Your midterm essay should be a systematic inquiry into one specific topic in Islamic law that relates to constructions of gender and gender relations, and is of particular interest to you. It should draw on just one or two kinds of pre-modern primary sources, including something from the Qur'an and/or Hadith, and also if you wish a legal text such as Reliance of the Traveller. Please be sure to keep a clear distinction between the different sources - don't just lump them all together as expressions of a monolithic "Islamic law." (You might take inspiration, or information about premodern jurists, from Kecia Ali's book, but she should not be one of the sources you analyze in this paper. She is a contemporary writer whose views you could analyze in your final paper.)
In addition to the texts we have used in class, you can search the whole Qur'an and some important collections of hadith online, in English:
This should be an interpretive essay: do not just present facts ("the Qur'an says this, Ibn Naqib says this"); interpret and analyze your primary sources, identifying patterns and assumptions about law and gender that are not stated explicitly in your sources, and pursuing one or more of the intellectual projects or issues that have been raised so far in this class.
I imagine that 6-7 pages should be sufficient for this first essay.
For your final paper, you will get to expand this essay to include several other kinds of primary sources, including modern ones, so as to trace an issue through multiple layers of Islamic legal discourse and practice (e.g. the Qur'an and Hadith, a classical law manual, a contemporary case study, and a modern critique). Be thinking now, as you choose your topic, about what kinds of approaches and materials you might want to use in expanding your essay later.
Please cite every source you use using footnotes. Please follow the scholarly documentation style that you ordinarily use in your own major field; if you have not yet adopted a particular style, I suggest you begin learning the "Chicago" style, which is explained in Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Each citation should give the exact page number, or the complete address of the precise web page, from which an idea or fact or phrase is derived. Any source that you use in any way should be cited, and listed in the bibliography, no matter how little you drew on the source - even if the source just gave you general background information, or even if the information you gained from it would be considered common knowledge. Verbatim quotes must be enclosed in quotation marks. Cite each source after every sentence in which you relied on it. Even information and ideas gained from friends should be specifically footnoted (e.g. "conversation with John Doe, February 2005"). I want to know exactly what are your own ideas, and what you got from someone else, so that I can see how your own thought process is working. The only sources you do not need to cite are our class web site and discussions. Failure to abide by these requirements will constitute academic dishonesty. I make these requirements stringent both because I don't want you to commit plagiarism accidentally, and also because I want to understand your thought processes.
Essays will be graded on whether they fulfill the assignment, on the quality and clarity of your writing, and on the depth and care and originality of your analysis of primary sources. I will NOT grade you based on whether I think your interpretations are correct, so feel free to express your ideas, even if you aren't sure of them. I want to see your mind at work!