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LAW-The Santillana Codes: The Civil Codes of Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania, by Dan E. Stigall. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. 200 pages. $90.
Reviewed by Mark D. Welton
The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a period of profound change in the legal landscape of the Islamic regions of the Middle East and North Africa. The norms of shari'a that underlay the legal systems of those regions were altered or even eliminated by the widespread adoption of European civil codes, legal processes, and judicial institutions. In large part these were imposed by Western colonial powers, but they were also welcomed by many Muslim reformers who were invested in the project of social, political, and legal modernization of their societies, resulting in what one author termed "the Islamic Enlightenment."1 While some of these reformers entirely rejected traditional Islamic law as incompatible with modern society, many others sought to integrate the two traditions - shari'a and Western (primarily civil) law - into a new, codified system. Among those in the "integrationist" camp of reformers was Tunisian jurist David Santillana.
Dan Stigall's book, The Santillana Codes, seeks to introduce this reformer to the reader and to demonstrate how his work resulted in a successful integration of the two legal traditions in the civil codes of Tunisia,...