Islamic rulers never challenged Shariʿa supremacy despite their military power

Evidence

Nor were all segments of the population inclined toward Shariʿa norms: the Bedouins in particular had their own powerful customs, often conflicting with these norms. Like any social groupings, Muslim society from North Africa and Muslim Spain to Java and Samarkand had its share of misery. It obviously had its own invaders and conquerors, its rebels, larcenists, petty thieves, and highway robbers, and even the occasional corrupt judge. Nonetheless, the Shariʿa was the normative system and the law of the land, its paradigmatic discourses and practices persisting in the continual re-creation of a particular order and, more importantly, a particular subject. With their military might and often unmatched power, sultans in Islam, the heads of the executive, came and went, one after the other, without as little as a murmur about an ambition to challenge the Shariʿa. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 154

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader debate on whether Islamic law was truly sovereign over political power, echoing Milgrom’s institutions point about power being constrained by norms.
• QUESTION: How does this claim square with sultans’ actual judicial appointments and periodic legal reforms, e.g., Ottoman kanun? Worth chasing.