Byzantinistik, Byzantinische Kunstgeschichte und Neogräzistik

The formation and transformation of legal systems in Late Antiquity and the early Islamic centuries were closely tied to the construction of social identities and the regulation of relations between rulers, subjects, and diverse communal groups. In Sasanian and Zoroastrian contexts, law structured hierarchies, obligations, and rights, while Jewish and Syriac legal traditions organized communal life through codified norms, judicial procedures, and mechanisms of dispute settlement, illustrating how legal frameworks both reflected and reinforced social order. Within this broader Mediterranean and Near Eastern legal continuum, Roman and Byzantine law moved from imperial codification to adaptive transmission and reinterpretation, culminating in paraphrased Greek legal forms that reflected changing structures of authority and identity. With the rise of Islamic legal discourse in seventh-century Medina and its expansion under the Umayyad and Abbasid administrations, these broader questions persisted: how should inherited practices, textual reasoning, and social norms be adapted to new religious, political, and cultural contexts? Early sources explore the interplay between juridical practice and textual authority, as well as the regulation of social life. This course aims to examine these processes, tracing the historical development of legal thought, while offering participants guidance to engage critically with early legal sources.