@mastersthesis {1298682,
	title = {The "New Mi{\textquoteright}yar" of al-Mahdi al-Wazzani: Local Interpretation of Family Life in Late Nineteenth-Century Fez},
	year = {2007},
	type = {PhD dissertation},
	abstract = {<p>In 1910, al-Mahdi al-Wazzani, a distinguished Maliki mufti of Fez, published an extensive compilation of Maliki fatwas and named it the New Mi{\textquoteright}yar (al-Mi{\textquoteright}yar al-jadid, or the New Standard Measure). This dissertation investigates the New Mi{\textquoteright}yar as a mufti{\textquoteright}s interpretation of his society. Al-Wazzani thought with his fatwas, and I unpack the way he discursively constructed his world and conveyed it in his fatwa compilation. The family serves as a unit of analysis and a conceptual framework, and the New Mi{\textquoteright}yar provides the arena for exploring al-Wazzani{\textquoteright}s interpretation of the Fasi family. This study, informed by discourse analysis and cultural anthropology, contributes another strategy for reading fatwa literature by offering a methodology for the investigation of fatwas as cultural texts. My point of departure is that the juridical opinion, even in its most specialized version, is a cultural phenomenon that takes place within a certain human culture and projects its internal logic. With this in mind, I approach al-Wazzani{\textquoteright}s New Mi{\textquoteright}yar as an embodiment of a specific society as seen through the eyes of one mufti.</p><p>Taken together, chapters one and two present a portrait of al-Mahdi al-Wazzani and his New Mi{\textquoteright}yar. Chapter one is a detailed account of al-Wazzani{\textquoteright}s biography. In chapter two, I investigate the New Mi{\textquoteright}yar {\textemdash}that is, the historical circumstances of its production, and its nature and characteristics. Chapters three and four focus on al-Wazzani{\textquoteright}s juristic interpretation of the family in late nineteenth-century Fez. These chapters are particularly concerned with the relationship between property and family. Chapter three is an exploration of the way al-Wazzani conceptualized the association between religious endowments and the family. Chapter four examines al-Wazzani{\textquoteright}s interpretation of women{\textquoteright}s relationships to their maintenance. These chapters offer a sense of al-Wazzani{\textquoteright}s understanding of the patriarchal-patrilineal familial order. I argue that al-Wazzani understood the Fasi family as a social unit anchored in patrilineal ideology of kinship and patriarchal ideals and norms as expressed in shari{\textquoteright}a law. However, this family form as constructed by al-Wazzani was a highly complicated unit, marked by contradictions and conflicts. Above all it was a dynamic set of relationships between individuals and was the product of negotiation and construction.</p>},
	url = {http://search.proquest.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/docview/304847282?accountid=11311},
	author = {Etty Terem}
}
