Short answers, pulled from the story.
Fatawa 'Alamgiri is a 17th-century compilation of Islamic sharia law covering statecraft, criminal punishment, personal law, economic policy, and military strategy. It was compiled between 1664 and 1672 under the sponsorship of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. It served as the governing law of the Mughal Empire and later became the legal foundation for colonial South Asia.
Mughal emperor Muhammad Muhiuddin Aurangzeb Alamgir commissioned the Fatawa 'Alamgiri. He assembled 500 experts in Islamic jurisprudence: 300 from South Asia, 100 from Iraq, and 100 from the Hejaz. Shaikh Nizam, a lawyer from Lahore, was appointed chairman of the scholarly commission.
Fatawa 'Alamgiri originally spanned 30 volumes in various languages. Modern printed editions condense the text into 6 volumes. It is described as the greatest digest of Muslim law during Mughal India.
When British power displaced Mughal rule, colonial authorities retained the Fatawa 'Alamgiri as the legal foundation for Muslim personal and civil law rather than introducing European common law. English translations by Charles Hamilton, William Jones, and Neil Baillie (who published A Digest of Mohummudan Law in 1865) helped apply it through colonial courts. Many of the laws derived from it were carried into independent India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh after 1947.
Jamal Malik argues the Fatawa 'Alamgiri stiffened social stratification by calibrating punishments to rank. Muslim nobles such as Sayyids were exempt from physical punishments; governors and landholders could be humiliated but not arrested; the middle class could be imprisoned but not physically harmed; and common people at the lowest rank could be arrested, humiliated, and physically punished.
In 1892, the Bengali scholar Muhammad Naimuddin published a four-volume Bengali translation of the Fatawa 'Alamgiri. The work was supported by Wajed Ali Khan Panni and patronised by Hafez Mahmud Ali Khan Panni, the Zamindar of Karatia.