Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

This chapter explores the general characteristics of, and the role of law among, early Muslim communities of the Indian Ocean world in the seventh to the tenth centuries, a period usually understood as the formative and classical period of Islamic law. After dividing the oceanic littoral into five major zones on the basis of early Islamic settlements and identifying five functional groups of Muslim itinerants, I explore how the Muslims functioned within the existing physical and social structures, with or without following a particular legal paradigm. Did Muslims manage their own laws or did they operate under other legal regimes, and how did Islamic law appear in those places to administer a partly mobile and partly sedentary community?

Department of History

Islamic Law in the Indian Ocean World

Zones of origins: The formation of Islamic law in the Indian Ocean littoral, c. 615–1000 CE

This article examines the Bengal-China connections between the Ilyās Shāhī and Ming dynasties in the early fifteenth century across the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea. It traces how law played a central role in the cultural geography and diplomatic vocabulary between individuals and communities in foreign lands, with their shared understanding of two nodal points of law. Diplomatic missions explicate how customary, regional and transregional laws were entangled in inter-imperial etiquette. Then there were the religious orders of Islam that constituted an inner circle of imperial exchanges. Between the Ilyās Shāhī rule in Bengal and the Ming Empire in China, certain dimensions of Islamic law provided a common language for the circulation of people and ideas. Stretching between cities and across oceans the interpolity legal exchanges expose interesting aspects of the histories of China and Bengal. © 2021 Brill Academic Publishers. All rights reserved.