The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

705 Pages·2012·18.167 MB·English

by  Gerhard Bowering (ed.), Patricia Crone (ed.), Wadad Kadi (ed.), Devin J. Stewart (ed.), Muhammad Qasim Zaman (ed.), Mahan Mirza (ed.)

Job#:340896j
Date:12-09-07 16:09:03
(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:114)(cid:1)(cid:1)Sects, schools, regions, and dynasties:
Mu‘tazilis, Shi‘ism, Quraysh, Mecca and THE PRINCETON ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
Medina, Baghdad, Indonesia, Nigeria, Islamic Political Thought
Central Asia, Ottomans
(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:114)(cid:1)(cid:1)Thinkers, personalities, and statesmen:
edited by Gerhard Bowering
Mawardi, Shafi‘i, Saladin, Tamerlane, Akbar,
Atatürk, Nasser, Khomeini Patricia Crone, Wadad Kadi, Devin J. Stewart,
q Contains seven historical and contemporary The development of Islamic political thought tracks the differing positions Islam has Muhammad Qasim Zaman, associate editors
maps of Muslim empires, postcolonial occupied during its political expansion over the course of 14 centuries. Just as Islamic Mahan Mirza, assistant editor
nation-states, populations, and settlements history both preserved its tradition and reshaped its internal culture consistently over
q Guides readers to further research through this period of expansion, so did Islamic political thought maintain certain principal The first encyclopedia of Islamic political
bibliographies, cross-references, and an index foundations while undergoing successive stages of evolution. The foundations of Islam thought from the birth of Islam to today, this
neither allow for distinctions between spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and civil, comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible refer-
Gerhard Bowering is professor of Islamic studies
or religious and secular categories, nor envisage the same duality of authority accept- ence provides the context needed for understand-
at Yale University. Patricia Crone is Andrew W.
ed in Western political thought as standard, such as God and Caesar, church and state, ing contemporary politics in the Islamic world
Mellon Professor at the Institute for Advanced
clergy and laity. Over the centuries, Islamic forms of state and government, power and and beyond. With more than 400 alphabetically
Study in Princeton. Wadad Kadi is the Avalon
authority, and rule and loyalty have exhibited great diversity. Although they were all arranged entries written by an international team
Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of
based on the premise of a unity of religion and state, it has nonetheless been impos- of specialists, the volume focuses on the origins
Islamic Thought (Emerita) at the University of
sible for Islam to formulate a norm of political thought that would stand above and and evolution of Islamic political ideas and related
Chicago. Devin J. Stewart is associate professor
apart from its various cultural permutations. . . . subjects, covering central terms, concepts, person-
of Arabic and Islamic studies at Emory Univer-
Emerging currents in political Islam are attempting to articulate ideologies and or- alities, movements, places, and schools of thought
sity. Muhammad Qasim Zaman is the Robert H.
ganize movements that aspire to inner purity, ethical strength, personal freedom, and across Islamic history. Fifteen major entries
Niehaus ’77 Professor of Near Eastern Studies and
collective dignity. Burdened with political and cultural fragmentation and labeled by provide a synthetic treatment of key topics, such
Religion at Princeton University. Mahan Mirza
the West as violent religion, Islam thirsts for a new paradigm of political thought that as Muhammad, jihad, authority, gender, culture,
is vice president for academic affairs at Zaytuna
will enable it to construct its future as a peaceful order in a pluralistic world. . . . minorities, fundamentalism, and pluralism. Incor-
College.
In creating this encyclopedia, our goal was to provide a solid and innovative refer- porating the latest scholarship, this is an indispens-
ence work that would trace the historical roots of Islamic political thought and dem- able resource for students, researchers, journalists,
onstrate its contemporary importance. . . . We intended to make the encyclopedia and anyone else seeking an informed perspective
accessible, informative, and comprehensive with respect to the contemporary politi- on the complex intersection of Islam and politics.
