title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: For , Williams had the quickest and most reliable car, the FW18. Coulthard had left Williams to join Mika Häkkinen at McLaren, and Williams replaced him with Canadian Jacques Villeneuve, who had won the CART series title in 1995, while Hill remained with the team. Schumacher left Benetton to join Ferrari. Williams won the first five Grands Prix, Hill winning all but one of them. Olivier Panis would take victory at the sixth round in Monaco after both Williams cars retired. Hill would retire for the second time in a row after he spun-off in Spain, while his teammate, Villeneuve, took third place. Hill and Villeneuve dominated the next Grand Prix in Canada, with a 1–2 in qualifying and a 1–2 finish. Williams made it a second 1–2 after Hill won the French Grand Prix. Villeneuve won his second race in F1 at Silverstone after Hill retired with a wheel bearing failure on lap 26. Hill was victorious in the next Grand Prix in Germany while Villeneuve won the race after that in Hungary. Schumacher's Ferrari would then take the next two Grands Prix at Spa-Francorchamps and Monza. Villeneuve mounted a title challenge going into the final race of the season at Japan, but Hill reasserted his dominance to take the race and the 1996 title, while Villeneuve lost a wheel and retired.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams's dominance was such that they had clinched the Constructors' Championship and only their drivers had a mathematical chance of taking the title, several races before the season concluded. Around that time, Frank Williams announced that Hill would not be re-signed after his contract expired, despite Hill's successes and eventual Drivers' Championship, so he joined Arrows for 1997. Adrian Newey had ambitions as a technical director (rather than just chief designer), but this was not possible at Williams, as Patrick Head was a founder and shareholder of the team. McLaren lured Newey away, though he was forced to take garden leave for the majority of 1997.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: For what would be the final season of Williams-Renault and a car designed with Newey's input, Frank Williams brought in German Heinz-Harald Frentzen, who had created a good impression on Williams during his first few seasons in Formula One. Frentzen proved to be a disappointment though, and won only one race in two years with Williams, the 1997 San Marino Grand Prix. Jacques Villeneuve won seven races during 1997, compared to five wins by his main rival, Michael Schumacher of a resurgent Ferrari. Williams also achieved the 100-race-win milestone at the British Grand Prix. Coming to the final round of the season at Jerez, Schumacher led Villeneuve by 1 point; however, on lap 48, Schumacher and Villeneuve collided. Schumacher was disqualified from second place in the championship as the accident was deemed by the FIA as "avoidable". Williams won the Constructors' title for the second time in a row, scoring 123 points. Jacques Villeneuve won the Drivers' Championship by three points to Michael Schumacher, who kept his points total despite being removed from second place; thus, runner-up went to Frentzen with 42 points.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: After 1997, the team was unable to maintain their dominance in Formula 1 as Renault ended their full-time involvement in Formula 1, and Adrian Newey moved to the rival team, McLaren. Williams then had to pay for Mecachrome engines, which were old, rebadged Renault F1 engines. This meant that the FW20 not only featured a very similar aerodynamic package to their 1997 car but also virtually the same engine, leading some to comment that they ran what was virtually the same car, adjusted for the 1998 regulations. There were changes on the sponsorship front, as Rothmans opted to promote their Winfield brand, replacing the popular blue and white livery with a red one. For , Williams kept both drivers from the previous season, the first time since that a reigning world champion remained driving for the team. While Ferrari and McLaren battled for the Constructors' and Drivers' titles, Williams fell to the middle of the field. The team won no races and took only 3 podiums during the season, with Frentzen finishing in third at the first round in Australia and Villeneuve finishing third in Germany and Hungary. Williams finished third in the Constructors' Championship, scoring 38 points, while Villeneuve finished fifth in the Drivers' Championship with 21 points, and his German teammate, Frentzen, finished 4 points behind him in seventh.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: In , Williams employed the Supertec engine, which was a rebadged Mecachrome-Renault unit, and a new driver line-up. Villeneuve moved to the new British American Racing (BAR) team, while Frentzen moved to Jordan trading places with fellow German Ralf Schumacher who joined Williams. To replace Villeneuve, Williams signed Italian Alex Zanardi, who after an unsuccessful F1 career in the early 1990s had been racing in the CART series, winning two series championships and a total of fifteen races in his three years. As with Schumacher a driver trade was made, where Zanardi would join Williams and the team's test driver at the time, Juan Pablo Montoya, would join CART in Zanardi's car for Chip Ganassi Racing.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The team managed three podiums, all scored by Ralf Schumacher, with third place in Australia and Britain and a second place in Italy. Zanardi, meanwhile, struggled through the entire season and failed to finish in the points at any race. Due in large part to this, the team finished fifth in the Constructors' Championship, the lowest finish for Williams in the 1990s; the team finished behind Stewart and Jordan, with Schumacher scoring all of the team's 35 points.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: After the season, deciding the relationship was not working, Zanardi's contract with the team was terminated by mutual agreement. He would eventually return to CART in 2001.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: In 1998, the team signed a long-term agreement with German manufacturer BMW to supply engines and expertise for a period of 6 years. As part of the deal, BMW expected at least one driver to be German, which led to the team's signing of Ralf Schumacher for the subsequent season. In 1999, the team had a Williams car with a BMW engine testing at circuits, in preparation for a debut in the season.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: There were major sponsorship changes for 2000–2005, as Rothmans International had been purchased in 1999 by British American Tobacco (BAT), which owned British American Racing and chose not to renew Rothmans' contract with Williams. BMW paid for Williams cars to be entirely in blue and white – unlike the standard motorsport livery scheme, dominated by the colours of the team or major sponsors with the logos of minor sponsors in their own colour schemes. Williams' second major sponsor became Compaq, and following Compaq's acquisition the team debuted Hewlett-Packard (HP) sponsorship at the 2002 British Grand Prix. Complaints about the HP logo on the rear wing led to its replacement in with the sponsor's tag line, "Invent". In a cross-promotion of this technological partnership, a worldwide television commercial featured drivers Ralf Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya seemingly driving their BMW Williams cars around a track by radio control from a grandstand.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The new "clean" image allowed Williams to sign a cigarette anti-craving brand, Niquitin, and Anheuser-Busch, alternating with the Budweiser beer brand and SeaWorld Adventure Parks, in compliance with trademark disputes or alcohol bans.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: To replace Zanardi, Britain's Jenson Button made his series debut. The first season of Williams' partnership with BMW did not yield a single victory, but they managed to get on the podium three times, with Ralf Schumacher responsible for all three. Williams finished third in the Constructors' Championship, with 36 points, one more than the prior year. Ralf Schumacher finished fifth in the Drivers' Championship, while Button, in his debut season, finished in eighth. Button made scrappy mistakes in early races (Monaco, Europe), but overall made an impressive debut in Melbourne, and continued to impress, notably at Silverstone, Spa, and Suzuka.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: In , the arrangement between Williams and Ganassi came to an end, and thus Williams was able to bring Juan Pablo Montoya back to drive full-time for the team. He was returning after two successful years in CART, where he succeeded Zanardi as champion for 1999 and won ten races total; he also had become the first CART driver since the infamous 1996 split of American open-wheel racing to win the Indianapolis 500, doing so in 2000.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Since Montoya was returning to Williams, this left Jenson Button as the odd man out. He would move over to Benetton, which was still running rebadged Renault engines, for what was the team's final season under that name.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The FW23 won four races, three by Ralf Schumacher at Imola, Montreal, and his home Grand Prix in Germany. His teammate, Montoya, was victorious at Monza, and would have won a few more races if not for the FW23's unreliability and pit crew blunders. The car proved to be quicker than the Ferrari and McLaren counterparts in several races, but Williams's 2001 campaign only yielded third place in the Constructors' Championship.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams maintained their driver line-up for the season. The team only won one race, which was at Malaysia, one of only 2 races not won by Ferrari in a year dominated by the Ferraris of Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. Despite Montoya qualifying on pole for 7 races, he ended up having a winless season. Williams did improve on their Constructors' Championship position, finishing in second. Montoya finished third in the Drivers' Championship, eight points ahead of Ralf Schumacher, who finished fourth.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: In qualifying for the at the Monza circuit, Montoya lapped his Williams FW24 in 1:20.264 for an average speed of , breaking the speed record of set by Keke Rosberg in a Honda turbo-powered Williams FW10 at Silverstone for the 1985 British Grand Prix.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: would see Williams come closest to winning its first title since 1997. During pre-season, Frank Williams was very confident that the FW25 would challenge for the title. The team won four races, with Montoya winning at Monaco and Germany, while Ralf Schumacher won at the Nürburgring and the following race at Magny-Cours. Montoya stayed in contention for the Drivers' Championship during the season, and finished third, 11 points behind Michael Schumacher, while Ralf Schumacher finished fifth, 24 points behind Montoya. Williams finished second in the Constructors' Championship, two points ahead of McLaren.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: At the start of the season, it was announced that Montoya would be moving to McLaren in 2005. The team began the season with a radical nose-cone design, known as the "Walrus-Nose", that proved uncompetitive and was replaced by a more conventional assembly in Hungary. Ferrari dominated for a third consecutive season, winning 15 of the 18 races. Williams picked up a win at the final race in Brazil, with Juan Pablo Montoya finishing one second ahead of Kimi Räikkönen's McLaren; this remained Williams's last F1 win until the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix. Another low part of the season was when both Williams and Toyota were disqualified from the Canadian Grand Prix after it was discovered that both cars had brake irregularities, the brake ducts seemingly not conforming to regulations. Williams finished the season in fourth, scoring 88 points and finishing on the podium six times, while Montoya was the highest-placed Williams driver that year, scoring 58 points to finish in fifth position.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: For the season, Schumacher moved to Toyota, while Montoya moved to McLaren. Taking their places were Australian Mark Webber and German Nick Heidfeld. Jenson Button was to have driven for Williams in 2005, but an FIA ruling forced Button to remain with his current team, BAR. Antônio Pizzonia served as the test driver for the team during the 2005 season. Meanwhile, Button signed a contract to drive for Williams in 2006.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: During the course of the 2004 and 2005 F1 seasons, BMW Motorsport and director Mario Theissen increasingly became publicly critical of the Williams F1 team's inability to create a package capable of winning the Constructors' Championship, or even multiple victories within a single season. Williams, on the other hand, blamed BMW for not producing a good enough engine. Williams's failed attempt to prise Jenson Button out of his BAR contract may also have been an issue with Theissen. Despite Frank Williams's rare decision to capitulate to commercial demands by employing German driver Nick Heidfeld when he allegedly preferred Antônio Pizzonia, the fallout between Williams and BMW continued through the 2005 Formula One season. Despite BMW's contract with Williams to supply engines until 2009, this public deterioration of the relationship between Williams and BMW was a factor in the decision by BMW Motorsport to buy Sauber and rebrand that team to feature the BMW name.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams opted for Cosworth V8 engines for the which saw Nico Rosberg replace German Nick Heidfeld, who departed for BMW Sauber, while Mark Webber stayed on with the team. Despite having signed a contract to race for Williams, Jenson Button decided to stay with BAR for 2006 as it was to become a Honda works team. In September 2005 a deal was reached to allow Button to remain with BAR, with Williams receiving around £24m, some of it paid by Button himself, to cancel this contract.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams and Cosworth entered a partnership agreement where Cosworth would supply engines, transmissions and associated electronics and software for the team. Major sponsors Hewlett-Packard concluded sponsorship agreements one year before their official end of contract. The Williams team also switched to Bridgestone tyres.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The season started well, with both drivers scoring points in the opening race of the season, and Nico Rosberg setting the fastest lap at the Bahrain Grand Prix. The rest of the season was disappointing for Williams, with 20 retirements out of 36 starts for the two cars. The team failed to finish on the podium all season, the first time this had happened since Williams's debut season in 1977. The team eventually finished eighth in the Constructors' Championship, with only 11 points.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Following Williams's worst points tally since , the team announced that Japanese manufacturer Toyota would be supplying the engines for the season. In addition, the Toyota engine customer deal also included Magneti Marelli Step 11 engine control unit (ECU) systems as it was used by works Toyota team. A number of other changes were announced for 2007: Alexander Wurz, who had been a test driver at Williams since 2006, became the team's second driver to replace the outgoing Mark Webber; Japanese driver Kazuki Nakajima, son of Satoru, replaced Wurz as a test driver alongside Karthikeyan. Sponsorship saw a change in 2007, as it was announced that AT&T would become the title sponsors for the team from the upcoming season. AT&T was previously involved as minor sponsors with the Jaguar and McLaren teams but moved to Williams following McLaren's announcement of a title sponsorship deal with Vodafone, a competitor of AT&T. On 2 February, the new FW29 was presented to the media in the UK. Soon afterwards, the team secured a sponsorship deal with Lenovo who built the team's new supercomputer.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Rosberg and Wurz gave Williams a more productive season in terms of points and, in Montreal, Wurz scored the team's first podium finish since Nick Heidfeld's second-place at the 2005 European Grand Prix. Over the course of the year, Rosberg was consistently in the points, scoring 20 during the season; in comparison, teammate Wurz finished in the points three times. Following the announcement that Wurz would be retiring from the sport, Williams brought in their young test driver Nakajima to drive the second car for them in the final race in Brazil. The Japanese driver finished in tenth despite starting from near the back of the grid, while Rosberg enjoyed his best race of the season, finishing in fourth. Williams finished fourth in the Constructors' Championship that year.