Allain, Jean --- "Acculturation through the Middle Ages: The Islamic Law of Nations and its Place in the History of International Law" [2011] ELECD 582; in Orakhelashvili, Alexander (ed), "Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law

Editor(s): Orakhelashvili, Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443549

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: Acculturation through the Middle Ages: The Islamic Law of Nations and its Place in the History of International Law

Author(s): Allain, Jean

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

13 Acculturation through the Middle Ages: the
Islamic law of nations and its place in the history
of international law
Jean Allain


Lassa Oppenheim was quoted with authority as late as 1948 stating that `international
law as a law between sovereign and equal states based on the common consent of those
states is a product of modern Christian civilization, and may be said to be about four
hundred years old'.1 Such a statement might have held up to scrutiny in the early years
of the United Nations organisation, which consisted of only 58 Member States and had
yet to go through the decolonisation process. The last sixty years, by contrast, have seen
membership of the United Nations grow more than threefold to 192; and has taken the
State system, which was comprised in the main of European States and outposts of its
progeny, to one which is truly worldwide. As a result might one not say that international
law is a law between sovereign and equal states, which has only become fully functional
with the end of the decolonisation process? Can one declare that international law, rightly
understood as a State system including all peoples of the world, is barely twenty years old?
International law, as `a product of modern Christian civilization', only gains traction
with the age of discovery and the European colonial venture which lasted until European
States looked to accommodate non-Christian States from the Treaty of Peace of 1856
(settling the Crimean War) onwards, via ...