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This article explores the politics of family cohesion in a Muslim polity simultaneously committed to the application of Islamic law, the preservation of cultural identity, and socio‑economic modernization. The article focuses on the work of Qatar’s Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs, a government body that seeks to make Wahhābī Islam relevant to a society in the midst of rapid social change. Drawing on an analysis of the Ministry’s fatwas on family life, the article shows how Qatar’s media muftis have incorporated modern assumptions into their discourse and adjusted to new power configurations. The dissonance between the discourses articulated within official religious institutions and those found in other state bodies reflects the growing polarization of Qatari society, the normative pluralism undergirding modernization in the Gulf, and the regulatory ambitions of proliferating state institutions in a rentier economy. Cet article analyse les contestations autour de la notion de cohésion familiale dans un État musulman qui cherche simultanément à faire appliquer la loi islamique, à préserver ses traditions culturelles, et à moderniser la société et l’économie. L’article porte sur le travail du ministère des Habous et des Affaires islamiques du Qatar, une institution gouvernementale qui essaie de rendre l’islam wahhabite pertinent dans un contexte de changement social rapide. Partant d’une analyse des fatwas du ministère sur les questions de la vie familiale, l’article démontre comment les cyber‑muftis de l’émirat ont incorporé des concepts modernes dans leur discours et se sont adaptés à de nouvelles configurations de pouvoir. La dissonance qui existe entre le discours des institutions religieuses officielles et celui des autres agences gouvernementales reflète les clivages croissants de la société qatarie, le pluralisme normatif qui sous‑tend les processus de modernisation dans le Golfe, et les ambitions régulatrices de l’état proliférant dans une économie rentière.

Over the past several decades, the problem of obesity has attracted overwhelming attention in the popular and scholarly press. Partially in reaction to the medical conceptualisation of healthy body weight as a biological universal, scholars have directed increasing attention to the historical and cultural specificity of the social meanings of fat. This article focuses on an account by the Mamluk-era scholar Ibn al-Ḥāǧǧ (d. 737/1336) of contemporary Egyptian women’s systematic cultivation of ample bodies, which has until now received little scholarly attention. Ibn al-Ḥāǧǧ’s discussion places the issue of intentional over-eating within several different interpretive frames, including religious law, erotic ideals and medicine. Au cours des dernières décennies, l’obésité est devenue un problème. D’ailleurs, elle a suscité un immense intérêt dans la presse populaire et savante. En partie en réaction à la représentation médicale qui fait d’un poids corporel sain un universel biologique, certains spécialistes ont accordé une attention grandissante aux spécificités historiques et culturelles des significations sociales de l’embonpoint. Cet article s’intéresse aux remarques du savant Ibn al-Ḥāǧǧ (m. 737/1336) sur la volonté des femmes égyptiennes de son temps de rendre leur corps plus large. Ces remarques n’ont jusqu’à présent pas attiré l’attention des spécialistes. Ibn al-Ḥāǧǧ replace la suralimentation volontaire à l’intérieur de plusieurs cadres interprétatifs, qui relèvent de la loi religieuse, des idéaux érotiques, ou de la médecine.

In this article, I investigate the way Muslims living in major Abbasid cities represented themselves when it came to legal matters. Was there any sort of legal identity evident between one place and another? To answer this question, I propose to focus the connection between the local urban elite and the government. I seek to investigate the role that the urban elite in several Iraqi and Egyptian cities played in selecting and appointing the qāḍīs during the early Abbasid period (132-218/750-833). It appears that during the second half of the second/eighth century, appointments to the judiciary were the subject of strenuous competition between the local elite and the central government. The caliphate tried to increase its authority in the main provincial cities and reduce legal heterogeneity in the empire. The local learned elite resisted this policy in order to preserve its traditional power and local interests. The Abbasids had to negotiate, and the provincial elite succeeded in keeping some of its special prerogatives in the selection of qāḍīs for some time. In the third/ninth century, however, the reinforcement of caliphal authority and the evolution of political structures resulted in a definitive marginalisation of the local elite.