Program in Islamic Law founded at Harvard Law School
Islamic Studies Today 2018
Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School Founded
The Program in Islamic Law (PIL) is dedicated to promoting research and providing resources for the academic study of Islamic law, with the use of data science tools and methods. Formerly part of the Islamic Legal Studies Program (ILSP) until 2018, PIL is directed by Professor Intisar Rabb, joint Professor of Law and History at Harvard. The Program builds data science tools and conducts digital humanities research through its Islamic Law Lab, and it is home to SHARIAsource, a growing digital library of primary sources for Islamic legal and historical texts (highlighting fatwās, judicial decisions, and digital corpora such as OpenITI) and for a developing set of data science tools (Courts and Canons database for research on legal canons, StackLife for Hollis visual searches for the field, and CorpusBuilder for Arabic historic OCR). The Program promotes scholarship on Islamic law through several publications: the Harvard Series on Islamic Law (books published in conjunction with Harvard University Press), the Harvard Papers in Islamic Law occasional papers, and the Journal in Islamic Law, and the Islamic Law Blog. The Program is also home to visiting scholars, workshops, and conferences.
