Public Violence in Islamic Societies: Power, Discipline, and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 7th-19th Centuries CE 9780748637331

Citation preview

Public Violence in Islamic Societies

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PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES Power, Discipline, and the Construction of the Public Sphere, 7th–19th Centuries CE

2 Edited by Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

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© in this edition Edinburgh University Press, 2009 © in the individual contributions is retained by the authors Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh www.euppublishing.com Typeset in JaghbUni by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 3731 7 (hardback) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

List of abbreviations Acknowledgements

vii viii

Introduction: Spatial, ritual and representational aspects of public violence in Islamic societies (7th–19th centuries CE) Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro PART I

Public violence and the construction of the public sphere

1. The case of Jaʿd b. Dirham and the punishment of ‘heretics’ in the early caliphate Gerald Hawting, School of Oriental and African Studies, London 2. Qāḍīs and the political use of the maẓālim jurisdiction under the ʿAbbāsids Mathieu Tillier, University of Oxford 3. From revolutionary violence to state violence: the Fāṭimids (297–567/909–1171) Yaacov Lev, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 4. Actions speak louder than words: reactions to lampoons and abusive poetry in medieval Arabic society Zoltán Szombathy, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest PART II

27

42 67 87

Ritual dimensions of violence

5. Reveal or conceal: public humiliation and banishment as punishments in early Islamic times Everett K. Rowson, New York University 6. Emulating Abraham: the Fāṭimid al-Qāʾim and the Umayyad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III Maribel Fierro, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid

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1

119 130

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7. Where on earth is hell? State punishment and eschatology in the Islamic middle period Christian Lange, University of Edinburgh 8. Justice, crime and punishment in 10th/16th-century Morocco Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid PART III

156 179

Representations of public violence

9. Responses to crucifixion in the Islamic world (1st–7th/ 7th–13th centuries) Tilman Seidensticker, University of Jena 10. Violence and the prince: the case of the Aghlabid Amīr Ibrāhīm II (261–89/875–902) Annliese Nef, Université Paris4-Sorbonne 11. Concepts of justice and the catalogue of punishments under the Sultans of Delhi (7th–8th/13th–14th centuries) Blain Auer, Harvard University 12. Public violence, state legitimacy: the Iqāmat al-ḥudūd and the sacred state Robert Gleave, Exeter University 13. Violence in Islamic societies through the eyes of non-Muslim travellers: Morocco in the 19th and early 20th centuries Manuela Marín, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Madrid

203 217 238 256 276

292

Index

vi

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Abbreviations

AESC AI BSOAS EI1 EI2 EI3 EQ ILS IOS JAOS JRAS SI TG

Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations Annales Islamologiques Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st edition, ed. M. Th. Houtsma et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1913–36) The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, ed. H. A. R. Gibb et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2004) The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition, ed. G. Krämer et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007–) The Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, ed. J. D. McAuliffe et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2001–6) Islamic Law and Society Israel Oriental Studies Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Studia Islamica Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert der Hidschra: eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991–7)

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Acknowledgements

The bulk of the contributions in this volume go back to the international conference ‘The public display of violence in Islamic societies (seventh–eighteenth centuries)’ which was held at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid (15–16 June 2006). This seminar was made possible thanks to the financial support given by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (Acción Complementaria HUM2004-22361-E) and by the CSIC as part of the research project ‘Violencia y castigo en sociedades islámicas pre-modernas: Al-Andalus y el Magreb (Violence and punishment in pre-modern Islamic societies: al-Andalus and the Maghreb)’, which was also funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (2002–6, BFF2002-00075). Two contributions in this volume derive from a panel at the 2006 meeting of the Middle East Studies Association titled ‘Punishment and discipline in the Islamic middle ages’ (Boston, 27 November 2006). In the wake of these two events, Robert Gleave, Annliese Nef, Everett Rowson and Mathieu Tillier graciously agreed to come on board and thus give the volume its present shape. The topic at hand is vast. Nevertheless, it is hoped that a satisfying degree of coherence has been achieved, not least by means of the introduction, which lays out a conceptual framework for the volume. The two anonymous reviewers of the book proposal are owed thanks for their valuable comments and suggestions for improvement of the manuscript. The people at Edinburgh University Press, especially Nicola Ramsey and Eddie Clark, have seen this volume through press with much competence and patience. We are particularly grateful to our copy-editor, Judith Oppenheimer, for her efficient and professional work on the manuscript, and to Dr Philip Hillyer for expertly compiling the index. The editors Edinburgh and Madrid, June 2009

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Introduction: Spatial, ritual and representational aspects of public violence in Islamic societies (7th–19th centuries CE) Christian Lange and Maribel Fierro

Violence as an element in the historical relationships both among Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims has been the object of some scholarly work in the past, as in the case of jihād, the law of rebellion (aḥkām al-bughāt), or penal law.1 However, the role of violence in the political economy of Muslim societies, especially inasmuch as it was used as a strategy to take possession of the public sphere,2 has only recently begun to receive the scholarly attention the topic deserves. Few if any attempts have been made to offer a comprehensive picture of the political uses of violence by Muslim states past and present, or of the historical struggle of Muslims to defend the integrity of their bodies, property and honour against violent intrusions by the powers that be.3 The present volume is conceived as a step in this direction. No study of public violence in the formation of Islamic societies can take as its point of departure a simple definition of the relationship between Islam and violence; what we are dealing with is, rather, a spectrum of agendas and attitudes which often took centuries to develop. As the essays in this collection demonstrate, state violence in Islam’s early centuries made use of a different register of punishments than in later centuries, and reactions to state violence likewise differed according to temporal and geographical setting. It would be rash, therefore, to claim that the general Sunnī and Shīʿī attitude toward state violence has been one of political quietism, the view that it is better to live with occasional acts of violence and cruelty by the ruler than to risk the break-up of Muslim society. True, a host of traditions similar to the following suggest that “the tyranny of a sulṭān for forty years is preferable to the flock being left without a master for a single hour”.4 The roots of this attitude, or so the argument goes, stretch back to the collective trauma of the civil wars of the first century of Islam, 1

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when leadership of the Muslim polity had been openly challenged, to the brink of tearing the umma apart. It is also pointed out that the collective memory of Islam never divorced itself from the terrifying spectre of the Khārijites, who indulged in murderous violence based on their conviction that allegiance to morally reprobate rulers was a form of kufr, punishable by death. For most Shīʿīs, the disaster of the failed revolts of their early leaders likewise led to a stress on the impermissibility of open resistance against temporal rule. In the Islamic Middle Period, quietist attitudes were further facilitated by the rise of Turkish military governments and the sense of insecurity they brought to the hearts and minds of the subject population who, to borrow from Huizinga, “in any crisis looks to the power of the state to implement a reign of terror”.5 Writers of the Persian mirrors-for-princes tradition eagerly exploited this dilemma, propagating old Iranian notions of the divine right of kings to exercise absolute power.6 One would be tempted to conclude from all this that the prevailing view was that it was better to submit to the capricious, unjust and excessively violent ruler because justice would be done, or so one would hope, in the hereafter. However, stated in such extreme terms, this picture is a caricature and must not be taken as an exact representation of how things were. While strands of quietism were undoubtedly strong in both Sunnī and Shīʿī Islam,7 alternative views of the legitimacy of public violence circulated. At times these oppositional discourses were set forth openly and took on institutionalized aspects; at other times they were deployed in a more oblique and informal fashion. Revolutionary violence is but one, obvious instance of an Islamic anti-quietist attitude toward violence. The success of the ʿAbbāsid, Fāṭimid, Almohad and Safavid revolutions (as well as numerous others in the history of Islamic societies) retrospectively legitimized the use of violence against the governments these emerging dynasties had helped to overthrow. Such movements, however, inevitably ran into the problem of routinization, that is, of how to preserve and perpetuate their charisma as revolutionary harbingers of justice and ‘good violence’.8 All too soon revolutionary governments could be regarded as just another of the oppressive régimes that were based solely on military force. Arguably, a more sustained challenge to the state’s monopoly over violence was developed behind the scenes, in the representations of violence in the legal literature, in theology and the arts. The classical jurists’ views of rebellion by no means simply followed in the tradition of political quietism, as Khaled Abou El Fadl’s ground-breaking study (2001) has shown. Rather, the jurists (whether Sunnī, Shīʿī, or Ibāḍī) made room for the concept of rebels with a cause (bughāt) and developed sophisticated 2

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“balance-of-evil tests” in which they assessed the legitimacy of violence against the state in light of the requirements of just rule.9 In criminal law, the attempt to circumscribe the ruler’s power to punish is apparent in the laws of both ḥadd and taʿzīr, even if the tendency to assimilate the notion of political expediency (siyāsa) into the framework of fiqh raises serious concerns about the consistency of the legal system.10 However, traditions of representing, and thereby seeking to influence, the socially constructed meaning of violence were not confined to the legal literature. Poets and authors of belles-lettres, chroniclers, theologians, and representatives of other literary traditions, including popular ones, all created their own discourses about the phenomenon of violence, thus claiming a measure of authority over the public sphere. As Dale Eickelman has observed, the picture that emerges from the study of traditional Islamic societies is that of “a vibrant public sphere, accommodating a large variety of autonomous groups and characterized by its relatively stable yet very dynamic nature”.11 Each literary tradition that touches on issues of violence deserves close study, and it is hoped that the contributions in this volume will go some way to responding to this challenge. In the following pages, three themes are laid out that can be fruitfully pursued in the study of public violence in the history of Islamic societies, themes that also serve as a conceptual framework for the present volume: (1) the public and private dimension of violence in traditional Islamic societies; (2) the ritual dimension of violence, that is, the ways in which acts of violence were clothed in symbolic imagery and patterns of behaviour; and (3) the representational dimension of violence: how acts of violence were mentally processed, and challenged, by those who observed and reported them.

Violence and the public sphere There is no exact translation, in any of the Islamic languages, of the Western concepts of private and public, which are in themselves subject to multiple interpretations. As many have pointed out, there is the danger of artificially exporting a conceptual dichotomy anchored in the Western social sciences into contexts which are fundamentally alien to it. What seems uncontestable is that one must avoid an anachronistic imposition on premodern Islam of the modern concept of the public sphere in the sense of an all-inclusive arena for the critical exercise of public reason.12 It would be equally one-sided, however, to claim that traditional Islamic societies had, beyond the domestic private sphere, no public sphere at all, but rather, only a ‘sphere of public authority’, that is, of state dominion. 3

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Islamic literature seems to favour a vocabulary of expressions that relate to the Western concept of privacy: terms such as ḥarām/maḥẓūr (“forbidden”), sirr/maktūm (“secret”), sitr (“veiling”), ḥurma (“inviolability”), ʿawra (“anything that man conceals by reason of shame or pudency”13) by and large seem to play a bigger role than antonymic concepts such as ʿalāniyya (“open, manifest”) or tashhīr (“making well-known/ notorious”). In many Islamic discussions of these concepts of privacy, the link with violence is readily apparent: Ghazzālī (d. 505/1111), for example, defines mercy, an antonym of violence, as the readiness to veil others.14 Violence, in this view, is the act of unveiling others, of “tearing apart the veil of integrity spread over Muslims” (hatk sitr al-ʿiffa ʿalā l-muslimīn), as the Ḥanafī al-Sarakhsī (d. c. 483/1090) puts it.15 A definition of the public sphere in premodern Islam, therefore, is perhaps best begun in the negative: as the sphere of life which is not protected from unwanted intrusion by the state. However, as the above list of terms makes clear, privacy in Islam is not simply a territorial concept. Space is only one of several dimensions in the definition of private. Urban spaces like the mosque or the market, for example, can have both public and private characteristics: they are, in the words of Roy Mottahedeh, the “two lungs of public life”, but they also “look inward, psychologically and architecturally”, as spaces marked off against the outside.16 The concept of privacy in Islamic societies must also take into account notions of the privacy and dignity (karāma) of the human body, regardless of location, and of the inviolability of reputation and honour of a person. Such rights could well claim validity even when they entered into the ‘sphere of public authority’. In general, the line that separated private from public was unstable and porous, shifting according to the historical and social context. To begin with territorial concepts of privacy, then, one encounters, on the domestic level, the notion of the inviolability (ḥurma) of houses, which no doubt is strongest with regard to the harem (ḥarīm), the innermost recesses of the house, open only to the women in the family and their maḥram male relatives.17 The medieval theorists of ḥisba, the office of the market inspector and censor of public morals, debated at length if and under what circumstances the muḥtasib, as the representative of state power, was allowed to transgress into the domestic sphere.18 The notion of ḥarīm also came to be used in a broader sense, in order to designate inviolate urban areas or sacred grounds. In the 3rd/9th century, the palace of the Ṭāhirid governors of ʿIrāq and Khurāsān (al-Ḥarīm al-Ṭāhirī) in West Baghdad “enjoyed quasi-regal administrative and legal status”, whence it was called ḥarīm, that is, sanctuary.19 The ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mustaẓhir, in 488/1095, began to build a wall that would 4

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eventually surround the premises, also called ḥarīm, that were occupied by the caliphal estates, the dār al-khilāfa, in East Baghdad.20 In Būyid and Saljūq times, the caliphal ḥarīm was a safe haven for those who fled state violence, for example, the repression suffered at the hands of the officials of the Saljūq sulṭān. In 515/1121, the sulṭān’s chief of police (shiḥna) chased a man suspected of murder to the Bāb al-ʿĀmma, the Public Gate, one of the principal entrances to the caliphal precinct in East Baghdad, but was not allowed to proceed into the ḥarīm – instead, he had to content himself with threatening the caliph’s vizier and the Chamberlain of the Gate (ḥājib al-bāb).21 A similar status of inviolability, protecting against acts of violence by the state, was enjoyed by religious sanctuaries, such as the holy precincts in Mecca and Medina (al-ḥaramayn), the ḥaram al-sharīf in Jerusalem, as well as Shīʿī shrines such as in Najaf and Karbalāʾ (both of which are called ḥarams).22 In later centuries, Ṣufī shrines likewise offered protection for the persecuted.23 Semi-public spaces such as mosques, markets and cemeteries were of special symbolic significance in the struggle between the rulers and the ruled over the construction of the public sphere. The mosque, as has been alluded to above, is “a complex arrangement of types of public and private spaces”,24 which combines private areas such as the areas separated for women, prayer alcoves in which to practise retreat (iʿtikāf) during Ramaḍān, or the ruler’s maqṣūra, with more public features such as the courtyard, which was used as a space of assembly for public debate, as the seat of the judge (qāḍī), sometimes (as in 6th/12th-century Baghdad) also as the penal theatre in which the repressive state organs staged public spectacles of punishment.25 The debate between Shāfiʿī and Ḥanafī jurists as to whether the qāḍī should be allowed to take his seat in the courtyard may reflect a different understanding of the public or private character of the mosque.26 The mosque was also a space of contestation and violence wrought between the ʿulamāʾ: in the West, the famous Mālikī scholar Saḥnūn (d. 240/855) is reported to have punished the Muʿtazilī Ibn Abī l-Jawād by having him flogged day after day in the courtyard of the Great Mosque of Kairouan, until he died.27 Like other religious sanctuaries, mosques could be seen to offer protection against public violence. During the pillage of Nīshāpūr at the hand of Turkmen hordes in 548/1153, the local population sought refuge in the Friday mosque of the town; the chroniclers write with great horror about the Turkmens’ disregard for this space of refuge, which they mercilessly burned to the ground.28 Like the mosque, the market (sūq, bazār) “looked inward” as a shared space of discussion for those who entered into it. In another sense, however, it was also “the precinct of public discourse”.29 Understandably, 5

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then, the state was eager to stamp its mark of authority on it. Ignominious parades, a common form throughout the centuries of discretionary punishment (taʿzīr) by the state, led through busy market fares (as well as through mosques).30 The ways in which state violence literally ‘took place’ in the urban landscape changed and evolved over time: ignominious display of offenders in 1st/7th-century Medina, as Everett Rowson reports in his contribution to this volume, might consist in making them stand, in impromptu fashion, on bags of figs (bulus). In Saljūq Baghdād, shaming rituals were performed on an open platform (dikka ẓāhira) at the Bāb al-Nūbī;31 and in 11th/17th-century Morocco, as Fernando Rodríguez Mediano records in his essay in this volume, dung heaps were used for the same purpose. Other violent shows of force were sometimes staged in the market: in medieval Baghdad, thieves and other criminals were hanged from the central archways of the sūqs, or gibbeted on the doors of the shops.32 Other favourite, highly visible urban locations for acts of state violence included river banks, city gates, and, a development that appears to be peculiar to the Islamic West, the open-air oratory (muṣallā).33 As suggested above, next to the inviolability of spaces, definitions of privacy in the Islamic context need to take account of the inviolability of the human body, arguably the most private of all objects. Islamic legal discourse establishes a protocol of the gaze, by defining the shame zones (ʿawrāt) of the human body which are not to be looked at or revealed to the public.34 Again, there can be no question of a clear distinction into public and private, for the meaning of ʿawra was largely contextual: for example, the ʿawra of a female slave was different from that of free woman, and a maḥram male relative was allowed to see body parts of the women in his family which outsiders were forbidden to look at. The concern for the inviolability of the human body is also manifest in criminal law. In the case of legal punishment, whether ḥadd, talionic punishment, or taʿzīr, the classical jurists stipulated that certain parts of the body must never be injured. These were the so-called maqātil, that is, head, face and genitals, body parts which were considered to be especially private, not because they were critical for survival of the human organism (as the name maqātil would suggest), but rather because they were so important for the constitution of selfhood.35 The jurists also argued against crucifying offenders alive36 and polemicized against the practice of face blackening and shaving the beard (for example, as complementary punishments in ignominious parades), both of which they condemned as a form of mutilation (muthla), which, according to Islamic law, is strictly forbidden.37 Such defensive posturing on the part of the jurists must be seen against the background of Muslim states’ claims to dispose of the bodies of its 6

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subjects. The court secretary Ibn Ḥamdūn (d. 562/1166) unabashedly recommended that the prince must “lead the bodies of the subjects to obedience in their hearts” (qāda abdāna l-raʿiyya ilā l-ṭaʿa fī qulūbihim).38 The state’s monopoly over violence was perhaps most readily demonstrated by its power to destroy the privacy of bodies. By public acts of humiliation and mutilation, the power of the state was inscribed, visible to all, on the bodies of its subjects. This dimension of the privacy-threatening nature of state violence is explored to great effect by Fernando Rodríguez Mediano in his chapter in this volume on public punishment in 10th/16th-century Morocco. Rodríguez Mediano shows how the bodies of delinquents in Saʿdian Morocco became the catalysts of a pedagogical discourse aimed at the collective memory of the audiences of state punishment. A third dimension of the meaning of ‘privacy’ in the history of Islamic societies is herewith announced: that of honour and reputation. That a person’s public reputation is sacrosanct, and that private sins must not be publicized, is a leitmotif of Islamic ethical literature. Already the Qurʾān (49:12) condemns spying and prying on others. “The way of the pious,” Ghazālī exhorts his readers, is “to cover the faults of others and to refuse to learn about them.”39 Nothing worse, then, than to have one’s dignity and honour taken away in public: Ibn Rushd (Averroes, d. 595/1198) is said to have remembered all his life how he had to leave the mosque in Cordoba after having been publicly disgraced there.40 The fear of public insult also helps to explain the sometimes violent reactions against invective poetry (hijāʾ), a topic discussed in this volume by Zoltán Szombathy. Szombathy points out that the responses in medieval Arabic society to lampoons were many and included longanimity, especially by those who were powerful enough to indulge in it; but no doubt the publicness of the insult was a factor that carried great weight. Punishment could in fact consist in paying the insulting offender back in the same coin. As Everett Rowson’s discussion of the tashhīr punishment in the Umayyad context makes clear, the “making notorious” of offenders against moral and social norms by public parading was often in retribution for “making scandal” by different kinds of highly unconventional behaviour. Tashhīr served to publicly announce the sin and thereby to launch an attack on the offender’s honour, his ‘water of the face’ (māʾ al-wajh), which was symbolically destroyed by the practice of face-blackening (taswīd al-wajh), one of the integral parts of the punishment.41 The bestialization of victims in public acts of violence also follows this logic of dehumanization, that is, to make people into ‘others’, by flogging them like cattle, imprisoning them like animals kept in cages, sometimes even by ritually slaughtering them as if in animal sacrifice (see Gerald Hawtings’ and Maribel Fierro’s contributions to this volume). 7

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Punishment also consisted in contagious association with animals, for example, when offenders were kept in cages together with monkeys (see Yaacov Lev’s contribution), or were paraded on cows, camels or donkeys, in addition to being tied to pigs, dogs or cats (Everett Rowson), or being crucified next to them.42 The dimension of shame associated with violence helps to explain why the ruling classes in the history of Islamic societies preferred to punish members of their own stratum in secret, within the confines of palaces or private prisons. Ibn Ḥamdūn judged that an offence committed in private (dhanb al-sirr) requires a punishment meted out in private (ʿuqūbat alsirr).43 Common people, on the other hand, are “like cattle” (al-ʿawwām ka-l-anʿām),44 and can therefore be given over to the ignominious spectacle of public violence. The locus classicus in Islamic legal literature in this regard is Kāsānī’s (d. 587/1189) stratified model of taʿzīr, which is based on four different levels of honourability: the less honour is at stake, the more public taʿzīr is. According to Kāsānī, descendants of the Prophet and the jurists (ashrāf al-ashrāf) must only be made to suffer a private reprimand from the judge as taʿzīr. Noblemen (ashrāf), that is, the land owners (dahāqīn) and military leaders (quwwād), receive a reprimand from the judge in the public setting of the court. The middle classes (awsāṭ), that is, the market people (sūqa), are punished with reprimand in the judge’s court and with imprisonment. Finally, the vulgar (akhissāʾ), that is, the nether classes (sifla), suffer public reprimand, imprisonment and beating.45 Mathieu Tillier, in his essay on ʿAbbāsid qāḍīs’ troubled relationship with the caliph’s ‘Court of Grievances’ (maẓālim), gives the example of a dissident governor (his offence was to have composed an invective poem, or hijāʾ, directed against the caliph) whose punishment was a daily public appearance and reprimand in court. Tillier’s discussion of maẓālim, yet another contested space in which different public and private interests clashed, shows how the caliph was keen to keep a check on the social reputation of judges, by subjecting them to the humiliating procedure of “display in front of the people” (al-iqāma li-l-nās). The maẓālim gave the caliph leverage against the ʿulamāʾ, especially the qāḍīs. As this typology of the private and public divide in medieval Islamic society suggests, the spheres demarcated by the right of territorial immunity, the right of inviolability of the body and the right of protecting one’s honour and reputation were not rigidly opposed to the sphere of governmental authority. The three private spheres delineated by inviolate territory, body and honour reached out into the public sphere, thereby creating what might be termed ‘counter publics’. The formation of such ‘counter publics’ in turn was predicated on the complex pattern of Muslim networks that 8

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made up the social fabric of Islamic societies. How, concretely, the different spheres of influence of the state, the ʿulamāʾ, the literati and other networks of authority related to one another, and how the public sphere was configurated in the light of violence, varied from one historical context to an other. Before reviewing representational strategies of some of the ‘counter publics’ alluded to above, let us first take a closer look at how medieval Muslim governments used violence to claim authority over the public sphere. In particular, it will be explored how Muslim governments instrumentalized violence as a ritual of domination.

