Law, Dynasty, and Islam in Arab Monarchies, 1860s-1930s

This talk focuses on the legal codification of dynasties in Arab monarchies between the 1860s and 1930s. In a sweeping survey, it compares how the succession order and the members of the ruling family were defined in laws, decrees, and constitutions in the new national kingdoms of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia with comparisons to older monarchies, equally impacted by European imperialism, such as Morocco and Oman. The argument I would advance is that constitutionalism prompted dynastic codification which rulers hastened to achieve before and within the writing of basic laws. This feature also meant that certain re-invented Islamic principles of power, such as the preference for male and sane Muslim rulers, were also codified. Thus the new and old dynasties themselves embodied a fictional core of Muslim constitutionalism in the early twentieth century.