From Tha'r to State Justice: Legal Pluralism and the Centralization of Authority in the Gulf

Abstract

This thesis explores legal pluralism in the Arabian Gulf from 1890 to 2006 across three phases: the pre-modern tribal era, the period of British protection, and the emergence of the modern nation-state. It examines Qatar, Bahrain, and Eastern Saudi Arabia before fixed borders and then proceeds with a focus on modern-day Qatar. It analyzes the interaction of tribal custom, Shari’a, and state law and the ways these overlapping systems shaped ideas of justice, legitimacy, and authority. Thaʾr is used as the main socio-legal lens as it embodies duty, honor, pardon, and reconciliation within tribal-based networks and highlights the shift from customary practices of settlement to prosecution under state control. These factors show the gradual centralization of law under imperial oversight, legal drafting, and shifts in the boundary between public and private spheres through the invocation of the tribe and family. The findings indicate that state projects draw on selected aspects of tribal custom to implicitly reshape procedure and limit kinship authority. Thaʾr moves from an accepted means of seeking justice to being omitted and reconfigured in formal texts and within state procedures, signaling a wider redefinition of crime, punishment, and retribution. These findings align with Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, which recognizes international custom and general principles of law as core sources of international law, in which pre-protectorate Gulf practices of authority and rule-making can be understood as evidence of a precolonial international legal order that challenges typical Eurocentric narratives of civilization. This thesis thus provides a region-specific account linking doctrinal change with social practice and traces the trajectory of tribal justice under state rule while contributing to debates on legal pluralism, indigenous orders, and centralization in international law and laying the groundwork for future research on Gulf legal history, socio-legal method, and the intersection between custom, religion, and code in modern state formation.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	HBKU College of Law