Violence, ritual and the sacred Acts of public violence, unless spontaneous and improvised, take on the formal and functional characteristics of ritual. According to René Girard, “there is [. . .] hardly any form of violence that cannot be described in terms of sacrifice”.46 As Robert Gleave points out in his contribution to this volume, Muslim jurists talk about ḥadd punishments in terms of ritual: as ‘rights of God’ (ḥuqūq Allāh) the ḥudūd are non-negotiable. Only God knows their precise purpose. Therefore they elude legal reasoning: they are simply ‘due’ to God.47 This does not mean, however, that from the standpoint of the social sciences we cannot speculate about the function of legal punishment in Islam. Girard famously declared that the purpose of religious sacrifice, the most basic of all rituals, is in fact to sublimate violence. Ritual sacrifice, according to Girard, diffuses the ‘mimetic crisis’ of interests between two or more rival parties, and thus restores peace and social harmony. It is precisely for this reason, Girard concluded, that rituals are regarded as sacred.48 The violence in ritual, in this view, is ‘good violence’, because it prevents further ‘bad violence’. This is also how medieval Muslim apologists rationalized state punishment: as a conflict-solving public performance, which by force of deterrence (zajr) prevents further offences and thus guarantees social cohesion.49 Girard’s theory relies on the assumption that the participants in the ritual ceremony agree, in a quasi-democratic process, to submit to the order-restoring power of the ritual. However, less optimistic interpretations of the relationship between ritual and violence are possible. The meaning of ritual violence changes rather drastically when the justification and execution of the ritual can be shown to have been monopolized by one party only. Arguably, political ritual instrumentalizes the ‘sanctity’ of ritual in order to create an illusion of legitimacy. Publicly orchestrated, ritualized state violence can transform “the arbitrary and conventional 9

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into what appears to be necessary and natural”.50 Arbitrary violence thus appears as justified. “It is through ritual,” observes Catherine Bell, “that those claiming power demonstrate how their interests are in the natural, real, or fruitful order of things.”51 The symbolism and structural processes of ritual violence also help to disguise the fact that violence is inherently chaotic. According to Jonathan Z. Smith, “ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that this ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled, course of things”.52 Ritual violence has a protocol, it is an orderly, structured affair that takes place in a controlled environment; ordinary violence, on the other hand, is uncontrolled and messy, a fact which the ritual seeks to make forget. An example of this mechanism is discussed in this volume by Yaacov Lev and Maribel Fierro: the rebellion of Abū Yazīd (332–6/943–7), which “brought the Fāṭimid rule in North Africa to the brink of collapse” and was characterized by “intense bloodshed” on both sides, and which ended in the defeat and capture of Abū Yazīd. The rebel was paraded through the cities under Fāṭimid control in a cage, a cage which contained both him and, symbolically, the violence of the rebellion that he had fought. Ritual, then, has the power to sacralize violence and to obliterate its fundamentally arbitrary and destructive nature. Anthropological studies of violence since Foucault’s exploration of the ancien régime’s ‘spectacle of the scaffold’ have emphasized a third dimension of ritual violence: the creation of subjected bodies and the establishment of a bodily discipline. “The body,” Foucault proposes, “is directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.”53 Public punishment is a spectacle, a celebration of the lack of power of the punished person, and thus a manifestation of the power of the ruling élite. The human body serves as the canvas on which this power is inscribed. By symbolically, and publicly, disciplining the bodies of its subjects, the state seeks to discipline the body politic. While the structural process of ritual in itself creates a sense of its ‘sanctity’, the symbolic imagery of ritual further underscores this meaning by connecting the ritual to mythical and religious themes. In Islamic societies, ritual violence typically alludes to God’s opprobrium,54 to instances of the wrath He shows against the rebellious and ungrateful, or simply to His inscrutable exercise of absolute power. The link with sacred history works both backwards in time and forwards: ritual violence symbolically evokes the mythical past (myth, in the definition of Bruce Lincoln, is “ideology in 10

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narrative form”55), but also maps the present on the eschatological future. The contributions in this volume, especially in Part II, present evidence for both mechanisms of symbolization. State violence could seek justification by modeling itself on the actions of the Prophet Muḥammad. This, however, was not restricted to judgments by the judge (qāḍī), based on the example of Prophetic violence laid down in legal ḥadīth. Quite independently from the workings of sharīʿa, the rulers and their ideologues claimed a share in the Prophetic heritage. For instance, the Fāṭimid caliph al-Muʿizz (r. 341–65/953–75) compared the execution of the dāʿī Abū ʿAbd Allāh to the punishments meted out by the Prophet Muḥammad, despite his clemency and mercy, to those Muslims who had transgressed God’s laws.56 Another popular strategy, as Blain Auer points out in his discussion in this volume of notions of justice under the Delhi sultanate (7th–8th/13th–14th centuries), was to invoke the “custom” (sunna) or the “rule” (ḍabṭ) of the second caliph ʿUmar, who came to embody the ideal stern ruler of Islam’s mythic past. The link with salvation history, however, reaches beyond the blessed time of the Prophet and his Companions, taking the audience of ritual violence further back, to the days of the Biblical prophets. Al-Muʿizz declared his execution of Abū ʿAbd Allāh was tantamount to the punishments inflicted by God on prophets such as Adam, Jacob, Jonas, Job, David and Solomon. There are at least two prominent examples of ritual executions in the history of Islam which seem like symbolic re-enactments of the primordial sacrifice of Abraham. One is that of the early free thinker Jaʿd b. Dirham, discussed by Gerald Hawting in his contribution to this volume. The chronicles report that Jaʿd b. Dirham was executed toward the end of the rule of the Umayyad caliph Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–25/724–43). The manner of his execution was ritual slaughtering (dhabḥ), the time, the Day of Sacrifices; in all likelihood, this happened in the mosque of the garrison town of Wāsiṭ, at the hands of the governor, Khālid al-Qasrī. The other example, discussed by Maribel Fierro, is the public execution of the prince ʿAbd Allāh, son of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, Umayyad caliph of al-Andalus (r. 300–50/912–61). ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III reportedly slaughtered his own rebellious son on the muṣallā of Cordoba on the Day of Sacrifices, in front of a multitude of people. Rituals of violence could also be presented to their audiences as instances of apocalyptic violence, announcing the arrival of a messianic age of promise. Muslim apocalyptic literature predicted that the mahdī of the end of times, who carried the epithet “God’s caliph” (khalīfat Allāh), would govern with justice and righteousness. The violence attributed to the mahdī to achieve this end was replicated (or ‘realized’, depending on one’s 11

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point of view) by the followers of messianic movements. Apocalyptic traditions detail, for example, that the mahdī’s helpers will mutilate (maththala) the corpses of slain enemies, and that the mahdī himself will execute his nemesis, the Sufyānī, at the gates of Jerusalem.57 Messianic dynasties in the history of Islam thrived on their initial identification with the mahdī’s armies. ʿAbbāsid, Fāṭimid and Almohad rulers assumed apocalyptic titles (al-Mahdī, al-Qāʾim, etc.), suggesting to their subjects that they were, in fact, “the last ruler on earth, just before Judgment Day”.58 However, once in power, a different wind blew in the faces of the apocalyptic parvenus. As Yaacov Lev points out in his contribution, the reign of the first Fāṭimid imām, al-Mahdī (r. 297–322/909–34), had seen so much bloodshed that despite his messianic credentials, al-Mahdī had to offer official explanations for his execution of political enemies. Lev also gives the example of the aforementioned al-Muʿizz, who publicly had to perform expiation (kaffāra) for the execution of a number of Carmathian prisoners. If anything, the felt need for justification intensified during the history of Fāṭimid rule, and of messianic régimes in general. Later titles of both ʿAbbāsid and Fāṭimid rulers (al-Maʾmūn, al-Ḥākim, al-Āmir, etc.), indicate peace and stability, rather than war and vengeance.59 The transition from revolutionary violence to state violence posed new problems of legitimacy; it also constituted a challenge to the symbolism of public violence. One way to meet this challenge was to extend the eschatological symbolism of violence and to suggest, by means of ritualized performances, that state violence was not an instance of the justice of the last days of this world, but a pre-enactment of the eternal punishment of sinners in the world to come, as Christian Lange argues in this volume. Whether wittingly or not, this was achieved by modelling elements of the punitive ritual on the popular imaginaire of the Day of Judgement and Hell. Punitive parades (tashhīr), for example, appear to have been interpreted as dramatic performances of eschatological punishment in which the sinners, their faces blackened, are led before the Throne of Justice by the zabāniyya, the demonic angel punishers of hell. Mitchell Merback has argued that the motif of the crucifixion of Christ and the two thieves was used, in medieval Western art, as a commentary on contemporary acts of public violence, such as wheeling.60 The poetics of punishment in medieval Islam, on the other hand, as Lange theorizes, played with notions of the tribunal of justice on the Day of Resurrection and the resulting punishment of sinners in hell. The eschatological symbolism of state violence thus suggested that the justice of the ruler was, in the last analysis, divine justice. This was in line with a general “trend toward absolutism” in the history of Islamic 12

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governments.61 The Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid caliphs considered themselves God’s vice-regents (khulafāʾ Allāh) on earth, the Saljūq sulṭāns assumed the title of “shadow of God” (sāya-yi khudā),62 and charismatic régimes such as the Fāṭimids and the Almohads claimed that their rule was God’s command (amr) itself.63 The idea, in sum, was that God’s violence and the ruler’s violence were the same, or at least derived from the same source of authority. However, as will be discussed in the next section, those Muslim authors who were not apologists of state ideology wrote about public violence in markedly different ways.

Representations of violence The demise of public punishment in early modern Europe is often explained by the fact that the political powers realized that public punishment had become ineffectual and vulnerable to challenge. The rationale that ‘good violence’ prevented ‘bad violence’ was increasingly called into question. As Peter Spierenburg and others have argued, the emerging nation-states of early modern Europe offered an improved security situation, and a new appreciation for the human individual developed. In consequence, European populaces’ sensibilities vis-à-vis public spectacles of violence changed. Audiences of public state punishment now reacted with compassion and outrage when witnessing the pain of the victims of state violence, so that the state emerged weakened, rather than strengthened, from the ordeal. Violence thus reverted to its perpetrators.64 In Islamic historiography of the premodern period, open challenges to public rituals of state violence are mentioned only occasionally. From this we should not infer, however, that Muslim crowds always readily acquiesced in paying ‘scaffold service’. The lack of such reports could simply express the chroniclers’ bias in favour of the authorities (in whose service they usually worked).65 As Robert Brunschvig relates, in 19th-century Tunis, “the masses attended public executions eagerly, responding with es-smāḥ (you are forgiven) to the request of the condemned for pardon; great silence precedes and follows the fatal instant; people often throw stones at the executioners and try to seize pieces of the garment of the tortured as tokens of good luck”.66 The public ritual of violence described by Brunschvig appears to have failed to imprint the absolute power of the prince on the minds of his subjects. The Tunis crowd obviously empathized with the condemned and declared, by way of a collective illocutionary act, that his punishment would serve as atonement (kaffāra) for his offence. If the state agents had hoped to create a sense of the sanctity of the punitive ritual, they clearly failed. Instead, the victim himself (or, by contagion, his 13

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clothes) acquired baraka, as is clear from the spectators’ attempts to grab pieces of the executed man’s garment. The representatives of the state, on the other hand, were not treated with respect and awe, but with contempt and thinly disguised aggression. On other occasions, this may have informed the authorities’ choice of executioners, whose blood-stained trade always risked reflecting negatively on government. Both Manuela Marín and Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, in their contributions to this volume, underscore the fact that Jews and slaves were appointed as executioners in the Morocco of the 17th to the 19th centuries. The case discussed by Brunschvig shows that acts of public violence in 19th-century Tunis were open to a number of different readings. In earlier centuries, this can hardly have been different. How violence was understood was not necessarily how the performers of state violence wanted it to be understood. What is more, how state violence was then represented, whether in literature or in other forms of expression, was even less easily controllable. Such representations could endorse the ideological status quo of violence, but they could also seek to subvert it, and thus reclaim a measure of agency and authority over the public sphere. In medieval Islamic belles-lettres, criticisms of excessive violence were regularly made. Mythology could be invoked toward this end. Poets like Abū Tammām reminded their royal patrons that cruel rulers such as Zuhāk, the legendary Iranian king of old, would eventually fall and pay for their evil actions.67 More subtle, often even ironical strategies to criticize violence found expression in fictional narratives, as in the case of the Arabian Nights.68 In the present volume, Tilman Seidensticker offers an analysis of how Arab poets of the classical age responded to the spectacle of crucifixion (ṣalb), the public display of bodies, both dead and alive, on (usually T-shaped) trunks of wood. One is struck, when reading Seidensticker’s translations, by the apparent casualness with which the poets wrote about the punishment: a common sight throughout the Islamic Middle Period, crucifixion may have lost some of its persuasive power, thus allowing the poet to escape his position as passive, awe-struck observer, and even to radically re-evaluate the meaning of crucifixion in favour of the crucified. The examples provided by Seidensticker show a striking tendency of Arab poets to see a positive side in crucifixion: to be elevated on the cross indicates the crucified’s elevated position in life (a theme echoed in Fernando Rodríguez Mediano’s essay in this volume, where a man crucified in 11th/17th-century Fez is reported to have shouted at the spectators of his ignomy: “Once I was above you, and today I still am!”); the shame occasioned by the victim’s nakedness is re-evaluated as a sign of strength (as one poet muses, “does not the sword have the most terrifying appearance 14

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when it is drawn?”); crucifixion saves from the narrowness of the grave; the crucified can find solace, even pride, in the fact that he shares the fate of many prominent figures in the history of Islam; in one daring image, a poet even sees in the spread arms of the crucified an indication that he is about to embrace the virgins of paradise. Missing from these crucifixion poems is a clear statement of empathy, of sharing the pain of the condemned (unlike what one would find, for example, in Shīʿī literary representations of the martyrdom of Ḥusayn). However, Seidensticker finds this not in poetry, but in historiography. The chroniclers of premodern Islam, as Julie Meisami has reminded us, must not be misunderstood as presenting mere historical facts to the reader. Instead, their aim was to create a “usable past”,69 a past whose primary function was to inform, and potentially reform, the present. Therefore, descriptions of public violence in the chronicles (such as the passage from Abū Shāma’s al-Dhayl ʿalā l-rawḍatayn quoted by Seidensticker) must be read not in the positivist spirit of a search for ‘how things actually happened’, but rather, with a close focus on the particular social, political and economic context in which these historical narratives were created and acquired their sense.70 Bayhaqī’s (d. 470/1077) famous depiction of the execution of the Ghaznavid vizier Ḥasanak, for example, may tell us more about Bayhaqī’s own (critical) view of sulṭānic justice than about how public violence was actually enacted by the ruling powers of the time.71 This approach to historiographical representations of violence is firmly espoused by Annliese Nef and Blain Auer in their contributions to this volume. Nef offers a resolutely contextualized reading of the acts of violence attributed to the ‘mad’ Aghlabid amīr Ibrāhīm II (r. 261–89/875– 902), one of the last rulers of his dynasty before the establishment of the Fāṭimid caliphate in 296/909. According to Nef, there are certain recurring topoi and narrative structures used by chroniclers to frame their stories of the ruler’s violence, such as establishing a link between violence, reform and apocalypticism. However, this does not mean that there is an Islamic violence destined to repeat itself throughout history. What is relevant, on the contrary, is that such themes and narrative structures do not have the same meaning in different contexts. Different political cultures may have recourse to them, but, once contextualized in concrete terms, they reveal a different, localized interpretation of the norms that regulate politics. Blain Auer’s essay records shifts in the ways in which chroniclers of the Delhi Sultanate sought to mediate between the ruler’s free exercise of capital punishment on the grounds of political expediency (siyāsa) and the requirements of sharīʿa, as monitored by the ʿulamāʾ. Auer emphasizes the didactic function of historiography, which, as he observes, puts 15

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the genre in proximity to the mirror-for-princes literature. In the chronicles produced in the Delhi Sultanate, past rulers such as Muḥammad b. Tughluq were made “usable” in order to underline, whether in descriptive or prescriptive fashion, the development toward forms of violence that were legitimate from the point of view of sharīʿa. Other dynasties, such as the ʿAbbādids of Seville in the 5th/11th century, exerted themselves to ground their exercise of political violence on the example of past ‘ideal’ dynasties, as they were remembered in the chronicles.72 The so-called brigandage verse (Qurʾān 5:33) played a central role in any discussion about the limits of legitimate violence by the Islamic state. The vagueness of the verse – terms like muḥāraba or fasād are exceedingly broad – constituted an inroad for absolutist conceptions of the ruler’s violence into the fabric of sharīʿa. This was worrisome not only for the chroniclers but equally, or even to a greater extent, for the jurists of Islam. While writers of belles-lettres and of historiography were traditionally close to the court, the ʿulamāʾ relied on their own networks of communication and authority and thus were often able to occupy a more oppositional stand vis-à-vis the ruling classes.73 The history of the relationship between Islamic law and politics, however, is a complicated one, and again we must be cautious not to posit a single pattern of interaction between the ʿulamāʾ and the state. Khaled Abou El Fadl, as mentioned above, has shown how jurists distinguished between legitimate and non-legitimate rebellion and sought to establish the rights of rebels to their lives, physical integrity and property. This was in clear tension with the principles of royal siyāsa justice (see the fifth of the seven legitimate reasons for execution by the sulṭān according to the historian Baranī in Auer’s essay). In his contribution to this volume, Robert Gleave highlights yet another feature of Muslim jurisprudence as it addressed the critical issue of the state’s use of violence. Gleave argues that the jurists’ goal in discussing the ḥudūd was not to make ḥadd punishments relevant for practice, but to come to grips with the question of legitimate political authority, and of whether legal violence was at all possible in the absence of a legitimate ruler. The many different representations of violence in a variety of literary genres (whether poetry, prose, historiography, or jurisprudence) sensitize us to the contextual nature of the Western view of Muslim violence. Manuela Marín’s essay in this volume reminds us that the Western gaze on Islam is never disinterested. Non-Muslim travellers to Morocco in the 19th and early 20th centuries conveyed to their readers the idea that violence was at the core of Moroccan society, thereby cementing the Orientalist stereotype that Muslim violence is chaotic and capricious. Western violence, or so these travellers implied, is orderly and rational; one infers from such 16

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accounts that colonial intervention is justified. Thus, rather than seeking to understand the innercultural logic of violence, violence is read through the lense of the Western experience. The present volume is an attempt to challenge such perceptions and to achieve a more nuanced view of the manifold factors contributing to the history of violence in Islamic societies. As Mohamed Arkoun encourages us, when discussing the role of violence in the history of Islamic societies, “[o]ne needs to identify, if possible, the social, political and religious status of violence, without, of course, permitting oneself to make the usual [jumps] from synchronic analysis to diachronic extrapolation or, conversely, devising an Islamic doctrine of violence.”74 This volume aims to contribute to this endeavour of a multi-dimensional study of violence in Islam. It is hoped that the multi-faceted picture that emerges from this volume will help future research in this area to avoid generalizations, whether based on “diachronic extrapolation” or on the attempt to reduce historical diversity to a single experience; in sum, that it will facilitate a better understanding of the complex ways in which Muslims from different historical backgrounds perpetrated, suffered, justified and resisted the unsettling phenomenon of public violence.

Notes 1. A typology of violence in Islam, both physical and psychological, would have to include forms of domestic violence (against children, women and slaves), criminal violence, violence against ‘outsiders’ (in jihād and against minorities), violence against the state (rebellion) and violence by the state (in warfare and legal and extra-legal punishment). Not all of these forms of violence can be dealt with adequately within the cover of one book. For the purpose of this introduction, and this collection of essays in general, the stress is on forms of public violence, particularly state violence. Even here, however, it is of course impossible to achieve exhaustiveness: most contributions in this volume deal with political contexts before the rise of the three ‘gunpowder empires’ of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. 2. Exactly what the concept of a public sphere signifies in the context of the history of Islamic societies, especially premodern ones, remains open to debate. A general problem lies in the fact that, as Mohsen Kadivar states, in the classical Islamic legal and ethical tradition “a systematic discussion of the private and public domains [. . .] as independently significant subjects of inquiry remains undeveloped.” See idem, “An Introduction to the Public and Private Debate in Islam,” in Social Research 79,2 (2003), 659–82. For recent collaborative attempts to approach a definition, see Miriam Hoexter, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt and Nimrod Hurvitz (eds), The Public Sphere in Muslim 17

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3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Societies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); Mohamed Kerrou (ed.), Public et privé en Islam: espaces, autorités et libertés (Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose, 2002). For a number of recent contributions to the study of the legal dimensions of rebellion, jihād, and sharīʿa punishments, see Khaled Abou El Fadl, Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005); Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). See EI2, s.v. Ẓulm, 11:566–9 (B. Lewis/R. Badry). Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, tr. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich Mammitzsch ([1919], Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996), 20. Ann K. Lambton, “Quis Custodiet Custodes? Some Reflections on the Persian Theory of Government,” SI 6 (1956), 128. See Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam: Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 123–4, 229–32. Cf. Saïd Amir Arjomand, “Islamic Apocalypticism in the Classic Period,” in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism: Volume 2: Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture, ed. Bernard McGinn (New York: Continuum, 1998), 268–9. Abou El Fadl, Rebellion and Violence, 321–33. On this point, see Baber Johansen, “Eigentum, Familie und Obrigkeit im ḥanafitischen Strafrecht: das Verhältnis der privaten Rechte zu den Forderungen der Allgemeinheit in ḥanafitischen Rechtskommentaren,” Die Welt des Islams 19 (1979), 73. Dale F. Eickelman, “Foreword: The Religious Public Sphere in Early Muslim Societies,” in The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies, 15. For this understanding of the public sphere, see notably Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, tr. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence ([1962], Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). See Edward William Lane, An Arabic–English Dictionary (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1863–), s.v. ʿ-w-r. Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, al-Maqṣad al-asnā sharḥ asmāʾ Allāh al-ḥusnā (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-ʿĀlamiyya, [1910]), 36. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Sarakhsī, K. al-Mabsūṭ (Cairo 1324–31/[1906–13]), 9:85, 16:126. Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000), 34. For the development of the notion of a domestic sphere in Sunnī Islamic law, see Eli Alshech, “‘Do Not Enter Houses Other Than Your Own’: The Evolution of the Notion of a Private Domestic Sphere in Early Sunnī Islamic 18

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18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Thought,” ILS 11,3 (2004), 291–332. It would be rash, however, to regard the harem as a space that was completely ‘closed’ to the outside. As Jocelyne Dakhlia argues, the domestic scene of the harem also claims a measure of publicness, especially in the sense that it is a “scène de l’exemple”. See eadem, “Le Harem de Mawlay Ismaïl: un despotisme exemplaire?” in Public et privé en Islam, 169–77. See Yaron Klein, “Between Public and Private: An Examination of Ḥisba Literature,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 7 (2006), 41–62; Roy Mottahedeh and Kristen Stilt, “Public and Private as Viewed Through the Work of the Muḥtasib,” Social Research 70,3 (2003), 735–48. See EI2, s.v. Ṭāhirids, 10:105 (C. E. Bosworth). Guy LeStrange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (1900, repr. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983), 274; EI2, s.v. Baghdād, 1:901 (A. A. Duri). ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn al-Jawzī, K. al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk wa-lumam (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1412/[1992–3]), 17:192–3. See F. E. Peters, Jerusalem and Mecca: The Typology of the Holy City in the Near East (New York, 1986). For Karbalāʾ, see Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, K. al-Mazār (Qumm: Madrasat al-Imām al-Mahdī, 1409/1988–9), 34, quoted in Josef Meri, The Cult of Saints Among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 15. Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 239. Mottahedeh and Stilt, “Public and Private,” 744. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 17:310 (a case of execution by burning). See also the case of Jaʿd b. Dirham discussed by Gerald Hawting in this volume. For this debate, see Irene Schneider, Das Bild des Richters in der “adab al-qāḍī”-Literatur (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1990), 20, 50–60. Cf. EI2, s.v. Saḥnūn, 8:843a–845b (M. Talbi). Talbi states that “[h]itherto, in the multiple circles of scholarship, representatives of all tendencies were able to express themselves freely in the Great Mosque of Kairouan. In a process amounting to a purging of the community of scholars there, Saḥnūn put an end to this ‘scandal’. He dispersed the sects of the ahl al-bidaʿ; the leaders of heretical sects were paraded ignominiously, and some were compelled to recant in public.” Ẓahīr al-Dīn al-Nīshāpūrī, Saljūqnāma (Tehran: Chāpkhāna-yi Khāwur, 1332 sh./[1953–4]), 49–51. Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet, 36. See Christian Lange, “Legal and Cultural Aspects of Ignominious Parading (Tashhīr) in Islam,” ILS 14,1 (2007), 81–108. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 18:84. Ibid., 18:160. Cf. ʿAbbūd Shāljī, Mawsūʿat al-ʿadhāb (Beirut: Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Mawsūʿāt, 1980), 3:244. In addition to the mosque and the market, a third kind of semi-private, semi-public space were graveyards. As marginal spaces often located on the fringes of settlements they offered a range of opportunities 19

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33.

34.

35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

to engage in private forms of behaviour (such as contact between the sexes, or wailing for the dead) in an open (ẓāhir, ʿalāniyya) way. The muḥtasib, as the “guardian of the public sphere,” was instructed to prevent such behaviour, if necessary with force. See Klein, “Between Public and Private,” 51–6. On early Islamic reactions against the wailing of women in funerary rituals, see Leor Halevi, Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 119–35. As Maribel Fierro points out in her contribution to this volume, under the Fāṭimids and later western dynasties, the muṣallā was a theatre of violence in terms both of actual violence (the animal sacrifice in the Feast of Sacrifice, perhaps also executions) and of violence as a part of the eschatological imaginaire (as apocalyptic battleground, or malḥama). On the concept of sitr al-ʿawra, see Baber Johansen, “The Valorization of the Human Body in Muslim Sunnī Law,” in Law and Society in Islam, ed. Devin Stewart, Baber Johansen and Amy Singer (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996), 71–112, esp. 75; Ze’ev Maghen, “See No Evil: Morality and Methodology in Ibn al-Qaṭṭān al-Fāsī’s Aḥkām al-naẓar bi-Ḥāssat albashar,” ILS 14,3 (2007), 342–90. See the tradition in ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1409/[1988–89]), 5:529. In fiqh: Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1406/ [1985–6]), 1:287; ʿAlī b. Abī Bakr al-Marghinānī, al-Hidāya (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, [1975]), 2:97. Only the Shīʿīs and a majority of the Mālikīs allowed crucifixion alive. See Tilman Seidensticker’s contribution in this volume. Ibn Tūmart (d. 524/1130), in accordance with the other legal schools, explicitly forbade such practice. See Evariste Lévi-Provençal, Documents inédits d’histoire almohade (Fragments manuscrits du “legajo” 1919 arabe de l’Escurial) (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1928), 96. Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 229–32, with further references. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan Ibn Ḥamdūn, al-Tadhkira al-Ḥamdūniyya, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1996), 1:295. Ghazālī, Kīmiyā-yi saʿādat (Tehran: Kitabkhāna-yi va-Chāpkhāna-yi Markazī, 1333/[1914–15]), tr. Helmut Ritter (Düsseldorf: Diederichs, 1981), 113. Cf. the tradition that “who covers a Muslim will be covered by God in this life and the next”. See ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf, ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1970–2), 10:228; Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad (Cairo: Muʾassasat Qurṭuba, n.d.), 4:104: man satara musliman satarahu llāh fī l-dunyā wa-l-ākhira. The man satara tradition is discussed by Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 80, with reference to what he calls the Islamic “respect for privacy”. 20

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40. See Emile Fricaud, “Le problème de la disgràce,” in Averroés et l’averroïsme (XIIe–XVe siècle): Un itinéraire historique du Haut Atlas à Paris et à Padoue, ed. André Bazzana, Nicole Bériou and Pierre Guichard (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2005), 180. 41. Lange, “Legal and Cultural Aspects of Ignominious Parading,” focuses on historical examples of tashhīr processions taken mostly from the eastern lands of Islam. However, the practice was known also in the west: the Mālikī jurist Ibn Wāfid (d. 404/1014) was paraded and publicly humiliated at Cordoba before his execution. See Delfina Serrano, “Ibn Wāfid, Abū Bakr,” in Biblioteca de al-Andalus: De Ibn Saʿāda a Ibn Wuhayb, ed. Jorge Lirola Delgado (Almería: Fundación Ibn Ṭufayl de Estudios Árabes, 2004–), 5:559b–565a. The vizier Ibn ʿAmmār (d. 479/1086), who had rebelled against al-Muʿtamid of Seville, was made to travel from his prison in Saragosse the long way to Seville with hands tied up, mounted on a donkey between two sacks full of straw, subject to the mockery of the populace. See Enciclopedia de al-Andalus: Diccionario de autores y obras andalusíes, ed. Jorge Lirola Delgado and José Miguel Puerta Vílchez (Seville, Spain: Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía; Granada: Fundación El legado andalusí, [2002–]), vol. 1, no. 240 (A. Alves). 42. In 123/741, the governor of al-Andalus ʿAbd al-Malik b. Qaṭan al-Fihrī was crucified by the Syrian army with a pig on his right and a dog on his left. See Fatḥ al-Andalus, ed. Luis Molina (Madrid: CSIC, 1994), 56 [33], tr. Mayte Penelas, La conquista de al-Andalus (Madrid: CSIC, 2002), 46 [33]. The Andalusian adventurer al-Ḥakam b. ʿUkkāsha was also crucified with a dog in 567/1075. See EI2, s.v. (al-)Ḥakam ibn ʿUk(k)āsha, 3:73b (A. Huici Miranda). 43. Ibn Ḥamdūn, Tadhkira, 1:301. Cf. Pseudo-Thaʿālibī (fl. probably early 7th/14th c.), Tuḥfat al-wuzarāʾ, ed. Regina Heinecke (Beirut: Dār al-Qalam Press, 1975), 58. 44. ʿAlī b. Abī Khafṣ b. al-Faqīh Muḥammad al-Iṣfahānī, Tuḥfat al-mulūk (Tehran: Mīrāth-i Maktūb, 1382/2003), 17. 45. Abū Bakr b. Masʿūd al-Kāsānī, Badāʾiʿ al-ṣanāʾiʿ (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Jamāliyya, [1910], repr. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1982), 7:64. This fourfold scheme is well known to both the post-classical Muslim jurists and Western legal historians. See EI1, s.v. Taʿzīr, 8:710a–711b ([W.] Heffening); Emile Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 570–1; Johansen, “Eigentum, Familie und Obrigkeit,” 50–1; Peters, Crime and Punishment, 33, 66. See also the discussion by Fernando Rodríguez Mediano in this volume. The exact meaning of the term sifla in Kāsānī’s model is difficult to know. In a later period, Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), in his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, enjoined the ruler to mete out justice in accordance with a similar quadripartite model of social stratification, enumerating the ‘men of the pen’, the ‘men of the sword’, the ‘men of transactions’, and the ‘men of agriculture’, viz., those “those who organise the feeding of 21

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46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

all the communities”. See Louise Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 7, 168. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, tr. P. Gregory ([1972], Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 1. The ‘non-rationality’ of the ḥudūd led the Ḥanafīs to reject analogical reasoning (qiyās) in them. See Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, 183–99. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 1, 19, 258, 267–8. How far theories of deterrence (zajr) penetrated fiqh doctrines remains to be studied in more detail, but when the fuqahāʾ speculate about the rationale of punishment, it is usually along this line of reasoning. See Peters, Crime and Punishment, 30. Roy Rappaport, “Liturgies and Lies,” International Yearbook for Sociology of Knowledge and Religion 10 (1976), 81. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 129. Jonathan Z. Smith, “The Bare Facts of Ritual,” in Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 63. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, tr. A. Sheridan ([1975], New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 25. On God’s violence in the Qurʾān, see Salvador Peña and Miguel Vega, “La muerte dada en el Corán (Glosario y estudio de una inscripción numismática de los Banū Gāniya),” in De muerte violenta: Política, religión y violencia en al-Andalus, ed. Maribel Fierro (Madrid: CSIC, 2004), 249–300. Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999), 147. See Maribel Fierro, “Violencia, política y religión en al-Andalus durante el s. IV/X: el reinado de ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III,” in De muerte violenta, 37–102. David Cook, Studies in the Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton: Darwin Press, 2002), 153, 164. Ibid., 144. Ibid., 146. See also Arjomand, “Islamic Apocalypticism,” 268. Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel (London: Reaktion, 1999). Ann K. S. Lambton, “Qui Custodiet Custodes?” 127. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Rāvandī, Rāḥat al-ṣudūr, ed. M. Iqbal (London: Luzac, 1921), 125. Emile Fricaud, “Origine de l’utilisation privilégiée du term Amr chez les Muʾminides almohades,” Al-Qanṭara 23 (2002), 93–122. See Peter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 183–99. One famous instance in which a measure of discontent of the witnesses of public punishment is described by a chronicler is the execution of the 22

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66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71.

