Ari Schriber

Ari Schriber is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the (De)Colonizing Shari’a? ERC-Advanced project in the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Social and Cultural Studies. His research interests lie at the intersection of legal history and Islamic intellectual history in the Middle East and North Africa since the nineteenth century. He is particularly interested in the evolution of Islamic legal practice in colonial and post-colonial courts of twentieth-century Morocco. He has performed archival fieldwork in Morocco and France since 2013 and lectured in the USA, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, and Morocco. He holds a PhD (2021) and MA (2013) from Harvard University and a BA from the University of Virginia. He was previously Marie Sklowdowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Utrecht University (2023-2023) and Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. 

Personal website: www.arischriber.com 

Shari’a of the Colony: Property, Paternity, and Proof in Morocco (1912-1965)

My project investigates the evolution of Islamic judicial practice in colonial and post-colonial courts of North Africa. My book research draws on original court records, state surveillance archives, and Islamic scholarship to reconstruct twentieth-century Islamic legal tradition in Morocco and its convergence with French colonial legalities. I pay special attention to court practice--namely, processes of determining “fact” or “truth” in judicial settings--as a pivotal domain of convergence between Islamic legal tradition and colonial governance. As postcolonial states worldwide continue making claim to religious law, this analysis foregrounds the fragmentation of Islamic legal tradition in postcolonial institutions. 

• “Knowledge in the Islamic Court: Centering Evidence, Proof, and Procedure in Islamic Law,” Islamic Law Blog (February 12, 2026), https://islamiclaw.blog/2026/02/12/roundtable-knowledge-in-the-islamic-court/.
• “Is There a Jury in Islamic Law? The Twelve-Witness ‘Lafīfiyya’ Testimony and the Limits of Judicial Discretion,” Studia Islamica 120, no. 1 (2025), 65-108.
• “The Transformation of Islamic Property and Evidentiary Law in Colonial-Era Morocco: The Case of Shufʿa as Préemption,” Die Welt des Islams 65, no. 2-3, 280-313. 
• “Judicial Practice as Islamic Law: The ʿAmal of Fez in Post-Classical Mālikī Legal Tradition,” Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques 78, no. 1, 173-217.
• “ʿAllal al-Fassi: Visions of Shariʿa in Post-Colonial Moroccan State Law,” in Contemporary Moroccan Thought Vol. 1, ed. Mohammed Hashas (Brill), 351-376.
• “Judgment of the Moroccan Supreme Council of Shariʿa Appeals in 1943 on Inheritance, Slavery, and Paternity Claim,” in Islamic Law in Context: A Primary Source Reader, ed. Robert Gleave and Omar Anchassi (Cambridge University Press), 296-310.
• “A Sense of Justice: Coloniality and the Islamic Legal Tradition” (with Samy Ayoub), introduction to special issue, Die Welt des Islams 65, no. 2-3, 151-160.
• “A Precedent for the Unprecedented: Historical Reflections on Plague, Quarantine, and Islamic Law in Morocco,” Journal of Islamic Law 2, No. 1, 146-157.