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: For the season, Williams confirmed Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima as their race drivers. Rosberg was confirmed as staying with Williams until the end of on 9 December 2007, ending speculation that he could take Fernando Alonso's vacated seat at McLaren. During the Winter testing sessions, the team ran six different liveries to celebrate their 30th year in the sport and their 500th Grand Prix.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The 2008 season was a mixture of success and disappointment for Williams. While Rosberg managed to obtain 2 podiums in Australia and Singapore, the team struggled at circuits with high-speed corners. The fact that the team was one of the first to switch development to their 2009 car (when new regulations came in) also hindered their season and Williams finished a disappointing 8th in the Constructors' Championship. Rosberg stated that unless the team was more competitive in the near future, he would look to drive elsewhere. Williams retained Rosberg and Nakajima for the 2009 season.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Frank Williams had admitted that he had regretted parting with BMW but stated that Toyota had a tremendous ability to become a top engine supplier. Speculation had been surrounding Toyota's future on the Formula 1 grid. This was due to the fact that for a big-budget team, Toyota had only managed second place as their best result. In December 2008, Williams confirmed their commitment to F1 following the Honda withdrawal announcement.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Ahead of the 2009 Brazilian Grand Prix, Williams announced that it would be ending its three-year partnership with Toyota and finding a new engine supplier for 2010.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: After the termination of their Toyota contract, Williams announced that from the season they were to enter into a "long-term partnership" with Cosworth, and would be using an updated version of the CA V8 engine which powered their cars in 2006. Williams also announced a complete driver change for the 2010 season. Rubens Barrichello joined from 2009 Constructors' Champion Brawn GP, whilst GP2 champion Nico Hülkenberg graduated from the test driver seat. Replacing Hülkenberg in the test seat was Finland's Valtteri Bottas, who finished third in the 2009 Formula Three Euroseries as well as winning the non-championship Masters of Formula 3 event at Zandvoort.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Their new 2010 car, the Williams FW32, was unveiled for the first time at a shakedown test at Silverstone. Its first official test was on 1 February at Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia. Hülkenberg took the team's first pole position in over five years, in variable conditions at the . Hülkenberg was dropped from the team ahead of the season, and replaced by Venezuelan newcomer and reigning GP2 Series champion Pastor Maldonado. The combination of Barrichello and Maldonado meant that 2011 would be the first time since 1981 that Williams would start a season without a European driver in their line-up.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: At the second pre-season test in Jerez, Barrichello posted the fastest time of the week on the last day. That was to no avail as Williams endured one of their worst seasons to date: two ninth places for Barrichello and one tenth place for Maldonado were their best results during the entire year. After Brazil, the team ended with a ninth place in the Constructors' Championship.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 4 July 2011, Williams announced they would be reuniting with engine-supplier Renault who were to supply the team's engines from 2012 onwards. On 1 December 2011, it was confirmed that Maldonado would be retained for the 2012 season, along with reserve driver Valtteri Bottas, who took part in 15 Friday practice sessions. In January 2012, it was confirmed that Bruno Senna would be the driver to partner Maldonado, effectively ending Rubens Barrichello's F1 career.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Prior to the 2012 season, Patrick Head moved from the Williams F1 team to Williams Hybrid Power Limited, another subsidiary of Williams Grand Prix Holdings. The team also announced that its relationship with AT&T ended by mutual agreement, and there were negotiations with another telecommunications company for team's title sponsorship. At the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, Pastor Maldonado took his only Grand Prix victory, which was also Williams's first race victory since 2004 Brazilian Grand Prix. Around 90 minutes after celebrating this win, a fire broke out in the garage of the Williams team, damaging the FW34 of Bruno Senna and leaving several injured. The team eventually achieved eighth position in the Formula One World Constructors' Championship.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Claire Williams, the daughter of team principal Frank Williams, was appointed deputy principal in March 2013. Maldonado was retained by the team for and was joined by Bottas, promoted from his role as test driver. The team struggled throughout the season, despite a good qualifying session at the Canadian Grand Prix and a place in the top 10 at the United States Grand Prix, scoring only five points in the World Constructors' Championship.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: While Williams enjoyed a victory in the 2012 season and occasional points finishes, they did not reach the same heights as was achieved during their domination of Formula One during the 1990s. This, combined with an absolutely dismal 2013 season, prompted Williams to look for a new engine supplier from the 2014 season onwards.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: In May 2013, Williams signed a long-term contract with Mercedes to supply engines for the team, the German manufacturer providing 1.6-litre V6 turbo engines from the start of the 2014 season. Bottas was retained as driver for , and Felipe Massa was signed from Ferrari to replace Maldonado. The team also unveiled a new, multi-year title sponsorship deal with drinks brand Martini. As part of the deal, the team became Williams Martini Racing, except in Bahrain, Russia and Abu Dhabi, where the team is known as Williams Racing because of alcohol advertising restrictions.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The team won its first pole position since 2012, courtesy of Massa at the ; it was the only time that Mercedes would be beaten to pole position over the course of the 2014 season. With Bottas qualifying alongside Massa, it was also the first time the team had locked out the front row since the 2003 German Grand Prix. The team enjoyed an upturn in performance, including a double podium in Abu Dhabi, resulting in them taking third place in the Constructors' Championship. They repeated this feat in the season, despite a low-key season owing to the resurgence of Ferrari.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The team went into the season with Bottas and Massa retained. Former Ferrari Driver Academy member Lance Stroll joined the team as a development driver; Alex Lynn became a reserve driver with Paul di Resta who was announced on 13 March, following Susie Wolff's retirement from motorsport.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: In September 2016, Massa announced his intentions to retire from Formula One, with Stroll later announced as his replacement for . Following Nico Rosberg's decision to retire, the team released Bottas from his contract to allow him to take his place at Mercedes, with Massa returning to the team on a one-year deal.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Massa was forced to withdraw from the 2017 Hungarian Grand Prix due to illness; the team then announced that Paul di Resta would be racing alongside Stroll instead.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 4 November 2017, Felipe Massa announced his decision to retire from F1. Renault reserve driver and 2016 GP2 Series 3rd-place finisher Sergey Sirotkin was signed as his replacement for , with Robert Kubica joining the team as a reserve and development driver.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams struggled over the course of the 2018 season, scoring only 7 points and finishing last in the Constructors' Championship standings. Although the FW41 rarely suffered from reliability issues, it was significantly off the pace; the team's highest finish was Stroll's 8th-place finish in Azerbaijan. The team's only other points finish was at the , with Stroll finishing 9th and Sirotkin scoring his first championship point in 10th. This was also the only Grand Prix of the season in which the team reached the third qualifying session, with Stroll starting 10th on the grid.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 27 February 2018 Martini announced that they would leave Williams and Formula One at the end of the 2018 season.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 12 October 2018, the team announced that reigning Formula 2 champion George Russell would be joining the team for the season. On 22 November 2018 it was announced that reserve driver Robert Kubica would be promoted to the other seat, marking his return to Formula One after eight years away from the sport due to injury. For the 2019 season, the team entered into a partnership with Polish petroleum company PKN Orlen and a multi-year title sponsorship arrangement with telecommunications company ROKiT.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams missed the first two-and-a-half days of pre-season testing in Barcelona due to the FW42 not yet being ready, the only team to suffer such a setback. Williams began the season out of reach from being competitive. During qualifying at the season-opener in Australia, their fastest time was almost 1.3 seconds slower than the nearest competitor. In the race, Russell and Kubica finished two and three laps behind the leader respectively. The team's best result of the season came in Germany, where Kubica was classified 10th, the team's only points finish that season. However, this result only came after post-race penalties for other drivers. Upgrades came during the season with which the FW42 began to catch up to its competitors; Russell came within 0.1 seconds of reaching Q2 in qualifying for the and finished close to the points with 12th in Brazil. However, both cars would be eliminated in Q1 at every race of the season. Despite the team's lack of performance in comparison to 2014–2017, it was confirmed that Williams have extended their engine supplier partnership with Mercedes until 2025.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 19 September 2019, Williams announced that Kubica had decided to leave the team at the end of the 2019 season; he would go on to join Alfa Romeo as a reserve driver. 2019 Formula 2 Championship runner-up Nicholas Latifi was promoted from his role of reserve driver to replace Kubica for the season. Jack Aitken replaced Latifi as reserve driver. In May 2020, following publication of significant losses in 2019, Williams announced the immediate termination of its title sponsorship deal with ROKiT.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: In the opening race of 2020, the 2020 Austrian Grand Prix, Latifi reached 11th place, just outside the points, whereas in qualifying Russell was only 0.15 seconds away from reaching Q2 (Russell retired in the race with a fuel pressure issue). In the wet qualifying for the next race, the Styrian Grand Prix, Russell succeeded in making it out of Q1, the first time a Williams driver had done so since the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix, and, in the slippery conditions, qualified in 12th. Russell started the race in 11th, following the application of penalties for other drivers.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: At the 2020 Hungarian Grand Prix, both drivers made it out of Q1 for the first time since the 2018 Italian Grand Prix. It was Russell's second time getting out of Q1, and Latifi's first time getting out of Q1.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 21 August 2020, Williams was acquired by US investment group Dorilton Capital for €152 million. The amount includes settling the debt of the company and it will continue to run under the Williams name and keep its UK base.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Despite being offered the chance to stay on as Team Principal, Claire Williams announced her departure from the team effective after the weekend of the 2020 Italian Grand Prix. Following this announcement, it will be the first time Williams F1 Team has not been under the leadership of the Williams family since its inception 43 years prior. Simon Roberts, who joined Williams from McLaren in May 2020, became the acting team principal of the team. In December 2020, Williams announced Jost Capito will be joining Williams as the new CEO, with Roberts becoming team principal and reporting to Capito.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: During the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix, Williams celebrated their 750th Grand Prix start. To celebrate the occasion, Williams launched a competition where the names of 100 Williams supporters were featured on their car, the Williams FW43B, together with the number of races since they started supporting Williams. In June 2021, Roberts left the team. Most of his responsibilities were taken over by Capito, with François-Xavier Demaison taking his trackside leadership duties. The 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix saw Williams score their first points since the 2019 German Grand Prix with Robert Kubica, and their first double points finish since the 2018 Italian Grand Prix. At the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, Russell qualified in 2nd place and scored Williams' first podium since the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as the race was stopped after only two laps under safety car conditions were completed, allowing most drivers to retain their qualifying position. The team also achieved a second consecutive double points finish, as Latifi finished 9th.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Russell scored back-to-back points at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix and at the 2021 Russian Grand Prix (9th and 10th respectively; in the latter he qualified 3rd, behind Carlos Sainz Jr. and pole-sitter Lando Norris). Williams finished in 8th place in the constructors’ championship with 23 points, 10 points ahead of Alfa Romeo, which finished in 9th place.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: For the 2022 season, Russell left Williams to join Mercedes, whose junior team he had been a part of. Ex-Red Bull driver, Alex Albon, was signed to replace Russell. Latifi retained his spot in the team. Prior to the season, Williams announced a partnership deal with the battery manufacturer Duracell. Albon scored the teams first points of the season in the Australian Grand Prix, where he pitted only once on the last lap and finished tenth. Albon also finished ninth in the Miami Grand Prix. Latifi achieved his first ever Q3 appearance at the British Grand Prix, though he dropped out the points and finished in twelfth. Following a number of penalties at the Belgian Grand Prix, Albon qualified ninth and started sixth. Albon went on to score Williams' third point position finish by ending the race in tenth. Prior to the third practice session at the Italian Grand Prix, Albon withdrew after feeling ill and suffering from appendicitis. Williams announced Nyck de Vries as the replacement. In his first ever qualifying session, de Vries qualified thirteenth, but started eighth after penalties. de Vries went on to finish ninth, scoring points on his debut.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams Grand Prix Holdings is the public company of Williams Group, which includes the Formula One Team, Williams Advanced Engineering and others like Williams Heritage and collaborations with other brands.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) is the technology and engineering services business of the Williams Group. Based in the United Kingdom, it is located in a dedicated facility of , adjacent to Williams Formula One facilities.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The company provides the battery technology used in Formula E and Extreme E, and has assisted the development of the electric Vanda Dendrobium car from Singapore. It has worked with Jaguar to create the C-X75 hybrid supercar. WAE partnered once again with Jaguar to build new stunt C-X75s for the 24th James Bond film, "Spectre".