cal and cultural situation of Islam, while also providing in-depth examination
of the historical roots of that situation. q Includes more than 400 concise, alphabetically
—From the introduction arranged entries
q Features 15 in-depth entries on key topics
q Covers topics such as:
Jacket photo courtesy of Shutterstock
(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:114)(cid:1)(cid:1)Central themes and sources of Islamic political
Jacket design by Lorraine Betz Doneker thought: caliph, modernity, knowledge, shari‘a,
government, revival and reform
(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:114)(cid:1)(cid:1)Modern concepts, institutions, movements,
and parties: civil society, Islamization, secular-
ism, veil, Muslim Brotherhood
(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:1)(cid:114)(cid:1)(cid:1)Islamic law and traditional Islamic societies:
justice, taxation, fatwa, dissent, governance,
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The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought
pup-bowering-fmdesign.indd ii 1/18/12 3:37 PM
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought
Editor
Gerhard Bowering
Yale University
Associate Editors Assistant Editor
Patricia Crone Mahan Mirza
Institute for Advanced Study Zaytuna College
Wadad Kadi
University of Chicago
Devin J. Stewart
Emory University
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Princeton University
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2013 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Princeton encyclopedia of Islamic political thought / editor,
Gerhard Böwering ; associate editors, Patricia Crone . . . [et al.] ;
assistant editor, Mahan Mirza.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-13484-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Political
science—Islamic countries—Encyclopedias. 2. Political science—
Islamic Empire—Encyclopedias. 3. Islam and politics—
Encyclopedias. I. Böwering, Gerhard, 1939– II. Crone, Patricia,
1945– III. Mirza, Mahan. IV. Title: Encyclopedia of Islamic
political thought.
JC49.P75 2012
320.55'703—dc23 2012003118
This book has been composed in Times and Myriad Pro.
Printed on acid-f ree paper.
press.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Introduction vii
Alphabetical List of Entries xxi
Topical List of Entries xxv
Contributors xxix
Maps xxxv
Entries A– Z 1
Index 607
This page intentionally left blank.
Introduction
The Islamic World Today in Historical Perspective
In 2012, the year 1433 of the Muslim calendar, the Islamic popula- well as provincial capitals of the newly founded Islamic empire, such
tion throughout the world was estimated at approximately a billion as Basra, Kufa, Aleppo, Qayrawan, Fez, Rayy (Tehran), Nishapur,
and a half, representing about one- fifth of humanity. In geographi- and San‘a’, merged the legacy of the Arab tribal tradition with newly
cal terms, Islam occupies the center of the world, stretching like a incorporated cultural trends. By religious conversion, whether fer-
big belt across the globe from east to west. From Morocco to Mind- vent, formal, or forced, Islam integrated Christians of Greek, Syriac,
anao, it encompasses countries of both the consumer North and the Coptic, and Latin rites and included large numbers of Jews, Zoroas-
disadvantaged South. It sits at the crossroads of America, Europe, trians, Gnostics, and Manicheans. By ethnic assimilation, it absorbed
and Russia on one side and Africa, India, and China on the other. a great variety of nations, whether through compacts, clientage and
Historically, Islam is also at a crossroads, destined to play a world marriage, persuasion, and threat or through religious indifference,
role in politics and to become the most prominent world religion social climbing, and the self- interest of newly conquered peoples.
during the 21st century. Islam is thus not contained in any national It embraced Aramaic- , Persian- , and Berber- speaking peoples; ac-
culture; it is a universal force. commodated the disruptive incursions of Turks and the devastating
The cultural reach of Islam may be divided into five geographi- invasion of Mongols into its territories; and sent its emissaries, trad-
cal blocks: West and East Africa, the Arab world (including North ers, immigrants, and colonists to the lands beyond the Indus valley,
Africa), the Turco- Iranian lands (including Central Asia, northwest- the semiarid plains south of the Sahara, and the distant shores of the
ern China, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and parts of Russia and the Southeast Asian islands.
Ukraine), South Asia (including Pakistan, Bangladesh, and many By transforming the world during the ascendancy of the Abbasid
regions in India), and Southeast Asia (the Indonesian archipelago; Empire (750– 1258), Islam created a splendid cosmopolitan civili-
the Malaysian peninsula; Singapore; and minorities in Thailand, the zation built on the Arabic language; the message of its scripture,
Philippines, and by extension, Australia). Particularly in the past tradition, and law (Qur’an, hadith, and shari‘a); and the wisdom and
century, Islam has created the core of a sixth block: small but vig- science of the cultures newly incorporated during its expansion over
orous communities living on both sides of the Atlantic, in Europe three continents. The practice of philosophy, medicine, and the sci-
(especially in France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and ences within the Islamic empire was at a level of sophistication un-
Spain), and the Americas (especially in Canada, the United States, matched by any other civilization; it secured pride of place in such
the Caribbean, and Argentina). diverse fields as architecture, philosophy, maritime navigation, and
Islam has grown consistently throughout history, expanding into trade and commerce by land and sea and saw the founding of the
new neighboring territories without ever retreating (except on the world’s first universities. Recuperating from two centuries of rela-
margins, as in Sicily and Spain, where it was expelled by force, and tive political decentralization, it coalesced around the year 1500 into
the Balkans, where it is now regaining its foothold). It began in the three great empires: the Ottomans in the west with Istanbul as their
seventh century as a small community in Mecca and Medina in the center, the Safavids in Iran with Isfahan as their hub, and the Mu-
Arabian Peninsula led by its messenger, the Prophet Muhammad ghals in the Indian subcontinent with Agra and Delhi as their axis.