72. 73.

74.

Ghaznavid vizier Ḥasanak in 422/1031. See Muḥammad b. Ḥusayn Bayhaqī, Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī (Tehran: Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 1332/[1953]), 166. Cf. also the case of the Mālikī jurist Ibn Wāfid (cf. note 41). The spectacle of his public punishment, according to his biographer Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, “tore people’s hearts asunder (taqaṭṭaʿa qulūbuhum)”. See Serrano, “Ibn Wāfid, Abū Bakr,” 5:561b. See Robert Brunschvig, “Justice religieuse et justice laïque dans la Tunisie des Deys et des Beys jusq’au milieu du XIXe siècle,” SI 23 (1965), 64 (our translation). Abū Tammām (cited by Thaʿālibī, Qurar, ed. H. Zotenberg, 35) characterized Zuhāk as the foremost embodiment of violence and cruelty. See EI2, s.v. Zuhāk, 11:554 (E. Yarshater). See Peter D. Molan, “Sindbad the Sailor: A Commentary on the Ethics of Violence,” JAOS 98,3 (1978), 237–47. Julie Meisami, Persian Historiography (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 12. Bert Fragner, in a piece suggestively titled “To whom belongs the city?” likewise calls for an understanding of medieval Persian chronicles as literature rather than fact-yielding mines of information. See idem, “Wem gehört die Stadt? Raumkonzepte in einer Chronik der Seldschukenzeit,” in Erzählter Raum in Literaturen der islamischen Welt, ed. Roxane Haag-Higuchi and Christian Szyska (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001), 95–111. Julie Scott Meisami, “Exemplary Lives, Exemplary Deaths: The Execution of Ḥasanak,” Actas XVI Congreso UEAI (Salamanca), ed. Concepción Vázquez de Benito and Miguel Ángel Manzano Rodríguez (Salamanca: Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional/CSIC/UEAI, 1995), 357–64. See Bruna Soravia, “La meurtre d’Ismāʿīl,” in De muerte violenta, 207–24; José Ramirez del Río, “Los modelos literarios de las muertes violentas en la corte ʿabbadí de Sevilla,” in ibid., 225–45. As Marshall Hodgson writes, the “oppositional role of the ʿulamāʾ” was “diluted” by the establishment of state-endowed madrasas, but the madrasa system also helped to give the autonomy of the ʿulamāʾ a “definite form”. See Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 2:48. For a discussion of this topic with specific reference to the formation of the madrasa system, see Daphna Ephrat, A Learned Society in a Period of Transition: The Sunnī ʿUlamāʾ of Eleventh-Century Baghdad (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). EQ, s.v. Violence, 5:432 (M. Arkoun).

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1

The case of Jaʿd b. Dirham and the punishment of ‘heretics’ in the early caliphate Gerald Hawting*

Jaʿd b. Dirham is known in Muslim tradition as an adherent of unorthodox or heretical religious views, executed in Iraq towards the end of the rule of the Umayyad Caliph Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–25/724–43). It is widely reported that his execution took place on the Day of Sacrifices (Yawm, or ʿĪd, al-Aḍḥā), and usually that the unfortunate Jaʿd was killed in the same way as the sheep or goats dedicated for slaughter on that day – by dhabḥ: that is, by having his throat cut so as to sever the windpipe and the major blood vessels at the same time. In most reports of the event, Hishām’s governor of Iraq and the East, Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī, is described as having personally killed Jaʿd in that way in a public gathering. There is some confusion about precisely where it happened, but most accounts favour the mosque of the garrison town of Wāsiṭ. The date is obscure, but since Khālid al-Qasrī was removed from his governorship in 120/738, it could not be later than that. Virtually all the accounts of the event state explicitly that he was killed because of his unacceptable religious views. If these accounts are taken to reflect a historical event, they raise some questions about the understanding of the Day of Sacrifices in early Islam and about how heretics (or apostates) were dealt with in the late Umayyad period.1 However, there are alternative accounts of Jaʿd b. Dirhams’s fate that suggest that he was killed in a manner different from that just described, and it is necessary to begin, therefore, with some discussion of the evidence. * A version of this paper was given on 24 April 2007 as part of the Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on “Violence and Authority: Comparative Studies on European, Byzantine and Islamic States and State-Building”, convened by Dr Petra Sijpestein and Professor Chase Robinson at the University of Oxford. I am grateful to the Convenors, to my Respondent Professor Geert van Gelder, and to a number of those present for their critical and constructive comments.

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The evidence THE WIDELY TRANSMITTED REPORT ABOUT THE SLAUGHTER OF JAʿD (AL-BUKHĀRĪ, AL-DĀRIMĪ AND IBN ḤANBAL) The earliest sources that describe Jaʿd’s execution in the way summarised above are three works from the later 3rd/9th century: the Ansāb al-ashrāf of the well-known historian al-Balādhurī (d. 279/892), and writings directed against the ‘Jahmiyya’2 by the traditionists al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) and ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd al-Dārimī (d. 282/895–6). To these may be added the report of Abū Bakr al-Khallāl (d. 311/923) citing Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). Among these, al-Balādhurī’s report stands somewhat apart, while the other three transmit what is basically the same account. 3 The report common to Bukhārī, Dārimī and Ibn Ḥanbal is then found transmitted by a number of later authorities, such as Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176), Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328), al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373), and Ibn al-ʿImād (d. 1089/1679).4 That account of Jaʿd’s death is dependent, as van Ess has noted, on al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad b. Ḥumayd al-Maʿmarī (d. 228/843), who narrates it ultimately on the authority of an eyewitness, Ḥabīb b. Abī Ḥabīb (shahidtu):5 I witnessed Khālid al-Qasrī in Wāsiṭ when it was the Day of Sacrifices [fī yawm al-aḍḥā]. [Khālid] said [addressing the Muslims in a khuṭba]: “Go back and slaughter your offerings [ḍaḥāyā] – may God accept them from you. I am going to offer [anā muḍaḥḥin bi] Jaʿd, son of Dirham, who has claimed that God has not taken Abraham as a friend and has not spoken in speech to Moses. God is far above what the son of Dirham has said.” Then he descended [from the dais, minbar] and slaughtered him [fa-dhabaḥahu].6

While the verb dhabaḥa may, in some contexts such as battle narratives, have the sense merely of ‘to kill’ without the technical meaning of slaughtering an animal according to a particular ritual, it seems likely that we are intended to understand it here in the more specific sense. Al-Balādhurī (see below) must have understood it in that way, since he follows his report of Khālid’s treatment of Jaʿd with the note that “it is also said that he cut off his head (ḍaraba ʿunuqahu)”. THE REPORT TRANSMITTED BY AL-BALĀDHURĪ Al-Balādhurī’s seems to be the only early account of the slaughter of Jaʿd by Khālid that differs significantly in wording from that reported from Ḥabīb b. Abī Ḥabīb. 7 He does not name his sources and makes no 28

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reference to an eyewitness. Although, like others, he has Khālid say anā muḍahhin biʾl-Jaʿd, he has none of the other words reported by Ḥabīb b. Abī Ḥabīb, and he does not make Khālid refer to the issue of God taking Abraham as a friend or speaking to Moses. Occasioned by his allusion to the fact that the last Umayyad caliph, Marwān b. Muḥammad, was known by the soubriquet of al-Jaʿdī (often explained as a reference to Jaʿd b. Dirham having been his tutor), al-Balādhurī’s account tells us that Jaʿd was a zindīq or a dahrī, and the caliph Hishām was informed that he was a kāfir. The caliph learned that Maymūn b. Mihrān8 had cautioned Jaʿd (waʿaẓahu) but he had reacted by saying, “(To be?) a sheep led by a rope is more pleasing to me than what you profess” (la-shātu qiyād aḥabbu ilayya mimmā tudīnu bihi). Maymūn then cursed him. That led Jaʿd to flee to Ḥarrān, but there he was taken into custody and brought before Hishām. The caliph then exiled him to Iraq and wrote to his governor there, Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī, telling him to hold Jaʿd in prison. He remained in prison for some time until his wife brought him to Hishām’s attention again. Hishām expressed surprise: “Is he still alive?” He then wrote to Khālid criticising him for keeping him in prison, and making him decide to kill him. There follows the report about Khālid’s announcement fī yawm aḍḥā that he was going to offer (anā muḍaḥḥin) the enemy of God, Jaʿd b. Dirham. Finally we are told that Khālid slaughtered (dhabaḥa) Jaʿd, but that some say he cut off his head. Some assert that Jaʿd followed the doctrine of Ghaylān, but al-Balādhurī strongly denies that.9 Much of al-Balādhuri’s account consists of framing: details that those sources transmitting the Ḥabīb b. Abī Ḥabīb report lack, or sometimes provide in a slightly variant form. The mention of Ḥarrān reflects the association of Jaʿd and Jahm b. Safwān with that town in other sources. Both Jaʿd and Jahm are said to have originated there.10 That Jaʿd came to Iraq from Syria is also reported elsewhere but in ways different from al-Balādhurī’s report. In spite of the one phrase that al-Balādhurī’s report has in common with the Ḥabīb b. Abī Ḥabīb version, it appears to be independent of it. The framing is distinctive (the role of Maymūn b. Mihrān, the role of Hishām, the story of Jaʿd’s long imprisonment) while the failure to present it as the report of an eyewitness, and the citation of a denial that Jaʿd was indeed slaughtered like an animal, suggest that al-Balādhurī may have been using accounts independent of that of Ḥabīb. Al-Balādhurī’s account of Jaʿd’s words about the “led sheep” is difficult to assess. It is possible that it represents a protest against the deterministic rejection of free will espoused by the caliph Hishām and, perhaps, 29

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Maymūn b. Mihrān.11 Although Balādhurī denies that Jaʿd supported the (qadarī) Ghaylān, several sources do say that Jaʿd was a qadarī (see below). Whether the words are connected with Jaʿd’s subsequent slaughter like a sheep is not clear. Ibn al-Athīr, citing the phrase, reads qubādh (?) for qiyād.12 Insofar as the end of Jaʿd is concerned, however, the most striking feature of al-Balādhurī’s account is that it suggests that his death was occasioned almost by a whim of the caliph. Hishām first merely ordered Khālid to keep him in prison and it was only when he was reminded of Jaʿd’s existence by the latter’s pestering wife that the caliph lost patience and ordered the prisoner’s execution. THE REPORT THAT DOES NOT MENTION THE DAY OF SACRIFICES (AL-DHAHABĪ) Later sources also transmit a third version of the death of Jaʿd that does not refer to the Day of Sacrifices and talks of him being crucified rather than slaughtered. This account cites a nephew of Wahb b. Munabbih (d. 110/728 or 114/732) as its source. Although I have not seen it in any early text, it is notable that al-Balādhurī knew of an account saying that Jaʿd was decapitated, inconsistent with that saying he was slaughtered like a sheep. This version, which is reported alongside the more widespread account of the slaughter of Jaʿd on the Day of Sacrifices, tells us that Jaʿd began frequently to pester Wahb b. Munabbih with questions about the divine attributes (al-ṣifāt). Wahb would reply by imploring Jaʿd to desist from his questioning and insisting that, if it were not that God had informed us in His book that He has a hand, eye, etc., we would not say that He has. Wahb expresses the suspicion that Jaʿd is destined to be among those who perish (la-aẓunnuka min al-hālikīna), and it was not long, indeed, before Jaʿd was crucified (ṣuliba). In these accounts, Jaʿd is mainly associated with the doctrine of the created Qurʾān, and the reports generally show an interest in his religious and intellectual genealogy. It is said, for example that he was the one who taught Jahm b. Ṣafwān that the Qurʾān was created, and the latter transmitted it to Bishr al-Marīsī and, through him, the Muʿtazila. Jaʿd’s heresy (bidʿa) was transmitted to him through a chain that included Bayān b. Samʿān (also reported as having been executed by Khālid al-Qasrī) and began with the Jewish sorcerer who had bewitched the Prophet, Labīd b. al-Aʿṣam.13 It is evident, then, that the story that has Jaʿd slaughtered by Khālid on the Day of Sacrifices is more widely attested than those that have him crucified or beheaded without any reference to that day. Apart from Balādhurī’s version (repeated by Ibn al-Athīr and perhaps used also by Ibn al-Nadīm), 30

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however, all of those accounts are repetitions of the same report, dependent on the transmitter al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad al-Maʿmarī. I only know the version that talks of Jaʿd’s crucifixion from relatively late sources, but the significance of that is not clear. There is no obvious sign that it has emerged specifically to counter those that have him slaughtered by dhabḥ: the two reports are simply given alongside each other in those texts that have them both. Given the widespread currency of the accounts of Jaʿd being killed like an animal on the Day of Sacrifices, however, it seems unlikely that the crucifixion version would emerge at a late stage without any knowledge of the other. At present, therefore, we should leave open the question of which, if any, of the versions is a more accurate account of Jaʿd’s fate.

Jaʿd’s heresy It is worth considering briefly the information that we are given about the nature of Jaʿd’s religious unorthodoxy. This will reinforce, I think, the impression that there were distinct and discrete lines of tradition, and it may be relevant to the issue of which, if any, of them is to be preferred. The common report about the slaughtering of Jaʿd on the Day of Sacrifices tells us that Khālid justified his act by referring to him as the one who denied that God had taken Abraham as a friend (khalīl), or spoken to Moses.14 While that sentence attributed to Jaʿd may appear at first sight to indicate that he was accused of denying generally accepted views about Abraham and Moses among all monotheists, it probably represents a protest against anthropomorphic language and concepts when talking of God, as Madelung has argued. The expression is to be understood as a protest against the view that God has friends as human beings do, or speaks in the same way that human beings do.15 The reports that have no mention of the Day of Sacrifices and talk, instead, of Jaʿd being crucified, do not report this sentence about Abraham and Moses, but nevertheless they associate Jaʿd with a similar circle of ideas, albeit described in a more theoretical, developed and technical way. They tell us that Jaʿd kept asking Wahb b. Munabbih about the divine attributes (al-ṣifāt) and that Wahb insisted that God had told us in His book that He has a hand, an eye, etc. Again it seems that Jaʿd is portrayed as uneasy about anthropomorphic descriptions of God and, possibly, about the imputation that God has uncreated attributes separable from His essence. Divine speech would have been included among the attributes called into question by Jaʿd. These texts also tend to link him with the doctrine of the created Qurʾān, i.e., the view that God’s speech (the Qurʾān as kalām Allāh) must be a created and inessential divine attribute. 31

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Balādhurī’s account, which reports the slaughter of Jaʿd on the Day of Sacrifices but not his denial of Abraham being God’s friend and Moses having been spoken to by God, again stands apart. Balādhurī refers to Jaʿd as a heretic in rather general terms (dahrī, zindīq) but tells us that some say he was a disciple of Ghaylān, something which Balādhurī himself rejects. This Ghaylān must be Ghaylān al-Dimashqī, who is commonly reported as an adherent of the doctrine of human free will (qadar) and who was himself executed under the caliph Hishām and his body exposed at one of the gates of Damascus. This suggests that some saw Jaʿd’s heresy as support of the same doctrine.16 ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī (d. 429/1037) also associates Jaʿd with the Qadariyya: he reports his execution on the Day of Sacrifices (without any additional detail) in the course of his discussion of the Qadariyya. Like Balādhurī, Baghdādī makes no reference to the denial of Abraham as khalīl Allāh or of Moses as kalīm Allāh, but tells us that a group of the Qadariyya which he calls the Ḥimāriyya had taken from Jaʿd the view that the knowledge (maʿrifa) that is produced by speculation (al-naẓar) has no creator.17 What is notable in these accounts of Jaʿd’s religious position is the way in which each of the three main accounts of his death is linked with a different formulation of his heresy. He seems to have become a symbol of unorthodoxy associated with ideas subsequently associated with the Muʿtazila.18 In comparison with the quite technical and general references to Muʿtazilī-type views (the created Qurʾān, rejection of anthropomorphism, reference to the issue of the divine attributes, support for free will) ascribed to Jaʿd in those versions which refer to his crucifixion, the dictum concerning Abraham and Moses seems less clearly developed and more unexpected, possibly making us more inclined to see it as a genuine pronouncement from early theological debates. That might incline us to look more favourably on the account of Jaʿd’s slaughter at the hands of Khālid that contains the dictum, but is hardly a decisive point.

Other accounts that associate the Day of Sacrifices with executions If the execution of Jaʿd b. Dirham took place on the Day of Sacrifices as reported, it may be unique in the early caliphate, but the idea of it seems to have had some resonance. Van Ess has drawn attention to another account that associates execution and the Day of Sacrifices in the Umayyad period, although its historicity seems doubtful. In his massive Biḥār al-anwār, al-Majlisī (d. 1110/1698) reports that the Umayyad governor al-Ḥajjāj (d. 95/714) had intended to kill a supporter of the ʿAlids, Yaḥyā b. Yaʿmur, on ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā – again in Wāsiṭ (hādhā yawm aḍḥā wa-qad aradtu an uḍḥī 32

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fihi bi-rajul min ahl al-ʿIrāq). Yaḥyā’s offence was to have claimed that there was Qurʾānic proof for the status of Ḥasan and Ḥusayn as progeny of Muḥammad. In fact, the threat came to nothing and the long report about the confrontation between Ḥajjāj and the ʿAlid ends with the triumph of the latter and the governor having to pay him a substantial amount of money that he had wagered against the existence of a Qurʾānic text showing that ʿAli’s two sons were indeed progeny of the Prophet.19 That story does not sound so convincing – it is a rather entertaining example of Shīʿī exegesis that may have been suggested in part by the traditions about the execution of Jaʿd b. Dirham. The historical sources sometimes portray al-Ḥajjāj and Khālid in a similar light – both are devoted servants of the Caliph, whom they are prepared to elevate to a status higher than that of the Prophet himself, and both are prepared to violate the sanctity of the holy places if the Caliph so commands. Al-Ḥajjāj was, of course, the founder of Wāsiṭ, the most commonly named place for the killing of Jaʿd on ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā. Two later reported cases of human captives killed as offerings associated with the Day of Sacrifices that have greater claims to historicity were drawn attention to by Goldziher. In 339/951 the Andalusian Caliph ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III is described killing his son ʿAbd Allāh on the Feast of Sacrifices for plotting to seize the throne. We are told that the Caliph kept his son and others who had taken part in the plot in prison and brought them out on the ʿĪd. He then told his chief men: “This is my offering (uḍḥiyya) on this ʿĪd”, and his son was thrown down before him and he slaughtered him (dhabaḥahu) with his own hand.20 The words and actions are reminiscent of those reported regarding Khālid al-Qasrī and Jaʿd b. Dirham. The other incident referred to by Goldziher is the execution of Frankish captives taken prisoner from among the force that Reynald of Châtillon, Lord of Kerak, had sent to attack Muslim ships in the Red Sea in 577/1182. Some of these men, it is said, were executed at Minā, the place where the pilgrims slaughter their offerings. It is not clear from the sources I have seen that the executions actually occurred on the Day of Sacrifices in that year, although that would be an obvious deduction.21 These were, of course, non-Muslims and it seems that the Muslims suspected a purpose of the expedition to be an attack on the holy city of Medina.22 While it would be too much to argue, therefore, that there is a strong and consistent notion that the Day of Sacrifices was an especially suitable time for the performance of execution, the association between that day and the killing of human prisoners has some persistence, whether in reality or merely as an idea. Possibly the traditions concerning the execution of Jaʿd had something to do with that. 33

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The Day of Sacrifices Traditional scholarly explanations of the Day of Sacrifices emphasise a number of its aspects. The slaughtering of an animal on that day is, among other things, to be interpreted as a sign of gratitude to God for what He has given us; as a commemoration of the ‘sacrifice’ of Abraham when he was prepared to obey God’s order to kill his son but at the last moment was provided with a ram as a substitute; as a means to help us (maṭiya) on the path to salvation (al-ṣirāṭ); and as atonement (takfīr) and seeking forgiveness (maghfira) for sin.23 In practice the feast today seems predominantly to have a joyful aspect – it provides an occasion for feasting and sharing food with family, friends and – at least in theory – the poor. That would seem to make it an unsuitable time for the performance of executions. When Saddam Hussein was executed close to the time of the festival on 30 December 2006, some Muslim spokesmen, including the Saudi government, protested against his killing at a time when, it was said, the peace and brotherhood between Muslims should be to the fore. In contrast, the idea that it is a suitable time for executions may be more in tune with a view of the festival as one dominated by fear of God and the need to appease Him, associated with atonement and the seeking of forgiveness for sin. In the reports about the killing of Jaʿd it is notable that Khālid’s address includes the hope that God will accept the offerings of those to whom he is speaking (fa-ḍaḥḥū taqabbala Allāhu minkum). That seems to emphasise the sacrificial character of the offerings, something that is less prominent in later practice, in spite of the name of the feast. The origins and the character of the Festival of Sacrifices have not really been investigated fully. Most scholars have been happy to accept the traditional view that links it with the slaughtering of animals at Minā during the Ḥajj ceremonies. It is as if the slaughters that take place at the same time throughout the Islamic world are dependent on the Ḥajj, a way in which Muslims unable or unwilling to go to Mecca can nevertheless share in the ceremonies taking place there. There are some grounds, however, for thinking that the roots of the Day of Sacrifices lie deeper in the history of the Middle East before Islam. It may be a development of an atonement ritual – perhaps connected with the Jewish day of Atonement – that has been amalgamated with animal offerings occurring at Mecca as part of the Ḥajj.24 The slaughter of Jaʿd b. Dirham – and the later cases – may fit better with that sort of interpretation. It is notable that – as just mentioned – a common interpretation of the Festival is to see it as a commemoration of Abraham’s aborted sacrifice. 34

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Now, Jaʿd was accused of denying that God had taken Abraham as His friend. One might think that there was some link here, but none of the sources that I have seen make this connection and I doubt that it is valid.

The execution of Jaʿd in the context of the punishment of heretics in the early caliphate Two main theoretical alternatives seem possible regarding execution and punishment in the early caliphate. On the one hand, we might expect a reasonably arbitrary and random pattern, reflecting the whim of individual rulers and governors. That would serve to underline the power of the rulers and the limited restraints on them. The most likely restraint would be tradition, the likelihood that the caliphs and their representatives usually adopted methods of punishment and execution customary in the lands they controlled. The alternative is to envisage a growing systematisation, reflecting the increasing centralisation of the caliphate from the late 1st/7th century onwards and the claims of the caliphs to be God’s (or, later, the Prophet’s) deputies as rulers of the Muslims. One might expect this systematisation would reflect a tendency to align methods of punishment and execution with the developing Islamic law, to apply Qurʾānic and similar injunctions and maxims, and to associate certain punishments with certain offences.25 Possibly also one might expect rulers and governors to be obliged to present public explanations for their decisions, if not to justify the particular form of punishment or execution applied. Lacking a systematic survey of the measures taken against heretics and apostates in the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid caliphates,26 I can only offer here some impressionistic comments on the way in which Jaʿd’s case relates – or does not relate – to the wider picture. In the historical source it seems that crucifixion is the most common fate for those whose crime merited capital punishment. Most often the crucifixion followed death effected by other means, but there are some cases where the victim is reported as alive upon the gibbet. Although crucifixion is mentioned in Qurʾān 5:33 (the ḥirāba verse) as one of the punishments prescribed for “those who make war on (yuḥāribūna) God and His Messenger and spread corruption in the land (yasʿawna fiʾl-arḍi fasādan)”, there is little reason to think that use of it in the late Umayyad period was responding to the Qurʾānic verse: crucifixion was a traditional punishment in the Middle East, and it is likely that its use simply represented a continuation of tradition.27 35

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One case contemporary and comparable with that of Jaʿd was the execution of Ghaylān al-Dimashqī, generally referred to as a Qadarī (proponent of free will), in Damascus. He is reported to have been crucified on the orders of the Caliph Hishām, after having his hands and feet amputated and his tongue removed. Most sources clearly see his execution as a consequence of his heresy.28 In other cases roughly contemporary with that of Jaʿd, however, heretics and rebels in Iraq are reported to have been burned to death by Khālid al-Qasrī. Two examples involve Shīʿite leaders, subsequently classified as ghulāt, Bayān b. Samʿān and al-Mughīra b. Saʿīd.29 Another one said to have been killed by being burned on the order of Khālid was Wazīr al-Sakhtiyānī, who had rebelled at al-Ḥīra. The nature of his religopolitical position is not clear – he was described as a Ḥarūrī (Khārijite), and the report about him emphasises his recital of Qurʾān.30 There are numerous traditions too about the use of fire as a means of execution by the caliph ʿAlī – and about the opposition to it attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās.31 While many of those traditions may be apocryphal, they can be taken to attest at least to the existence of burning as one means of execution in Iraq in the early caliphate. The source of this method of execution is puzzling. One would not expect it to be a survival from Sasanid law, given the sacred nature of fire in Zoroastrianism. Burning exists as a punishment in biblical and Jewish law, but seems to be associated with sexual transgressions and is not mentioned in connection with heresy or apostasy. It is possible that it has been taken over from Byzantine practice, but then it is strange that we hear of it, apparently, only in Iraq and not in Syria. In most of the cases alluded to here, the sources present the heretic’s execution, whether by crucifixion, fire, dhabḥ in the case Jaʿd, or other means, as consequent upon his unorthodox religious views. Unorthodox here means that they were at variance with the positions of the rulers (at least, of the rulers who had them killed), although at a later date figures like Jaʿd and Ghaylān also came to be portrayed as representatives of views rejected by Sunnī Islam. In some cases, however, there are indications that those unorthodox views were associated with political activity and even with rebellion. That has been argued by van Ess regarding Ghaylān and some of the Qadariyya,32 and he has also suggested that Jaʿd’s doctrine is hardly enough to account for the fate he met, and that the more basic reason was his involvement in intrigues and political infighting. One isolated report makes his sister the mother of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwān II. Another thing noted by van Ess is the reference to Jaʿd in Ṭabarī’s account of Yazīd b. Muhallab’s revolt against the Umayyad 36

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Caliph Yazīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik in 102/720. Although it is not said explicitly, it seems that he supported the rebel Ibn Muhallab against the Umayyads. 33 It was probably the political associations of certain religious positions that were more important than the ‘heretical’ views themselves in securing a sentence of death.34 It may, then, be possible to argue, given that the sources nearly always present the execution of a heretic as a consequence of his unorthodox religious views, that the rulers took some care to justify such executions in religious terms. Perhaps the sources reflect those justifications. It is more difficult, however, to argue that the forms of execution were as yet systematised or that they yet showed the influence of Qurʾānic norms or Islamic law.