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: WAE announced in June 2013 a new collaboration with Nismo, the performance-orientated brand of Nissan, to partner in the development of high-performance road cars.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The company announced in August 2017 a collaboration with Singer Vehicle Design. The initial work is a modified, naturally aspirated, air-cooled, flat-six Porsche 911 engine with a 4.0L capacity, four valves per cylinder and four camshafts, rated at 500HP.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 1 May 2019, Williams Advanced Engineering announced their partnership with the FIA sanctioned electric off-road racing series, Extreme E. Williams Advanced Engineering will supply the batteries for the first two seasons of Extreme E, which began in 2021.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 2 May 2019, it was announced that Williams Advanced Engineering will supply the batteries for the multi-make ETCR series that is due to launch in 2020.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: On 24 January 2022, the Australian mining firm Fortescue Metals Group announced it would be purchasing Williams Advanced Engineering for £164m in an effort to meet its carbon neutral targets for 2030.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams Hybrid Power (WHP) was the division of Williams F1 that developed electromechanical flywheels for mobile applications such as buses, trams and high-performance endurance-racing cars. A hybrid system that uses a spinning composite rotor to store energy, these flywheels help a vehicle save fuel and ultimately reduce its CO emissions.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: WHP was first established in 2008 and immediately set about developing a new flywheel energy-recovery system for the Williams F1 Team after the introduction of Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) into Formula One for the 2009 season. While other teams were pouring their efforts into electric battery systems, Williams F1 opted to go down the flywheel route because of a strong belief in the technology's wider applications. While it was never raced in Formula One due to technical changes, WHP has since seen its technology adapted for a range of applications. For example, the Audi R18 hybrid car that won the 2012 Le Mans 24 Hours used a WHP flywheel. WHP has also seen its flywheel technology introduced into a series of buses as part of a deal with the Go-Ahead Group, one of the UK's biggest transport operators. In April 2014, Williams Hybrid Power was sold to GKN.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams Heritage (WH) is the retired chassis and restoration division of Williams F1 (similar to Ferrari F1 Clienti and Classic Team Lotus) that keeps and maintains old retired Williams Formula One chassis that are no longer in racing use. The division's headquarters are located at the Formula One team's site in Grove, Oxfordshire. Williams Heritage manage the restorations, maintenance and on-track activities of the entire Williams collection, as well as privately owned Williams cars. The division was created by Jonathan Williams and is managed by heritage team manager, Tom Morton.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams developed the car for the revived Formula Two championship, beginning in 2009. The design was originally created for a new, more-powerful offshoot of the Formula Palmer Audi series, however the car was re-purposed when Jonathan Palmer's MotorSport Vision successfully bid for the rights to run the new Formula Two series.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The Metro 6R4 rally car was developed by Williams in 1984 on commission from Rover. The rally car was a MG Metro with a completely new V6 engine (mid-engined) and four-wheel drive, developed to the international Group B rallying regulations. Williams developed the car in just six months.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams entered the British Touring Car Championship in 1995, taking over the works Renault programme. Alain Menu transferred from Renault Dealer Racing, with Will Hoy signed to partner him. Williams employed Ian Harrison, future director of Triple Eight Racing as team manager. While Menu was a championship contender, Hoy had constant failures and bad luck during the first half of the season. However, Hoy's luck changed and he won three races and scored several podium finishes in the second half of the year, eventually taking fourth in the championship while Menu finished second in the championship with seven wins. Renault won the manufacturers championship. 1996 was a more difficult year with the front-wheel-drive cars outclassed by the 4WD Audi A4s of Frank Biela and John Bintcliffe. Menu was second in the championship again, while Hoy finished a lowly ninth. 1997 was a breakthrough year for Williams, winning the drivers' championship with Menu, the manufacturers' trophy and teams' award. Other changes for the team saw Jason Plato replacing Hoy, taking third in the championship. The team won 15 races out of 24 in 1997. It also competed in the 1997 Bathurst 1000 with Menu and Plato leading for much of the early part of the race. Alan Jones drove the second car, his first appearance for Williams since 1981.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: 1998 saw few changes to the Williams team: the driver line-up was unchanged with Menu to defend his title alongside Plato, but the main sponsor for 1998 was Nescafé, with Renault still putting sponsorship in for the team. While the Renaults had a new look for 1998, the opposition had caught up after 1997, and both Menu and Plato had a more difficult season, finishing fourth and fifth in the championship. In the final round of 1998 at Silverstone, a third car was entered for Independents Champion Tommy Rustad. Renault ultimately finished third in the manufacturers trophy and second in the teams championship. 1999 was the most difficult season for Williams, as Menu left Renault after racing with them since 1993. Plato was joined by Jean-Christophe Boullion. Nescafé were again the main sponsor for the Williams team in 1999. Renault did not have much luck in 1999 with engine failures haunting the team during the mid-part of the season. One win for Plato was the only success for the season, and Renault pulled out of the BTCC at the end of the season.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Prior to their F1 partnership, Williams Motorsport built Le Mans Prototypes for BMW, known as the V12 LM and V12 LMR. The V12 LMR won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1999. The car was driven by Pierluigi Martini, Yannick Dalmas and Joachim Winkelhock, and operated by Schnitzer Motorsport under the name of BMW Motorsport.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: The Williams name and logo were used on the Renault Clio Williams, a limited sports model of the production supermini, which was Formula One's safety car at the 1996 Argentine Grand Prix.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Through subsidiary Williams Hybrid Power, the company developed and supplied a flywheel-based kinetic-energy storage system which was in use on a Porsche 911 GT3 R car in various GT racing series. The car achieved its first victory on 28 May 2011 at the 4th round of the VLN Endurance Racing Championship held at the Nürburgring.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Williams's Advanced Engineering division collaborated with Jaguar Racing in its debut season. Williams have a contract to supply the battery system for the Gen 3 Car from the 2021–22 Formula E World Championship.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Like most F1 teams, Williams operates its own driver academy. They currently have five drivers in their programme.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Current drivers within the Driver Academy are Jamie Chadwick (W Series Champion 2019, 2021, 2022), Roy Nissany, Logan Sargeant (Williams F1 driver 2023), Zak O'Sullivan, and Oliver Gray.