(d. 632), who was eventually to unite all the Arab tribes under the As the Islamic world witnessed the emergence of these three em-
banner of Islam. Within the first two centuries of its existence, it came pires, European powers began to expand their influence over the
into global prominence through its conquests of the Middle East, world during the age of global discoveries—westward across the
North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, the Iranian lands, Central Asia, Atlantic into the Americas and eastward by charting a navigational
and the Indus valley. In the process and aftermath of these conquests, route around Africa into the Indian Ocean—there entering into
Islam inherited the legacy of the ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian fierce competition with regional powers along the long-e stablished
civilizations, embraced and transformed the heritage of Hellenistic network of trade routes between China on the one hand and the
philosophy and science, assimilated the subtleties of Persian state- Mediterranean and East Africa on the other. The European explora-
craft, incorporated the reasoning of Jewish law and the methods of tion of the East and growing ability to exploit an existing vast trade
Christian theology, absorbed cultural patterns of Zoroastrian dualism network, together with the inadvertent but eventually lucrative “dis-
and Manichean speculation, and acquired wisdom from Mahayana covery” of the New World, were to result in Europe’s economic
Buddhism and Indian philosophy and science. Its great cosmopolitan and political hegemony over the Islamic world, with which it had
centers— Baghdad, Cairo, Córdoba, Damascus, and Samarqand— rubbed military and mercantile shoulders since the early Muslim
became the furnace in which the energy of these cultural traditions conquests. The early modern Islamic world (and much of the rest
was converted into a new religion and polity. These major cities, as of the world) fell behind the West economically and politically with
vii
Introduction
the advent of the Enlightenment in the 18th century and the Indus- the course of 14 centuries. Just as Islamic history both preserved
trial Revolution in the 19th century. its tradition and reshaped its internal culture consistently over this
By about 1800, small European nations (e.g., England, France, period of expansion, so did Islamic political thought maintain cer-
and Holland) had established rule over large regions of the Islamic tain principal foundations while undergoing successive stages of
world. Their trading companies and imperial outposts in distant evolution. The foundations of Islam neither allow for distinctions
Muslim lands were transformed into colonies of European suprem- between spiritual and temporal, ecclesiastical and civil, or religious
acy that were eager to benefit from Western industrialization. It took and secular categories, nor envisage the same duality of authority
until the end of World War II for the global geopolitical map to accepted in Western political thought as standard, such as God and
become reorganized into an array of discrete nation- states on the Caesar, church and state, clergy and laity. Over the centuries, Is-
European model. Muslim nations perceived Islam not only as the lamic forms of state and government, power and authority, and rule
way of life led by the majority of the population but also as the and loyalty have exhibited great diversity. Although they were all
source of normative principles for social order. based on the premise of a unity of religion and state, it has none-
In the 19th century, two diametrically opposed trends would theless been impossible for Islam to formulate a norm of political
preoccupy the Muslim intelligentsia in their effort to bring about thought that would stand above and apart from its various cultural
social and religious renewal. Modernism proposed adapting Islam permutations.
to Western ideals, while revivalism advocated restoring the vigor In contrast to the West, the respective realms of religion and state
of the original dynamics of Islam; neither approach would lead to are intimately intertwined in Islam and subject to a process of fluid
the utopia of a Pan- Islamic caliphate. Islam was now challenged to negotiation; the concepts of authority and duty overshadow those of
express itself within the framework of independent nations, with freedom and the rights of the individual. Islamic political thought
their focus on ethnicity, territoriality, and culture. not only deals with matters of government, politics, and the state
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Islamic world wit- but also addresses questions of acceptable behavior and ethics of
nessed the explosion of Turkish secularism; in its middle period, both the ruler and the ruled before God. Islamic political thought
it sought sovereignty and honor in Arab, Iranian, Pakistani, and cannot be measured by Western criteria and standards of political
Indonesian nationalism; at the end of the 20th century, it became theory. It must be understood from within its own tradition, charac-
increasingly dominated by militant trends. “Islamism,” a funda- terized by a vibrant integration of the secular and sacred in obedi-
mentalist reaction to Western ascendancy, called for an Islamic ence to God and His Prophet. In its very nature, Islam is dynamic,
state rigorously based on Islamic law; its public image was domi- not static, both as a way of life and as a way of monotheistic wor-
nated by marginal yet high- profile extremists who advocated the ship. It is a living reality rather than a frozen system.
use of terrorist attacks and suicide martyr missions to achieve this Rudimentary but enduring foundations for Islamic political
end. Both Sunni and Shi‘i expressions of Islamism— in Algeria, thought were laid beginning with the Prophet’s career in Medina.
