Family law in Syria: a plurality of laws, norms, and legal practices

Eijk, E. van (2013)

Doctoral Thesis

statutory, political, communal, and individual. The author believes that this study makes a useful and valuable contribution to understanding the historical, socio-political and religious complexities that mark today’s Syria. The thesis consists of two parts. Part One, entitled ‘The Plural Legal Landscape: Family Laws in Syria’, focuses primarily on the historical, legal, and political aspects of Syria’s plural family law system. The inherited plurality founded the fabric of Syria’s current mosaic of family law, with all its complexities and contestations. Part Two, entitled ‘Unity in Multiplicity: Muslim and Christian Laws and Legal Practices’, focuses on the content of the various personal status laws and discussing legal practices in and around some personal status courts, in particular a sharʻiyya and a Catholic court in Damascus. Moreover, the argument that, albeit this plurality, the diverse personal status courts are united in their shared communal, cultural understandings on marriage, gender and family relations, runs as a connecting thread through the second part.

• Syria
• Personal status law
• Islamic family law
• Eastern Christian family law
• Legal plurality
• Legal Anthroplogy

• All authors: Eijk, E. van
• Supervisor: Buskens, L.P.H.M.
• Committee: .
• Qualification: Doctor (dr.)
• Awarding Institution: Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), Faculty of Law, Leiden University
• Date: 2013-09-19