title: Williams Grand Prix Engineering

text: Former drivers include Lance Stroll (who currently races for Aston Martin in Formula One), Oliver Rowland (who currently races for Mahindra in Formula E), Nicholas Latifi, Dan Ticktum, and Jack Aitken.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: Kim Woo-bin (born Kim Hyun-joong on July 16, 1989) is a South Korean actor and model. He began his career as a runway model and made his acting debut in the television drama "White Christmas". He subsequently gained attention in "A Gentleman's Dignity" (2012), and made his breakthrough with "School 2013" (2012-2013) and "The Heirs" (2013). Kim later starred in box office hits "" (2013), "The Con Artists" (2014) and "Twenty" (2015). In 2016, he took on his first leading role on television in "Uncontrollably Fond".


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: In May 2017, Kim's agency announced that Kim would be taking a hiatus after he was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer. Kim subsequently returned to screen in 2022 with the TV series "Our Blues" and "Black Knight" and also with the sci-fi action film "Alienoid", directed by Choi Dong-hoon.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: Kim wanted to pursue a modeling career since he was a high school student. He debuted as a runway model in 2009 at the age of 20 and began appearing in prêt-à-porter and Seoul Fashion Week collections.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: As his modeling career progressed, he started doing commercial films and began studying acting, under the guidance of acting coach Moon Won-joo. Kim fell in love with acting, saying, "In the course of doing so, I found myself feeling the same thrill and enthusiasm that I felt the first time I came to walk on the runway".


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: Under the stage name Kim Woo-bin, he made his acting debut in 2011, starring in mystery drama "White Christmas" and the low-rated cable sitcom "Vampire Idol".


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: In 2012, he had a supporting role in the romantic comedy drama "A Gentleman's Dignity", written by famed screenwriter Kim Eun-sook. Next came a two-episode guest appearance in drama adaptation of the popular manga "To the Beautiful You".


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: Kim's breakout year came in 2013 with two hit dramas and one film. From late December to early 2013, he starred in the teen drama "School 2013". He received his first acting award for the role at the 2nd APAN Star Awards under the category Best New Actor.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: The same year, he was cast in Kim Eun-sook's teen drama "The Heirs", which became popular domestically and internationally with a peak audience rating of 28.6% and 1 million hits on the Chinese streaming website iQiyi. Kim experienced a surge in popularity overseas. This led to increased advertising contracts and acting offers for the actor.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: Kim then appeared in his first major film role in "", the blockbuster sequel to Kwak Kyung-taek's 2001 box office hit. He received positive reviews for his portrayal as a young gang member. The same year he became the host of cable music program "M! Countdown" from August 15, 2013, to February 13, 2014.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: After his rise in popularity in 2013, Kim continued appearing in big screen projects. In January 2014, he was cast in the heist movie "The Con Artists", in which he played a top safe-cracker alongside rising star Lee Hyun-woo. He then took on a comedic character in indie director Lee Byung-heon's sophomore effort "Twenty" in 2015"."


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: Kim then appeared in an ad campaign for Calvin Klein Watches + Jewelry, making him the first East Asian model for the brand.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: In 2015, Kim was cast in his first television leading role in the melodrama "Uncontrollably Fond," written by screenwriter Lee Kyung-hee. The drama premiered on July 6, 2016.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: He then starred in crime action film "Master" alongside Lee Byung-hun and Kang Dong-won. The movie premiered in December 2016 and became the 11th bestselling film for 2016 in South Korea.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: In 2017, Kim was cast in crime caper film "Wiretap" by Choi Dong-hoon. The project has since been suspended to allow Kim to seek treatment for cancer.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: On March 11, 2020, AM Entertainment announced that Kim would be returning to the big screen in Choi Dong-hoon's upcoming sci-fi film "Alienoid" alongside Ryu Jun-yeol and Kim Tae-ri. The film premiered in July 2022 and Kim played the role of 'Guard', person in charge of managing alien prisoners.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: Also in 2022, Kim co-starred in acclaimed screenwriter Noh Hee-kyung's television series "Our Blues", and will star in Netflix original series "Black Knight".


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: Kim is best friends with fellow model-actor and "School 2013" co-star Lee Jong-suk, whom he has known since their modeling days.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: On May 24, 2017, Kim was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer. Kim's agency, Sidus HQ, said Kim had begun drug and radiation treatment and would halt all activities. On December 29, Kim announced, in a letter, that he had completed his treatment plan for the cancer. However, he was still exempted from military service.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: On March 8, 2022, Kim donated million to the Hope Bridge Disaster Relief Association to help the victims of the massive wildfires that started in Uljin, Gyeongbuk. and also spread to Samcheok, Gangwon.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: In 2013, Kim was named honorary ambassador for his alma mater, Jeonju University. The same year, he was appointed the public relations ambassador of the 2013 Suwon Information Science Festival; and ambassador of the "Good Downloader Campaign" organized by the Korean Film Council and Film Federation Against Piracy.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: In 2015, Kim was chosen as the promotional ambassador of CJ CGV's arthouse exhibition chain CGV ARTHOUSE.


title: Kim Woo-bin

text: In April 2017, Kim was appointed as an honorary ambassador for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Kim is the second actor to take on this role and was set to take part in various activities to promote the event. In October, however, he was pulled from the role due to his ongoing cancer treatments.


title: Sharia

text: Sharia (; ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term "sharīʿah" refers to God's immutable divine law and is contrasted with "fiqh", which refers to its human scholarly interpretations. In the historical course, fiqh sects have emerged that reflect the preferences of certain societies and state administrations on behalf of people who are interested in the theoretical (method) and practical application (Ahkam / fatwa) studies of laws and rules, but sharia has never been a valid legal system on its own. It has been used together with "customary (Urf) law" since Omar or the Umayyads.


title: Sharia

text: It may also be wrong to think that the Sharia, as a religious argument or belief, is entirely within or related to Allah's commands and prohibitions. Several non-graded crimes are mentioned in the Qur'an, and they are met with qisas or a single ungraded corporal punishment. Many regulations such as tazir punishments, which are not included in the few crimes called hudud, rajm, which is considered contrary to the Qur'an by some jurists and the sharp distinction between free women and concubines in women's clothing can be counted within this scope.


