The "New Mi’yar" of al-Mahdi al-Wazzani: Local Interpretation of Family Life in Late Nineteenth-Century Fez

Thesis Type:

Abstract:

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'yar (al-Mi'yar al-jadid, or the New Standard Measure). This dissertation investigates the New Mi'yar as a mufti'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'yar provides the arena for exploring al-Wazzani'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's New Mi'yar as an embodiment of a specific society as seen through the eyes of one mufti.

Taken together, chapters one and two present a portrait of al-Mahdi al-Wazzani and his New Mi'yar. Chapter one is a detailed account of al-Wazzani's biography. In chapter two, I investigate the New Mi'yar —that is, the historical circumstances of its production, and its nature and characteristics. Chapters three and four focus on al-Wazzani'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's interpretation of women's relationships to their maintenance. These chapters offer a sense of al-Wazzani'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'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.

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