The “Lamp of Hind” in Cairo

Abstract

This article explores scholarly exchange across the Arabian Sea in the fourteenth century with respect to Islamic law. It connects legal contexts from the Delhi Sultanate to the Cairo Sultanate and shows how the Sunni legal schools (madhhabs) and the recently emergent system of legal pluralism shaped transoceanic exchanges of scholarship. In particular, this article focuses on the career of Sirāj al-Dīn al-Hindī (d. 773/1372), an Indian scholar who traveled from Delhi via Mecca to Cairo, and then built an accomplished career that culminated with him as chief Hanafi judge in Cairo. It examines his relationships with Turkish mamluks and sultans as well as his prolific writings to uncover their shared investment in the Hanafi madhhab and the significance of ongoing transregional debates between the Hanafi and Shafiʿi legal schools. In so doing, this article sheds light on a missing history of how Mamluk initiatives towards expanding legal pluralism between the madhhabs created new opportunities across the Indian Ocean for Hanafi jurists like Sirāj al-Dīn. Hence, it widens our understanding of premodern Islamic intellectual exchange between South Asia and the Middle East, showing how South Asia also served as an exporter of Islamic scholarship and legal expertise rather than its peripheral recipient.