The social background of divorce rulings in Islamic family law

This study examines the social foundations of Islamic family law and, on this basis, analyzes the practice of talaq from the perspectives of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), law, and sociology. In Islamic law, the family is not merely a contractual relationship between individuals but a fundamental institution through which social order, moral values, and conceptions of justice are shaped. The starting point of this research is to understand how the relationship between fiqh, law, and sociology becomes concretized particularly through the phenomenon of divorce. Employing a qualitative, comparative, and interdisciplinary methodology, the first chapter analyzes the social dimension of fiqh through principles such as custom (urf), public interest (maslaha), juristic preference (istihsan), and the distinction between judicial (qadai) and moral-religious (diyani) norms. The second chapter examines concepts such as marriage, dower (mahr), maintenance (nafaqa), waiting period (idda), and khul by bringing classical fiqh literature into dialogue with sociological theories. The third chapter focuses on talaq by analyzing Ottoman sharia court records and the 1917 Ottoman Law of Family Rights, and explains the sociological transformation of divorce over the historical process. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that Islamic family law is not a system composed solely of normative rules, but rather a dynamic legal tradition that develops through continuous interaction with social reality. The institution of talaq emerges as one of the most salient examples through which the relationship between fiqh, law, and sociology becomes visible. Keywords: Fiqh, Islamic Law, Family Law, Talaq, Divorce, Sociology, Sociology of Law