Brill Visions of Justice: Shara and Cultural Change in Russian Central Asia (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 8 Uralic & Central Asia): 24

In Visions of Justice Paolo Sartori surveys the role of Russian colonialism in affecting the way in which Muslims in Central Asia formulated their convictions about right and wrong and became exposed to different notions of morality. Review Visions of Justice is a remarkable depiction of Islamic justice among Central Asian Muslims under Tsarist rule. Paolo Sartori s book tells a story that everyone interested in Islamic legal institutions and practice should hear. This meticulously researched, eloquently narrated account will generate an impact beyond the field of Central Asian studies. --Bogac A. Ergene, The University of Vermont Based upon a wide range of legal sources written in Russian, Arabic, Persian, and Chaghatay, Visions of Justice invites readers to understand law as it was experienced by Muslims in Central Asia under tsarist rule and to explore the complex relationship between law and colonialism. This is an invitation that scholars of Islamic law will want to accept --David S. Powers, Cornell University Paolo Sartori s Visions of Justice is a brilliant and pathbreaking study of Tsarist-era Central Asia, and should launch a fundamental rethinking of Central Asian history from the late 18th to 21st centuries. Focused on the encounter of Russian and local legal institutions and procedures during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the book reveals the complex adaptations and manipulations, by Central Asians, of the expanded menu of legal options that would prove to be one of the most subtly transformative aspects of Russian rule. --Devin DeWeese, Indiana University About the Author Paolo Sartori, Ph.D. (2006), is Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He specializes in the history of Islamic Central Asia (17th-20th centuries), law, imperial history and colonialism. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (Brill).