What’s Law Got to Do with It?: Mufti Kifayatullah’s Readers, Religious Knowledge, and the Urdu Public Sphere

Using evidence of reader reception and engagement found in one genre of vernacular religious legal writing—the fatwā (Islamic legal opinion)—this talk considers the implications of accessible printing on the production and interpretation of religious knowledge in late-19th and 20th-century India. In particular, it surveys Mufti Kifayatullah’s extensive collection of fatwās, which were written and published in a variety of venues during his extensive career (c. 1898–1952).