Conclusion It does not seem possible to say for sure that the frequently reported execution of Jaʿd by dhabḥ on the Day of Sacrifices reflects historical reality, although it became the most frequently reported version of his demise and perhaps had some impact on later events and ideas. The association between the festival of the Day of Sacrifices and the execution of people deemed to have offended official religious views, Islam, or the Imam who represented both, is not strong, but the traces of the idea in the literature suggest that ideas about the festival have changed over time. If Jaʿd was indeed killed on that day, his case seems to be unique in the early caliphate but serves to strengthen the view that the forms of punishment for heretics were still quite arbitrary in the later Umayyad period, based on inherited practices and not showing much sign of the impact of Islamic or Qurʾānic regulations.

Notes 1. Of course, the notion of heresy and the very word are of questionable applicability in an Islamic context. Jaʿd is often referred to as a zindīq or a kāfir. Since he is also understood as someone who claimed to be a Muslim, it is likely that from the point of view of developed Islamic law he would have been regarded as an apostate (murtadd) rather than a heretic. In the early second century of the Islamic era it would simply have meant that he held views at odds with those of the ruling authority. 2. On that expression, see n. 18 below. 3. See Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, Khalq afʿāl al-ʿibād and ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd al-Dārimī, Radd ʿala l-Jahmiyya in ʿAqāʾid al-salaf, ed. ʿAlī Sāmī al-Nashshār and ʿAmmār Jumʿī al-Ṭālibī (Alexandria: Munshaʾat al-Maʿārif, 37

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4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

1971), 118 (for al-Bukhārī’s report), 258, 349–50, 353 (for al-Dārimī’s). Al-Dārimī’s Radd is also available in the edition of Gösta Vitestam, Lund: Gleerup; Leiden: Brill, 1960. Al-Bukhārī has the same report in his al-Taʾrīkh al-kabīr (Hyderabad: Maṭbaʿat Jamʿiyyat Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1360–84 [1941–64]), vol. 2, pt 1, 145. For Ibn Ḥanbal, see Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Khallāl, al-Musnad min masāʾil . . . Ibn Ḥanbal, ed. with English introduction by Ziauddin Ahmed (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh Publications 29, Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1975), 423. For al-Balādhurī’s version, see below. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1995–2001), 16:137 (in the biography of Khālid al-Qasrī); Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Ibn Taymiyya, Tafsīr Sūrat al-ikhlāṣ, ed. Ṭaha Yūsuf Shāhīn (Cairo: Maktabat Anṣār al-Sunna al-Muḥammadiyya, n.d.), 63; Ismāʿīl b. ʿUmar Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya, ed. Aḥmad Abū Milḥim et al. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1988), 9:364; Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-Islām, ed. ʿUmar Tadmurī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1987–99), 7:337 (no. 343 in ṭabaqa 12, covering AH 111–20); ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. Aḥmad Ibn ʿImād, Shadharāt aldhahab, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʿūṭ (Beirut: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1986–95), 2:112 (AH 126). For other sources see Ignaz Goldziher, “Die Gottesliebe in der islamischen Theologie,” Der Islam 9 (1919), especially 155–7; TG, vol. 2, especially pp. 449–58. TG, 2:450; al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl, ed. al-Bajāwī (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1963), no. 6836, indicates that al-Qāsim’s reputation as a rāwī was not high. Bukhārī, Afʿāl, in ʿAqāʾid al-salaf, 118. The other sources that transmit this account have only slight variations, usually abridgements or additional details, such as that none of those present blamed or criticised Khālid for what he did; rather, they approved of it (e.g., Dārimī, apud ʿAqāʾid al-salaf, 258, 349–50). Ibn al-Nadīm’s reference in the Fihrist to Jaʿd b. Dirham has some features in common with al-Balādhurī’s presentation, notably the information that he had remained in Khālid al-Qasrī’s prison for a long time before the caliph, reminded of his presence there by Jaʿd’s family, ordered his execution. See Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, ed. and tr. by Bayard Dodge (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1970), 803–4. Like Balādhurī, Ibn al-Nadīm refers to Jaʿd as a zindīq, and his subsequent comment that Khālid al-Qasrī was also a zindīq may suggest that Ibn al-Nadīm regarded Khālid’s delayed execution of Jaʿd as resulting from shared religious views. On him see the article s.v. in EI2, 2:916 (F. M. Donner). The most common date given for his death is 115/735–6, which could imply a somewhat earlier one for the execution of Jaʿd, if these details of al-Balādhurī’s report are to be credited. Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, ed. al-Dūrī (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1978–2003), 3:100 (in the notice on Ṣāliḥ b. ʿAlī). Cf. the almost iden38

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10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

tical account in ibid., ed. Khalīl ʿAthāmina (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1993), vol. 6 pt 2, 21–2 (in the chapter on Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik). Khallāl, Musnad, 420 (for Jahm). The printed text of Ibn Kathīr’s Bidāya has Jaʿd originating in Khurāsān, which is probably a misreading of Ḥarrān. EI2, s.v. Maymūn b. Mihrān, 6:916b–917a (F. Donner), refers to a report that Maymūn refused to speak about qadar. ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fi l-taʾrīkh, ed. Tornberg (Leiden: Brill, 1867–76), 5:329. Ibn al-Athīr appears to split Balādhurī’s report into two: the end of it is given at 5:192–3, following a report about the death of the caliph Hishām, while the beginning of it appears at 5:329 appended to an account of the death of the caliph Marwān (al-Jaʿdī). Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-Islām, 7: 337–8 (in ṭabaqa 12); Ibn Kathīr, Bidāya, 9:364. Lam yattakhidh Ibrāhīma khalīlan is an explicit denial of the formula used in Qurʾān 4:125; sometimes the rejection of the idea that God spoke to Moses is expressed as lam yukallim Mūsā taklīman, which is a negation of the expression used in Qurʾān 4:164; sometimes it is put as lam yattakhidh Mūsā kalīman (thus rejecting the common designation of Moses as kalīm Allāh). The different formulae concerning Moses do not seem significant, and the latter may merely reflect a wish to have greater verbal and grammatical parallelism in both parts of the sentence. See Wilferd Madelung, “The Origins of the Dispute about the Creation of the Qurʾān,” in Orientalia Hispanica sive Studia F.M. Pareja Dedicata, ed. J. M. Barral (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 505–7. On Ghaylān see s.v. in EI2, 2:1026 (Ch. Pellat). Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 5:329, which is dependent on Balādhurī, associates Jaʿd with both the created Qurʾān doctrine and that of qadar. ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, al-Farq bayna l-firaq, ed. Muḥammad Badr (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Maʿārif, 1328/[1910]), 262, cited by Goldziher, “Gottesliebe” (see n. 4, above). The English translation of the Farq, Moslem Schism and Sects, part II by Abraham S. Halkin (Tel Aviv: [Palestine Publishing Co., Ltd], 1935), 263–4, has: “[W]hen deductive proof leads to knowledge, that knowledge becomes an act without an agent.” The passage goes on to give some illustrations of things which the Ḥimārī Qadarīs believe are not created by God but by man: wine, maggots that emerge from a piece of meat that a man buries, scorpions that emerge from straw placed under baked bricks. Halkin associates the name Ḥimāriyya with the last Umayyad caliph, Marwān b. Muḥammad, known as al-Ḥimār as well as al-Jaʿdī. Van Ess, TG, 2:458, remarking on the obscurity of the relationship between Jaʿd and Marwān, also suggests that Jaʿd may have been involved in alchemy and speculation about spontaneous generation. His reported connection with Jahm b. Ṣafwān, and the fact that two of the earliest reports of his slaughter at the hands of Khālid – those of Dārimī and Bukhārī – are found in works attacking the Jahmiyya, is difficult to 39

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19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

assess. It is not explained how he might have come into contact with Jahm, who was caught and executed in Khurāsān in 128/746, and any connection between the historical Jahm and the “Jahmiyya” is questionable. It may be that “Jahmī” is no more than a polemical term for “Muʿtazilī”, a way of connecting the Muʿtazila with an older and notorious heretic. See EI2, s.v. Djahmiyya, 2:388 (W. Montgomery Watt). Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār, 103 vols (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1983–), 25:243–6, cited in TG, 2:450. Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, ed. Maḥmūd al-Ṭanāḥī (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, [1964–76]), 3:309–10 (an earlier edition is cited by Goldziher, “Gottesliebe,” 156); Evariste Lévi-Provençal, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane (Paris-Leiden: G. P. Maisonneuve, 1950–3), 2:120, cites different sources and gives the date as 338/950. E.g., Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 11:491 (s.a. 578): wa-arsala baʿḍahum ilā Minā li-yunḥarū bihā ʿuqūbatan li-man rāma ikhāfatan ḥarama llāhi taʿālā wa-ḥarama rasūlihi (ṣ). Ibid., 11:470 (s.a. 577): wa-ʿazama ʿala l-sayr . . .ilā Taymāʾ wa-minhā ilā Madīnat al-Nābī (ṣ) li-stīlāʾ ʿalā tilka l-nawāḥī al-sharīfa. See also Goldziher, “Gottesliebe,” citing Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī, al-Uns al-jalīl, 281. See also Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades (Cambridge: University Press, 1951–4), 2:436–7, citing from French translations of Abū Shāma’s K. al-Rawḍatayn, Ibn al-Athīr’s al-Kāmil fī l-tārīkh and al-Maqrīzī’s K. al-Sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk. E.g., Abū Bakr b. Masʿūd al-Kāsānī, Badāʾiʿ al-ṣanāʾiʿ, 10 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 6:276. See further Gerald Hawting, “The Slaughter of a Ḍaḥiyya during Ḥajj and the Origins of ʿĪd al-Aḍḥā,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 31 (2006), 58–73. In an almost certainly apocryphal story, Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 16:145, reports that a poor man came to the governor Khālid al-Qasrī on a cold day and asked him to cut off his head. Khālid asked why, and listed three things that would have justified cutting off someone’s head: highway robbery (qatʿ al-ṭarīq), terrorising the roads (? ikhāfa sabīlan), and rebellion (nazʿ al-yad ʿan al-ṭāʿa). See further Joel Kraemer, “Apostates, Rebels and Brigands,” IOS 10 (1980), 34–73 (the article refers mainly to legal writings but does mention some cases reported in historical sources, including that of Jaʿd b. Dirham, at p. 54); Andrew Marsham, “‘Those Who Make War on God and His Messenger’: Some Implications of Recent Scholarship on Rebellion, Banditry and State Formation in Early Islam,” Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists 17.2 (2005), 29–31. See EI2, s.v. Ḳatl, 4:766b-772b (J. Schacht); ibid., s.v. Ṣalb, 8:935a–936a (F. Vogel); EQ, s.v. Crucifixion (N. Robinson). For a general study Martin Hengel, Crucifixion in the Ancient World, tr. John Bowden (London: 40

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28.

29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

SCM Press, 1977); with specific reference to Islam, Otto Spies, “Über die Kreuzigung im Islam,” in Religion und Religionen: Festschrift für Gustav Mensching, ed. Rudolph Thomas (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1967), 143–56. For references in Islamic poetry, see Manfred Ullmann, Das Motiv der Kreuzigung in der arabischen Poesie des Mittelalters (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995). 2 Sam. 4:12 reports that David punished Baanah and Rechab for their murder of Ishbaal the son of Saul by ordering their execution, the amputation of their hands and feet, and their crucifixion. Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim Ibn Qutayba, Maʿārif, ed. Sarwat Ukāsha (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1969), 484; EI2, s.v. Ghaylān b. Muslim, 2:1026b (Ch. Pellat). See Kraemer, “Apostates, rebels and brigands,” 54 n74 for further sources. Al-Mughīra and Bayān: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. M. J. de Goeje et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901), 2:1619–22. Abū Nuʿaym says that Khālid killed al-Mughīra and crucified him, but a circumstantial report from Saʿīd b. Mardāband reports how both al-Mughīra and Bayān were burned alive. Similarly Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, 16:142–3 reports the burning of al-Mughīra. See also Kraemer, “Apostates, rebels and brigands,” 46. For a detailed discussion of Bayān and al-Mughīra as leaders of millenarian movements in early Islam, see now William F. Tucker, Mahdis and Millenarians: Shīʿite Extremists in Early Muslim Iraq (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 2:1628–9. See Kraemer, “Apostates, rebels and brigands,” 44–6, for extensive sources. Kraemer notes that in some of the reports the burning takes place after the victim has been killed by other means. But many others are explicit that the victim was burned alive. See EI2, s.v.Ḳadariyya, 4:368a–372a (J. van Ess); idem, “Les Qadarites et la Ġailāniya de Yazīd III,” SI 31 (1970), 269–86. TG, 2:454, citing Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 2:1396–76. Note that another Qadarī, ʿAmr b. Sharāḥīl al-ʿAnsī, is reported as having been merely exiled to the prison island of Dahlak by Hishām. See Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 2:1777.

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2

Qāḍīs and the political use of the maẓālim jurisdiction under the ʿAbbāsids Mathieu Tillier*

The role of the maẓālim jurisdiction is generally regarded as threefold by present-day historians. As ordinary courts – all grievances could in theory be brought to the caliph – the maẓālim symbolized the discretionary authority vested in the ruler who could, at any time, exercise a power that he would ordinarily delegate to other judges. Moreover, the maẓālim offered the possibility to claim damages for unjust acts committed by public servants, public officials or high-ranking dignitaries against whom the qāḍīs would find it difficult to take punitive actions. Finally, the maẓālim emerged as a possible recourse against the judgment of qāḍīs, and as such, functioned as a court of appeal.1 Although the institution goes back to the beginning of the ʿAbbāsid era, it was only systematically theorized in the 5th/11th century, in the works of al-Māwardī and Ibn al-Farrā,2 which makes it difficult to determine exactly when this type of justice was practiced in the early centuries of Islam. While the maẓālim are often referred to as independent institutions, the texts are not always explicit: in the opinion of L. Massignon and E. Tyan, al-Ḥallāj was one of its most famous victims, although no text clearly says that his judges held a maẓālim court.3 Indeed the maẓālim were not recognizable only by their name or by the judges sitting in the courts; they were mainly identified by their procedures: free from the limits of ordinary jurisdictions, judges could take a case without prior accusation.4 In practice, the existence of such courts could be recognized when trials took place by order of the ruler, without his involvement as a litigant. Above all, the maẓālim provided rulers with a number of ways to regain control of justice, without the qāḍīs’ involvement. * I would like to thank Christian Lange, Maribel Fierro and Christopher Melchert for their comments and suggestions on the original version of this chapter.

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Initiated by sovereigns, the maẓālim have often been analyzed exclusively in the context of caliphal court.5 In the same way, and in spite of the permeability – pointed out by Tyan – that existed between the ordinary judgeship and the maẓālim,6 there has been little research done on the role played by qāḍīs in the maẓālim, perhaps because the dividing line between the person of the qāḍī and the person of the ṣāḥib al-maẓālim is still considered as a general and necessary rule.7 The maẓālim, however, were not at all confined to the capital city; they had been established in smaller towns or in provinces since the ʿAbbāsid era. The link between the qāḍīs and the maẓālim’s jurisdictions remains a mystery. Re-exploring the institution’s central and provincial dealings will help us understand how the governing power managed to instrumentalize justice and impose or legalize certain forms of state violence.

Provincial maẓālim and political strategies THE MAZ. ĀLIM IN PROVINCIAL TOWNS In provincial towns, maẓālim courts were held in different ways. The sovereign himself could act as a judge, but such cases occurred only under special circumstances. Most of the time, the sovereign would delegate his power to a third party, usually an officer specially appointed for this purpose or a qāḍī already in place. As we shall see further on, these options were anything but unbiased. The maẓālim came across as the ultimate expression of sovereign justice, and, indeed the institution was often a major issue in the competition between contenders for legitimacy. To the extent that they could be identified, the Table lists the names of judges sitting in maẓālim courts in Iraq and Egypt and occasionally in Syria and Iran, and reveals the difficulty of establishing an uninterrupted list of incumbents. There is even some doubt that the institution was actually represented in provinces on a permanent basis. In addition, most aṣḥāb al-maẓālim did not hold maẓālim functions concurrently with their judicial functions. Some of them (such as al-Ḥasan b. ʿUmāra, al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī, or ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Abī Yazīd al-Khalanjī) were also qāḍīs during their lifetimes, but at different points in time. Therefore, the maẓālim appear, in most cases, as a separate judicial institution. In Iraq, some qāḍīs were vested with maẓālim powers, but only on a mission basis rather than as a permanent function. ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan was not assigned maẓālim duties throughout the duration of his judicial duties in Baṣra: while prayers, or khuṭba, are mentioned as his official duty by biographers,8 maẓālim are not. The only indication 43

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Judges sitting in maẓālim courts CITY OR PROVINCE DATES Baṣra Sometime between 156/773 and 167/783–41 160–3/777–80 or 167–73/783–93 ca 202–10/817–25 ca 223–39/837–53 ca 256/870 Kūfa ca 132/750 (?) Under al-Manṣūr Fārs Under al-Maʾmūn

Jabal Before 228/842–3

Marw Before 235/849–50 Damas Under al-Muʿtaṣim

QĀḌĪ

NOT A QĀḌĪ

ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī2

APPOINTED BY

al-Mahdī (caliph)

Fazāra b. ʿImrān4 Isḥāq b. Ismāʿīl5 Aḥmad b. Riyāḥ6 Ibn Qutayba Ibn Shubruma8

Ibn Abī Duʾād (chief qāḍī) Ṣāʿid b. Makhlad7 ʿĪsā b. Mūsā (governor) / al-Manṣūr (caliph)

al-Ḥasan b. ʿUmāra9 al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī10 ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Abī Yazīd al-Khalanjī11 Aḥmad b. ʿUmar b. Ḥafṣ al-Wakīʿī12 Abū Muslim al-Naṭʿī13 Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabarānī14 ʿAbd/ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Fatḥ15

Ibn Abī Duʾād (chief qāḍī) Ibn Abī Duʾād (chief qāḍī) Khumārawayh (governor)

Fusṭāṭ 211–12/826–7

ʿAṭṭāf b. Ghazwān16

215/830

Isḥāq b. Ismāʿīl17

ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṭāhir (governor) ʿAbdawayh b. Jabala (governor)

Under al-Muʿtaṣim 273/886 or 275/887

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Judges sitting in maẓālim courts (cont.) CITY OR PROVINCE DATES 215–16/830–1

QĀḌĪ

235/850 274–8/887–92 278–83/892–6

283/896 292/905

362/973

APPOINTED BY

Muḥammad b. ʿAbbād b. Muknif18 ʿĪsā b. Lahīʿa b. ʿĪsā al-Ḥaḍramī19 Muḥammad b. ʿAbda b. Ḥarb20

Kaydar (governor)

Muḥammad b. ʿAbda b. Ḥarb21

Isḥāq b. Yaḥyā b. Muʿādh (governor) Khumārawayh (governor) Khumārawayh (governor)

Ibn Ṭughān22 Muḥammad b. ʿAbda b. Ḥarb23

Muḥammad b. Sulaymān (governor) Ibn al-Ḥaddād24 ʿAtīq b. al-Ḥasan (Bakrān)25

324–7/936–9 331/943 340/951–

NOT A QĀḌĪ

ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. al-Khaṣīb26

Al-Ikhshīd (governor)

Kāfūr (governor)

ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Abī Thawbān27

Al-Muʿizz (Fāṭimid caliph)

1. M. Tillier, “Un traité politique du IIe/VIIIe siècle. L’épître de ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī au calife al-Mahdī,” AI 40 (2006), 141. 2. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Muṣṭafā al-Marāghī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Saʿāda, 1947–50), 2:92. 3. During this period, the governor of Baṣra was Muḥammad b. Sulaymān. See Ch. Pellat, Le milieu baṣrien et la formation de Ğāḥiẓ (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1953), 281. 4. Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 2000), 53:137; al-Tawḥīdī, al-Baṣāʾir wa-l-dhakhāʾir, ed. Wadād al-Qāḍī (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1988), 4:41; Ibn al-Jawzī, K. al-Ḥamqā wa-l-mughaffalīn (Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīd, n.d.), 77, 93. It may be Fazāra b. ʿImrān b. Mālik b. Bilāl, from Banū al-Jūn b. Anmār. See Ibn Durayd, al-Ishtiqāq, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, n.d.), 497. 5. Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik wa-taqrīb al-masālik li-maʿrifat aʿlām madhhab Mālik, ed. Aḥmad Bakīr Maḥmūd (Beirut–Tripoli: Dār Maktabat al-Ḥayāt-Dār Maktabat al-Fikr, 1967), 1:558. He was in office at the time when Yaḥyā b. Aktham was qāḍī of Baṣra: Ibn Ḥajar regards him as one of his amīns. See Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-mīzān (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlāmī, 1986), 1:352. 6. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 2:175. 7. Al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-islām, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1987), 20:383. Al-Dhahabī speaks of “al-Riyāsatayn” (nickname of al-Faḍl b. Sahl, who died long (Notes continued overleaf)

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Judges sitting in maẓālim courts (cont.)

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

before Ibn Qutayba was born), but he probably means “[Dhū] l-Wizāratayn”, which was the nickname of the vizier Ṣāʿid b. Makhlad. See al-Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 1997), 3:187. See also EI2, s.v. Ibn Ḳutayba, 3:844–5 (G. Lecomte). Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 3:124. al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb al-kamāl, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1980), 6:275. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 2:173–4. Ibid., 3:290; al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 10:74; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 32:379. Al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 4:284. Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 67:224. Ibid., 64:117 Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr ʿan quḍāt Miṣr, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1998), 388 (tr. M. Tillier, Vies des cadis de Miṣr (Cairo: IFAO, 2002), 79). Al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, in K. al-Wulāt wa-kitāb al-quḍāt, ed. R. Guest (Leiden: Brill, 1912), 432–3; Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 267. Al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 189; Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 3:280; al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik, 2:558; Tillier, Vies des cadis, 39. Al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 441; Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 299, 360. Al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 198. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 383 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 72). Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 384 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 74). Ibn Burd, in al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 480. Ibid., 480–1. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 326 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 133). Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 56 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 158). He claimed the title of qāḍī – officially assigned to al-Kishshī – but major witnesses refused to call him so. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 198 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 165). Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 199, 329 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 179).

comes from a dialogue between the qāḍī and the caliph al-Mahdī, pieced together by Wakīʿ, in which the qāḍī explained, “I received a letter from the Commander of Believers, who ordered me to investigate unjust acts (maẓālim) committed against the people of Baṣra, to listen to their trustees (nuqabāʾ) and to write him back to inform him of the facts I established. That is what I did.”9 A few decades later, Aḥmad b. Riyāḥ appears to be formally vested with the role, but once again, Wakīʿ says that it was entrusted to him only in the aftermath of his appointment as a qāḍī. His role in the maẓālim also suggests that he was assigned the responsibility as a subsidiary duty.10 In the Iraqi amṣār, at least, the maẓālim probably did not constitute a permanent institution. They were not, it seems, full-time functions,11 but rather, temporary mandates, possibly assigned to qāḍīs by the governing power, perhaps in the event of a crisis or particularly delicate matters. To entrust a qāḍī with the task of “redressing wrongs”, was indeed a way for the caliph to reinforce his delegate’s authority against high-ranking public figures who could not otherwise – under normal cir46

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cumstances – be summoned to hearings.12 But if a qāḍī could take responsibility for maẓālim justice in addition to his regular duties, why were the two institutions so often separated? Calling on a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim who did not hold qāḍī functions at the same time usually signaled a strategy to assert one power at the expense of the other. AN INSTRUMENT OF CENTRAL AUTHORITY In the early ʿAbbāsid era, the institution of maẓālim was regularly used by the caliphate as a means to affirm (or reaffirm) authority. In the Iraqi amṣār, aṣḥāb al-maẓālim were appointed mainly in times of crisis. Initially, the maẓālim may have helped legitimize new powers. In southern Iraq, landed property seemed to be deeply affected by the revolution: the land of the Marwānids, in particular, was confiscated and redistributed to ʿAbbāsid family members.13 Land claims were countless in the following years – as some tried to take possession of land while others protested against expropriations that they considered to be unfair – and the establishment of local maẓālim courts therefore likely gave the dynasty the means to control discontent and tensions which might fuel rebellion. According to Wakīʿ, the governor of Kūfa, ʿĪsā b. Mūsā, appointed ʿAbd Allāh b. Shubruma to the town maẓālim court, while he assigned judicial responsibilities to Ibn Abī Laylā.14 According to Ibn Qutayba, however, Ibn Shubruma’s jurisdiction extended primarily to the sawād of this miṣr (i.e. the surrounding countryside), and he acted in al-Manṣūr’s name.15 Yet, Ibn Saʿd considers that the governor entrusted him with qaḍāʾ arḍ al-kharāj.16 Such a strange jurisdiction appears to be unique in the history of Iraq; it implies that Ibn Shubruma was in charge of dealing with specific rural conflicts at that time. A little later, in Baṣra, the caliph al-Mahdī assigned maẓālim duties to the qāḍī ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAnbarī (in office from 156/773 to ca 166/782–317). This role is also mentioned in a rural context: under the caliph’s mandate, the qāḍī may have rendered several decisions on the status of nearby land parcels.18 What is more, the appointment of a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim made it possible for the caliphate to reinstate its authority when confronted with a qāḍī’s excessive autonomy or noncompliance with the official ideology of the ruling power. After defying al-Mahdī’s instructions, ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Ḥasan was himself subjected to maẓālim procedures. Summoned on appeal by a plaintiff, al-Mahdī ordered the ʿāmil of Baṣra to call a meeting of the local fuqahāʾ to look into one of his decisions.19 The qāḍī’s excessive independence and charismatic personality left their mark on Baṣra’s memory,20 and it is no coincidence that a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim was appointed 47

