Arabic legal documents and socio-economic history
Legal documents were the main guarantee for people who went to law to keep their rights intact. Thus, they approached the notaries to have these legal instruments written down. The study of the social and economic history of Islam in premodern times, using the legal documents as the main source, should always have this premise in mind, as it was mainly individuals (and not those working in the legal system) who demanded the writing out of documents. In this sense, as historians, if we bear in mind this agency for the “consumers” of Islamic law, we will foster a more dynamic perspective in the study of Islamic societies.
