Religion and Politics under the Early ⊂Abbasids: The Emergence of the Proto-Sunni Elite.

• Author: El-Hibri, Tayeb
• Position: Review

Religion and Politics under the Early [subset]Abbasids: The Emergence of the Proto-Sunni Elite. By MUHAMMAD QASIM ZAMAN. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1997. Pp. 232. $92.

The relation between religious and political authority in the early Islamic period is a topic that generally defies easy communication to nonspecialist audiences, especially those who cluster around Western historical paradigms. Explaining the Prophet's mission and conquests, then delving into the problem of succession, the nature of caliphate vs. imamate, hadith evolution, and messianic tendencies forces the particularity of historical circumstance on our attention, obscuring theoretical concerns. This book's title tries to make these issues accessible by using a broad frame.

In reality, this is a specialized monograph that assumes familiarity with Islamic controversies, Rashidun and Umayyad history, and recent debates in the field about the definitions of caliphal authority and the dating of Islamic law. The basic premise of Muhammad Qasim Zaman's work is that religious authority in the first half century of [subset]Abbasid rule (750-809) was a cooperative enterprise between the caliphs and the [subset]ulama. From this perspective, al-Ma[contains]mun's mihna was an anomaly or a reversal in a relation of harmony (and not a culmination of [subset]Abbasid religious pretensions, as in Crone's and Hinds' God's Caliph) between the [subset]ulama and the caliphs that began in the early [subset]Abbasid period and reached its peak during the caliphate of Harun al-Rashid. According to Zaman, there are specific characteristics that mark what he calls "proto-Sunni" [subset]ulama[contains] in the first half century of [subset]Abbasid rule. These consist of recognition of hadith and fiqh as th e [subset]ulama[contains]'s domain of religious authority, the [subset]ulama[contains]'s recognition of [subset]Abbasid political legitimacy, and a general aversion to Shi[contains]i views, [subset]Alid rebellions, and discussing the life of [subset]Ali and his political-historical role. Thus, a division of labor existed between the [subset]ulama[contains] who held religious authority and the caliphs who merely incorporated this law in the administration of the empire.

Adopting this framework, however, is no easy matter and confronts many problems that ultimately make the book's argument unconvincing. The main difficulty lies in the fact that the author tends to take stories about the caliphs, the...