J. Kremařik (in the OCR of The Achehnese also rendered Krcsmarik) was a European Orientalist whose work on the waqf law of the Hanafite school is cited by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese as an example of the kind of detailed, school-specific legal scholarship necessary for a proper understanding of Mohammedan law.
Kremařik is mentioned in a footnote appended to Snouck Hurgronje’s discussion of the administration of justice in Mohammedan countries. The passage in question concerns the ideal character of Mohammedan law, which, as developed “for the most part in the schools, out of reach of all close connection with the real requirements of daily life,” fails to provide a workable system for the practical administration of justice. This theme Snouck Hurgronje had already treated at length in two earlier essays, Mohammedaansch recht en rechtswetenschap (Indische Gids, 1886) and De fiqh en de vergelijkende rechtswetenschap (Rechtsgeleerd Magazijn, 1886), and it had been further developed by Ignaz Goldziher in Mohammedanisches Recht in Theorie und Wirklichkeit (Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, vol. VIII).
To this body of critical scholarship Kremařik’s study supplied what Snouck Hurgronje calls “a further striking example of directly contradictory rules in regard to questions of the highest importance, which find authoritative supporters even within each of the four orthodox schools.” The example is Kremařik’s “admirable description of the Waqf-law of the Hanafites,” published in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Band XLV (1891), pp. 511 et seq. The waqf — the perpetual Islamic endowment of property for religious or charitable purposes — was one of the most complex institutions of Mohammedan law; and Kremařik’s exposition showed how, even within a single orthodox school (the Hanafite), authoritative jurists had arrived at flatly inconsistent rulings on central questions.
The citation of Kremařik in The Achehnese is significant for Snouck Hurgronje’s methodological argument. The “directly contradictory rules” exposed by Kremařik explain why the practical administration of justice in Mohammedan lands — and a fortiori in Acheh, where the sultans and uleebalangs had had to devise their own adat-based compromises — could never simply “apply” Mohammedan law as it stood in the books. The reference thus belongs to the same line of reasoning that leads Snouck Hurgronje, a few pages later, into his sharp criticism of Der Kinderen for supposing that Achehnese adat could be adequately understood through ordinances and informant-testimony alone.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.
J. Kremařik (in the OCR of The Achehnese also rendered Krcsmarik) was a European Orientalist whose work on the waqf law of the Hanafite school is cited by Snouck Hurgronje in Vol. I of The Achehnese as an example of the kind of detailed, school-specific legal scholarship necessary for a proper understanding of Mohammedan law.
Kremařik is mentioned in a footnote appended to Snouck Hurgronje’s discussion of the administration of justice in Mohammedan countries. The passage in question concerns the ideal character of Mohammedan law, which, as developed “for the most part in the schools, out of reach of all close connection with the real requirements of daily life,” fails to provide a workable system for the practical administration of justice. This theme Snouck Hurgronje had already treated at length in two earlier essays, Mohammedaansch recht en rechtswetenschap (Indische Gids, 1886) and De fiqh en de vergelijkende rechtswetenschap (Rechtsgeleerd Magazijn, 1886), and it had been further developed by Ignaz Goldziher in Mohammedanisches Recht in Theorie und Wirklichkeit (Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, vol. VIII).
To this body of critical scholarship Kremařik’s study supplied what Snouck Hurgronje calls “a further striking example of directly contradictory rules in regard to questions of the highest importance, which find authoritative supporters even within each of the four orthodox schools.” The example is Kremařik’s “admirable description of the Waqf-law of the Hanafites,” published in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Band XLV (1891), pp. 511 et seq. The waqf — the perpetual Islamic endowment of property for religious or charitable purposes — was one of the most complex institutions of Mohammedan law; and Kremařik’s exposition showed how, even within a single orthodox school (the Hanafite), authoritative jurists had arrived at flatly inconsistent rulings on central questions.
The citation of Kremařik in The Achehnese is significant for Snouck Hurgronje’s methodological argument. The “directly contradictory rules” exposed by Kremařik explain why the practical administration of justice in Mohammedan lands — and a fortiori in Acheh, where the sultans and uleebalangs had had to devise their own adat-based compromises — could never simply “apply” Mohammedan law as it stood in the books. The reference thus belongs to the same line of reasoning that leads Snouck Hurgronje, a few pages later, into his sharp criticism of Der Kinderen for supposing that Achehnese adat could be adequately understood through ordinances and informant-testimony alone.
See Also
Source
The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.