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at the end of his office or early during the next one. It was to replace the image of an uncooperative justice system with one that was more dependent on central power. His successor, Fazāra b. ʿImrān, is remembered as an idiot,21 which may reflect the fact that public opinion understood the political stakes of such a rearrangement and proceeded to discredit him. This interpretation is confirmed by several events during the miḥna. The period of inquisition was particularly critical for qāḍīs, who had to adhere to the official dogma of the creation of the Qurʾān. The caliph, in an effort to restore his authority, weakened by the traditionalist movement, was determined to affirm his control over the judicial system and through it, over the whole of society22. The maẓālim played an important role in the struggle for authority. The judicial system in Damascus was at one time neglected, to the benefit of the maẓālim institution. Under al-Muʿtaṣim (r. 218–27/833–42), the qāḍī Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā b. Ḥamza was dismissed, but he was not replaced by another qāḍī until the arrival of al-Mutawakkil. Instead, the chief qāḍī, Aḥmad b. Abī Duʾād – head of the miḥna – appointed two ṣāḥib al-maẓālim successively, Abū Muslim al-Naṭʿī and Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabarānī.23 According to al-Dhahabī, al-Maʾmūn had ordered the governor of Damascus to impose the miḥna on the qāḍī Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā; the latter had acknowledged the dogma of the created Qurʾān and agreed to put his shuhūd to the test. But he was also actively involved in tribal rivalries between Yamanīs and Qaysīs in Damascus and surrounding areas, and was biased in his handling of justice.24 On the other hand, despite his acknowledgment of the created Qurʾān, there may be reason to believe that he was closer to traditionalist circles than it seemed. He was indeed known as a traditionist25 and his father, who had long held judicial functions in Damascus before him, was also a well-known muḥaddith, a disciple of al-Awzāʿī and Makḥūl.26 Indeed, the miḥna affected mostly scholars who were part of this movement. He may have acknowledged the doctrine in order to retain his dominant political position; since the civil war, the ashrāf in Damascus had reached a high level of local autonomy and, from 213/828, al-Muʿtaṣim (heir apparent and later caliph) strove to restore central authority in the territory.27 Replacing a qāḍī suspected of disloyalty by a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim under the direct control of the caliphate was a convenient tool to implement his policy. The maẓālim institution also contributed to the restoration of central authority in Fusṭāṭ. It began to develop after the fourth fitna, when Egypt acquired de facto autonomy. In 211/826, the judicial system was first suspended for two years. The qāḍī Ibrāhīm b. al-Jarrāḥ, appointed in the midst of the civil war, aroused the wrath of the amīr ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṭāhir, 48

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who had come to bring peace to Egypt on behalf of the caliph. The letter of surrender he had written on behalf the rebel governor ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Sarī was too forceful for the Ṭāhirid amīr, whom the letter bade to swear that he would divorce his wife and free his slaves if he broke the safe conduct he had granted ʿUbayd Allāh. Ibrāhīm b. al-Jarrāḥ was dismissed, but not replaced: instead ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṭāhir appointed a maẓālim judge in the person of ʿAṭṭāf b. Ghazwān.28 As it had done in Damascus, the qāḍīs’ justice system vanished, just before the beginning of the miḥna, in 215/830. Once again, the judicial system was a danger for the caliphate. The qāḍī Ibn al-Munkadir, who was close to the aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth and early pietists, was indeed influenced by a group of “ṣūfiyya” who “commanded right and forbade wrong”, to the point that he dared to write al-Maʾmūn to protest against the appointment of Abū Isḥāq al-Muʿtaṣim as governor of Egypt.29 It was more than the ruling power was willing to bear: Ibn alMunkadir was dismissed, imprisoned and exiled to Iraq, and the judicial system – whose unreliability was gradually confirmed – was suspended, to be replaced by the sole maẓālim – held on behalf of the governor by Muḥammad b. ʿAbbād. Evidently, such ‘political’ justice, symbolically orchestrated by the sovereign, was neither popular, nor universally considered as legitimate: when he took office in 217/832, Hārūn b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Zuhrī revoked many of the judgments that Ibn ʿAbbād had rendered.30 THE MAZ. ĀLIM AND PROVINCIAL AUTONOMY The powers that emerged following al-Mutawakkil’s caliphate also used the maẓālim to impose their authority. At the central level, al-Muwaffaq foreshadowed a transfer of power to the amīr al-umarāʾ, and then to the Sultans. In the wake of a serious crisis in Sāmarrāʾ, he took control of his brother, the caliph al-Muʿtamid (r. 256–79/870–92). For several decades, the appointment of the empire’s qāḍīs clearly depended upon the caliphate. But the dangerous Zanj revolt, which ravaged the south of Iraq from 255/869, prompted the regent to intervene directly in the judicial system.31 Shortly before the takeover of the city by the rebels in 257/871,32 the renowned polygraph Ibn Qutayba was appointed ṣāḥib al-maẓālim in Baṣra. He was not selected by the caliphal administration but by the office of al-Muwaffaq, who had his own secretaries – including Ṣāʿid b. Makhlad, who almost certainly encouraged the appointment.33 The objective was to strengthen the central authority – represented by alMuwaffaq – to face up to growing unrest in the central territories. The maẓālim, however, represented primarily the autonomy of provincial powers. When Ibn Ṭūlūn settled in Egypt, a qāḍī appointed by the 49

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caliphate, Bakkār b. Qutayba, was already in power. The amīr imposed his autonomy de facto, but never attempted to dismiss him, even at the end of his reign, when it became obvious that the qāḍī would not confer upon him the legitimacy that he needed. He had him imprisoned, but did not officially relieve him of his judicial duties; he simply ordered him to delegate his duties to a vicar.34 Justice was an essential component of the ruling power, and Ibn Ṭūlūn developed the maẓālim into a competing judicial institution: he frequently presided over hearings, to the point where the people of Fusṭāṭ completely gave up on Bakkār, who, they said, would doze off out of boredom during court sessions.35 In earlier times, the maẓālim alternative had been a reminder of the primacy of the caliph’s justice; now the institution symbolized the supremacy of the amīr’s justice. Under Khumārawayh, who succeeded Ibn Ṭūlūn, it was no longer necessary for the ordinary judicial system to compete with the maẓālim: for seven years, no qāḍī was assigned by the caliphate in Egypt; only a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim (Muḥammad b. ʿAbda) was appointed by Khumārawayh. When the war between the latter and al-Muwaffaq came to an end,36 ordinary judgeship was given to Muḥammad b. ʿAbda, whose position was officially recognized by the caliphate.37 Now in the hands of a single man, the ordinary judgeship and the maẓālim became the expression of the autonomous Ṭūlūnid power. The maẓālim also contributed to maintaining their authority in Syria: a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim, ʿAbd (or ʿUbayd) Allāh b. al-Fatḥ, was sent to Damascus following an episode of civil disorder.38 The city’s governor, Saʿd al-Aʿsar (or al-Aysar), winner of the Battle of the Mills,39 had been assassinated in 273/886–7 or 275/888–9 by Khumārawayh (personally, some say) for having criticized him. The population of Damascus, however, were very attached to their governor and they immediately responded by revolting.40 It was thought that the appointment of a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim alongside the qāḍī Abū Zurʿa – who was devoted to the Ṭūlūnids – would help solve the crisis. Ultimately, the maẓālim helped the Ṭūlūnids maintain a semblance of justice while their power was failing. After Jaysh b. Khumārawayh was deposed in 283/896,41 a civil war forced the qāḍī Muḥammad b. ʿAbda to go into hiding and the judgeship was vacant for a few months.42 The Ṭūlūnids therefore temporarily entrusted the maẓālim to a Turk, Ibn Ṭughān. The governor, Muḥammad b. Sulaymān, reappointed Muḥammad b. ʿAbda when the ʿAbbāsid power was restored in 292/905 in Egypt, possibly in an effort to facilitate the transition between the two regimes and allow defendants to be judged by someone they knew.43 But here sources cease to mention the maẓālim, a sign that they no longer played an essential role. It was not until the Ikhshīdids came to power that the maẓālim came 50

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back into the spotlight: from 324/936 to 327/939, al-Ikhshīd entrusted them to a renowned jurist, Ibn al-Ḥaddād, while al-Ḥusayn b. Abī Zurʿa was in charge of the ordinary judgeship. This twofold justice system was, in many respects, reminiscent of Ibn Ṭūlūn’s policy. The qāḍī was formally appointed by one of the leading qāḍīs in Baghdad44 and he reported to the caliphate. By restoring the maẓālim in his own name, al-Ikhshīd was preparing for new Egyptian autonomy. The following verse is part of a poem distributed with the plaintiffs’ petitions at Ibn al-Ḥaddād’s hearing: “You exercised power without any official appointment, and you rendered your decision without any deed!”45 A number of people in Fusṭāṭ understood the scheme and blamed the jurist for his contribution to an illegitimate activity. The two-party judicial scheme was subsequently repeated several times. In 331/943, ʿAtīq b. al-Ḥasan was entrusted with the maẓālim, while al-Kishshī was supposed to practice “ordinary justice”. Though the circumstances of their assignments remain rather obscure, it is likely that, once again, al-Ikhshīd tried to compete with a justice system reporting to a qāḍī in Baghdad.46 Under Kāfūr, the relationship between the ordinary and maẓālim courts seemed to function as it had under Khumārawayh nearly a century earlier: in 340/951, the governor became the only person able to appoint qāḍīs in Fusṭāṭ.47 He was therefore able to entrust the judgeship and the maẓālim to a single man, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. al-Khaṣīb: from then on, justice came only from the amīr. When, a few years later, Kāfūr began to render judgments on his own – thus taking away the maẓālim duties from his qāḍī, Abū Ṭāhir al-Dhuhlī – the power struggle with Baghdad was no longer an issue: Abū Ṭāhir, a prominent jurist from Baṣra, had basically been imposed on the amīr by the notables in Fusṭāṭ. Just as Ibn Ṭūlūn had done, Kāfūr referred most plaintiffs to the maẓālim and kept the upper hand on justice.48 When they arrived in Egypt, the Fāṭimids did not change the system. They sensed that it would be dangerous to revoke the popular Abū Ṭāhir al-Dhuhlī, but on the other hand, the Ismāʿīlī caliphate could not apply only Sunni justice; therefore, al-Muʿizz named a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim to practice justice according to the Ismāʿīlī doctrine. He competed so well with the qāḍī that many professional witnesses left Abū Ṭāhir and joined him, and he soon pretended to the title of “qāḍī of Miṣr and Alexandria”.49 To the population, justice was the most concrete image of a regime that they usually had little contact with. As a result of their established knowledge and their role in the ‘Islamic’ management in the city, qāḍīs were a powerful instrument of political legitimization, but they were difficult to control. The freedom of practice claimed by some was a threat to 51

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the interests and even to the authority of their principals. Furthermore, in the second half of the 3rd/9th century, following the development of provincial autonomy, the judicature became subject to competition between the caliphate and the governors. Different powers used the maẓālim to get around the ordinary judgeship when they could not control it: sometimes entrusted to the qāḍī as lesser duties, the maẓālim could become important when the rulers wanted to remind everyone that justice ultimately came from them – thus proclaiming their sovereignty. Despite the importance of the ṣāḥib al-maẓālim, sources are relatively silent on the subject: al-Kindī mentions them in his biographies of ordinary qāḍīs but never describes them individually. The few paragraphs dedicated to some ṣāḥibs al-maẓālim by Ibn Ḥajar are insignificant compared to those he wrote about qāḍīs.50 The authors’ deliberate oversight may reflect an intention to minimize the weight of a ‘political justice’ that biographers considered to be illegitimate.

Qāḍīs as instruments and victims of state violence JUDGESHIP AS A POLITICAL TOOL Major political strategies hid behind both the exercise of appointing maẓālim to provinces and the relationship they maintained with the ordinary judgeship. The careers of individual qāḍīs and the importance given to them in the sovereign justice of maẓālim are proof of the stakes at hand. In the aftermath of the ʿAbbāsid revolution, qāḍīs became privileged instruments of the regime. The popular recognition they enjoyed as scholars and judges helped strengthen the dynasty, especially at times when political affairs hurt the ideal of justice on which relied the dynasty’s legitimacy. A number of caliphs in the early ʿAbbāsid era presided over maẓālim courts themselves and received their subjects’ complaints. Even if al-Rashīd delegated maẓālim duties to the Barmakids Yaḥyā and Jaʿfar51 for a while, caliphal justice was generally entrusted to qāḍīs. Al-Ḥasan b. ʿUmara, qāḍī of Baghdad, also acted as a maẓālim judge for al-Manṣūr.52 Under al-Amīn, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Anṣārī was assigned to the position in 193/809, shortly after he had practiced as an ordinary judge in Baṣra.53 During the miḥna, the chief qāḍī, Aḥmad b. Abī Duʾād, was also entrusted with the maẓālim54 before his son Abū l-Walīd55 then Yaḥyā b. Aktham succeeded him.56 In the late 3rd and early 4th centuries, while maẓālim were more and more in the hands of the vizierate, they were still entrusted to a number of qāḍīs: Yūsuf b. Yaʿqūb was appointed in 277/890–1, while practicing officially as 52

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a judge in Baṣra,57 and Abū ʿUmar, qāḍī of al-Sharqiyya and ʿAskar al-Mahdī, was appointed in 306/918–19.58 The ṣāḥib al-maẓālim’s role was more bureaucratic than the qāḍī’s. Differing from the rules of ordinary hearings, the presence of both parties was not required in the maẓālim court, and the plaintiff generally handed in a written petition (ruqʿa or qiṣṣa) which had already been processed by the administration59. This explains why many of the early maẓālim judges had no other experience in law. Under al-Mahdī, some were administrators, such as the mawlā Sallām60 or ʿUmar b. Muṭraf, who was also responsible for the dīwān al-kharāj.61 They may even have written answers to petitions for minor cases. When cases were more serious however, they only examined them before handing them over to the caliph or a qāḍī for judgment. When an ordinary individual filed a complaint against one of al-Mahdī’s wakīls, Sallām did no more than bring the request to the caliph, who in turn handed it over to one of the two qāḍīs of ʿAskar al-Mahdī, ʿĀfiya b. Yazīd and Ibn ʿUlātha.62 Qāḍīs were the image of justice, and the caliphate therefore relied on them as much as possible. The mere act of assigning qāḍīs to maẓālim courts was a form of manipulation – showing that the sovereign’s justice and God’s “decree” (qaḍāʾ) were one and the same – yet some qāḍīs were used even without having been officially entrusted with maẓālim duties. Many times, it was in the interests of the state to eliminate existing or potential opponents. While many of them spent their lives in the caliphs’ jails, without any form of trial, it was important that the law appear to be respected. It was therefore sometimes preferable to have opponents tried and convicted by regular qāḍīs. Al-Manṣūr arrested large numbers of ʿAlīds, whose rebellious intentions he feared,63 but things were more complicated when the suspect was a high-ranking official. In 155/772, suspecting the ḥasanid governor of Medina, al-Ḥasan b. Zayd, of preparing a riot, the caliph ordered ʿUbayd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Ṣafwān al-Jumaḥī, qāḍī in Baghdad, to bring him to trial. The governor was accused of dualistic religious beliefs when a plaintiff claimed that he believed in “a heavenly god and an earthly one”, the latter of whom had vested him with the caliphate.64 Although it cannot be formally proven, the prosecution may have been entirely fabricated, since political trials were such common practice at that time. As an example, ʿAbd Allāh b. Marwān, one of the last heirs to the Umayyad dynasty,65 was in hiding in Yemen when governor Naṣr b. Muḥammad b. al-Ashʿath had him captured and sent to al-Manṣūr.66 Al-Mahdī first intended to bring him to Syria and force him to officially relinquish his position of heir apparent – and therefore his 53

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claim to the caliphate – but it was feared that the local Syrian population would support him.67 Instead, he chose to eliminate him under the guise of legality. The caliph organized a trial presided over by the qāḍī ʿĀfiya b. Yazīd.68 An individual named ʿAmr b. Sahla al-Ashʿarī accused ʿAbd Allāh b. Marwān of killing his father. Al-Mahdī had no doubt that the lex talionis would be applied against the culprit, in keeping with the law. But the trial took an unexpected turn when an ordinary citizen came at the last moment before the qāḍī and confessed the murder.69 ʿAbd Allāh b. Marwān could no longer be convicted, so al-Mahdī had him bound and shackled and sent to the Muṭbaq prison, where he eventually died.70 Justice was not the primary objective of this trial – the man whose confession should have resulted in a conviction was acquitted because, it was said, he had acted by order of Marwān II, the last Umayyad caliph. The trial had served as legal background to a political maneuver. Assignments to the maẓālim were also a way of organizing political trials. The best example is the complaint investigated by Aḥmad b. Riyāḥ, qāḍī of Baṣra from 223/837 to 239/853, against the governor, Jaʿfar b. al-Qāsim.71 The people of Baṣra objected to his violent temper and numerous abuses.72 The qāḍī was entrusted with the maẓālim73 and when the amīr was relieved of his duties he had to stand trial. The qāḍī did not organize a big trial; he simply reopened the governor’s file each time a complaint was lodged against him in ordinary court. The governor was summoned to appear before the court on a daily basis, to avoid the trouble of having to be fetched at each accusation. In fact, the man ended up waiting in a corner of the mosque to be called to face his accusers. This type of trial was very humiliating. The deposed amīr was permanently exposed to the public eye, including the lowest classes of society.74 Were Jaʿfar b. al-Qāsim’s crimes against his own people serious enough to warrant such a procedure? Possibly. But other governors were just as guilty, yet they were not forced to endure such disgrace. The caliph al-Wāthiq actually had other reasons to dismiss and humiliate the governor. Jaʿfar b. al-Qāsim was indeed guilty of a much more serious political crime: he had composed a hijāʾ about al-Wāthiq, in which he had actually claimed the caliphate for himself.75 Al-Wāthiq, who was perhaps the most zealous disciple of the miḥna,76 could not let that go unpunished. It is no coincidence that the maẓālim institution officially served that purpose: the qāḍī was used symbolically to remind everyone of the limits of the caliph’s tolerance.

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QĀD. ĪS APPEARING BEFORE THE MAZ. ĀLIM COURTS While qāḍīs were the instruments of violence justified by reason of state, their reliability and cooperation were becoming increasingly uncertain. At the beginning of the 3rd/9th century, the intellectual and religious authority claimed by the ahl al-ḥadīth, as well as the written law established by the emerging madhhabs, made it easier for many of them to claim more freedom from their principals. During the miḥna, qāḍīs were both promoters of the official doctrine and prime suspects of insubordination. By establishing the judgeship as the crux of the caliphal policy, governing powers ran the risk of strengthening the qāḍīs’ authority at their own expense. Should the qāḍīs be given too much freedom with regard to the dogma, the fragile attempt to preserve the caliphate’s authority would be destroyed from within. The maẓālim were therefore positioned as a competing institution, in an effort to isolate the qāḍīs when necessary (see above). Indeed, several people tried in maẓālim courts were qāḍīs. Qāḍīs usually went through special indictment procedures called iqāma li-l-nās, where individuals were ordered by the sovereign to appear before the crowd, even when no complaint had been lodged against them. In this way, their trial was made public – the sitting judge could be the sovereign, a governor, a delegate to the maẓālim or a qāḍī – and anyone who wished to complain was invited to come forward and file suit against the accused.77 Although sources do not always clearly associate iqāma li-l-nās with maẓālim courts, their common characteristics – ex officio actions, trials held by order of political authorities, formal accusations of high-ranking officials – clearly reveal that both were expressions of a single sovereign justice. The procedure was already in use at the end of the 2nd/8th century, when the qāḍī of Fusṭāṭ, ʿAbd al-Malik b. Muḥammad al-Ḥazmī (170–74/786–9178), was the object of a damning report from the local ṣāḥib al-barīd, infuriated at the qāḍī’s refusal to let him intercede on behalf of a plaintiff. Hārūn al-Rashīd therefore ordered the Egyptian governor to have him publicly displayed to a vindictive crowd (an yūqifa l-Ḥazmī li-l-nās).79 Saved by the favor of a cheering crowd, the qāḍī, however, was forced to resign.80 This type of public display was also used during the miḥna and during the ‘purge’ that followed. As early as 214/829, the qāḍī of Fusṭāṭ, ʿĪsā b. al-Munkadir, was subjected to this type of procedure by order of the governor, Abū Isḥāq al-Muʿtaṣim, who blamed him for his close contacts with traditionalist groups and his opposition to al-Maʾmūn’s policy. People came in great numbers to lodge complaints against the qāḍī, who was jailed and replaced by a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim – perhaps the very judge who sat at his trial.81 At the end of the 55

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miḥna, the qāḍī of al-Sharqiyya (al-Karkh district court in Baghdad), ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Khalanjī, was also forced to face the crowd by his successor. A disciple of Ibn Abī Duʾād, he had distinguished himself by his steadfastness during the miḥna, going as far as to pronounce the divorce of a woman whose husband refused the doctrine of the created Qurʾān.82 This iqāma li-l-nās aimed to help calm the crowds and symbolically marked the end of the inquisition. Two examples show how qāḍīs’ trials at the maẓālim could appear as a simulacrum of justice serving the state. At the beginning of al-Muʿtaṣim’s reign, an individual accused the qāḍī of Baṣra, ʿĪsā b. Abān, of physically mistreating him during the hearing, to the point where he lost his eyesight. He appealed to the caliph, who ordered the faqīh ʿUbayd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿĀʾisha to look into the complaint – and hold de facto a one-time maẓālim court. The hearing took place at the Great Mosque, in front of a large crowd, and ʿĪsā b. Abān succeeded in turning the situation to his advantage. He began by stating his requirements: he would only appear in the presence of both the governor and local ṣāḥib al-barīd. Taking advantage of the crowd’s rush into the mosque, he made everyone wait and came in discreetly through the muezzins’ entrance, in an effort to set himself apart from ordinary defendants. Eventually, the presiding faqīh made the mistake of sitting on an ordinary seat in the mosque, instead of sitting next to the column (sāriya) traditionally reserved for qāḍīs; ʿĪsā b. Abān did not miss the opportunity to declare ironically that he should change places if he had indeed been appointed as a judge. In short, the qāḍī demonstrated publicly that he was the only real judge, and the procedure came to a dead end.83 Was it a coincidence? ʿĪsā b. Abān was a Ḥanafite, close to the ruling power and Muʿtazilite circles,84 and, with the miḥna in progress, al-Muʿtaṣim was not really eager to see him convicted. Not only did the governor of Baṣra and the ṣāḥib al-barīd come to the hearing, but their secretaries recorded all verbal exchanges: political pressure was such that the inexperienced faqīh temporarily appointed as a ṣāḥib al-maẓālim could not examine the case properly. The trial was staged to demonstrate the piousness and justice of the central power. The second example is that of Bakkār b. Qutayba, qāḍī of Fusṭāṭ in the second half of the 3rd/9th century. Infuriated by the qāḍī’s refusal to lay a curse on the regent al-Muwaffaq as he had requested, Ibn Ṭūlūn ordered him to appear before the maẓālim (aqāmahu li-l-nās),85 and offered the people of Fusṭāṭ an opportunity to challenge some of the qāḍī’s decisions. Although he defended himself admirably and no formal charges could be made against him, he was assigned to house arrest until the amīr’s death.86 56

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THE QĀD. Ī’S WORD The iqāma li-l-nās procedure used against dissident qāḍīs is reminiscent of the tashhīr used against people convicted of perjury.87 The main objective of these humiliating episodes of ignominious parading or public exposure to vindictive crowds was to ruin a person’s reputation.88 Such procedures may have echoed the warning attributed by Islamic tradition to the caliph ʿUmar in his famous letter to Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī: “He who tries to embellish himself in the eyes of men, though Allāh knows he is not, Allāh shall tear his veil (hataka llāh sitrahu) and reveal his actions (abdā fiʿlahu).” These words may have been said with regards to a dishonest qāḍī.89 His public exposure was specifically intended to “tear off his veil” and damage his status of “mastūr”, defined as a respectable man whose life is “hidden” from the public eye.90 The procedure took on a special meaning during the miḥna, when qāḍīs themselves were used to harm the reputation of opponents to the doctrine of the created Qurʾān, who were excluded from ʿadāla. The goal of the miḥna was to discredit their word, and consequently weaken their influence.91 A qāḍī’s words were very significant, due to the performative nature of his judgments. The iqāma li-l-nās therefore publicly disallowed those qāḍīs likely to openly oppose the regime. Bakkār b. Qutayba’s trial is a prime example. His opposition to Ibn Ṭūlūn and his refusal to lay curse on al-Muwaffaq could only be curtailed by an episode of public humiliation that would symbolically discredit his statements. The support of the qāḍī was necessary, but it was a double-edged sword. The authority conferred upon him by the people could undermine the ruling power. The intimidating aspect of qāḍīs came from the performative and binding nature of their judgments, which were very difficult to reverse. Much diplomacy was needed to take advantage of the qāḍīs’ position and, at the same time, remain flexible enough to prevent the negative effects of their authority and challenge or ignore it. The safest way to deal with qāḍīs was to ask them for fatwās – only advice – rather than final and binding judgments. The presence of qāḍīs at maẓālim hearings that they did not preside over goes back a long time. In the second half of the 2nd/8th century, al-Mahdī held court in the presence of qāḍīs, supposedly conferring more legitimacy on his decisions.92 Al-Maʾmūn also sat in the presence of his chief qāḍī, Yaḥyā b. Aktham.93 But it was not until the beginning of the 4th/10th century that this – merely advisory – method of legitimizing decisions became widespread in maẓālim courts. Since the latter part of the 3rd/9th century, the maẓālim had been more and more entrusted to viziers.94 Qāḍīs, however, 57

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never ceased to play a key role, as they were the only experts in law and justice who could confer some legitimacy on the viziers’ decisions. A qāḍī’s words were more flexible when he acted as a muftī in trials directly presided over by political authorities; when contrary to the interests of the ruling power, his advice was rejected; when favorable, it was regarded as decisive. Such manipulative practices existed as early as the 3rd/9th century. In 231/846, al-Wāthiq had the traditionalist al-Khuzāʿī executed, as advised by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Isḥāq al-Ḍabbī, qāḍī of West Baghdad, and in spite of the chief qāḍī Aḥmad b. Abī Duʾād’s reservations.95 The best example, however, is that of al-Ḥallāj. Tried once for his religious views and his involvement with various dissident groups, his case was reopened in 309/922 by Ḥāmid b. ʿAbbās, vizier of al-Muqtadir.96 The second trial appeared in every way as a political trial. It was the result of a conflict, within the civil administration, between the current vizier and his predecessor, ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā, who opposed Ḥāmid b. ʿAbbās’ tax policies, among other things. Al-Ḥallāj’s conviction was a way to discredit ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā, a protector of the well-known mystic.97 Yet, to be seen as fair, the judgment had to be based on the counsel of a recognized qāḍī. At first, Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Isḥāq b. al-Buhlūl al-Tanūkhī (the Ḥanafī qāḍī of Madīnat al-Manṣūr) was asked to cooperate: the vizier asked him to issue a fatwā against the accused but he refused to do so, on the grounds that no legal evidence of his guilt had been provided.98 So the vizier turned to the Mālikī Abū ʿUmar (qāḍī of al-Sharqiyya and East Baghdad), who agreed to speak in favor of al-Ḥallāj’s death sentence.99 By reducing the qāḍī to a mere adviser – whose opinion was easily manipulated – rulers again used the legal system to serve their policies. During the reign of al-Muqtadir one more qāḍī, Abū ʿUmar, continued to practice maẓālim justice for a while, in 306/918–19. His role in the institution was limited, however, since that same year the qahramāna Thaml was also appointed to the maẓālim court and held hearings at al-Ruṣāfa. Like the viziers who were now frequently entrusted with such duties, she sat surrounded by fuqahāʾ and qāḍīs.100 The role of muftī played in the maẓālim courts by some qāḍīs may have increased their independence by lessening the influence of their dictates; since their individual opposition to ongoing political schemes was always subject to being offset by another fatwā, they incurred fewer sanctions than their predecessors. In 311/923 the vizier Abū l-Ḥasan b. al-Furāt summoned the qāḍīs Abū ʿUmar and Abū Jaʿfar al-Tanūkhī to attend the prosecution hearing against his predecessor, ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā, whom he accused of conspiring with the Carmathians. But the vizier’s arguments were too weak and the two qāḍīs refused to 58

