaced by those of the sharia, or Islamic law.
Rather, they coexisted alongside Islamic law, or
they were assimilated and continued to be honored
in the new Islamicate society. Historians of Islamic
law have noted that local traditions were not as a
rule formally recognized as one of the sources of
law (Quran, sUnna, ijmaa [consensus], and qiyas
[analogy]), but Muslim jurists did discuss them
and legitimate them as sunna or ijmaa. On the
other hand, a custom or practice that conserva-
tive ulama determined to be blatantly un-Islamic
could be condemned as an illegal bidaa (innova-
tion). Customary law was also invoked in advisory
opinions, or fatwas. By such means, local custom
contributed to the formation of the major Islamic
legal traditions. Thus, the maliki legal school
embodied the local customs of Medina, while the
hanaFi legal school embodied those of southern
Iraq, a much more cosmopolitan region than the
Arabian Peninsula. Western scholars, moreover,
have maintained that both the Quran and the
sunna embody customary laws present in the Hijaz
prior to the appearance of Islam. If their theory
is correct, therefore, what eventually became the
universal sharia originated in the local customary
law of western Arabia and was later continuously
shaped by the indigenous legal traditions of the
wider Middle East and beyond. Muslims of conser-
vative outlook may refute this theory by claiming
that Islamic law is based more on revelation from
God, but they must still account for the differences
between the Islamic legal schools and the variety
of local customs that have acquired legal legiti-
macy in different parts of the Muslim world.
In the Middle East and perhaps even more so
in Africa and Asia, customary law has coexisted
with religious law. Before the modern era, it may
even have surpassed it on the level of the locality,
especially among tribal populations and settled
communities living in remote areas. During the
19th and 20th centuries, Dutch colonial officials
attempted to use customary law (adat) as a way
to weaken the authority of Muslim jurists and
the influence of the sharia in Indonesia. Modern
Islamic reform movements and Islamic revivalism
do not yet appear to have directed their ener-
gies against customary law in most countries,
however. They are more directed against colonial
and postcolonial Western laws and institutions.
Customary law appears to still be widely valued as
part of the indigenous cultural heritage.
See also adUltery; aUthority; crime and pUn-
ishment; FatWa; fiqh.Further reading: Noel James Coulson, “Muslim Cus-
tom and Case Law.” In Islamic Law and Legal Theory,
edited by Ian Edge, 259—270 (New York: New York
University Press, 1996); Wazir Jahan Karim, Women and
Culture: Between Malay Adat and Islam (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1992); Gideon Libson, “On the Devel-
opment of Custom as a Source of Law in Islamic Law.”
Islamic Law and Society 4, no. 2 (1997): 131–155.K 176 customary law