No description available.

No description available.

Modern scholars are deeply divided over the extent to which early Byzantine provinces such as Egypt adopted imperial Roman law. This thesis undertook a diachronic study of the published debt acknowledgements from Egypt and Nessana for the fifth through seventh centuries CE to examine the degree of adoption of imperial legal changes. The debt acknowledgements are one of the largest sets of papyri documents for this period, consisting of 283 Greek and fifty-seven Coptic documents. Having created a database of these documents, in their original Greek or Coptic plus an English translation and information from the major commentaries, I had an unparalleled opportunity to analyse change, both legal and socio-economic. The research shows that while many legal changes, including the requirement for regnal dating and changes in the liability of co-debtors, were generally adopted, there was resistance to other changes. For example, the interest rate reduction ordered by Justinian I in 528 was clearly disseminated because some documents reflect the reduction. Most people, however, continued to charge the earlier higher rates. Furthermore, some sectors of the population appear to have struggled with the imperial changes. Model formats for a simplified Greek debt acknowledgement and a very similar Coptic debt acknowledgement were developed and disseminated in the sixth century. These simplified formats did not use regnal dating or many of the other customary clauses of the formal Greek debt acknowledgment. The early development of these simplified formats, together with evidence of the privatisation and localisation of many imperial functions, including dispute resolution, support the view that the later sixth century experienced an unravelling of ties with the Roman Empire. The catastrophic seventh century, with its civil wars and Persian and Arab invasions, resulted in a shift in language from Greek to Coptic for personal legal documents. The disruption of the seventh century, however, only accelerated and finalised a process of change that was already well established in the sixth century.

This thesis is a study on the response of the British and the French to Muhammad 'Ali's policies. Muhammad 'Ali success in transforming Egypt into a powerful state was aimed at developing Egypt's commercial network and expanding her territorial boundary. The gains that Muhammad 'Ali achieved from the commerce and territorial conquest, however, was at the expense of what England had enjoyed before Muhammad 'Ali rose to power. In order to regain what had been lost to Muhammad 'Ali England undertook a strong response consisting of economic, military and diplomatic pressure which led to the collapse of Muhammad 'Alis power. France, on the other hand, had a positive reaction and gave full support to Muhammad 'Alis expansionist policy. Nevertheless, France's final act was to abandon policy of support for Muhammad 'Ali as a result of European politics when a new French government sought rapprochement with England. Muhammad 'Ali became a cost of rapprochement.

The autonomy of the shari` a courts in Ottoman-Egypt during the 16th and 17th centuries, is the subject of this thesis. Specifically, it pursues the question of formalization (the incorporation of courts and their functionaries into the civil apparatus of the state) and, relatedly, the legal innovations which accompanied this policy (the merger of siyasa to shari `a and the development of the qanun ), gauging the implications of both for the judiciaries independence from the state. With regards to procedural law, it finds the courts to be the autonomous domain of its practitioners, muftis and qadis, while concluding that formalization renders the efficacy of the courts dependent on the fortunes of the state. With respect to the two innovations described above, it finds that in the contemplative realm of law, the manipulations of the state spurred certain legal trends without affording the state a place in the domain of law.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Not available

Not available / text