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write the requested fatwās.101 Despite such occasional setbacks, the ruling authorities never ceased to instrumentalize qāḍīs’ statements during political trials. In 326/938, the fatwā given by the chief qāḍī, Abū l-Ḥusayn ʿUmar b. Abī ʿUmar, made it possible for the amīr al-umarāʾ, Ibn Rāʾiq, to eliminate Ibn Muqla, the last of the leading ʿAbbāsid viziers: the qāḍī’s legal opinion was enough to justify punishing the vizier-calligrapher, whose hand was cut off.102

Conclusion As the highest body representing sovereign justice, the maẓālim were intended as an essential tool for the legitimation of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty, whose “revolution” could only be justified by a concern for the restoration of justice, viewed as flouted by the Umayyads. It should not be doubted that they most often accomplished the purpose of “rectifying prejudices”. The institution’s ideological façade, however, also served to hide some forms of state violence. On the symbolic level, the institution contributed to an affirmation of a sovereign authority within provincial jurisdictions. The caliphate used the courts to resist the aspiration to independence of some qāḍīs, especially in the first half of the 3rd/9th century; controlled by the local authorities, the courts later contributed to the enfranchisement of autonomous dynasties such as those of the Ṭūlūnids or the Ikhshīdids. Their role in the affirmation or maintenance of a political order made the maẓālim a privileged instrument of coercion and physical violence insofar as they represented a political justice guided by the immediate interests of the rulers or the state. Such state violence takes on its full meaning only in light of the ʿAbbāsid court system as a whole, and the justice of the qāḍīs in particular. To consider maẓālim justice as ‘secular’ as opposed to the ‘religious’ justice of the qāḍīs103 would be inconsistent with that time. Not only did the caliph’s justice appear as religious,104 but the dialectical relationship between the regular judgeship and maẓālim reflects as much their complementarities as their interchangeability. For the authorities, only the close association of the qāḍīs with the maẓālim courts could remove suspicions of political bias and vest their judgments with legitimacy, which is why qāḍīs were repeatedly trusted with temporary or standing maẓālim mandates. On the other hand, the qāḍīs’ submissiveness was sometimes disturbed by a sense of allegiance to higher values. If qāḍīs somehow failed to faithfully execute the sovereign will, the maẓālim could turn into a concurrent jurisdiction capable of circumventing or temporarily superseding the 59

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normal judicial channels. The crisis of authority which shook the caliphate at the beginning of the 3rd/9th century and the ensuing miḥna even overturned the positions of several qāḍīs, who appeared as defendants before such tribunals and whose credibility was publicly denounced through the iqāma li-l-nās procedure. The example of the Egyptian qāḍī Ibn alMunkadir is perhaps the most significant: by joining a group of Ṣūfiyya who claimed to “command right and forbid wrong”, exercise authority over the public domain and moralize the caliph, he agreed to challenge the state monopoly on coercive force. Exposure of the qāḍī to the crowd was not enough: a clear boundary between public and private spheres needed to be reasserted. This was done by temporarily substituting the maẓālim for the judiciary. In the second half of the 3rd/9th century, in the context of a systematic codification of the fiqh and the emergence of madhhabs, the instrumentalization of qāḍīs by central authorities became too random to ensure that they should continue to administer the sovereign’s ultimate justice. The increased role played by the viziers with respect to the maẓālim was thus linked to more than a general strengthening of the vizierate: increased attention by Sunni lawyers to judicial procedures, the status of the qāḍīs and their relationship to power consolidated the institution from within and made their instrumentalization much less predictable. As the qāḍīs’ authority was necessary to legitimize a violence which was, in fact, nothing more than reasons of state, it was necessary to incorporate them in another way in maẓālim justice: the muftī function, which permitted the relativization of their authority, was the only one which offered the degree of flexibility sought by the ʿAbbāsid rulers. It is precisely because the qāḍīs began at that time to administer justice “toward and against all”105 that the post of judge in the maẓālim durably escaped them.

Notes 1. E. Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1960), 463–4. On maẓālim, other references are: H. F. Amedroz, “The Mazalim Jurisdiction in the Ahkam Sultaniyya of Mawardi,” JRAS, 1911, 635–74; D. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside (Damascus: IFD, 1959–60), 2:640– 8; J. Schacht, Introduction au droit musulman, tr. P. Kempf and Abdel Magid Turki (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1983), 50; J. Nielsen, Secular Justice in an Islamic State: Maẓālim under the Baḥrī Mamlūks, 662/1264–789/1387 (Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1985), 1–11; EI2, s.v. Maẓālim, 6:933–4 (J. Nielsen); M. Shapiro, “Islam and Appeal,” California Law Review 68 (1980), 366–8; D. S. Powers, “On Judicial Review in Islamic Law,” Law and Society Review 26 (1992), 316; M. H. Kamali, “Appellate Review and Judicial Independence in Islamic 60

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2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

Law,” in Islam and Public Law, ed. Ch. Mallat (London: Graham and Trotman, 1993), 62. Al-Māwardī, al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1985), 97–119; Ibn al-Farrāʾ, al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya, ed. Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Faqī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1986), 73–90. See Nielsen, Secular Justice, 17ff. L. Massignon, La Passion de Husayn Ibn Mansûr Hallâj (Paris: Gallimard, 1975), 1:436; Tyan, Histoire, 497; Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:646. Tyan, Histoire, 441, 443. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:640–8; Nielsen, Secular Justice, 1–11. The most important exception is Tyan (Histoire, 491ff.), who studied this institution in pre-Fāṭimid Egypt. Tyan, Histoire, 489–90; Shapiro, “Islam and Appeal,” 366. Tyan, Histoire, 438, 464. In the 6th/12th century, al-Shayzarī did not remember that qāḍīs in earlier times may have held high positions in maẓālim courts. See al-Shayzarī, al-Minhāj al-maslūk fī siyāsat al-mulūk (al-Zarqāʾ: Maktabat al-Manār, 1987), 562ff. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 2:91; al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, ed. Aḥmad al-Arnāʾūṭ and Turkī Muṣṭafā (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth, 2000), 19:244. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 2:92. Ibid., 2:175. Under al-Muqtadir, a budget of 439,000 dirhams allocated to the provincial maẓālim leads us to believe that the institution was well established at that time. See Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī tawārīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umam, ed. Suhayl Zakkār (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1995), 7:384. See M. Tillier, “La société au miroir du tribunal. Égalité juridique et hiérarchie sociale,” AI 42 (2008), forthcoming. M. G. Morony, “Landholding and Social Change: Lower al-ʿIrâq in the Early Islamic Period ,” in Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East, ed. T. Khalidi (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1984), 216. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 3:124. Ibn Qutayba, al-Maʿārif, ed. Tharwat ʿUkāsha (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1969), 470. Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1988), 6:350. Tillier, “Un traité politique du IIe/VIIIe siècle,” 141. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 2:92. Ibid., 2:96. The fuqahāʾ finally supported the qāḍī. Under al-Mutawakkil, a decision rendered by the Egyptian qāḍī al-Ḥārith b. Miskīn was also looked into by a fuqahāʾ commission ordered by the caliph. See Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 124 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 50–1). J. van Ess, “La liberté du juge dans le milieu basrien du VIIIe siècle,” in La notion de liberté au Moyen Age: Islam, Byzance, Occident (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), 28ff.; Tillier, “Un traité politique du IIe/VIIIe siècle,” 144. Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Ḥamqā, 77, 93. 61

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22. F. Jadʿān, al-Miḥna: baḥth fī jadaliyyat al-dīnī wa-l-siyāsī fī l-islām (ʿAmmān: Dār al-Shurūq, 1989), 279–80. 23. Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 67:224, 64:117–18. 24. Al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-islām, 17:349. 25. Ibn Ḥajar, Lisān al-mīzān, 5:422. 26. Ibn Ṭūlūn, Quḍāt Dimashq al-Thaghr al-bassām fī dhikr man wulliya qaḍāʾ al-Shām, ed. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munjid (Damascus: al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī, 1956), 13–14. 27. P. M. Cobb, White Banners: Contention in ʿAbbasid Syria, 750–880 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 96–7. 28. Al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 430–2. See G. Wiet, L’Égypte arabe de la conquête arabe à la conquête ottomane (Paris: Plon, 1937), 71; H. Kennedy, “Egypt as a Province in the Islamic Caliphate,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt, ed. C.F. Petry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1:81. 29. In another version, they encouraged him to complain about the kharāj tax collectors. Cf. al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik, 2:583. See M. Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 384. Such was the attitude of traditionalists who protested against state authority and asserted their own authority in law enforcement. See Jadʿān, al-Miḥna, 280–1. Cf. I. Lapidus, “The Separation of State and Religion in the Development of Early Islamic Society,” IJMES 6 (1975), 376ff. The ṣūfiyya mentioned here may have been members of the ṣūfiyyāt al-muʿtazila, who considered that the function of Imam was not necessary to enforce the law. On this group, see Jadʿān, al-Miḥna, 268–9; P. Crone, “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists,” Past and Present 167 (2000), 12ff. 30. Al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 440–1; Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 299. 31. M. Tillier, Les cadis d’Iraq à l’époque ʿabbāside: organisation administrative et rapports au pouvoir (132/750–334/945) (PhD Université Lyon 2, 2004), 108. 32. See A. Popovic, La Révolte des esclaves en Iraq au IIIe/IXe siècle (Paris: Geuthner, 1976), 99. 33. EI2, s.v. al-Muwaffaḳ, 7:820 (H. Kennedy). 34. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 107 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 70). 35. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 106 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 67). Cf. Tyan, Histoire, 476. 36. Wiet, L’Égypte arabe, 104. 37. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 383 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 72). 38. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 388 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 79); Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 20:408; 31:399. 39. The battle, which took place in 271/885 between the armies of Khumārawayh and the future al-Muʿtaḍid, made it possible for the Ṭūlūnids to recover a leading position in Syria. See Wiet, L’Égypte arabe, 103; EI2, s.v. Khumārawayh, 5:49 (U. Haarmann). 62

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40. Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 20:407–8; al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-islām, 20:354–5. 41. Z. M. Hassan, Les Tulunides. Étude de l’Égypte musulmane à la fin du IXe siècle, 868–905 (Paris: Établissements Busson, 1933), 136. 42. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 385–6 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 76). 43. Justice was frequently a way to ensure a peaceful transition between two regimes. See Tillier, Les cadis d’Iraq à l’époque ʿabbāside, 85ff. 44. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 144 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 143). Cf. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 24. 45. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 336 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 134). 46. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 24. 47. Ibid., 24–5. 48. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 328 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 177). 49. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 199. 50. Ibid., 267, 360. 51. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:442. 52. Al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 14:107; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 64:260. 53. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:442. See Ibn Qutayba, al-Maʿārif, 384; al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 5:409; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 6:12. 54. Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1994), 1:86. 55. Al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 1:314; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 6:473; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 7:65. 56. Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-umam wa-l-mulūk (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 5:314; Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, 1:85. 57. Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 5:598; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 7:225; al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik, 3:184. 58. Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 8:12. 59. Tyan, Histoire, 443, 470. 60. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 3:255; See Tyan, Histoire, 485. 61. Al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 1:87; al-Jahshiyārī, K. al-Wuzarāʾ wa-lkuttāb (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr al-Ḥadīth, 1988), 106. Al-Mahdī also appointed as ṣāḥib al-maẓālim ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ṭābit b. Thawbān, well known for his ascetism (see al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 10:223; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 34:250). Among those who were not qāḍīs at the same time, we note the following: al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAṭiyya al-ʿAwfī, under al-Mahdī; he was qāḍī in Baghdad but later, under al-Rashīd (al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 8:30); Ismāʿīl b. Ibrāhīm b. Muqsim Abū Bishr al-Asadī, known as Ibn ʿAliyya, at the end of Hārūn al-Rashīd’s reign (Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, 7:325; Ibn Qutayba, al-Maʿārif, 520; al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 6:229–30); Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. al-Rabīʿ al-Anbārī, appointed in 237/851–2 (al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 1:299); Muḥammad b. ʿImrān al-Ḍabbī, under al-Muʿtazz (al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 63

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62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

5:419); Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb Abū Rabīʿ, under al-Mutawakkil (al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 5:314). Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 4:586. H. Kennedy, The Early Abbasid Caliphate: A Political History (LondonSydney: Croom Helm, 1981), 66. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 3:250. See EI2, s.v. al-Ḥasan b. Zayd b. al-Ḥasan, 3:244 (F. Buhl). Al-Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām, 4:137. Al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, ed. Suhayl Zakkār and Riyāḍ Ziriklī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1996), 9:326; al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 4:354. On the pro-Ummayad unrest in Syria at the beginning of the ʿAbbāsid era, see Cobb, White Banners, 43ff. ʿĀfiya b. Yazīd al-Awdī was qāḍī of ʿAskar al-Mahdī beginning in 161/777–8. See Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 3:251; al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh Baghdād, 12:303. Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 4:560. Al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, 9:326. On the Muṭbaq, the Baghdad prison where inmates were tied up at the bottom of wells, see E. Tyan, Institutions du droit public musulman (Paris: Sirey, 1954), 1:414. Jaʿfar b. al-Qāsim b. Jaʿfar b. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī al-ʿAbbāsī was governor of Baṣra under al-Wāthiq. See al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, 11:123. Some say he may have been appointed earlier as governor of Medina, in 209/824–5. See al-Basawī, al-Maʿrifa wa-l-taʾrīkh, ed. Akram Ḍiyāʾ al-ʿUmarī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, n.d.), 1:197. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 2:177–8. Ibid., 2:175. Ibid., 2:178, 179. Al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, 11:123. T. El-Hibri, “The Image of the Caliph al-Wāthiq: a Riddle of Religious and Historical Significance,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 19 (2001), 47. Cf. Tyan, Institutions du droit public musulman, 1:418. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 254. The verb awqafa here is a synonym of aqāma, mentioned in the next line. See also Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 3:300: the author tells how al-Wāthiq, in the latter years of his reign, “would display to the crowd” the disciples of Ibn Abī Duʾād (waqafa aṣḥābahu li-l-nās). Al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 384; Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 255. Al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 441; al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, Tartīb al-madārik, 2:583– 4. Wakīʿ, Akhbār al-quḍāt, 3:290–1. Al-Ṣaymarī, Akhbār Abī Ḥanīfa wa-aṣḥābihi (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1985), 150–1. M. Bedir, “An Early Response to Shāfiʿī: ʿĪsā b. Abān on the Prophetic Report (khabar),” ILS 9 (2002), 288–92. 64

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85. The use of both terms in the same sentence reveals the close connection between the iqāma li-l-nās procedure and the maẓālim institution. 86. Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ al-iṣr, 106–7 (tr. Tillier, Vies des cadis, 68–70); al-Balawī, Sīrat Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn, ed. Muḥammad Kurd ʿAlī (Cairo: Maktabat alThaqāfa l-Dīniyya, n.d.), 316–18. On the crisis which led Ibn Ṭūlūn to lay a curse on al-Muwaffaq, in Damascus, in the spring of 269/883, see Z. M. Hassan, Les Tulunides, 88; Th. Bianquis, “Derrière qui prierastu, vendredi?,” Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales 37–8 (1985–6), 18; idem, “Autonomous Egypt,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt, ed. C. F. Petry, 1:101. 87. Ch. Lange, “Legal and Cultural Aspects of Ignominious Parading (tashhīr) in Islam,” ILS 14 (2007), 94ff. 88. At the end of the miḥna, al-Mutawakkil condemned the qāḍī of Fusṭāṭ, Ibn Abī l-Layth to such ignominious parading. See al-Kindī, Akhbār quḍāt Miṣr, 465. 89. Al-Jāḥiẓ, al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn (Tunis: Dār Saḥnūn, 1990), 2:49. 90. Cf. Y. Lev, Charity, Endowments, and Charitable Institutions (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 10–11. “Tearing up the veil” of respectability was a very serious act, as al-Sarakhsī observed in al-Mabsūṭ (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d.), 9:85 (I owe this reference to Ch. Lange): the defamatory accusation of fornication (qadhf) is a crime (jarīma) for “it tears up in vain (min ghayr fāʾida) the veil of virtue (sitr al-ʿiffa)”. 91. Jadʿān, al-Miḥna, 279–80. 92. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:641; Tyan, Histoire, 477. 93. Al-Bayhaqī, al-Maḥāsin wa-l-masāwī (Beirut: Dār Ṣāḍir, 1970), 497ff.; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 6:79–80. 94. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:643–4. 95. Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh, 5:282–3; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 6:393; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 7:21–2. Cf. Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, al-ʿIqd al-farīd, ed. Aḥmad Amīn, Aḥmad al-Zīn and Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī (Cairo: Maktabat alnahda al-miṣriyya, 1953), 2:465. See El-Hibri, “The Image of the Caliph al-Wāthiq,” 49ff. 96. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:414. 97. EI2, s.v. al-Ḥallādj, 3:103 (L. Massignon/L. Gardet); D. Sourdel, L’État impérial des califes abbassides (Paris: PUF, 1999), 195. Cf. H. Bowen, The Life and Times of ʿAlí ibn ʿÍsà ‘The Good Vizier’ (London: Cambridge University Press, 1927), 194–5. 98. Al-Hamadhānī, Takmilat Taʾrīkh al-Ṭabarī, in Dhuyūl Taʾrīkh al-Ṭabarī, ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, n.d.), 219. 99. Miskawayh, Tajārib al-umam, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Oxford, 1920–1), 1:80–1; ʿArīb b. Saʿd al-Qurṭubī, Ṣīlat Taʾrīkh al-Ṭabarī, in Dhuyūl Taʾrīkh al-Ṭabarī, 83; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 8:30. 100. Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam, 8:12; al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, 65

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101. 102. 103. 104. 105.

ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ and Muḥammad Nuʿaym al-ʿArqasūsī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1413/[1992–3]), 15:49. See Tyan, Histoire, 489. When he presided over the maẓālim court, the vizier ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā was also surrounded by qāḍīs. See Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, al-Wuzarāʾ tuḥfat al-umarāʾ fī tārīkh al-wuzarāʾ, ed. ʿAbd al-Sattār Aḥmad Farāj ([Cairo]: Dār Iḥyāʾ alKutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1958), 369. Hilāl al-Ṣābiʾ, al-Wuzarāʾ, 317–19. Cf. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:416–17; Bowen, The Life and Times of ʿAlí ibn ʿÍsà, 210–11. Al-Hamadhānī, Takmilat Taʾrīkh al-Ṭabarī, 315. Cf. Sourdel, Le vizirat ʿabbāside, 2:556. Tyan, Histoire, 510; Shapiro, “Islam and Appeal,” 366. P. Crone and M. Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 80ff. Cf. Powers, “On Judicial Review in Islamic Law,” 336. Tyan, Histoire, 493.

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3

From revolutionary violence to state violence: the Fāṭimids (297–567/909–1171) Yaacov Lev*

Historiography of the Fāṭimid ascent to power A Hebrew maxim which has its origin in the early modern European revolutionary tradition says: “The revolution kills its sons.” This certainly sums up the experience of countless 20th-century revolutionaries, among them many Jews, who massively and enthusiastically joined the Bolshevik revolution only to be confronted later with its ugly face: Stalin’s reign of terror and anti-semitism. Thus, while I was reading ʿAbbāsid history with Simha Sabari at Tel Aviv University (herself an ex-revolutionist in Mandatory Palestine and the Israel of the 1950s), the killing of the ʿAbbāsid propagandist Abū Muslim was no great surprise. For her, however, the ʿAbbāsids, whatever their revolutionary origins, constituted the ruling power; she was less interested in rulers than in popular protest and violence demonstrated against the rulers’ oppressive economic policies and their attempts to impose a uniform dogma on their subjects.1 Her teaching of ʿAbbāsid history was a good starting point for understanding Fāṭimid history, which offers some striking parallels to the ʿAbbāsid rise to power. The first stage of Fāṭimid history took place among the Berbers of the Kutāma in the Lesser Kabylia mountains, which were the geographical, cultural and ethnic fringe of the 4th/10th-century Muslim world and a region more backward than Khurāsān, the cradle of the ʿAbbāsid revolution. For information about the activity of the Fāṭimid mission among the Kutāma, we are dependent on Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa * An early version of this paper was presented at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciónes Científicas conference on “The public display of violence in Islamic societies” (Madrid, June 2006). I wish to thank Maribel Fierro for her kind invitation and the participants for their comments and suggestions.

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wa-ibtidāʾ al-dawla, and this is a partisan account as problematic as the equivalent ʿAbbāsid source, Akhbār al-dawla.2 Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), the creator of the Fāṭimid law and a prolific author, wrote this account many years after the events described took place, when the Fāṭimid state was already firmly established and secured. The question is not whether we should believe his account or not,3 but how his narrative is structured and what messages he tried to convey to his readers. Although deceptively modern, Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa is actually a wholly medieval text. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān sincerely believed that an imām was necessary for the well-being of humanity and he knew his identity, ʿAbd Allāh (ʿUbayd Allāh in the accounts of his enemies) al-Mahdī, the first reigning Fāṭimid imām. All of this work focuses on the imām and the propagandist Abū ʿAbd Allāh, who, up to certain point, served him loyally. The text appeals to the modern reader because of Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s simple language and detailed narrative, his insights and fondness for original documents, which, as far as can be ascertained, have been left untampered with. An example of this is Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s reproduction of the preamble of Ziyādat Allāh III’s letter to the people of Tunisia, which condemns Abū ʿAbd Allāh and seeks support for his rule. This letter of the last Aghlabid ruler (290–6/903–9) begins as follows: “In the name of God the Compassionate the Merciful. From the emir Ziyād Allāh, the son of ʿAbd Allāh, the military supporter of the religion of God, the one who adheres to the tradition of the Messenger of God and his family, the one who fights the Holy War against the enemies of God.”4 In this case we can discern Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s sarcasm, since Ziyād Allāh III ignominiously fled Tunisia and all his pretensions to be the true upholder of God’s religion proved wrong and empty. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān furthermore claims that Ziyād Allāh III’s letter proved to be counter-productive, since people were aware of both the killings he committed against his own family and his immoral life style. On the other hand, Abū ʿAbd Allāh earned a reputation for himself as a pious person who urged people to adhere to religion, to avoid what is prohibited and to refrain from sinning. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān also reproduces a letter written by the ʿAbbāsid caliph to the people of Tunisia. The opening phrase of this letter reads: “In the name of God the Compassionate the Merciful. From the servant of God Abū Muḥammad, the Imām al-Muktafī (supported through God), the Commander of the Faithful.”5 At the time when Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān wrote Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa the ʿAbbāsids were the major Muslim power in the Middle East, while the Fāṭimids ruled only Tunisia. They had failed to conquer Egypt and were now in the midst of preparations for a new 68

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attempt. Reproducing the claims of the rivals says nothing about accepting their validity and Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān trusted his readers to understand this. More than anything else, the reproduction of ʿAbbāsid claims to legitimacy conveys icy contempt. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s complete devotion to the imām endows the text with an uncompromising sense of self-righteousness which, in a dialectical way, enables him to report how others perceived al-Mahdī’s actions. For example, Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān recounts that the killing of Abū ʿAbd Allāh and his brother by al-Mahdī shocked the head of the former Aghlabid supporters, Abū al-Ḥasan ibn Abī Ḥajar, whom al-Mahdī employed in his service. He reacted to this by saying: “Abū ʿAbd Allāh is the master of this cause and the reason for this rule and one who kills his friends will be quick to kill his enemies.” He led a half-hearted uprising, which was crushed, and all of its participants were captured and executed.6 For Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān the moral superiority of the divinely guided Fāṭimid imām was self-evident and beyond reproach. Those who refused to admit this were considered to be blind and misguided. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s dogmatic, uncompromising devotion to the Fāṭimid cause produced a sophisticated, cohesive but impenetrable text. I suggest adopting an approach that goes along with the text rather than against it, since any attempt to “crack” the text, so to speak, will be futile. It would be pointless to discuss the deficiencies of the text and to supplement it with information derived from other sources. This paper is not about of “what really happened” but about perceptions of how the events took place. Our sources, more than depicting a historical reality, construct different images of it. The best we can do is to discuss these images, the attitudes of the writers who produced them and the impact they intended to make on their readers. Although violence is a central motif in all of the accounts dealing with the rise of the Fāṭimids to power, they differ in regard to its causes and present it differently.

