Hassan Khalilieh

University of Haifa | haifa · Department of Multidisciplinary Studies

This essay underlines the rules of jettison and the financial settlements arising from losses at sea. Muslim jurists did not hold a consensus as regards the jetsam’s value and offered four legal opinions: based on the its cost at the market place from which it was purchased, at market place of the port of embarkation, the nearest port where they we...

The history of the ribāṭ of Kafr Lāb is shrouded in obscurity. Until the IAA undertook archaeological excavations of the site near Caesarea in 1999, the great majority of contemporary scholars tended to attribute the fortress's construction to the Crusaders, who captured the port-city of Caesarea and its district in 1101. Based on written records f...

This essay demonstrates how maritime qirad, as conducted in the Muslim world prior to the emergence of the Italian communes, influenced the lex mercatoria maritima. It contends that the medieval Latin accomendatio (commenda) likely owes its inception to the qirad/mudaraba institution, already prevalent in pre-Islamic Arabia, contrary to the commonl...

Among the numerous studies on Islamic maritime history in the medieval Mediterranean, Picard’s Sea of the Caliphs—originally published in French as La mer des califes: Une histoire de la Méditerranée musulmane (viie–xiie siècle) (Paris, 2015)—is one of the most comprehensive and insightful analyses published in recent years. Its high academic quali...

S. D. Goitein left a tangible contribution in many areas relating to the cultural, economic, social, political, and legal history of classical Islam. With three monumental studies—the first volume of A Mediterranean Society, Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders, and India Traders—and numerous academic articles, he also left an indelible imprint on ou...

Legal historians hold that the foundations of the modern law of the sea date to the first decade of the seventeenth century, when the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) extracted chapter 12 of his De Jure Praedae (On the Law of Prize and Booty) and published it in a single treatise titled Mare Liberum (The Free Sea), which was published anonymou...

Early Muslim governors and army commanders of Bilād al-Shām (Greater Syria) were aware of the strategic importance of the coastal frontiers of their territories along the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. With the ascent of the Umayyads and the transfer of the capital from Kufa (Iraq) to Damascus, the Syrian region was fortified with...

span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'">The article deals with the attitude of Islamic law towards the carriage of women by water and how Muslim judicial authorities viewed their presence on ships. It discusses the conditions under which women were carried, accommodated and treated, in addition to their personal and social beha...

Islamic polities of the classical period recognized the importance of seaweeds in their daily life. Their men of science, craftsmen, and navigators used them for medicinal purposes, manufacturing, and navigation. The agar components were used in treating pathological conditions such jaundice, spleen, kidney and skin ailments, and malignancies. As f...

The Cairo Geniza continues to bring to light an ever more comprehensive picture of the social, political and economic life of medieval Muslims and Jews. Though the document under discussion — Bodl. MS Heb. a3 (Cat. 2873), f. 9 — has been published three times, many aspects of it treated in this paper have been largely if not entirely overlooked. Al...

Tantura B is by far the first early Islamic shipwreck to be discovered off the Palestinian coast. Scientific evidence indicates that this vessel sank some time between the mid-8th and the mid-9th centuries. Neither archaeological remains nor historical sources can ascertain its exact function and origin due to the lack of circumstantial documentary...

The article deals with the methods employed in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds during the seventh to early eleventh centuries to compute the ship capacity at a time when a uniform system did not exist in the Mediterranean world. It describes the responsibility of central and provincial authorities for inspection, construction, and registration of...

This volume examines Islamic maritime law and the actual practice of Muslim sailors during the classical period. It contains seven chapters. The first surveys the important terminology of maritime life. The second chapter examines the interrelationship of shipowners, crew, and passengers. The third chapter deals with maritime commercial laws; contr...

The article deals with the role of the coastal defense system, called ribât in medieval Islam, in coastal navigation. The issues emerge through this discussion are the distance between each one of the watching points along the coastal frontiers, inhabitants of the ribats, and the civil functions of the ribâts. The article proves that these fortress...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Princeton University, 1995. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 200-218). Photocopy.