title: Sharia

text: Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence recognizes four sources of Sharia: the "Quran", "sunnah" (authentic hadith), "qiyas" (analogical reasoning), and "ijma" (juridical consensus). Different legal schools—of which the most prominent are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafiʽi, Hanbali, and Jaʽfari—developed methodologies for deriving Sharia rulings from scriptural sources using a process known as "ijtihad". Traditional jurisprudence ("fiqh") distinguishes two principal branches of law, "ʿibādāt" (rituals) and "muʿāmalāt" (social relations), which together comprise a wide range of topics. Its rulings are concerned with ethical standards as much as with legal norms, assigning actions to one of five categories: mandatory, recommended, neutral, abhorred, and prohibited. This classification has also been integrated with the motto enjoining good and forbidding wrong, which is accepted as a type of jihad and has a place in the Qur'an about 30 repeat. Fiqh was elaborated over the centuries by legal opinions (fatwas) issued by qualified jurists (muftis) and historically applied in Sharia courts by ruler-appointed judges, complemented by various economic, criminal and administrative laws issued by Muslim rulers.


title: Sharia

text: In the 21st century, the role of Sharia has become an increasingly contested topic around the world especially on political basis. There are ongoing theoretical debates as to whether Sharia is compatible with democracy, human rights, freedom of thought, women's rights, LGBT rights, and banking. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECtHR) ruled in several cases that Sharia is "incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy". Some traditional practices include serious violations of human rights, especially on women and freedom of religion.


title: Sharia

text: The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim fundamentalists and modernists. In the modern era, traditional laws in the Muslim world have been widely replaced by statutes inspired by European models. Judicial procedures and legal education were likewise brought in line with European practice. While the constitutions of most Muslim-majority states contain references to Sharia, its rules are largely retained only in family law. The legislators who codified these laws sought to modernize them without abandoning their foundations in traditional jurisprudence. The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought along calls by Islamist movements for full implementation of Sharia, including "hudud" corporal punishments, such as stoning. Today, fundamentalist terrorist organizations and modernist Islamists have advocated the implementation of the different interpretations of the sharia adopted by them through religious-political-terrorist organizations and different propaganda methods. On the other hand, theologian thinkers such as Fazlur Rahman Malik joined this discussion with their views that can be summarized as the Qur'anic expressions and the provisions derived from them have historical characteristics and should be abandoned. In some cases, this resulted in traditionalist legal reform, while other countries witnessed juridical reinterpretation of Sharia advocated by progressive reformers.


title: Sharia

text: The primary range of meanings of the Arabic word "šarīʿah", derived from the root "š-r-ʕ", is related to religion and religious law. The lexicographical tradition records two major areas of use where the word "šarīʿah" can appear without religious connotation. In texts evoking a pastoral or nomadic environment, the word, and its derivatives refer to watering animals at a permanent water-hole or to the seashore, with special reference to animals who come there. Another area of use relates to notions of stretched or lengthy. This range of meanings is cognate with the Hebrew "saraʿ" and is likely to be the origin of the meaning "way" or "path". Both these areas have been claimed to have given rise to aspects of the religious meaning.


title: Sharia

text: Some scholars describe the word "šarīʿah" as an archaic Arabic word denoting "pathway to be followed" (analogous to the Hebrew term Halakhah ["The Way to Go"]), or "path to the water hole" and argue that its adoption as a metaphor for a divinely ordained way of life arises from the importance of water in an arid desert environment.


title: Sharia

text: In the Quran, "šarīʿah" and its cognate "širʿah" occur once each, with the meaning "way" or "path". The word "šarīʿah" was widely used by Arabic-speaking Jews during the Middle Ages, being the most common translation for the word "torah" in the 10th-century Arabic translation of the Torah by Saʿadya Gaon. A similar use of the term can be found in Christian writers. The Arabic expression "Sharīʿat Allāh" (شريعة الله "God’s Law") is a common translation for תורת אלוהים (‘God’s Law’ in Hebrew) and νόμος τοῦ θεοῦ (‘God’s Law’ in Greek in the New Testament [Rom. 7: 22]). In Muslim literature, "šarīʿah" designates the laws or message of a prophet or God, in contrast to "fiqh", which refers to a scholar's interpretation thereof.


title: Sharia

text: In older English-language law-related works in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the word used for Sharia was sheri. It, along with the French variant "chéri", was used during the time of the Ottoman Empire, and is from the Turkish "şer’"("i").


title: Sharia

text: The word "sharīʿah" is used by Arabic-speaking peoples of the Middle East to designate a prophetic religion in its totality. For example, "sharīʿat Mūsā" means law or religion of Moses and "sharīʿatu-nā" can mean "our religion" in reference to any monotheistic faith. Within Islamic discourse, "šarīʿah" refers to religious regulations governing the lives of Muslims. For many Muslims, the word means simply "justice," and they will consider any law that promotes justice and social welfare to conform to Sharia.


title: Sharia

text: Jan Michiel Otto distinguishes four senses conveyed by the term "sharia" in religious, legal and political discourse:


title: Sharia

text: A related term "" (, Islamic law), which was borrowed from European usage in the late 19th century, is used in the Muslim world to refer to a legal system in the context of a modern state.


title: Sharia

text: A similar legal concept "Eye for an eye" first recorded in the Code of Hammurabi. Qisas was a practice used as a resolution tool in inter-tribal conflicts in pre-Islamic Arab society. The basis of this resolution was that a member from the tribe to which the murderer belonged was handed over to the victim's family for execution, equivalent to the social status of the murdered person. The condition of social equivalence meant the execution of a member of the murderer's tribe who was equivalent to the murdered, in that the murdered person was male or female, slave or free, elite or commonone. For example, only one slave could be killed for a slave, and a woman for a woman. In these cases, "compensatory payment (Diyya)" could be paid to the family of the murdered person. On this pre-Islamic understanding added a debate about whether a Muslim can be executed for a non-Muslim during the Islamic period.


title: Sharia

text: The main verse for implementation in Islam is Al Baqara, 178 verse: "Believers! Retaliation is ordained for you regarding the people who were killed. Free versus free, captive versus captive, woman versus woman. Whoever is forgiven by the brother of the slain for a price, let him abide by the custom and pay the price well."


title: Sharia

text: According to the traditionalist ("Atharī") Muslim view, the major precepts of Sharia were passed down directly from the Islamic prophet Muhammad without "historical development" and the emergence of Islamic jurisprudence ("fiqh") also goes back to the lifetime of Muhammad. Modern historians have presented alternative theories of the formation of fiqh. At first Western scholars accepted the general outlines of the traditionalist account. In the late 19th century, an influential revisionist hypothesis was advanced by Ignac Goldziher and elaborated by Joseph Schacht in the mid-20th century. Schacht and other scholars argued that having conquered much more populous agricultural and urban societies with already existing laws and legal needs, the initial Muslim efforts to formulate legal norms


title: Sharia

text: regarded the Quran and Muhammad's hadiths as just one source of law, with jurist personal opinions, the legal practice of conquered peoples, and the decrees and decisions of the caliphs also being valid sources.


title: Sharia

text: According to this theory, most canonical hadiths did not originate with Muhammad but were actually created at a later date, despite the efforts of hadith scholars to weed out fabrications.


title: Sharia

text: After it became accepted that legal norms must be formally grounded in scriptural sources, proponents of rules of jurisprudence supported by the hadith would extend the chains of transmission of the hadith back to Muhammad's companions. In his view, the real architect of Islamic jurisprudence was Al-Shafi‘i (d. 820 CE/204 AH), who formulated this idea (that legal norms must be formally grounded in scriptural sources) and other elements of classical legal theory in his work "al-risala", but who was preceded by a body of Islamic law not based on primacy of Muhammad's hadiths.


title: Sharia

text: While the origin of hadith remains a subject of scholarly controversy, this theory (of Goldziher and Schacht) has given rise to objections, and modern historians generally adopt more cautious, intermediate positions,


title: Sharia

text: and it is generally accepted that early Islamic jurisprudence developed out of a combination of administrative and popular practices shaped by the religious and ethical precepts of Islam. It continued some aspects of pre-Islamic laws and customs of the lands that fell under Muslim rule in the aftermath of the early conquests and modified other aspects, aiming to meet the practical need of establishing Islamic norms of behavior and adjudicating disputes arising in the early Muslim communities. Juristic thought gradually developed in study circles, where independent scholars met to learn from a local master and discuss religious topics. At first, these circles were fluid in their membership, but with time distinct regional legal schools crystallized around shared sets of methodological principles. As the boundaries of the schools became clearly delineated, the authority of their doctrinal tenets came to be vested in a master jurist from earlier times, who was henceforth identified as the school's founder. In the course of the first three centuries of Islam, all legal schools came to accept the broad outlines of classical legal theory, according to which Islamic law had to be firmly rooted in the Quran and hadith.


title: Sharia

text: According to the traditionalist Muslim (Atharī) view, the major precepts of Sharia were passed down directly from the Islamic prophet Muhammad without "historical development" and the emergence of Islamic jurisprudence ("fiqh") also goes back to the lifetime of Muhammad. In this view, his companions and followers took what he did and approved of as a model (sunnah) and transmitted this information to the succeeding generations in the form of hadith. These reports led first to informal discussion and then systematic legal thought, articulated with greatest success in the eighth and ninth centuries by the master jurists Abu Hanifah, Malik ibn Anas, Al-Shafi‘i, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who are viewed as the founders of the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafiʿi, and Hanbali legal schools ("madhhabs") of Sunni jurisprudence.