Revolutionary violence According to Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, the propagandist Abū ʿAbd Allāh met Kutāma Berber pilgrims in Mecca, befriended them and traveled with them to the Maghreb. While his personality, learning and manners captivated them, he subtly interrogated them about their geographical, political and tribal circumstances. He found out that the Kutāma territory was five days’ journey long, three days’ journey wide and at a distance of ten days’ journey from the seat of the Aghlabid ruler (probably Kairouan). Politically, the Kutāma were independent people who merely 69

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acknowledged Aghlabid suzerainty. This was also true for the independent towns of Mīla, Satīf and Bilizma, which bordered on Kutāma territory and whose rulers held no power over the Kutāma.7 The Kutāma were a free tribal society divided into clans, with political authority held by tribal chiefs (akābir) and religious and judicial authority exercised by people who possessed ʿilm, knowledge. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s account is very vague on this point and the nature of the ʿilm remains unexplained. Better attested to is the tax system that prevailed among the Kutāma. They paid only the tithe and alms-tax (referred to as ṣadaqa) and the tax revenues were spent locally, with the poor being the beneficiaries of the alms-tax. The Kutāma characterized themselves as a proud, fighting tribal society which was immune from external threats, due to the size of its population and the prohibitive geography of its homeland. There was internal warfare, but they were also able to patch up their disputes.8 In 280/893, Abū ʿAbd Allāh settled in Ikjān among the Kutāma of Banū Saktān and began to preach. His preaching focused on the merits of ʿAlī and the imāms of his line; he also emphasized prayers, fasting during Ramaḍān and charitable and good moral deeds. Those who joined Abū ʿAbd Allāh realized how morally wrong their previous life had been, were motivated by the desire for proximity to God, sought heavenly rewards and became immersed in charitable work. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān describes those who joined Abū ʿAbd Allāh as believers and friends of God, while others described them as a group who shared a secret.9 While we are not well informed about the political structure of Berber society, how tribal chiefs were elected and how political power was legitimized, we do know that Abū ʿAbd Allāh established a new type of community and translated the religious-moral authority he had acquired into political power that had nothing to do with the traditional political order of the Kutāma society. Unsurprisingly, he was perceived as a threat by Berber tribal chiefs and the ruler of Mīla, and even the Aghlabid ruler took notice of his activity. Eventually, the pressure on the Banū Saktān increased and Abū ʿAbd Allāh and his group moved to Tāzrūt, where they were offered patronage by Ḥasan ibn Hārūn, the chief of Banū Ghashmān. The move to Tāzrūt was beneficial to both Abū ʿAbd Allāh and his men and Ḥasan ibn Hārūn, whose power much increased, something that allowed him to overshadow his elderly brother Maḥmūd as a tribal chief. A clash between the two brothers was inevitable and, in the war that erupted, Maḥmūd was killed. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān is very candid about Ḥasan’s reaction to Maḥmūd’s death. He describes how he was overjoyed and took over as the leader of Banū Ghashmān who, subsequently, joined Abū ʿAbd Allāh and his cause (daʿwa). The intra-Banū Ghashmān war 70

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was only the beginning of the tribal warfare which, later, led to fighting against a large, hostile coalition that also included the Mazāta clan of the Zenata Berbers.10 If one takes a broader view of the period from 280/893 to 296/909, when Ziyādat Allāh III fled Tunisia, one can discern two phases in Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s war for supremacy in Ifrīqiya. The first phase was between 280–9 and 893–902, when Abū ʿAbd Allāh gained control of the Kutāma, and the second was from 289/902, when he began to subdue other towns in Ifrīqiya and also frequently fought Aghlabid armies. How, then, did Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān present the violence and bloodshed of the revolution (daʿwa)? Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān refers to Abū ʿAbd Allāh as a leader supported by God who fought a holy war, and he belittles the roles of others in Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s victories. Victories and the capture of booty are presented as definite signs of divine grace and support, and victories won after ferocious fighting are duly noted. The implied message seems to be that bloody victories are supreme proofs of God’s will. Widespread slaughter of the enemy was not repugnant to Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and heavy casualties inflicted upon the enemy are recorded as a matter of fact.11 God manifests himself through war and carnage and helps to overcome the stubborn enemies of His cause. Thus, broadly speaking, the killing of the enemy is justified. For example, after the fall of the town of Satīf, Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān states that “those whom it was right to kill were killed”. However, by Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s/Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s standards, letters of safety had to be honored. For example, when the Kutāma slaughtered the population of a town that had capitulated, Abū ʿAbd Allāh reproached his commanders and advised the population of another town to be cautious and surrender without opening the gates of their town.12 According to Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s account, Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s preaching was about religion, piety and the rights of ʿAlī and the imāms of his line. If we approach Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s text with modern expectations for a revolutionary message that addresses socio-economic issues we will be very disappointed. It can, however, be argued that it is quite possible that Abū ʿAbd Allāh was a shrewd agitator or, perhaps, a revolutionary, who understood and exploited local socio-economic problems to his advantage. The ʿAbbāsid propagandist Abū Muslim was, indeed, such a person and there is no reason to assume that Abū ʿAbd Allāh was not endowed with similar talents.13 If, indeed, there was some concrete socio-economic content in Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s appeal to the Kutāma, Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān is probably not the one to tell us about it.14 He presents a one-dimensional but cohesive and unyielding narrative, which leaves us with many insoluble questions. If, however, we ask how seemingly non-violent preaching produced 71

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violent consequences, the answer is embedded in Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s text. Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s preaching had far-reaching political consequences and, in the context of Kutāma society, it undermined the tribal leadership and authority of the traditional possessors of ʿilm while, in the broader Ifrīqiya context, it challenged Aghlabid power. The Fāṭimid revolution was a political call (daʿwa) to overthrow the existing Sunnī regimes (whether the Aghlabid emirs or ʿAbbāsid caliphs) and to replace them with rulers who enjoyed divine legitimacy. Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s preaching had a powerful impact on Kutāma society and created a new community within it. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān refers to this community as awlīyāʾ (the friends of God) and those who joined it are described as joining dīn, religion. Others, at least at the beginning of Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s activity, referred to them as those who adopted the Easterners’ way.15 Eventually, Abū ʿAbd Allāh became the undisputed ruler of the Kutāma, but whether all of the Kutāma came to be regarded as awlīyāʾ remains unclear.16 The best way to understand the impact of Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s preaching on the Kutāma is to compare their situation prior to 280/893 to that after 298/902. Prior to Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s arrival, the Kutāma were an autonomous, self-governing society that lived in peace with its neighbors or, at least, was secured from external threats. Abū ʿAbd Allāh brought them the violence of the daʿwa, harnessed them to his cause and set them against their neighbors. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s text, with its usual mixture of naïveté and self-righteousness, contains two conflicting reports about how the Kutāma fared under Fāṭimid rule. Al-Mahdī (297–322/909–34), the first Fāṭimid ruling imām, from the very early days of his reign, ruled through reliance on the Kutāma, on whom he conferred posts of authority, favors (the slave girls of the former Aghlabid emir) and wealth. Furthermore, he ordered them to demonstrate their wealth and display symbols of status such as luxurious clothing and expensive riding gear. Abū ʿAbd Allāh advocated another approach toward the Kutāma: to preserve their simple, traditional way of life, since the luxuries only corrupted them. Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s criticism of al-Mahdī’s conduct was public and he relied on his own experience with the Kutāma, whom he had instructed and taught and, as he put it, made them a tool for the accomplishment of his goals.17 Any reproach expressed towards the infallible imām implied disobedience and Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s account serves to show how Abū ʿAbd Allāh deviated from the right path and became a hypocrite (munāfiq) whose eventual killing was thus justified. If we take a broader view of the Kutāma’s position under the Fāṭimids, it is clear that while they benefited from their new position they also bore the brunt of the fighting for the Fāṭimid cause. 72

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State violence The violence of the state (dawla) was the continuation of the violence of the daʿwa but, one might say, on a far larger scale. One of the first things al-Mahdī did was to order the execution of al-Yasaʿ ibn Midrār, the ruler of Sijilmāsa, the place where he, his son and their men had been living in semi-hiding for some time. Immediately after the conquest of the town by Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s army, al-Yasaʿ ibn Midrār and members of his family fled, but were captured and executed. This killing is the subject of a letter written on al-Mahdī’s order explaining the affair. This is one of the most surprising and intriguing documents reproduced by Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān. What strikes the reader is the apologetic tone of the letter, which mentions that al-Yasaʿ ibn Midrār was first approached by al-Mahdī in a friendly way, but was later mistreated and imprisoned. The letter emphasizes that when al-Yasaʿ ibn Midrār was captured there were no guarantees (ʿaqd, ʿahd) given to him and, by implication, his killing was permitted and justified.18 The signature on the letter reveals al-Mahdī’s view of himself and the titles he assumed: Commander of the Believers, Friend of God and the son of His messenger. In light of these claims it seems strange that al-Mahdī felt any need at all to explain his deeds. However, al-Mahdī’s reign had seen so much bloodshed that Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān refers directly to this matter. In his view, the shedding of blood was the imām’s prerogative and his unique position elevated him above ordinary human morality – a view echoed later by other Ismāʿīlī authors. Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn (d. 872/1468), for example, in an en passant remark, states that the Imām al-ʿAzīz (365–86/975–96) killed many people in Syria when he tried to capture Damascus. Apparently, he refers to the bitter war for the control of the town between the Fāṭimid army and the local population in the 360s/970s. In the same breath he characterizes the Imām al-Ḥākim (386–411/996–1021) as one who unleashed his sword against the morally corrupted until God filled his heart with mercy.19 This remark seems to be a kind of apologetic explanation for al-Ḥākimʿs reign of terror, which claimed many lives.20 In order to understand Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s views concerning the position of the Fāṭimid imām, the issue of al-Mahdī’s titles must be reexamined. The three titles quoted above are supplemented by others. For example, when Abū ʿAbd Allāh presented al-Mahdī to the public he referred to him as walī al-amr, imām al-dahr, and al-mahdī al-muntaẓar supported by God. In one letter he is referred to as the Messiah supported by God (al-mahdī bi-llāh), while in another public letter the 73

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formula is Abū Muḥammad the Imām, the Messiah supported by God, the Commander of the Believers who manifests the glory of Islam. When Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān mentions al-Mahdī he refers to him as walī Allāh.21 I would argue that, of this array of titles, the most significant one is walī Allāh, which indicates a personal relation with God. Everything derives from this sublime position in relation to God held by the Fāṭimid ruler. One could have said that, since al-Mahdī was the Friend of God, his reign was a Messianic reign ruled by a Messiah supported by God. To put it differently, the man, his position in relation to God and the nature of his reign all conflated into a single entity. However, although the imām represented a fusion of the human and the divine, some of his deeds needed an explanation. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān writes that al-Mahdī “closed the gates of mercy and afterwards displayed mercy toward those who sought (it), and those who obeyed attained the position of the righteous”.22 This statement ends a short account that reports on al-Mahdī’s punishment of propagandists who deviated from the right doctrines, some of whom were executed and others of whom died in prison. Although killing is the prerogative of the imām, Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān felt that in this case it needed, if not justification, a context and explanation. The concept of the Fāṭimid ruler being the Friend of God and the one who wielded absolute power over the lives and deaths of the men in his service and of his subjects was deeply ingrained in the ideological underpinnings of the Fāṭimid state and its modus operandi. Al-Ḥākim’s reign of terror discredited neither his credentials as imām in the eyes of later Ismāʿīlī authors nor his 5th/11th-century contemporaries. Al-Ẓāhir (411–27/1021–36), his son and successor, was the recipient of the following titles: Servant of God and His Friend the Imām ʿAlī Abī al-Ḥasan al-Ẓāhir li-Iʿzāz Dīn Allāh, Commander of the Believers, son of the Imām al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, Commander of the Believers. In 415/1025, when al-Ẓāhir asked one his administrators what should be done with another administrator accused of some wrongdoing, he received the answer: “Oh our lord (you are) the master (mālik, possessor) of forgiveness and the sword.” In this case, al-Ẓāhir chose the sword and put the administrator (who had survived al-Ḥākim’s reign of terror) to death. Al-Ẓāhir was not a particularly cruel ruler; he was more a bon vivant who had also a sense of duty, although sometimes he was callous about the fate of his subjects. He, for example, visited a hospital and distributed money for its maintenance, and punished a man in his retinue for threatening a member of the public with a knife. Perhaps the best illustration of the Fāṭimid ruler as the one who controlled the lives of his subjects is al-Ẓāhir’s reaction to the hunger riots of 415/1025. At the height of the 74

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famine the state was unable to provide for the black regiments of the army and the hungry soldiers went on a rampage in the capital. The regime sent troops to protect Fuṣṭāṭ and announced that the people were allowed to kill any black soldier who abused them. The people took this permission seriously, and indeed fought the blacks.23 Although state violence, as exercised and authorized by the imām, was part and parcel of Fāṭimid religious and political doctrines, one can ask what the exact nature of this violence was. To deal with this question one needs to examine three aspects of state conduct: 1) the way the state dealt with rebellions, 2) the fighting of external enemies, and 3) the imposition of law and order. The most horrific display of state violence took place when fighting rebels. The rebellion of Abū Yazīd (332–6/943–7), for instance, brought the Fāṭimid rule in North Africa to the brink of collapse and the fighting between the Fāṭimid troops and the rebels was fierce and relentless. Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn depicts Abū Yazīd as a heretic who allowed his men to treat the defeated enemy as infidels whose wealth, women and children could be seized. The rebels’ hatred of the Kutāma was intense. The capture of Kutāma children had a high priority for them.24 The conquest of towns by the rebels usually ended in massive killing and looting.25 Captured Fāṭimid officials were killed in order to intimidate the enemy and bring about their capitulation.26 Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn defines the Fāṭimids as “the party of God” and describes their war against the rebels (referred to as “the party of the Satan”) as a holy war.27 Little can be learnt from Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn’s narrative about the Fāṭimid conduct of war but he does recount that the angry population of the Fāṭimid capital, al-Mahdiyya, killed five hundred rebel captives who were brought to the town. The display of the severed heads of dead rebels became a common practice during al-Mahdī’s reign and continued when fighting against Abū Yazīd took place.28 Nonetheless, the womenfolk and children of Abū Yazīd who had been captured were well treated and eventually released.29 Rather surprisingly, Ibn al-Athīr (555–630/1160–1233), someone who had little sympathy for the Fāṭimids, also depicts Abū Yazīd as a heretic and reports massive killings when towns were captured by his forces. Ibn al-Athīr writes that, when captured, Abū Yazīd was kept in a cage with two monkeys and eventually died there from his wounds. Apparently, the similarity between the accounts of Ibn al-Athīr and Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn is due to their common use of Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s book about Abū Yazīd’s rebellion. Ibn al-Athīr expunged any references to Fāṭimid claims of divine legitimacy from the text, but preserved its anti-Abū Yazīd tenor.30 A certain corrective perspective on Abū Yazīd’s rebellion is offered by 75

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Ibn ʿIdhārī (d. after 712/1313), who writes that the uprising was a reaction to the Fāṭimids’ oppressive rule. Although he admits that Abū Yazīd’s rebellion caused large-scale bloodshed, he refrains from describing him as a heretic and claims that Abū Yazīd did not reveal his religious leanings (madhhab). His preaching, in which he called upon people to adhere to God’s truth (ḥaqq) and to recognize his leadership, was simple yet effective.31 Other authorities cited by Ibn ʿIdhārī, however, describe Abū Yazīd’s rebellion as a religiously motivated, overtly Sunnī and anti-Fāṭimid uprising that was supported by both the jurists and the pious (ʿubbād, ṣulaḥāʾ). Abū Yazīd’s relations with the population of Kairouan were complex and, while he harbored animosity towards them, he tended to blame the Fāṭimids for his mistreatment of them. The fate of the population of Kairouan did not change for the better following Abū Yazīd’s defeat, when they became subjected to Fāṭimid punitive actions, including executions.32 Both the rise of the Fāṭimids and Abū Yazīd’s rebellion were complex social upheavals inspired by a variety of religious ideologies and political claims. North Africa in the 4th/10th century was characterized by intricate ethnic and linguistic division between the Arabs and the Berbers, and different modes of life prevailed. The Mediterranean cities differed from the inland oasis cities and a precarious coexistence was maintained between nomadic, rural and urban populations. In addition, large slave populations of European and African origin were also part of the social jigsaw that made up North Africa. The intense level of violence that characterized both the aforementioned events was not only the outcome of uncompromising religious ideologies, but was probably also the reflection of the more subtle social and economic differences that already existed in this society. Egypt, conquered by the Fāṭimids in 358/969, was predominantly a rural country and socially far more uniform than North Africa. The only serious internal challenge to Fāṭimid rule occurred during 394–95/1004–5 and was the result of a confluence that took place between religious-political preaching and the resentment of the Banū Qurra (the Arab nomads of Libya) against al-Ḥākim’s rule. In 390/1000, al-Ḥākim blamed the Banū Qurra for foiling his military campaign against the town of Tripoli in Libya. In 394/1004, he executed a group of Banū Qurra although he had given them letters of safety and ordered their return to Alexandria. What began as a clash between the state and a Bedouin tribe acquired broader religious and political dimensions because of the appearance of a rival caliph in the person of Abū Rakwa, who had lived among Banū Qurra eking out a living teaching Qurʾān and claimed to be a descendant of the Spanish Umayyads. Three Fāṭimid armies, one of which suffered 76

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particularly heavy casualties, were defeated by the rebels, who proceeded to seize the town of Barqa and loot the Fayyūm depression. The decisive battle took place in the vicinity of Fayyūm and must have been very fierce, since six thousand severed heads were brought to Cairo but only one hundred prisoners. The prisoners were exposed to the scorn of the population and eventually executed as was Abū Rakwa.33 Broadly speaking, the confluence of sectarian religious beliefs and Bedouin tribalism frequently produced intense violence. The wars of the Carmathians against the ʿAbbāsids and Fāṭimids illustrate this point. The anonymous History of the Carmathians, as well as other sources, clearly point out that the wars between the Carmathians and the ʿAbbāsids were ferocious. The Carmathian treatment of non-combatant rural and urban populations and pilgrims to the holy cities of Arabia was merciless; both sides regularly executed prisoners of war.34 In 360/971, and again in 363/974, the Carmathians invaded Egypt and were repulsed only after heavy fighting. In Ramaḍān 363/May–June 974, when 1,300 Carmathian prisoners of war were executed in Cairo, the Fāṭimid Imām al-Muʿizz (r. in Egypt 362–5/972–5), denied any responsibility for the executions, saying that he had given orders to set the prisoners free and pay them money. Grief-stricken, he distributed charity and freed slaves.35 Although al-Muʿizz denied personal responsibility for what had happened, he did accept responsibility as the head of state and his subsequent deeds were typical expiatory acts (kaffārāt) to atone for sins. Not all of the Fāṭimid rulers were able to make such a fine and, one must admit, precarious distinction between their personal behavior and their conduct as the head of state. In 521/1127, al-Āmir (r. 495–524/1101–30) appointed a Christian monk as a tax collector, but the man terrorized the people and extorted vast sums of money. Eventually the public outcry against his deeds reached al-Āmir, who ordered his execution. By doing this, al-Āmir dissociated himself from what had happened but at the same time he was afraid that his infallibility as an imām might be compromised. After long consultations with a jurist, he agreed to fast during the holy months of Rajab and Shaʿbān in addition to the obligatory Ramaḍān fast.36 One is still, nonetheless, left bewildered as to how the Fāṭimids were able to reconcile infallibility and expiation. In the wars between the Fāṭimids and their Sunnī enemies both sides displayed unrestrained violence. In one case mob violence and state violence converged. In Ramaḍān 307/February 920, following the defeat of the Fāṭimid navy off Rosetta, hundreds of captives were taken and separated into three groups. Naval officers were put on public display, captives from Sicily, Kairouan, Barqa and Tripoli were set free, but hundreds of 77

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the Kutāma and Zuwayla were massacred by soldiers and the civilian population.37 The ʿAbbāsid governor of Egypt was responsible for these selective killings and, through them, the authorities tried to deliver a message. The people of Sicily and the North African coastal towns were considered as a population subjected by the Fāṭimids, forced to participate in their military expeditions and were, therefore, spared. On the other hand the Kutāma were staunch Fāṭimid supporters and the Zuwayla were most probably blacks who, like the Kutāma, comprised the backbone of the Fāṭimid army, so they were killed. Upon closer examination, however, it seems that there were also other factors at work. The people from Sicily and North Africa must have been either ethnic Arabs or part of the Arabicized population, and most certainly Sunnīs. The Kutāma, on the other hand, were Berbers and Ismāʿīlīs and the Zuwayla were either slaves or freedmen. In this case, political animosity combined with ethnic and religious hatred sealed the fate of the Kutāma and Zuwayla captives. From the inception of their state, the Fāṭimids were involved in wars against the Byzantines and Italians and, given the geographical proximity of southern Italy to Sicily and Tunisia, they encountered little difficulty in raiding these territories. Ismāʿīlī sources, however, tend to exaggerate Fāṭimid successes. For example, they claimed that in a naval raid conducted in 323/934–35 the town of Genoa had been conquered and the raiders had killed many people and captured vast spoils. The Fāṭimid flotilla, however, was only twenty ships strong and, when the small size of 4th/10th-century vessels is considered, it appears that such an exploit was rather impossible.38 The reasons behind such exaggerations are quite obvious. Wars waged against Christians were regarded as the embodiment of the holy war and victories and slaughtering of the enemy as signs of God’s support for the imām. Frequently, however, Fāṭimid policies toward Christian powers, especially Byzantium, were pragmatic and the Fāṭimids were often ready to sign truce agreements. In 350/961, for example, the Fāṭimids maintained the truce agreement with Byzantium in spite of the Byzantine reconquest of Crete and requests for help sent to them. At that time the Fāṭimids were engaged in preparations for the conquest of Egypt and had no intention to spare any forces and resources for Crete. Following the conquest of Egypt, Fāṭimid expansion into Palestine and Syria led them into confrontation with Byzantium, and when Fāṭimid armies stood in the way of Byzantine interests in Syria, they were engaged without hesitation. In 360/971 a Fāṭimid army sent against Antioch was defeated, and in 385/995 Emperor Basil II inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Fāṭimid army that was laying siege to Aleppo. The Fāṭimid policy toward Byzantium can be best described as restrained, with a preference 78

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for truce agreements and diplomatic achievements such as securing the release of Muslim prisoners of war and the pronouncement of the Friday sermon at the Constantinople mosque in the name of the Fāṭimid rulers. In exchange, the Fāṭimids were ready to recognize Byzantine patronage over the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. After the Fāṭimid conquest of Egypt, Egypt’s international trade began to boom and it became very dependent on the arrival of Italian traders interested in spices and products imported from India to Egypt. The significance of this trade is illustrated by the events that took place in Rabīʿ II 386/April-May 996 in Cairo, when state violence was directed against Muslim rioters who killed Italian traders who were staying in the town. The riots erupted after the burning of warships in the arsenal and over one hundred traders from Amalfi were killed and goods worth 90,000 dīnārs were looted. The Fāṭimid authorities protected those who survived the riots. They made every effort to return the looted goods, and arrested and then carried out random executions against the Muslims suspected of taking part in the rioting. The execution of Muslims for injuring Christian foreigners was a highly unusual act and must have been motivated by the wish to protect crucial commercial interests. The Fāṭimid damage-control effort was successful and the Fāṭimids managed to convince the traders from Amalfi and other foreign traders that what had happened in Cairo was exceptional. The executions were instrumental in conveying this message to both the local population and the Christian traders.39 The Fāṭimid attitudes toward the Christian world were not based upon bigotry, and Fāṭimid relations with Christian powers were generally pragmatic. It is this pragmatism which may explain the Fāṭimids’ gross misunderstanding of the intentions and goals of the First Crusade. Although the Fāṭimids were well informed about the advance of the First Crusade, they only realized very late that they would actually have to fight the Franks. It is interesting to note that, in their earlier contacts with the Franks, the Fāṭimids proposed a common anti-Saljūqid policy to the leaders of the First Crusade. The loss of Damascus and the inland territories of Palestine to the Saljūqs (468–92/1076–99) prompted the Fāṭimids to take advantage of the conditions created by the First Crusade to recapture their lost possessions in the Eastern Mediterranean. Neither the First Crusade nor the Frankish expansion during the 6th/12th century, however, caused the Fāṭimid rulers to adopt a policy of holy war against the Franks. In spite of the Fāṭimid involvement in the wars of the Crusade, the ideology of jihād did not take root in Fāṭimid Egypt. The first priority of the political vision of the Fāṭimids was their desire to rule the Muslim world, and world rule 79

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came second. The most savage wars the Fāṭimids fought were against Muslim enemies, rebels and states, and not the Christian powers.

The running of the state If shedding blood was the imām’s prerogative, dispensation of justice was his duty. One of the signs of the coming of the Messiah was the inauguration of the rule of justice to follow the tyranny and oppression that typified the pre-Messianic era. The exact nature of this Messianic justice remains elusive, but it appears that its form was to be more judicial than social. Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn, for example, writes that the Fāṭimid imāms, who heralded the Messianic era, ruled justly and adhered most strictly to Islamic law (literally the law of Muḥammad).40 References to the dispensation of justice by Abū ʿAbd Allāh and al-Mahdī also appear in Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s account of the establishment of the Fāṭimid rule in Tunisia when he writes that al-Mahdī provided justice to the oppressed, accepted petitions and examined people’s grievances. This is the standard description of a Muslim ruler who presided over the Court of Complaint (maẓālim), and in this respect Islamic tradition (Sunnī and Shīʿī/Ismāʿīlī alike) was entirely in line with the ancient Middle Eastern tradition that equated kingship with justice, and the dispensation of justice with sovereignty. Far more interesting are Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s remarks about the dispensation of justice by Abū ʿAbd Allāh among the Kutāma. He wielded both political and judicial authority and applied the penalties prescribed by the Qurʾān and Islamic law as well as non-Islamic punishments, which were derived from local Berber tradition.41 Following the collapse of the Aghlabid regime, and before al-Mahdī took the reins of power into his hands, Abū ʿAbd Allāh had to deal with the situation in Kairouan, the biggest and the most important town of Ifrīqiya. His first priority was to establish law and order and to show that his rule was different from that of the Aghlabids. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān writes that Abū ʿAbd Allāh not only prohibited alcohol and other reprehensible practices but also appointed a Shīʿī person as the new qāḍī, who administered justice according to a legal system based on the utterances of the imāms.42 Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s administration of justice, however, indicates a wider and a more serious problem: the fact that the establishment of the Fāṭimid state preceded the creation of Fāṭimid law. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s remarks are of particular interest, since he was both the creator of Fāṭimid law and the historian of the daʿwa and dawla. What the meaning of a legal system based on the utterances of the imām could have been remains vague. The organization and administration of justice in the Fāṭimid state of 80

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Egypt is well attested to by the sources. Justice was administered through four judicial institutions: the qāḍī, the chief of police (ṣāḥib al-shurṭa), the market inspector (muḥtasib) and the Court of Complaints (al-naẓar fī l-maẓālim). In line with Islamic medieval practice, the chief of police was responsible for criminal justice, including the application of violent punishments as prescribed in Islamic law. In cases of apostasy from Islam the ultimate authority for applying the death penalty rested with the Fāṭimid ruler, and the chief of police needed his approval for the execution of the offenders.43 Punishments meted out by the chief of police were carried out publicly and the offenders were paraded through the streets. This public display of the coercive powers of the state had symbolic value and served as a deterrent. It stressed the role of the state as the upholder of the law and social order and made the dispensation of justice socially meaningful. Sometimes the policemen were themselves the perpetrators of crime. One such case from 373/983–4 is revealed to us in the writings of Ibn al-Ṣīrafī (d. 542/1147), a well-known administrator and author of administrative manuals. In that year a foreign merchant was murdered and robbed in a covered market (qayṣāriyya) in Fusṭāṭ. The police made several arrests but people accused the slave of the chief of police of being behind the murder and a petition to this effect was submitted to al-ʿAzīz, the reigning imām, who passed it on to his vizier. Al-ʿAzīz expressed his dismay that such crime could have happened “under our wings and in our city”, and urged the vizier to “cleanse this disgrace from our dynasty and the grief it has caused to it”. The vizier dismissed the chief of police from his post, but he was reinstated some years later.44 Commitment to justice was more than a self-righteous pose adopted by the Fāṭimid rulers; it was an obligation that evoked expectations among the subjects. A Geniza document from the reign of al-Mustanṣir (r. 427–87/1036–94) highlights what the subjects expected from their rulers. The document (ruqʿa, i.e. a petition) submitted by a father relates the sad story of the murder of his son and his business associate, who were killed and robbed by the captain and his crew while traveling on a boat on the Nile. The father invoked “the justice of the Prophetic dynasty” and request to order a certain emir to carry out the investigation. We do not know how the Fāṭimid authorities handled this case, but it cannot be said that merchants were regularly killed and robbed in Fāṭimid Egypt.45 While the shedding of blood was the imām’s prerogative and the dispensation of justice his obligation, the distribution of charity symbolized his virtue. The concept of charity was deeply embedded in Muslim thought, ethics and practice. The giving of zakāt (the obligatory alms-tax) became one of the five duties a Muslim had to carry out. The handling of zakāt 81

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by Muslim medieval states was, however, a dismal failure. Zakāt did not evolve into any kind of social leveler. On the other hand, the distribution of charity (ṣadaqa, meaning redemptive alms giving, hereafter referred to simply as charity) did become a standard practice. While charity embodied the piety of the donor and his quest for salvation it was also used as a tool to legitimize political rule and to enhance the social standing of the donor. Both meanings of charity, the sacred and the instrumental, are well attested to for the whole span of the Fāṭimid period. Some references to the distribution of charity by the Fāṭimid rulers are rather surprising. Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn, for example, writes that al-Manṣūr (r. 334–41/946–53) distributed food among the poor in Sūsa, which had been besieged by Abū Yazīd’s forces, and refers to this distribution as charity.46 At first glance the use of the term ṣadaqa in this context seems misleading, for one would expect a ruler to supply food to a town besieged by the enemy. Although charity was a sacred duty, the ruler and the state had no social obligations toward the subjects and, as a matter of fact, the subjects also had no great expectations from their rulers as to their individual welfare. Thus Idrīs ʿImād al-Dīn’s reference to a deed instrumental to the war effort as charity is a precise reflection of the realities of medieval times. Al-Manṣūr recognized the value of charity and royal clemency as political tools. As a ruler, his first deeds were the distribution of gifts (apparently among the people of the ruling establishment), the freeing of prisoners from jails and the distribution of charity among the poor.47 The most spectacular use of charity took place in Muḥarram 335/August 946 after the defeat of Abū Yazīd’s rebellion, when al-Manṣūr distributed charity both to the needy soldiers of his army and to the poor and needy Muslims at large. He ordered his governors to distribute charity in the districts under their rule and instructed his confidant, the eunuch Jawdhar, to dispense charity in al-Mahdiyya. Charity is also mentioned in a letter in which people were urged to distribute charity and free slaves as a token of gratitude to God for the restoration of peace after the turmoil of war. Al-Manṣūr himself set an example for this when he informed Jawdhar of his manumission from slavery and granted him the title Client of the Commander of the Believers.48 Al-Manṣūr’s distribution of charity was an expression of gratitude to God for his deliverance from the hands of his enemies. Charity served as a channel of communication between the believer, whether a monarch or a commoner, and his Lord. Fāṭimid rulers distributed charity when their family members died and when they survived personal accidents or assassination attempts. The personal and the public 82

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tend to blend. There is a striking similarity between what the Fāṭimid rulers did as individuals and the conduct of the state as a political entity. In 517/1123, for example, the Fāṭimid regime foiled a plot by a rival Ismāʿīlī group in which five agents were caught and executed and the money in their possession was seized. There were no celebrations, but only pious deeds and extensive dispensing of charity. The distribution of charity became a form of institutional conduct by the state during Ramaḍān and festivals, while certain charitable expenditures were incorporated into the state budget. In the budget of 517/1123–4, for instance, money was allocated to converts to Islam, to poor men and women and vagabonds, in addition to other charitable distributions carried out by the Office of the Pious Endowments.49

Conclusions In conclusion, while state violence sustained the Islamic medieval polity, it was only one of the elements that maintained the political and social order. Since there was a strong and persistent tendency to seek divine and religious legitimization for state violence and political power, with emphasis being placed on the rule of law and dispensation of legal justice, charity and charitable deeds in fact complemented state violence. The Fāṭimid state was a typical medieval Muslim state that came into existence through violence and was brought to an end by violence. It sought divine legitimacy for its existence and for the violence it exercised, and laid emphasis on its dispensation of justice and benevolence.

