Chapter 4 turns to legal maxims, the second core element of Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s legal philosophy. Beginning with a survey of the evolution of maxim terminology in Shāfiʿī law from the third/ninth to the fifth/eleventh century, I show that Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām was influenced by maxim-based legal reasoning in the works of prominent Khurasani Shāfiʿī jurists. He applied their analytic method to develop his own maxims, which he extracted from substantive law and then used them to analyze the purposes and values of the law discursively. Within Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s legal philosophy, maxims constitute a bridge between the established body of legal precedents and the abstract discourse about the telos of the law as the realization of human well-being.

Panama’s authorities identified and combatted unmarried cohabitation or "amancebamiento" as a threat to the social order. This chapter discusses marriage’s lack of popularity on the isthmus, due to non-Catholic cultural traditions as well as the convenience and potential advantages of “living in sin.” In particular, it notes a proliferation of young widows described as “single” but free from paternal and conjugal authority. Alongside legal and fiscal measures to promote marriage, cases for marital separation or annulment provide insights into gendered obligations associated with the sacrament. Such cases’ success at court depended upon family support and alleged compliance with gender obligations. Other women turned to magic to shape their marital, affective, and economic relations. Inquisitorial trails, recorded in the summaries sent from Lima or Cartagena to Madrid, detail the experiences of Afro-descendants whose amatory and divinatory techniques garnered them prominent clienteles or merged with indigenous traditions in nocturnal revelries. Finally, Portugal’s separation from the crown of Castile disrupted the slave trade more than Portuguese residents in Panama.

Chapter 3 focuses on Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s theorization of maṣlaḥa, one of the two core features of his legal philosophy. I first sketch the evolution of maṣlaḥa in the Shāfiʿī school in the centuries before Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām and then analyze his own theory of maṣlaḥa, its underlying moral philosophy, its legal normativity, and its debt to Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s Khurasani Shāfiʿī predecessors. The chapter also considers the challenges to the law’s rationality and morality in the Damascene milieu that likely motivated Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s development of his theory of maṣlaḥa.

Panama’s most important festivity, the annual Corpus Christi processions, featured the performance of gender and ethnicity. Celebrations involved Congo, Biafara, Bran, and other Black confraternities, as well as a longstanding dispute for precedence between members of the ship-builders’ and the stocking-makers’ guilds, who struggled for proximity to the monstrance. The most dramatic dispute in the Cathedral, however, entailed a battle for precedence between the wives of the city councilors and the spouses of the royal judges. Controversy over seating arrangements enabled the judges and city councilors to submit conflicts over their respective status to the king, who eventually allowed the judges’ wives, and even their mothers, to receive communion in the main chapel.

The introduction explores the idea of an Islamic legal philosophy within the broader history and historiography of Islamic thought. It situates Ibn ʿAbd al-Salām’s career and reputation in historical and contemporary sources and situates his contribution in the fields and debates of Islamic intellectual and legal history. It explains the importance of the study and the key contributions it makes. Finally, it presents an overview of the sources used in the study and an outline of each of the book’s chapters.