Islamic Law of the Sea

‘… the book provides a comprehensive account of the Islamic legal approach to the law of the sea from a historical perspective that aptly reveals a different civilizational narrative existing beyond Eurocentric scholarship in international law. Hence, this book is likely to become classic reading on the subject of the law of the sea and international law.’ Punsara Amarasinghe, Ilahiyat Studies‘Over the past two decades, Hassan Khalilieh has almost single-handedly revolutionized our knowledge of the Islamic contributions to the law of the sea. In this work, he embarks on what is effectively a genealogical study that shows how the Dutch Grotius and later European jurists have largely replicated, without acknowledgement, the Islamic practices and doctrines pertaining to free navigation in response to the earlier Spanish and Portuguese violent domination of the Indian Ocean. Khalilieh’s meticulous and impressive work is a must-read, not only for those who are interested in Maritime law and trade, but also for historians and analysts of the rise of modernity at large, where the allegedly new freedom of navigation, central to the modern project, was to be transformed in due course into yet another tool in the unprecedented forms of European colonialism.’ Wael Hallaq, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University‘This is an extraordinarily wide-ranging account not of Islamic maritime law (on which Khalilieh has already established himself as a leading expert) but of the Islamic law of the sea, well before Grotius wrote his tract on the Free Sea; the book ranges as far east as Melaka and China and as far west as the Mediterranean - a tour de force.’ David Abulafia, Emeritus Professor of Mediterranean History, University of Cambridge‘This is a masterful exposition of Islamic Law of the Sea, which makes an important contribution to the discourse on the universal application of modern International Law of the Sea generally. Highly recommended.’ Mashood A. Baderin, Professor of Laws, SOAS University of London‘This slim but richly detailed analysis of the customary and formal Islamic law of the sea fills a major gap in the literature.’ D. M. Varisco, Bibliotheca Orientalis

Hassan S. Khalilieh is a senior lecturer in the departments of Maritime Civilizations and Multidisciplinary Studies and a senior research fellow in the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa, Israel. His publications include Islamic Maritime Law: An Introduction (1998) and Admiralty and Maritime Laws in the Mediterranean Sea (ca.800–1050): The Kitāb Akriyat al-Sufun and the Nomos Rhodion Nautikos (2006).