title: Sharia

text: Classical jurists held that human reason is a gift from God which should be exercised to its fullest capacity. However, they believed that use of reason alone is insufficient to distinguish right from wrong, and that rational argumentation must draw its content from the body of transcendental knowledge revealed in the Quran and through the sunnah of Muhammad. (Husn and Kubh) Expressions used in the Qur'an and authentic hadith that can serve as a basis for legislation and judiciary, which are called nass by theorist jurists, are examined (in terms of linguistics, meaning, aim, context, scope, restrictions, etc.); new provisions are introduced, the scope is expanded by making comparisons (analogy) or exceptions are made.(Ijtihad) Classical Fiqh theory predicts that all legal problems of humanity can be resolved in this way.


title: Sharia

text: Fiqh is traditionally divided into the fields of "uṣūl al-fiqh" (lit. the roots of fiqh), which studies the theoretical principles of jurisprudence, and "furūʿ al-fiqh" (lit. the branches of fiqh), which is devoted to elaboration of rulings on the basis of these principles.


title: Sharia

text: Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence elaborates how scriptures should be interpreted from the standpoint of linguistics and rhetoric. It also comprises methods for establishing authenticity of hadith and for determining when the legal force of a scriptural passage is abrogated by a passage revealed at a later date. In addition to the Quran and sunnah, the classical theory of Sunni fiqh recognizes two other sources of law: juristic consensus ("ijmaʿ") and analogical reasoning ("qiyas"). It therefore studies the application and limits of analogy, as well as the value and limits of consensus, along with other methodological principles, some of which are accepted by only certain legal schools. This interpretive apparatus is brought together under the rubric of ijtihad, which refers to a jurist's exertion in an attempt to arrive at a ruling on a particular question. The theory of Twelver Shia jurisprudence parallels that of Sunni schools with some differences, such as recognition of reason ("ʿaql") as a source of law in place of "qiyas" and extension of the notion of sunnah to include traditions of the imams.


title: Sharia

text: Islamic scholar Sayyid Rashid Rida (1865 - 1935 C.E) lists the four basic sources of Islamic law, agreed upon by all Sunni Muslims:"the [well-known] sources of legislation in Islam are four: the "Qur'an", the "Sunnah", the consensus of the "ummah" and "ijtihad" undertaken by competent jurists"


title: Sharia

text: Quranism (al-Qurʾāniyya or Quran-only Islam) holds the belief that traditional religious clergy has corrupted religion, and Islamic guidance should be based strictly on the Quran, thus opposing the religious authority of all or most of the hadith literature and extra non-Quranic sources. Quranists believe that religious laws (as opposed to narrations) already in the Quran are clear and complete. Quranists claim that the vast majority of hadith literature may be fabrications, and that the Quran itself criticizes the hadith (and its role in Islam) both in the technical sense and the general sense.


title: Sharia

text: The classical process of ijtihad combined these generally recognized principles with other methods, which were not adopted by all legal schools, such as "istihsan" (juristic preference), "istislah" (consideration of public interest) and "istishab" (presumption of continuity). A jurist who is qualified to practice ijtihad is known as a "mujtahid". The use of independent reasoning to arrive at a ruling is contrasted with "taqlid" (imitation), which refers to following the rulings of a mujtahid. By the beginning of the 10th century, development of Sunni jurisprudence prompted leading jurists to state that the main legal questions had been addressed and the scope of ijtihad was gradually restricted. From the 18th century on, leading Muslim reformers began calling for abandonment of taqlid and renewed emphasis on ijtihad, which they saw as a return to the vitality of early Islamic jurisprudence.


title: Sharia

text: Fiqh is concerned with ethical standards as much as with legal norms, seeking to establish not only what is and is not legal, but also what is morally right and wrong. Sharia rulings fall into one of five categories known as "the five decisions" ("al-aḥkām al-khamsa"): mandatory ("farḍ" or "wājib"), recommended ("mandūb" or "mustaḥabb"), neutral ("mubāḥ"), reprehensible ("makrūh"), and forbidden ("ḥarām"). It is a sin or a crime to perform a forbidden action or not to perform a mandatory action. Reprehensible acts should be avoided, but they are not considered to be sinful or punishable in court. Avoiding reprehensible acts and performing recommended acts is held to be subject of reward in the afterlife, while neutral actions entail no judgment from God. Jurists disagree on whether the term "ḥalāl" covers the first three or the first four categories. The legal and moral verdict depends on whether the action is committed out of necessity ("ḍarūra") and on the underlying intention ("niyya"), as expressed in the legal maxim "acts are [evaluated according] to intention."


title: Sharia

text: These actions have material or moral equivalents in the classical understanding of sharia. The abandonment of the actions that are considered fard, wajib and sunnah, and doing the things that are considered makruh and haram are penalized (as hadd or tazir punishments).


title: Sharia

text: Constant committing of minor sins or the major sins that do not require greater punishment, which are described as wickedness (fisq) in fiqh terminology, are punished by the judge's discretion, without a certain limit and measure. In tazir punishments, there is no obligation to prove the crime (principle of legality) by witnessing or similar mechanisms.


title: Sharia

text: "Maqāṣid" (aims or purposes) of Sharia and "maṣlaḥa" (welfare or public interest) are two related classical doctrines which have come to play an increasingly prominent role in modern times. They were first clearly articulated by al-Ghazali (d. 1111), who argued that "maslaha" was God's general purpose in revealing the divine law, and that its specific aim was preservation of five essentials of human well-being: religion, life, intellect, offspring, and property. Although most classical-era jurists recognized "maslaha" and "maqasid" as important legal principles, they held different views regarding the role they should play in Islamic law. Some jurists viewed them as auxiliary rationales constrained by scriptural sources and analogical reasoning. Others regarded them as an independent source of law, whose general principles could override specific inferences based on the letter of scripture. While the latter view was held by a minority of classical jurists, in modern times it came to be championed in different forms by prominent scholars who sought to adapt Islamic law to changing social conditions by drawing on the intellectual heritage of traditional jurisprudence. These scholars expanded the inventory of "maqasid" to include such aims of Sharia as reform and women's rights (Rashid Rida); justice and freedom (Mohammed al-Ghazali); and human dignity and rights (Yusuf al-Qaradawi).


title: Sharia

text: The domain of "furūʿ al-fiqh" (lit. branches of fiqh) is traditionally divided into "ʿibādāt" (rituals or acts of worship) and "muʿāmalāt" (social relations). Many jurists further divided the body of substantive jurisprudence into "the four quarters", called rituals, sales, marriage and injuries. Each of these terms figuratively stood for a variety of subjects. For example, the quarter of sales would encompass partnerships, guaranty, gifts, and bequests, among other topics. Juristic works were arranged as a sequence of such smaller topics, each called a "book" ("kitab"). The special significance of ritual was marked by always placing its discussion at the start of the work.


title: Sharia

text: Some historians distinguish a field of Islamic criminal law, which combines several traditional categories. Several crimes with scripturally prescribed punishments are known as "hudud". Jurists developed various restrictions which in many cases made them virtually impossible to apply. Other crimes involving intentional bodily harm are judged according to a version of "lex talionis" that prescribes a punishment analogous to the crime ("qisas"), but the victims or their heirs may accept a monetary compensation ("diya") or pardon the perpetrator instead; only "diya" is imposed for non-intentional harm. Other criminal cases belong to the category of "taʿzīr", where the goal of punishment is correction or rehabilitation of the culprit and its form is largely left to the judge's discretion. In practice, since early on in Islamic history, criminal cases were usually handled by ruler-administered courts or local police using procedures which were only loosely related to Sharia.


title: Sharia

text: The two major genres of "furūʿ" literature are the "mukhtasar" (concise summary of law) and the "mabsut" (extensive commentary). "Mukhtasars" were short specialized treatises or general overviews that could be used in a classroom or consulted by judges. A "mabsut", which usually provided a commentary on a "mukhtasar" and could stretch to dozens of large volumes, recorded alternative rulings with their justifications, often accompanied by a proliferation of cases and conceptual distinctions. The terminology of juristic literature was conservative and tended to preserve notions which had lost their practical relevance. At the same time, the cycle of abridgement and commentary allowed jurists of each generation to articulate a modified body of law to meet changing social conditions. Other juristic genres include the "qawāʿid" (succinct formulas meant to aid the student remember general principles) and collections of fatwas by a particular scholar.


title: Sharia

text: Classical jurisprudence has been described as "one of the major intellectual achievements of Islam" and its importance in Islam has been compared to that of theology in Christianity.


title: Sharia

text: The main Sunni schools of law ("madhhabs") are the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali madhhabs. They emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries and by the twelfth century almost all jurists aligned themselves with a particular madhhab. These four schools recognize each other's validity and they have interacted in legal debate over the centuries. Rulings of these schools are followed across the Muslim world without exclusive regional restrictions, but they each came to dominate in different parts of the world. For example, the Maliki school is predominant in North and West Africa; the Hanafi school in South and Central Asia; the Shafi'i school in Lower Egypt, East Africa, and Southeast Asia; and the Hanbali school in North and Central Arabia. The first centuries of Islam also witnessed a number of short-lived Sunni madhhabs. The Zahiri school, which is commonly identified as extinct, continues to exert influence over legal thought. The development of Shia legal schools occurred along the lines of theological differences and resulted in formation of the Twelver, Zaidi and Ismaili madhhabs, whose differences from Sunni legal schools are roughly of the same order as the differences among Sunni schools. The Ibadi legal school, distinct from Sunni and Shia madhhabs, is predominant in Oman.


