Legislating before the Ottoman Constitutional Era Law and Sovereign in the Political Thought of Islam

This article studies the notion of “constitution” and approaches it as the extension of a long process of "positivization" of law, at work since the Classical Age of Islam. The establishment of a secular justice, the development of kānūn, the will to endow the State with a constitution : all these points attest to the irreducibility of pre modern and modern normativity to the idea of a transcendent divine Legislator, at the origin of all law and the organization of all political structures.