Sudan, Iran, or Afghanistan— were inspired by their belief that if Significant divisions, however, came to the fore under the Umayyad
only Muslims were to return to their religious roots, God would caliphs (658– 750), the first Arab dynasty ruling from Damascus.
grant them success in this world and bliss in the next. The past Arabic, the language of Muhammad and his early successors (632–
glory of the Islamic world would be restored, and the West would 61), was propagated by the conquests of Islam and became estab-
again study at its feet. lished as the language of high Islamic culture and political thought
At the beginning of the 21st century, the world has drawn closer during the caliphate of ‘Abd al- Malik (r. 685– 705). On the criterion
together through the power of advanced technology and the speed of its scripture (kitāb), Islamic political thought enforced the basic
of global communication, including ubiquitous access to mobile principle of obedience to God and His Prophet. That principle was
phones and the Internet. Those advances enabled the annihilation articulated in the nucleus of its creed, the shahāda, and extrapolated
of the Twin Towers in New York City on September 11, 2001, and in oral tradition by the early practice of the community, modeled
other acts of terror that have occurred since that date. Yet they also after the Prophet, which is known as the sunna.
may be nurturing a different response of Islam to the modern world, The Umayyad rulers belonging to the Quraysh, Muhammad’s
as rumblings of freedom, cries for liberation from corrupt regimes, tribe, claimed to be the rightful caliphs as heirs to the Prophet but
and calls for democratic forms of government echo from Muslim saw their leadership challenged by both the Shi‘is, who reserved le-
lands through cyberspace. The nonviolent but persistent 2011 dem- gitimate leadership for Muhammad’s family, and the Kharijis, who
onstrations in Freedom Square in Egypt may be a sign of a tran- advocated that the most meritorious Muslim be the ideal caliph. By
sition from organized martyr-m urderer movements to coordinated the end of the Umayyad caliphate in 750, the stage had been set for
peaceful agitation for political liberty, respect for human rights, and Islamic political thought to evolve through five successive periods,
free exercise of religion for the many polities of Islam. the trajectory of which may be summarized as follows.
750–­1055. The early medieval formulations of Islamic political
The Evolution of Islamic Political Thought thought during the ascendancy of the Abbasid caliphate at Baghdad
The development of Islamic political thought tracks the differing developed in three directions: those of the clerical class of admin-
positions Islam has occupied during its political expansion over istrators (kuttāb), the schools of legal scholars (‘ulama’, fuqahā’)
viii
Introduction
and theologians (mutakallimūn), and the circles of philosophers caliphal culture, and thus Islamic political thought was shaped ac-
(falāsifa). Over a period of five centuries, in particular during the cording to three different modes. Decline set in for all three empires
caliphates of Harun al-R ashid (r. 781– 809) and Ma’mun (r. 813– 33), in the 18th century: in the Ottoman lands after Russia gained ac-
Islamic thinkers integrated the thought patterns of a great variety of cess to the Black Sea and the Dardanelles in the Treaty of Küçük-
peoples, absorbing the intellectual systems brought into its fold by Kaynarca (1774) and Napoleon landed in Egypt (1798– 1801); in
the converted populations of the Iranian empire and the Byzantine Iran after the murder of Nadir Shah in 1747 and the Qajar accession
provinces. It appropriated the legacy of their learning and the acu- to power; and in India with a long, agonizing decline after the death
men of their political experience with the help of comprehensive of Aurangzeb in 1707 that terminated when the last Mughal em-
translation movements from Greek and Pahlavi into Arabic. peror was deposed by the British in 1858.