title: Sharia

text: The transformations of Islamic legal institutions in the modern era have had profound implications for the madhhab system. Legal practice in most of the Muslim world has come to be controlled by government policy and state law, so that the influence of the madhhabs beyond personal ritual practice depends on the status accorded to them within the national legal system. State law codification commonly utilized the methods of "takhayyur" (selection of rulings without restriction to a particular madhhab) and "talfiq" (combining parts of different rulings on the same question). Legal professionals trained in modern law schools have largely replaced traditional ulema as interpreters of the resulting laws. Global Islamic movements have at times drawn on different madhhabs and at other times placed greater focus on the scriptural sources rather than classical jurisprudence. The Hanbali school, with its particularly strict adherence to the Quran and hadith, has inspired conservative currents of direct scriptural interpretation by the Salafi and Wahhabi movements. Other currents, such as networks of Indonesian ulema and Islamic scholars residing in Muslim-minority countries, have advanced liberal interpretations of Islamic law without focusing on traditions of a particular madhhab.


title: Sharia

text: The social fabric of pre-modern Islamic societies was largely defined by close-knit communities organized around kinship groups and local neighborhoods. Conflicts between individuals had the potential to escalate into a conflict between their supporting groups and disrupt the life of the entire community. Court litigation was seen as a last resort for cases where informal mediation had failed. This attitude was reflected in the legal maxim "amicable settlement is the best verdict" ("al-sulh sayyid al-ahkam"). In court disputes, qadis were generally less concerned with legal theory than with achieving an outcome that enabled the disputants to resume their previous social relationships. This could be accomplished by avoiding a total loss for the losing side or simply giving them a chance to articulate their position in public and obtain a measure of psychological vindication. Islamic law required judges to be familiar with local customs, and they exercised a number of other public functions in the community, including mediation and arbitration, supervision of public works, auditing waqf finances, and looking after the interests of orphans.


title: Sharia

text: Unlike pre-modern cultures where the ruling dynasty promulgated the law, Islamic law was formulated by religious scholars without involvement of the rulers. The law derived its authority not from political control, but rather from the collective doctrinal positions of the legal schools (madhhabs) in their capacity as interpreters of the scriptures. The ulema (religious scholars) were involved in management of communal affairs and acted as representatives of the Muslim population vis-à-vis the ruling dynasties, who before the modern era had limited capacity for direct governance. Military elites relied on the ulema for religious legitimation, with financial support for religious institutions being one of the principal means through which these elites established their legitimacy. In turn, the ulema depended on the support of the ruling elites for the continuing operation of religious institutions. Although the relationship between secular rulers and religious scholars underwent a number of shifts and transformations in different times and places, this mutual dependence characterized Islamic history until the start of the modern era. Additionally, since Sharia contained few provisions in several areas of public law, Muslim rulers were able to legislate various collections of economic, criminal and administrative laws outside the jurisdiction of Islamic jurists, the most famous of which is the "qanun" promulgated by Ottoman sultans beginning from the 15th century. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707) issued a hybrid body of law known as Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, based on Hanafi fatwas as well as decisions of Islamic courts, and made it applicable to all religious communities on the Indian subcontinent. This early attempt to turn Islamic law into semi-codified state legislation sparked rebellions against Mughal rule.


title: Sharia

text: In both the rules of civil disputes and application of penal law, classical Sharia distinguishes between men and women, between Muslims and non-Muslims, and between free persons and slaves.


title: Sharia

text: Traditional Islamic law assumes a patriarchal society with a man at the head of the household. Different legal schools formulated a variety of legal norms which could be manipulated to the advantage of men or women, but women were generally at a disadvantage with respect to the rules of inheritance, blood money ("diya"), and witness testimony, where in some cases a woman's value is effectively treated as half of that of a man. Various financial obligations imposed on the husband acted as a deterrent against unilateral divorce and commonly gave the wife financial leverage in divorce proceedings. Women were active in Sharia courts as both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of cases, though some opted to be represented by a male relative.


title: Sharia

text: Sharia was intended to regulate affairs of the Muslim community. Non-Muslims residing under Islamic rule had the legal status of dhimmi, which entailed a number of protections, restrictions, freedoms and legal inequalities, including payment of the jizya tax. Dhimmi communities had legal autonomy to adjudicate their internal affairs. Cases involving litigants from two different religious groups fell under jurisdiction of Sharia courts, where (unlike in secular courts) testimony of non-Muslim witnesses against a Muslim was inadmissible in criminal cases or at all. This legal framework was implemented with varying degree of rigor. In some periods or towns, all inhabitants apparently used the same court without regard for their religious affiliation. The Mughal emperor Aurangzeb imposed Islamic law on all his subjects, including provisions traditionally applicable only to Muslims, while some of his predecessors and successors are said to have abolished jizya. According to Ottoman records, non-Muslim women took their cases to a Sharia court when they expected a more favorable outcome on marital, divorce and property questions than in Christian and Jewish courts. Over time, non Muslims in the Ottoman Empire could be more or less likely to use Islamic courts. For example, in 1729 at the Islamic court in Galata only two percent of cases involved non-Muslims whereas in 1789 non-Muslims were a part of thirty percent of cases. Ottoman court records also reflect the use of Islamic courts by formerly non-Muslim women. As it was illegal for non-Muslims to own Muslims and for non-Muslim men to marry Muslim women in the Ottoman empire, conversion to Islam would have been an option for non-Muslim women to free themselves of a spouse or master they did not want to subject to. However, this would likely lead to them being shunned by their former community.


title: Sharia

text: Classical fiqh acknowledges and regulates slavery as a legitimate institution. It granted slaves certain rights and protections, improving their status relative to Greek and Roman law, and restricted the scenarios under which people could be enslaved. However, slaves could not inherit or enter into a contract, and were subject to their master's will in a number of ways. The labor and property of slaves were owned by the master, who was also entitled to sexual submission of his unmarried slaves.


title: Sharia

text: Formal legal disabilities for some groups coexisted with a legal culture that viewed Sharia as a reflection of universal principles of justice, which involved protection of the weak against injustices committed by the strong. This conception was reinforced by the historical practice of Sharia courts, where peasants "almost always" won cases against oppressive landowners, and non-Muslims often prevailed in disputes against Muslims, including such powerful figures as the governor of their province. In family matters the Sharia court was seen as a place where the rights of women could be asserted against their husband's transgressions.


title: Sharia

text: A judge (qadi) was in charge of the qadi's court ("mahkama"), also called the Sharia court. Qadis were trained in Islamic law, though not necessarily to a level required to issue fatwas. Court personnel also included a number of assistants performing various roles. Judges were theoretically independent in their decisions, though they were appointed by the ruler and often experienced pressure from members of the ruling elite where their interests were at play. The role of qadis was to evaluate the evidence, establish the facts of the case, and issue a verdict based on the applicable rulings of Islamic jurisprudence. The qadi was supposed to solicit a fatwa from a mufti if it was unclear how the law should be applied to the case. Since Islamic legal theory does not recognize the distinction between private and public law, court procedures were identical for civil and criminal cases, and required a private plaintiff to produce evidence against the defendant. The main type of evidence was oral witness testimony. The standards of evidence for criminal cases were so strict that a conviction was often difficult to obtain even for apparently clear-cut cases. Most historians believe that because of these stringent procedural norms, qadi's courts at an early date lost their jurisdiction over criminal cases, which were instead handled in other types of courts.


title: Sharia

text: If an accusation did not result in a verdict in a qadi's court, the plaintiff could often pursue it in another type of court called the "mazalim" court, administered by the ruler's council. The rationale for "mazalim" (lit. wrongs, grievances) courts was to address the wrongs that Sharia courts were unable to address, including complaints against government officials. Islamic jurists were commonly in attendance and a judge often presided over the court as a deputy of the ruler. "Mazalim" verdicts were supposed to conform to the spirit of Sharia, but they were not bound by the letter of the law or the procedural restrictions of qadi's courts.


title: Sharia

text: The police ("shurta"), which took initiative in preventing and investigating crime, operated its own courts. Like the mazalim courts, police courts were not bound by the rules of Sharia and had the powers to inflict discretionary punishments. Another office for maintaining public order was the "muhtasib" (market inspector), who was charged with preventing fraud in economic transactions and infractions against public morality. The "muhtasib" took an active role in pursuing these types of offenses and meted out punishments based on local custom.


title: Sharia

text: Sharia was traditionally interpreted by muftis. During the first few centuries of Islam, muftis were private legal specialists who normally also held other jobs. They issued fatwas (legal opinions), generally free of charge, in response to questions from laypersons or requests for consultation coming from judges, which would be stated in general terms. Fatwas were regularly upheld in courts, and when they were not, it was usually because the fatwa was contradicted by a more authoritative legal opinion. The stature of jurists was determined by their scholarly reputation. The majority of classical legal works, written by author-jurists, were based in large part on fatwas of distinguished muftis. These fatwas functioned as a form of legal precedent, unlike court verdicts, which were valid only for the given case. Although independent muftis never disappeared, from the 12th century onward Muslim rulers began to appoint salaried muftis to answer questions from the public. Over the centuries, Sunni muftis were gradually incorporated into state bureaucracies, while Shia jurists in Iran progressively asserted an autonomous authority starting from the early modern era.


title: Sharia

text: Islamic law was initially taught in study circles that gathered in mosques and private homes. The teacher, assisted by advanced students, provided commentary on concise treatises of law and examined the students' understanding of the text. This tradition continued to be practiced in "madrasas", which spread during the 10th and 11th centuries. Madrasas were institutions of higher learning devoted principally to study of law, but also offering other subjects such as theology, medicine, and mathematics. The madrasa complex usually consisted of a mosque, boarding house, and a library. It was maintained by a "waqf" (charitable endowment), which paid salaries of professors, stipends of students, and defrayed the costs of construction and maintenance. At the end of a course, the professor granted a license ("ijaza") certifying a student's competence in its subject matter. Students specializing in law would complete a curriculum consisting of preparatory studies, the doctrines of a particular madhhab, and training in legal disputation, and finally write a dissertation, which earned them a license to teach and issue fatwas.


