Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Saïd Amir Arjomand -- Islamic empires, the Ottoman Empire and the circle of justice / Linda T. Darling -- Islam and constitutionalism since the nineteenth century : the significance and peculiarities of Iran / Saïd Amir Arjomand -- Bargaining and imposing constitutions : private and public interests in the Iranian, Afghani, and Iraqi constitutional experiments / Nathan J. Brown -- The respective roles of human rights and Islam : an unresolved conundrum for Middle Eastern constitutions / Ann Elizabeth Mayer -- The guardian of the regime : the Turkish constitutional court in comparative perspective / Hootan Shambayati -- Constitution, legitimacy and democracy in Turkey / Mehmet Fevzi Bilgin -- Crafting a constitution for Afghanistan / Barnett R. Rubin -- From interim to 'permanent' constitution in Iraq / Andrew Arato.

"This book is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of constitutional politics and constitution-making in the Middle East. The historical background and setting are fully explored in two substantial essays by Linda Darling and Said Amir Arjomand, placing the contemporary experience in the contexts, respectively, of the ancient Middle Eastern legal and political tradition and of nineteenth and twentieth century legal codification and political modernisation. These are followed by Ann Mayer's general analysis of the treatment of human rights in relation to Islam in Middle Eastern constitutions, and Nathan Brown's comparative scrutiny of the process of constitution-making in Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq with reference to the available constitutional theories which are shown to throw little or no light on it. The remaining essays are country by country case studies of Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq, the case of Iran having been covered by Arjomand as the special point of reference."--Jacket.

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