ABSTRACT
The Israeli shari‘a court in West Jerusalem is but one institution within a system of shari‘a courts in Israel, shaped by its predecessors, the Ottoman and the Mandate legal systems (Layish 1965: 50, Eisenman 1977: 328–9, Naveh 1997: 58). To better understand the operation of this contemporary shari‘a court, we must first examine the rich social and legal history that has shaped it. This chapter begins with a review of the shari‘a court system in the late Ottoman period, followed by a description of the evolution of this system in Mandate Palestine. It then proceeds to examine the establishment of the shari‘a court system under Israeli rule.