1055–­1258. During this stage, Islamic political thought had to From 1800­onward. The multifarious search for rationales of
address the upheaval caused by Sunni Turkic nomads from Central Islamic political thought from 1800 onward struggled with a situa-
Asia. Turkic sultans gained effective military control and cut into tion the world of Islam had never encountered before in its history.
the economic and administrative strata of an Iran- based society, It was challenged by a Western culture that had entered its ascen-
nominally ruled by the Abbasid caliphs. The Turkic Seljuqs nei- dancy. For the first time, Islam neither had the power to conquer nor
ther intended nor attempted to impose their language, culture, and the capacity to absorb the opposing culture. In response to this anx-
seminomadic social order on the fabric of the Islamic polity; instead ious and often desperate situation, there gradually emerged revival
they wholeheartedly adopted Islam as their religion and promoted movements and nationalisms in the Islamic world, whose ideologies
Persian next to Arabic as a language of higher learning. covered the spectrum from puritanism, reformism, modernism, sec-
1258–­1500. After the demise of the attenuated Abbasid caliph- ularism, nationalism, and socialism to the extremes of fundamental-
ate of Baghdad in 1258 during the Mongol invasions, Muslim ism, often termed “Islamism.” Its apogees are represented on the
political thinkers were forced to come to terms with three new one hand by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and on the other hand
political powers in the east: (1) Ilkhanid and then Timurid rule in by the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, on the United States.
Iran and Iraq, (2) khanate rule of the Golden Horde from Siberia
to the Caucasus and from the Urals to the Danube River, and (3) Rudimentary Foundations of Islamic Political
Delhi- based sultanates in India. Farther to the west, it saw mili- Thought (from Muhammad to 750)
tary control pass into the hands of Mamluk Turks and Circassians Both Islamic history and Islamic political thought began in the twi-
who, uprooted from their homelands as military slaves, were sold light of Late Antiquity with the hijra, the emigration of the Prophet
into the households of their patrons and emancipated as converts from Mecca to Medina in 622. During his prophetic career in
to Islam to serve as soldiers in the Mamluk armies in Egypt and Mecca, Muhammad preached with the expectation of apocalyptic
Syria. Control of the polity was thus usurped by a medley of for- end times, focusing his listeners on their future in the hereafter and
eign khanates and slave sultanates, each attempting to claim le- reminding them of their individual accountability before God. In
gitimacy through the manipulation of Islamic symbols of just rule Medina, he changed course, dominated by the urge to establish the
and institutional affiliation with Sufi shaykhs. Faced with this frag- collective religious unity of a community that would enter history
mentation, Islamic political thinkers sought to find new paradigms here and now and shape a polity in this world. Once the proclama-
that reflected the effort to overcome the tumultuous breakdown of tion of the Qur’an came to an end with the death of the Prophet,
order. Nonetheless, despite having to endure the devastations of eschatological concerns faded; Muslims focused on the victories of
Chingiz Khan (1167– 1227) and Tamerlane (1336– 1405), the con- the Arab conquest and the resulting exigencies of empire building
quered Islamic community managed to integrate the foreign con- and the shaping of polity. The caliphs took charge in their succes-
querors into its religion and polity. sion to the Prophet as leaders of the community. The crisis (fitna)
1500–­1800. From about 1500 onward, the division of the Islamic of fraternal wars of succession within the ranks of the believers
world into sultanates was succeeded by the rise of three separate pitted insiders against outsiders, early Arab Muslims against new
and flourishing monarchic empires, none of which used Arabic client converts, orthodox against heterodox, tribes against tribes,
as their official language of discourse and administration. The regions against regions, and dynasties against dynasties. It gave
Turkish- speaking Ottomans, who had conquered Constantinople rise to sects and parties but, ultimately, did not dismantle the body
in 1453 (now named Istanbul as their seat of government), added politic even though, from the ninth century onward, it allowed for
Syria and Egypt to their empire in 1517 and eventually adopted the the separation of political functions between caliphs, military amirs,
title and the legacy of Sunni caliphs. Adopting the Persian idiom, and viziers administering the state. Neither the bifurcation of the
the Safavids established themselves in Iran in 1501 and transformed caliphate in the middle of the tenth century into the Muslim East
it into a theocratic Imami Shi‘i monarchy. The Mughals, developing under the Buyid amirs in Baghdad and the Muslim West under the
a Persian- speaking culture, established their predominantly Sunni Fatimid caliphs in Cairo (and the Umayyad caliphs in Córdoba) nor
rule over India with their victory at Panipat in 1526. In this new the influx of Turks and Mongols in the middle of the 11th and 13th
threefold constellation, political theory was made to serve the par- centuries destroyed the cohesive but highly flexible structure of the
ticular vision of rule of each empire rather than that of a universal Islamic polity.
ix