The History of Iraqi Law - A Summary

Translated from Arabic by

Wefa & Sabah Al-Mukhtar 

  النسخة العربية هنا

    

Iraq was divided to three Provinces* (Mosul, Baghdad and Basra), which were under the Ottoman rule until the British Occupation in 1917.

At that time, the Ottoman courts used to apply the provisions of Islamic Fiqh (jurisprudence), a system built on judicial precedents issued by judges.  

The Ottoman courts had difficulty issuing consistent judgements because the courts relied on various books of Islamic jurisprudence. Thus in 1869 a committee was formed at the Astana Juridical Department in Istanbul to produce a unified legislation for the Empire.

 

In 1804, France issued the French Civil Code. This prompted the Ottoman judicial committee to use the French Civil Code’s Table of Contents as a template for the Ottoman Law. Then the committee compiled and unified the provisions based on the Hanafi School of Thoughts by reviewing all jurisprudence books and choosing the best provisions for each issue. Thus the Ottoman Civil Code “Al-Ahkam Al-Adliya” was established.  Subsequently it was applied throughout the Ottoman Empire including in the three Iraqi Provinces and later during the Kingdom of Iraq until 1951 when the Iraq civil law ‘ No. 40 of 1951’ was issued, considered to be the most important Iraqi law, which is still used today.

* The three Provinces were separated by Latitudes 32 and 36, which the United States used to determine the no-fly zones imposed during the blockade years 1991-2003