Leor Halevi tells the story of the Islamic trials of technological and commercial innovations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Shedding light on culture, commerce, and consumption in Cairo and other colonial cities, Modern Things on Trial is a groundbreaking account of Islam's material transformation in a globalizing era.

List of Maps and FiguresAcknowledgmentsPrologue: The Parable of the Montgolfière and the Translation of Haleby's CorpseIntroduction: Good Things Made Lawful: Euro-Muslim Objects and Laissez-Faire Fatwas1. The Toilet Paper Fatwa: Hygienic Innovation and the Sacred Law in the Late Imperial Era2. Fatwas for the Partners' Club: A Global Mufti's Enterprise3. In a Material World: European Expansion from Tripoli to Cairo4. Paper Money and Consummate Men: Capitalism and the Rise of Laissez-Faire Salafism5. The Qur¿an in the Gramophone: Sounds of Islamic Modernity from Cairo to Kazan6. Telegraphs, Photographs, Railways, Law Codes: Tools of Empire, Tools of Islam7. Arabian Slippers: The Turn to Nationalistic Consumption8. Lottery Tickets, Luxury Hotels, and Christian Experts: Economic Liberalism Versus Islamic Exclusivism in a Territorial FrameworkConclusionsNotesSelected BibliographyIndex