What happened when Islamic judges (qadis) steeped in divine law found themselves answerable to Habsburg officials who had never opened a Quran? Ninja Bumann and Julia Secklehner discuss how Habsburg-occupied Bosnia dealt with sensitive matters of marriage and divorce.
e-mails: ninja.bumann@uni-giessen.de
Ninja is a Research Associate at Justus Liebig University Giessen.
Alongside her work as a Research Associate at Giessen, Ninja is pursuing doctoral research at the University of Vienna, analysing the negotiation of marriage and divorce in Sharia courts in Habsburg Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this conversation, recorded on 16 April 2026, she explains how Islamic family law continued to operate under Austro-Hungarian administration after the Habsburg occupation of Bosnia in 1878. Drawing on archival records from the Supreme Sharia Court — an appeal body established in Sarajevo in 1879 — Ninja asks what happened when Islamic judges (qadis) steeped in divine law suddenly found themselves answerable to Habsburg officials who had never opened a Quran.
Legal pluralism in Bosnia was not (only) a matter of imperial pragmatism, but a dynamic space where competing legal cultures, questions of gender, and broader pan-Islamic debates about modernity and reform intersected and clashed. Ninja guides us through the difficulties of navigating marriage, divorce, and female agency in a society ruled by two empires simultaneously. As she notes, “reform is not only about ideas, but about very practical problems that we can encounter in court records.”
Further Reading
Bumann, N., “The Economy of Islamic Divorce in Habsburg Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878-1918),” in A. Griesebner and E. Doxiadis, eds., Gender and Divorce in Europe: 1600-1900. (New York: Routledge, 2023), pp. 195–212.
Giomi, F., Making Muslim Women European (Budapest: CEU Press, 2021).
Karčić, F., “Survival of the Ottoman-Islamic Laws in post-Ottoman Times in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in T. Simon, ed., Konflikt und Koexistenz. Band II: Serbien, Bosnien-Herzegowina, Albanien (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2017), pp. 43–69.
Younis, H., “The Image of Women Life Through Documents of the Sharia Court in Sarajevo 1878-1914,” Journal of Balkan Studies 2.1 (2022): 9–27.
Younis, H., A Qadi in the Christian Empire. The Staff and Work of the Sharia Courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1878-1914 (Sarajevo: University of Sarajevo, 2023.
Episode 83 – Divorce Court
Podcasts are published by TLP for the purpose of encouraging informed debate on the legacies of the events surrounding the Lausanne Conference. The views expressed by participants do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of TLP, its partners, convenors or members.