It is our sad duty to report the death of Aharon Layish at the age of eighty-eight. Aharon was one of the founders of Islamic Law and Society. He served as Associate Editor of the journal from 1994â2011 and as a member of the Advisory Board between 2011 and 2020. In 2021, he became Honorary Associate Editor. Aharon worked tirelessly on behalf of the journal and made important contributions to its scholarly excellence and to the field of Islamic legal history.
Aharon Layish (né Liskovski) was born in Suwalki, a small town in northeastern Poland, on May 25, 1933. He had a difficult childhood. In 1934, in the face of rising anti-Semitism, Aharonâs parents took their three boys and immigrated to Palestine, leaving many relatives behind. They settled in Haifa, where, in 1935, Aharonâs father succumbed to typhus. Unable to support her children, his widow placed Aharon in an orphanage and sent his two older brothers to a moshav agricultural settlement where they lived with foster families. After finishing elementary school, he moved in with his oldest brother, who lived in a mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood where Aharon was exposed to colloquial Arabic and Arabic culture. In high school Aharon began to study literary Arabic. In 1953, following two and a half years of military service, he enrolled as an undergraduate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he studied Arabic language and literature and modern Middle Eastern history. As an M.A. student, Aharon developed an interest in the Tanzimat reforms, and took his first steps in the study of Islamic law under the supervision of Shlomo Dov Goitein.
Between 1958 and 1966, Aharon served at the office of the Advisor on Arab Affairs in the Bureau of the Prime Minister, where his remit included matters relating to the communal organization and the judicial system of Muslim and Druze communities in Israel. He developed friendly relations with Muslim and Druze religious figures and became familiar with their legal documents. While working in the Bureau, Aharon wrote his M.A. thesis, under the supervision of Gabriel Baer, on Muslim communal organization in Israel, based on qadi court records.
In 1966 Aharon began his doctoral studies at the Hebrew University, where he read classical Islamic law with Eliyahu Ashtor at the Faculty of Law. Between 1966 and 1968, he was Visiting Research Associate at the Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University. During the academic year 1971â72, with the support of a British Council fellowship, he was a visiting scholar at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, where he read Islamic inheritance law with Noel Coulson and Doreen Hinchcliffe, and family law with Norman Anderson. One year later, in 1973, he submitted his Ph.D. thesis, written under Baerâs supervision, on the social status of Muslim women in Israel. A revised version of the dissertation was published under the title Women and Islamic Law in a Non-Muslim State: A Study Based on the Decisions of the SharÄ«Ê¿a Courts in Israel (1975).
In 1973 Aharon was appointed Lecturer in the Department of the History of the Muslim Countries and the Department of Islamic Civilization at the Institute of Oriental Studies (later, the Institute of Asian and African Studies) at the Hebrew University. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1978, Associate Professor in 1981, and Professor in 1989. Between 1981 and 1993, he served as Chairperson of both departments and â after their unification â as Chair of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. In addition, he taught Islamic law at the Faculties of Law at Tel Aviv University (1978â86) and at the Hebrew University (1981â83, 1987â88); at the Department of Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1979â80); and at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University (1989).
Aharon was a strict, demanding, and meticulous teacher who was dedicated to the welfare and success of his students. He was widely admired for his integrity, fairness, and reliability. He was a generous colleague who shared with colleagues and students not only his knowledge, wisdom, research materials but also his sharp sense of humor.
Throughout his career, Aharon was fascinated by the relationship between Islamic law (sharÄ«Ê¿a) and custom (Ê¿Äda or Ê¿urf), the former understood to be a divinely revealed law that is eternal and immutable, the latter an unwritten law shaped by local community practice. For centuries, the two have co-existed in a state of tension and mutual influence. The defining feature of Aharonâs scholarship was his focus on original legal documents: qadi court decisions, endowment deeds (waqfiyyas), and tribal legal documents. Based on his intimate familiarity with these sources, Aharon argued that in matters of personal status and inheritance, local customary law placed a limit on the rights conferred upon Muslim women by Islamic law.
Aharon was the first Israeli scholar to receive permission to use the records of the Druze courts to conduct research on Druze family law, inheritance, and wills. He was fascinated by the ability of Druze jurists to adapt certain rules relating to e.g., polygamy, remarriage to a divorced wife, and testamentary dispositions, to the needs of the agnatic Druze society; and by the ability of Druze jurists to modify and temper religious restrictions that were no longer consistent with modern ideas and practices.
Aharon was also interested in the methods used to introduce legal reform in contemporary Muslim societies. In his view, codification of the sharÄ«Ê¿a has had several consequences, not all of them positive: the transformation of Islamic law from a juristsâ law to a statutory law, the decline of classical legal methodology (uṣūl al-fiqh), a decline in the influence exercised by expert jurists (fuqahÄâ) over the regulation and development of sharÄ«Ê¿a; and the weakening of the traditional Muslim patrilineal and patriarchal family.
On occasion, Aharon was asked to issue expert opinions on matters relating to marriage, divorce, inheritance, family endowments, homicide and bodily assault. One of his opinions on a sharÊ¿Ä« rule relating to the paternity of a child born out of wedlock was instrumental in the Israeli Supreme Courtâs creation of a new constitutional norm, namely civil paternity.
Aharon served the Israel Oriental Society as editor of its journal, Hamizrah Hehadash, The New East (1976â92), as Deputy Chair of the Executive Committee (1981â98), as Chair of this committee (1998â2004) and, between 2004 and 2006, as President of the Society. In addition, he was a member of the executive committee of Sikkuy, the Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality for Arabs in Israel (1991â2004).
Aharon and his wife Bilha traveled frequently in search of knowledge, adventure and new experiences. He was a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall and Member of the Law Faculty, Cambridge (1979â80); at Eliot College, Kent (1986â87); at New York University (1989); at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford (1993); at the Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Leiden (1995), and at the Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Bergen (1996â97).
In 2002 Aharon retired from the Hebrew University. For the next fifteen years, he continued to pursue his research with enthusiasm and energy. During this period, he published inter alia SharÄ«Ê¿a and Custom in Libyan Tribal Society: An Annotated Translation of Decisions from the sharÄ«Ê¿a Courts of AjdÄbiya and Kufra (Brill, 2005); âInterplay between Tribal and SharÊ¿Ä« Law: A Case of TibbÄwÄ« Blood Money in the SharÄ«Ê¿a Court of Kufraâ (ILS, 2006); âḤasan al-TurÄbÄ«â (Brill, 2013); âWaqfs of AwlÄd al-NÄs in Aleppo in the Late MamlÅ«k Period as Reflected in a Family Archiveâ (JESHO, 2008), and, most recently, SharÄ«âa and the Islamic State in 19th Century Sudan: The MahdÄ«âs Legal Methodology and Doctrine (Brill, 2016).1
Aharonâs remarkable scholarly career came to a sudden end in 2017, when he suffered a fall in his home that caused serious brain injury and left him partially paralyzed. He died on April 16, 2022 and was buried in Jerusalem, leaving his devoted wife of sixty-three years, Bilha, three children, Galia, Hadara and Dan, and seven grandchildren. He will be sorely missed but remembered with fondness. Verily we belong to God and to Her we return. May the memory of Aharon Layish be for a blessing!
For a full list of Aharonâs publications, see Aharon Layish, âList of Publications,â in Law, Custom, and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish, ed. Ron Shaham (Brill, 2006), xxiiiâxxxi.