From Fıkıh to Law: The 1911 İstibdâl Law and the Ottoman Reconfiguration of Islamic Legal Authority

Abstract In the late Ottoman Empire, the reform of the vakıf institution emerged as a significant site of legal, political, and epistemological change. Specifically, the practice of istibdâl (the exchange of vakıf properties) stands out as a highly illustrative mechanism through which classical Islamic concepts were selectively operationalized and contextualized within the framework of the modernizing state. In this period, Ottoman Parliament facilitated the development of robust legal ( kânûnî ) arguments, both in favor of and against the classical fıkhî perspective, laying the groundwork for restructuring the vakıf system. The government subsequently enacted legislation to enable the conversion of vakıf s into cash that eliminated the necessity for a şer’î judicial process. The resulting legal framework, which combined kânûn and fıkıh into a unified structure, introduced a new Islamic legal methodology ( uṣūl ). In this context, the new uṣūl writers placed the sultan at the top of the legal order, portraying him as the main authority for the imposition of legal obligations. By tracing the transformation of istibdâl from a procedure controlled by judges to a codified policy administered by Ottoman Parliament and government, I explore how fıkıh was politically negotiated and subtly reinvented under the gaze of the modern state, a process I refer to as the emergence of a new fıkıh era .