States and local legal cultures in Medieval Islam: A comparative study of Akbar's Mughal rule and Sultan Agung's Mataram in 16th and 17th century

Abstract

This study seeks to expand the horizon of existing literatures on the dialectic of religion, legal culture and local dynamics by comparing two great Muslim rulers in two different parts of the world in the first Islamic millennium: Mughal Emperor Akbar and Mataram's Sultan Agung. It specifically aims to analyze historical accounts on the dynamic relations between Islamic norms and local culture with corresponding results of distinctive ways of ruling by these two great rulers. While both rulers Akbar and Sultan Agung shared similar concerns in political imagination, their difference was particularly shown in the representation of religion in the courts' political and legal culture, with the latter was heavily determined by different challenges they faced during their rule. This paper argues that a comparative overview of these two great figures, who ruled in different parts of the world and at rather successive periods, would be beneficial for the studies of religion-culture relations in flagging the variation and extent of manifestation of Islamic global norms in local legal cultures which heavily determined by their corresponding local dynamics. As a literary or library research, it uses eclectic, blended, with qualitative method in content analysis.