Just Writing: Paradox and Political Economy in Yemeni Legal Documents

One of the most revealing of Muslim doctrines about writing concerns the rather mundane and narrow genre of legal documents. As articulated by early jurists, the doctrine held that such writings as contracts and other private legal documents had no evidential value. According to the classical rules of evidence in Islamic law, written documents could not be brought forward in a legal proceedings as proof of a claim. Evidence, as defined by the jurists, was exclusively oral, anchored in the spoken testimony of present, upright witnesses. This nonrecognition of the evidence value of written documents is remarkable both because it