Forms and Functions of Legal Discourse Intertextuality in Works of Jewish and Islamic Law and Literature – Quotations, Allusions, References, and Plagiarism

The jurisdictional authority of courts in Egypt was a key administrative tool deployed by the Egyptian political and legal elite to shape emerging institutions since the mid-19th century. I maintain that the structural reconfiguration of the legal and judicial institutions in Egypt has not only given a wide jurisdictional mandate for the new secular National Courts since their inception in 1883, but it has also expanded their authority to review most disputes that were considered “religious” or fall within the purview of Islamic Courts. This paper explores the jurisprudence of the Islamic Supreme Court (1897-1955) (thereafter, ISC) in relation to Jewish litigants and Jewish law. I pursue two arguments in this paper. First, I propose that Islamic courts procedurally maintained the validity and the application of Jewish law. The ISC consistently upheld the decisions passed by Jewish courts in disputes on family law. Second, I assert that the ISC – resisting the overriding secularization of legal institutions – reaffirmed the jurisdictional authority of Jewish courts to hear cases and pass judgements.