title: Sharia

text: Starting from the 17th century, European powers began to extend political influence over lands ruled by Muslim dynasties, and by the end of the 19th century, much of the Muslim world came under colonial domination. The first areas of Islamic law to be impacted were usually commercial and criminal laws, which impeded colonial administration and were soon replaced by European regulations. Islamic commercial laws were also replaced by European (mostly French) laws in Muslim states which retained formal independence, because these states increasingly came to rely on Western capital and could not afford to lose the business of foreign merchants who refused to submit to Islamic regulations.


title: Sharia

text: The first significant changes to the legal system of British India were initiated in the late 18th century by the governor of Bengal Warren Hastings. Hastings' plan of legal reform envisioned a multi-tiered court system for the Muslim population, with a middle tier of British judges advised by local Islamic jurists, and a lower tier of courts operated by qadis. Hastings also commissioned a translation of the classic manual of Hanafi fiqh, "Al-Hidayah", from Arabic into Persian and then English, later complemented by other texts. These translations enabled British judges to pass verdicts in the name of Islamic law based on a combination of Sharia rules and common law doctrines, and eliminated the need to rely on consultation by local ulema, whom they mistrusted. In the traditional Islamic context, a concise text like "Al-Hidayah" would be used as a basis for classroom commentary by a professor, and the doctrines thus learned would be mediated in court by judicial discretion, consideration of local customs and availability of different legal opinions that could fit the facts of the case. The British use of "Al-Hidayah", which amounted to an inadvertent codification of Sharia, and its interpretation by judges trained in Western legal traditions anticipated later legal reforms in the Muslim world.


title: Sharia

text: British administrators felt that Sharia rules too often allowed criminals to escape punishment, as exemplified by Hastings' complaint that Islamic law was "founded on the most lenient principles and on an abhorrence of bloodshed". In the course of the 19th century, criminal laws and other aspects of the Islamic legal system in India were supplanted by British law, with the exception of Sharia rules retained in family laws and some property transactions. Among other changes, these reforms brought about abolition of slavery, prohibition of child marriage, and a much more frequent use of capital punishment. The resulting legal system, known as "Anglo-Muhammadan law", was treated by the British as a model for legal reforms in their other colonies. Like the British in India, colonial administrations typically sought to obtain precise and authoritative information about indigenous laws, which prompted them to prefer classical Islamic legal texts over local judicial practice. This, together with their conception of Islamic law as a collection of inflexible rules, led to an emphasis on traditionalist forms of Sharia that were not rigorously applied in the pre-colonial period and served as a formative influence on the modern identity politics of the Muslim world.


title: Sharia

text: During the colonial era, Muslim rulers concluded that they could not resist European pressure unless they modernized their armies and built centrally administered states along the lines of Western models. In the Ottoman empire, the first such changes in the legal sphere involved placing the formerly independent waqfs under state control. This reform, passed in 1826, enriched the public treasury at the expense of the waqfs, thereby depleting the financial support for traditional Islamic legal education. Over the second half of the 19th century, a new hierarchical system of secular courts was established to supplement and eventually replace most religious courts. Students hoping to pursue legal careers in the new court system increasingly preferred attending secular schools over the traditional path of legal education with its dimming financial prospects. The Tanzimat reforms of the 19th century saw reorganization of both Islamic civil law and sultanic criminal law after the model of the Napoleonic Code. In the 1870s, a codification of civil law and procedure (excepting marriage and divorce), called the "Mecelle", was produced for use in both Sharia and secular courts. It adopted the Turkish language for the benefit of the new legal class who no longer possessed competence in the Arabic idiom of traditional jurisprudence. The code was based on Hanafi law, and its authors selected minority opinions over authoritative ones when they were felt to better "suit the present conditions". The Mecelle was promulgated as a "qanun" (sultanic code), which represented an unprecedented assertion of the state's authority over Islamic civil law, traditionally the preserve of the ulema. The 1917 Ottoman Law of Family Rights adopted an innovative approach of drawing rules from minority and majority opinions of all Sunni madhhabs with a modernizing intent. The Republic of Turkey, which emerged after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, abolished its Sharia courts and replaced Ottoman civil laws with the Swiss Civil Code, but Ottoman civil laws remained in force for several decades in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq.


title: Sharia

text: Westernization of legal institutions and expansion of state control in all areas of law, which began during the colonial era, continued in nation-states of the Muslim world. Sharia courts at first continued to exist alongside state courts as in earlier times, but the doctrine that sultanic courts should implement the ideals of Sharia was gradually replaced by legal norms imported from Europe. Court procedures were also brought in line with European practice. Though the Islamic terms "qadi" and "mahkama" (qadi's/Sharia court) were preserved, they generally came to mean judge and court in the Western sense. While in the traditional Sharia court all parties represented themselves, in modern courts they are represented by professional lawyers educated in Western-style law schools, and the verdicts are subject to review in an appeals court. In the 20th century, most countries abolished a parallel system of Sharia courts and brought all cases under a national civil court system.


title: Sharia

text: In most Muslim-majority countries, traditional rules of classical fiqh have been largely preserved only in family law. In some countries religious minorities such as Christians or Shia Muslims have been subject to separate systems of family laws. Many Muslims today believe that contemporary Sharia-based laws are an authentic representation of the pre-modern legal tradition. In reality, they generally represent the result of extensive legal reforms made in the modern era. As traditional Islamic jurists lost their role as authoritative interpreters of the laws applied in courts, these laws were codified by legislators and administered by state systems which employed a number of devices to effect changes, including:


title: Sharia

text: The most powerful influence on liberal reformist thought came from the work of the Egyptian Islamic scholar Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905). Abduh viewed only Sharia rules pertaining to religious rituals as inflexible, and argued that the other Islamic laws should be adapted based on changing circumstances in consideration of social well-being. Following precedents of earlier Islamic thinkers, he advocated restoring Islam to its original purity by returning to the Quran and the sunna instead of following the medieval schools of jurisprudence. He championed a creative approach to ijtihad that involved direct interpretation of scriptures as well as the methods of "takhayyur" and "talfiq".


title: Sharia

text: One of the most influential figures in modern legal reforms was the Egyptian legal scholar Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri (1895–1971), who possessed expertise in both Islamic and Western law. Sanhuri argued that reviving Islamic legal heritage in a way that served the needs of contemporary society required its analysis in light of the modern science of comparative law. He drafted the civil codes of Egypt (1949) and Iraq (1951) based on a variety of sources, including classical fiqh, European laws, existing Arab and Turkish codes, and the history of local court decisions. Sanhuri's Egyptian code incorporated few classical Sharia rules, but he drew on traditional jurisprudence more frequently for the Iraqi code. Sanhuri's codes were subsequently adopted in some form by most Arab countries.


title: Sharia

text: Aside from the radical reforms of Islamic family law carried out in Tunisia (1956) and Iran (1967), governments often preferred to make changes that made a clear break from traditional Sharia rules by imposing administrative hurdles rather than changing the rules themselves, in order to minimize objections from religious conservatives. Various procedural changes have been made in a number of countries to restrict polygamy, give women greater rights in divorce, and eliminate child marriage. Inheritance has been the legal domain least susceptible to reform, as legislators have been generally reluctant to tamper with the highly technical system of Quranic shares. Some reforms have faced strong conservative opposition. For example, the 1979 reform of Egyptian family law, promulgated by Anwar Sadat through presidential decree, provoked an outcry and was annulled in 1985 by the supreme court on procedural grounds, to be later replaced by a compromise version. The 2003 reform of Moroccan family law, which sought to reconcile universal human rights norms and the country's Islamic heritage, was drafted by a commission that included parliamentarians, religious scholars and feminist activists, and the result has been praised by international rights groups as an example of progressive legislation achieved within an Islamic framework.


title: Sharia

text: The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought the topic of Sharia to international attention in the form of numerous political campaigns in the Muslim world calling for full implementation of Sharia. A number of factors have contributed to the rise of these movements, classified under the rubric of Islamism or political Islam, including the failure of authoritarian secular regimes to meet the expectations of their citizens, and a desire of Muslim populations to return to more culturally authentic forms of socio-political organization in the face of a perceived cultural invasion from the West. Islamist leaders such as Ayatollah Khomeini drew on leftist anticolonialist rhetoric by framing their call for Sharia as a resistance struggle. They accused secular leaders of corruption and predatory behavior, and claimed that a return to Sharia would replace despotic rulers with pious leaders striving for social and economic justice. In the Arab world these positions are often encapsulated in the slogan "Islam is the solution" ("al-Islam huwa al-hall").


title: Sharia

text: Full implementation of Sharia theoretically refers to expanding its scope to all fields of law and all areas of public life. In practice, Islamization campaigns have focused on a few highly visible issues associated with the conservative Muslim identity, particularly women's hijab and the "hudud" criminal punishments (whipping, stoning and amputation) prescribed for certain crimes. For many Islamists, "hudud" punishments are at the core of the divine Sharia because they are specified by the letter of scripture rather than by human interpreters. Modern Islamists have often rejected, at least in theory, the stringent procedural constraints developed by classical jurists to restrict their application. To the broader Muslim public, the calls for Sharia often represent, even more than any specific demands, a vague vision of their current economic and political situation being replaced by a "just utopia".