This chapter explores a 1912 legal opinion (fatwā) by the Iranian Twelver Shīʿī jurist Muḥammad Ḥusayn Fishārakī (d. 1353/1935) on a dispute over the ownership of two villages, Jayshī and Saryān, both of which were endowed and had been illegally sold by a trustee in order to escape his various financial troubles. The fatwā upholds the legitimacy of the endowments (sing. waqf) and finds that their sale had been unlawful. The source sheds light on how Islamic law in modern and early modern Iran often operated outside the context of state institutions.

The present volume contributes to the emerging field of comparative foreign relations law by focusing on how foreign relations law interacts with international law, a topic that has been underexplored in the literature. This concluding chapter reflects on the relationship between these two bodies of law, drawing on examples from this volume and also from The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law. It begins by offering a working definition of foreign relations law that is both analytically distinct from international law and useful for comparative analysis. It then explains how foreign relations law and international law have important and often under-appreciated effects on each other, sometimes in ways that are constructive and mutually reinforcing, but at other times in ways that produce potential conflict.