Published with license by Koninklijke Brill NV | doi:10.1163/24682470-12340095 © Kerstin Hünefeld, 2023 | ISSN: 2468-2462 ( print) 2468-2470 ( online) Shii Studies Review 7 (2023) 405–415 brill.com/ssr Book Reviews ∵ Eirik Hovden, Waqf in Zaydī Yemen: Legal Theory, Codification, and Local Practice. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Hardback. ISBN 978-90-04-37772-1. €129/$156. 425 pages In his book Waqf in Zaydī Yemen: Legal Theory, Codification, and Local Practice, Eirik Hovden provides the first systematic overview of Zaydī fiqh literature and presents a thought-provoking example of how to grasp the interrelatedness between legal theory and practice or, more precisely, between Islamic jurispru- dence ( fiqh) and local perceptions and practices of law related to waqf. The monograph takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining Islamic legal and historic-critical queries with an ethnographic perspective. Due to Hovden’s focus on Islamic law and jurisprudence, the epoch-spanning align- ment of the Islamic (Zaydī) legal tradition—that is, the relevance of older legal texts and debates for later practices and the incorporation of specific local practices into legal theory—the timeframe of this study is fluid. It covers juris- prudential texts from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, legal documents from the nineteenth century, and local practices up to the twenty-first century, more precisely up to 2010, the year in which Hovden conducted his fieldwork in Yemen. The latter included anthropological fieldwork, archival research, and the study of Islamic legal texts with a private teacher trained in the Zaydī tradition. The majority of Hovden’s informants were Zaydī men from Sanaa, although he did interview people from other regions in Yemen, too, such as the Tihāmā and Ḥaḍramawt. The book consists of eight chapters and focuses on the construction of legitimacy, authority, and validity as well as on the related “grey areas” and contradictions in waqf law and jurisprudence. It sheds light on how knowl- edge is constructed, transmitted, sanctioned, and put into legal use, and how the waqf institution and human agency, ideal doctrine and observed practice interplay and are bridged by concepts such as “custom” (ʿurf ) and “public inter- est” (maslaḥa). Hovden’s book is driven by the concrete research question of what “validity” means in the four different “fields of waqf knowledge” of his