Notes 1. See Simha Sabari, Mouvements populaires à Bagdad à l’époque ʿabbasside IXe–XIe siècles (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1981). 2. For how this text was commissioned and its orientation, see Ismail K. Poonawala, “The Beginning of the Ismāʿīlī Daʿwa and the Establishment of the Fāṭimid Dynasty as Commemorated by al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān,” in Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam, ed. Farhad Daftary and Josef W. Meri (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), 339–41; Michael Brett, The Rise of the Fāṭimids. The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Tenth Century CE (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 73–4. 3. James E. Lindsay, “Prophetic Parallels in Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shīʿī’s Mission Among the Kutāma Berbers, 893–910,” IJMES 24 (1992), 42. 4. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Risālat Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa, ed. Wadad al-Qadi (Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1970), 171. For the content of this letter, see Heinz Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi. The Rise of the Fāṭimids, Engl. tr. Michael Bonner 83

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

(Leiden: Brill, 1996), 113–14; Sumaiya A. Hamdani, Between Revolution and State. The Path to Fāṭimid Statehood (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 19–21. For an English annotated translation of Iftitāḥ al-Daʿwa, see Hamid Haji, Founding the Fāṭimid State: The Rise of an Early Islamic Empire (London, I.B. Tauris, 2006). Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 174. Ibid., 27–9. For the geography of the Aghlabid and Kutāma domain, see Georgette Cornu, Atlas du monde arabo-islamique à l’époque classique IXe–Xe siècles (Leiden: Brill, 1985), map XII. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 64–6; Mercedes García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform: Mahdīs of the Muslim West, Engl. tr. Martin Beagles (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 69; Halm, Empire, 40–1. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 67, 73, 76. For Ikjān, see Farhat Dachraoui, Califat fatimide au Maghreb 296–362/909–973: Histoire politique et institutions (Tunis: S. T. D., 1981), 64, and the map on 48–9. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 101–2, 105–6, 109. Ibid., 109, 116–17, 158, 159, 199, 205. Ibid., 155, 163, 164–5, 191–3. For Abū Muslim, see Moshe Sharon, “The Military Reforms of Abū Muslim and Their Consequences,” in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization, ed. Moshe Sharon (Jerusalem: Cana, 1986), 117–18; Jacob Lassner, Islamic Revolution and Historical Memory (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1986), 120–2. Claude Cahen has found no social content in Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlism. In North Africa the Fāṭimids simply enjoyed the support of malcontent Kutāma. See idem, “La changeante portée sociale de quelques doctrines religieuses,” in L’élaboration de l’Islam, ed. Centre de recherches d’histoire des religions (Strasbourg) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961), 15. GarcíaArenal states that the revolt of the Kutāma “reveals the susceptibility of Berber tribal society to Islamic prophethood, irrespective of doctrine.” See eadem, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 65. The motif of “susceptibility of Berber tribal society” also appears in the writings of Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress. They write that the Fāṭimid success in North Africa “had nothing to do with specific doctrines . . . It had more to do with the structural militancy of tribal society, mobilized by a militant messianism for a specific kind of revolution.” See eidem, The Berbers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 93. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 76, 93, 97, 110, 115. Ibid., 121, 123–7. Ibid., 256, 260. Cf. Halm, Empire, 149, 161. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 243–4; García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 72–3. Idrīs b. al-Ḥasan ʿImād al-Dīn (d. 872/1468), ʿUyūn al-akhbār, ed. 84

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20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36. 37.

Mohammed Yalaoui, Taʾrīkh al-khulafāʾ al-Fāṭimiyyīn bi-l-Maghrib (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1985), 40. For a different evaluation of al-Ḥākim’s career, see Heinz Halm, “Der Treuhänder Gottes: Die Edikte des Kalifen al-Ḥākim,” Der Islam 63 (1986), 11–72. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 245, 246, 251, 271, 273. The term amr (authority) has a wide range of meanings. See Dominique Sourdel, “L’autorité califienne dans le monde sunnite,” in La notion d’autorité au Moyen Age Islam, Byzance, Occident, ed. G. Makdisi, D. Sourdel and J. Sourdel Thomine (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1982), 101. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 276. Musabbiḥī, Akhbār Miṣr, ed. Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid and Thierry Bianquis (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archeologie Orientale du Caire, 1978), 20–1, 24, 59–60, 87. ʿImād al-Dīn, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 265, 272. Ibid., 274, 276, 277, 294–5, 299, 326. Ibid., 273, 281, 288, 290–1. Ibid., 311, 312, 316, 350, 398. Ibid., 179, 180, 281, 313, 398, 409. Ibid., 358, 371–2, 451. ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī l-taʾrīkh, ed. ʿAlī Shīrī (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1989–92, repr. 2004), 7:102–3, 104, 106, 108. For Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān’s book dealing with Abū Yazīd’s rebellion, see Halm, Empire, 306. For other accounts which rely on the Fāṭimid version of these events, see Brett, Rise, 167. Muḥammad Ibn ʿIdhārī, al-Bayān al-mughrib, ed. G. S. Colin and É. LéviProvençal (repr. Beirut, n.d.), 1: 216. Ibid., 1:218, 220. Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbār al-aʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafāʾ, ed. Muḥammad Aḥmad and Jamāl al-Dīn Shayyāl (Cairo: Lajnat Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1967–73), 2:34–5, 51–2, 54, 60–1, 62, 63–4, 65 (quoting Musabbiḥī); Stijn Van Nieuwenhuyse, “The Uprising of Abū Rakwa and the Bedouins Against the Fāṭimids,” in Les lieux de culte en Orient, ed. C. Cannuyer et al. (Acta Orientalia Belgica 17, Bruxelles: Société belge d’études orientales, 2003), 245–64. Taʾrīkh akhbār al-Qarāmiṭa li-Thābit ibn Sinān wa-Ibn al-ʿAdīm, ed. Suhayl Zakkār (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, [1971]), 16, 17, 20–1, 22–3, 25, 27, 32–3, 36. Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz al-ḥunafāʾ, 1:209. For other cases of expiation, see Maribel Fierro, “Caliphal Legitimacy and Expiation in al-Andalus,” in Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas, ed. Muhammad Khalid Masud et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 55–63. Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz al-ḥunafāʾ, 3:119, 125–6, 127. Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Kindī, K. al-Umarāʾ wa-K. al-Quḍāṭ, ed. Rhuvon 85

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38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

Guest, The Governors and Judges of Egypt (Leiden: Brill, 1912; London: Luzac and Co., 1912), 276. ʿImād al-Dīn, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 262–3. Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiz wa-l-iʿtibār bi-dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-al-āthār (Cairo: Būlāq, 1324/1906), 3:317–18. The topic of European traders in Fāṭimid Egypt is vast. See, for example, Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid, al-Dawla al-Fāṭimiyya fī Miṣr: tafsīr jadīd (Cairo: al-Dār al-Miṣriyya al-Lubnāniyya, 2000), 487–9, 494–5. ʿImād al-Dīn, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 41, 245. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 124, 258; Halm, Empire, 105, 153. Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, Iftitāḥ, 215. Musabbiḥī, Akhbār Miṣr, 90. Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz al-ḥunafāʾ, 1:263–5. S. M. Stern, “Three Petitions of the Fāṭimid Period,” Oriens 15 (1962), 17. For a broader discussion of this issue, see Yaacov Lev, “Charity and Justice in Medieval Islam,” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 76 (2002), 1–17. ʿImād al-Dīn, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 343. Ibid., 349–50. Ibid., 442–3. Mūsā Ibn al-Maʾmūn al-Baṭāʾiḥī, Akhbār Miṣr, ed. Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archeologie Orientale du Caire, 1983), 36, 37, 41, 42, 58, 64, 70–1, 77, 97, 98, 102; ʿAbd al-Salām b. al-Ḥasan Ibn Tuwayr, Nuzhat al-muqlatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn, ed. Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid (Beirut: In Kommission bei Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1992), 100–1; Yaacov Lev, Charity, Endowments, and Charitable Institutions in Medieval Islam (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005), 13–20.

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4

Actions speak louder than words: reactions to lampoons and abusive poetry in medieval Arabic society Zoltán Szombathy

Invective poetry as violence The genre of hijāʾ, ‘satire’, ‘lampoon’, or ‘invective poetry’, was a cultural phenomenon very characteristic of pre-Islamic Arabian society. It had a special significance in the context of tribal conflicts and rivalry, and was by no means considered sinful or reprehensible per se even though recognized to be a form of aggressive challenge. From the time of the great Islamic conquests urbanization, detribalization and the increasing dominance of Islamic values, emphasizing the brotherhood of all Muslims and condemning unnecessary conflict as well as malevolence and slander gradually modified popular attitudes to hijāʾ to some extent. Popular assessments of the phenomenon palpably shifted towards disapproval. However, that vague disapproval did not result in the emergence of clearcut norms, a set of straightforward rules, for the proper manner of reacting to a challenge of hijāʾ. As we shall see, a myriad possibilities of response were available to the offended person, and deciding the eventual course of action or inaction involved considerations of audience, publicity and secrecy, honour, generally accepted norms, political realities, and social circumstances. Surely, personal temper also played a role. Reactions to hijāʾ apparently ranged from extremely violent retaliation to deliberate inaction; and both extremes of behaviour might be either approved or disapproved of by the public, depending on the circumstances and the various interpretations of the antagonists’ motives. As will be obvious, my analysis owes a lot to two books in particular. The ideas and general approach of Michael Gilsenan in his admirably presented, rich analysis of violence in a village in cAkkār, Northern Lebanon1 were an immensely important source of inspiration: while the setting and the cultural ambience he worked in are obviously very 87

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different from the medieval situation, the idea that instead of hard-andfast rules of behaviour one can expect to find all manner of situational responses that make each case unique in its way seems to be valid for my corpus of data as well. On the genre of hijāʾ and its assessments in medieval Arabic culture, literature and literary criticism, G. J. H. van Gelder’s terse study remains the authoritative analysis. The motifs and style of hijāʾ and its historical development as a literary phenomenon will not be a concern of this essay, which is about violent reactions to lampoons, not about lampoons. Van Gelder’s primary concerns were apparently different from mine – more literary to start with2 – thus it might perhaps be said that where he finished, I will begin: for instance, his instructive but rather brief observations on the often puzzling variability of reactions to hijāʾ, and the “two kinds of ethos” (viz., Islam and honour),3 will find a more thorough treatment here. On the other hand, consulting his book, which I could do only after the completion of the bulk of this essay, led me to abridge my own discussion of one particular point, the widespread preference for a low linguistic register for the purpose of hijāʾ poetry. For a more detailed presentation of the problem, the reader should refer to van Gelder’s analysis.4 That composing hijāʾ in the high ʿAbbāsid era and onwards was still widely viewed as a genuine act of violence, an aggression with not inconsiderable social consequences, is indisputable. Yet it was violence in a sense different from that current in the early Islamic and pre-Islamic periods. First and foremost, the damage was now seen as more personal and less communal (even if slighting the targeted person’s tribe remained a common poetic motif). Either way, hijāʾ was positively capable of causing real social harm, and its social consequences would often, or mostly, go beyond some slight nuisance. To a modern reader accustomed to the very different sensibilities current in contemporary Western urban culture, many medieval Arab individuals’ reactions of genuine fear and loathing to rhymed abuse may often seem to be exaggerated, irrational or downright hysterical.5 They are nothing of the kind, however. In a social arena infinitely appreciative of rhetorical and linguistic feats and characterized by a fiercely competitive atmosphere among courtiers and other intellectuals, hijāʾ could be a truly lethal weapon, given the right set of circumstances. A poet with a talent for lampoons could easily overawe people who cared about their reputations, and utilize his skills and manipulate the fears of his opponents to serve his own best interests. A well-known account about Abū Nuwās and his senior poetic rival Abān al-Lāḥiqī (d. 200/815–16) illustrates this point. The latter was a poet favoured by the Barmakid family, who assigned him the responsibility 88

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of distributing their gifts among the rest of the profession at his own discretion. Incensed with the high position of someone whose talent he felt was inferior to his, the young Abū Nuwās composed a hijāʾ about Abān, which the latter implored him not to make public. Abū Nuwās nevertheless did so, which totally undid the reputation of Abān al-Lāḥiqī, and, as the account concludes, “thereupon Abān became like a slave to Abū Nuwās, glorifying him whenever he met him or heard his name mentioned” – no doubt fearing further lampoons.6 On the other hand, poets known for their excessive penchant for lampooning other people were usually feared and detested at the same time, and could actually become social outcasts. A Meccan poet of the 11th/17th century called Ibrāhīm b. Yūsuf al-Muhtār, notorious for his very obscene lampoons, died alone in his own house, and it was only after two days had passed that his cadaver was found for the stink of its decomposing tissues, a ghastly emblem of the man’s isolation and unpopularity.7 The motifs and the style of many a lampoon may appear bizarre to a modern reader, who would be excused for finding it perplexing that mature, intelligent and high-ranking men should have been so concerned with, indeed scared of, banal, often vulgar and obviously untrue versicles, rhymed accusations of sodomy, bestiality and suchlike abominations. But there are sufficient indications that, in the market for hijāʾ, it was neither quality nor truth content and plausibility that mattered.8 Poets would aim at maximum satirical impact – and social harm – and that could be best achieved by opting for a highly vernacular, and easily memorizable, style, vocabulary and imagery. This has to do with the issue of publicity: the conspicuity of the act of (verbal) aggression was a determining factor in its force and effect. The more public and widely known the lampoon the more damaging it would be, which explains the general preference for an almost vernacular register in such poems. This attitude is attested by many texts, some of which will presently follow, suggesting that the more readily comprehensible to the common folk the language of a hijāʾ poem, the more harmful and feared it would be.9 The reason is, I dare say, clear enough. It was not primarily in the halls of power that hijāʾ poems were intended to circulate; street kids could actually be more effective agents of making the poem notorious and widely disseminated than could intellectuals and men of letters. A hijāʾ in obscure classical Arabic would be savoured by scholars only, and would therefore have too limited a reach to have any real social impact. The following account is as explicit as could be concerning the merits of a vernacular style as an essential factor in causing maximum social harm to the target of hijāʾ: 89

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It has been narrated by Aḥmad b. Hārūn: One day, when I visited Abū Sacd al-Makhzūmī, he said, “Of what use is all this? I write good poetry and yet it won’t be transmitted, and [this man] makes worthless [poems], yet they’ll be passed on. He can disgrace me with his bad products, and him I cannot for all the good ones I make.” I asked, “Whom do you mean, oh Abū Sacd?”, and he replied, “Whoever else could I mean but this accursed man, Dicbil [al-Khuzācī]? I have written about him this: ‘Wearing a ṭaylasān is not a fitting garment for horsemen; [. . . etc.; a good hijāʾ poem in a sound classical style]’, and yet, by God, no-one bar some experts of poetry have paid any attention to it in this whole town. And he composed this: ‘Oh Abū Sacd, you woman, whose sister and wife are whores [. . . etc.; a hijāʾ consisting of such vulgar nonsense]’, and, by God, even the children in the Qurʾān schools, the passers-by and all the riffraff keep reciting it! I cannot pass anywhere without hearing some lowly people mouthing it. Some of them recognize me and try to put me to shame, while others are unaware of who I am and I have to listen to it simply because it is so easily palatable to them.”10

However, the above observations about the substantial social consequences of hijāʾ cannot pass without two caveats. First, it must be noted that as far as verbal offences, humiliation and damage to someone else’s honour are concerned, hijāʾ did not represent an entirely unique category. Besides it, a number of other poetic motifs and themes, all of which tended to affect a man’s honour, were viewed in much the same light as hijāʾ and treated accordingly. Love poetry addressed to the womenfolk of a great man is a prominent example. The Omayyad-era poet al-Aḥwaṣ barely escaped a serious beating for a hijāʾ poem, but what its target particularly resented was not the lampoon itself but the poet’s mentioning of his wife (mā jazictu min hijāʾika iyyāya wa-lākin mā dhikruka zawjatī?).11 (We will return to this case below.) A similar case, widely known among contemporaries, was set off by a muwashshaḥ poem of the so-called muzannam type (one that varies the use of classical Arabic case endings with the lack thereof characteristic of the dialects) composed by the North African poet Ibn Gharla: the opening lines of this love poem, because of their being suggestive of an amorous encounter between their author and the sister of the then ruler, incited the wrath of the Almohad ruler cAbd al-Muʾmin (524–58/1130–63) and led to the execution of the poet.12 And almost needless to say, political commentary of the unflattering sort was just as likely to provoke violent reprisals as any invective poetry.13 Another caveat to make is that no lampoon, sting it never so fiercely, could hurt someone totally unconcerned about it. We have already encountered, and will encounter further on, cases showing that some people were truly preoccupied, indeed obsessed, with protecting their 90

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honour; but then others obviously could not have cared less about it. The implication is that hijāʾ was an effective weapon only against those who attached great importance to cultivating a clean public image of themselves (including most of the highest echelons of the aristocracy); a range far more limited than we usually, at least tacitly, presume. Partly, the issue was one of status and wealth, as the very concept of sharaf (‘honour’) was unlikely to be associated in any way with the cāmma, ‘the common folk’, at least by the upper classes, who tended to view them as beneath contempt, a source of amusement at best. One ought not to forget that the attitudes recorded in the sources were ideals of a minority class only, the political and intellectual élite.14 Partly, it was an issue of individual choice, as there seem to have been higher-status people, and apparently fairly rich people too, who would not care two hoots about their reputation. It was thus quite possible to opt out of the whole sharaf game, and then hijāʾ would lose its threatening aspect. For instance, while imputations of miserliness and greed were traditionally some of the commonest poetic motifs employed in hijāʾ, a passage in al-Jāḥiẓ’s Kitāb al-bukhalāʾ reveals that defamation of this kind was actually not a matter of great concern to some people. After pledging that he would not reveal the identity of acquaintances in his book to avoid embarrassing them, al-Jāḥiẓ adds that “we may nevertheless mention a friend by name if he is the sort of person who makes fun of all this [matter of miserliness], and whom we see jesting about it and using his witty jestfulness as a way of masking his shame”.15 The following excerpt, though rather comical, illustrates the role of individual choice quite well: After al-Jammāz had composed a lampoon about [his poetic rival] cAbd al-Ṣamad b. al-Mucadhdhal, [the latter] came to me and asked me to protect him from [al-Jammāz]. I said to him: “Someone like you being afraid of al-Jammāz?” He replied: “Oh yes I am, because he doesn’t care about hijāʾ, nor does he fear it, as he’s got no honour at all; and his poetry has success among the ignorant.” He insisted [in his plea], until I made peace between them, but not before the following verses [by al-Jammāz] about him had become widely known: “Ibn al-Mucadhdhal: who is he; and who is this father of his, al-Mucadhdhal? / I asked Wahbān about him, and he told me that [he is an] egg smuggled into another nest (bayḍ muḥawwal).” Now, this Wahbān was a vendor of pigeons. [Having heard of the verses,] he gathered a group of friends and neighbours and kept turning up at friendly gatherings [majālis], swearing that he had never said Ibn al-Mucadhdhal was an egg smuggled into another nest, and imploring them to convey his apologies to him. This [behaviour] of his became quite a story and a source of much fun in Baṣra, so cAbd al-Ṣamad came to me asking for my help and saying: “Haven’t I told you that 91

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he’d bring a real disaster on me? By God, Wahbān’s going around and swearing to all and sundry that he’s never said I was an egg smuggled into another nest is even more of a nuisance than the original hijāʾ!” So I sent for Wahbān and summoned him, then told him: “We know that al-Jammāz has lied about you; we’ve accepted your apologies, and now we’d rather you didn’t try and apologize to everyone in this matter. We’ve accepted your apologies!” And he left, but cAbd al-Ṣamad had already suffered much trouble.16

Types of reaction to lampoons In the second part of this chapter, a short overview will be offered of the various retributions that might be meted out for verbal offences of the hijāʾ type. In fact, the sheer variety of ‘typical’ reactions is in itself an indication of the highly fluid norms regarding verbal violence, and effectively precludes the possibility of identifying a consistent system of sanctions. This subject will be discussed at more length in the remaining two sections. The first and most important point to stress is that, because lampoons were commonly regarded as veritable violence, they were thought to justify counter-violence, which might take the form of tit-for-tat verbal attacks (as in the early Islamic naqāʾiḍ exchanges)17, but might equally often (indeed, far more often) be transformed into physical violence carried out either in public or in secret. Mere counter-invective might actually be a lessthan-effective weapon, since, as we have already observed, some poets felt simply no anxiety to cultivate an immaculate reputation, for all their expertise in attacking others. Practically all the following evidence testifies that deliberate insults, especially in verse, were generally understood to be a form of aggressive behaviour analogous to physical violence.18 There is a rather shocking account in which the aspect of the equality of verbal and actual, physical violence – hence the justifiability of reacting to a verbal aggression with physical retributions – is particularly manifest. The initial cause of the conflict was a piece of vicious hijāʾ poetry in which the young Abū l-cAtāhiya (d. ca 212/828) – later to become a pious man, but at this point still a merry youngster – alleged that the aristocrat cAbdallāh b. Macn b. Zāʾida was fond of being sodomized by his young male servants.19 The story goes on to describe cAbdallāh’s reaction: c

Abdallāh b. Macn sent for [the poet], who was brought before him. He summoned some servant boys of his and ordered them to commit that dirty act (al-fāḥisha) upon him, which they did. He then told him to sit down, and said: “I have rewarded you for your [dirty] talk about me; now do you prefer reconciliation for a riding animal and ten thousand dirhams, or choose to continue warring?” [Abū l-cAtāhiya] said: “[I choose] reconciliation.”20 92

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As far as more common ways of physical retaliation go, a thorough beating of the delinquent poet was, of course, not an unlikely eventuality. This is what happened to a certain Hudhayl al-Ashjacī, who accused the judge cĀmir al-Shacbī (fl. late 1st/7th century) in a lampoon of being partial, in a legal ruling, towards a beautiful female claimant. When the hijāʾ became widely known and had reached al-Shacbī himself, the latter had the poet flogged for his audacity.21 Another poet, called Abū Sacd al-Makhzūmī, also got a flogging for a hijāʾ piece against a high-ranking aristocrat.22 One gets the impression that the primary goal of such a reprisal was to serve as a warning and precaution against future attempts to ruin one’s reputation. For instance, when the late Omayyad-era poet al-Aḥwaṣ composed a hijāʾ against Sacd, one of the sons of Muṣcab b. al-Zubayr (in the case referred to above), the offended man deceived him into accepting an invitation for a picnic at a pleasant spot outside the town. Once in the deserted place, the aristocrat’s servants tied the poet and prepared to beat him up. The poet, warning Sacd that he would never cease to lampoon him if subjected to this humiliating treatment, offered never to satirize him again if spared the indignity of being beaten up, a truce that Sacd did accept.23 The next kind of retaliation is the imprisonment of the author of hijāʾ. It was apparently quite possible for a man of high status, and especially a caliph or a lesser monarch, to imprison a poet who had offended him, while killing someone for the same crime was far less routine business (a topic treated at more length in the fourth section below). A nephew of the celebrated poet Abū Nuwās claimed that it was on account of a lampoon against the northern Arab tribes (Muḍar) that Hārūn al-Rashīd (170–93/786–809) had imprisoned the profligate poet, who was only freed under the next caliph, al-Amīn (193–8/809–13).24 It is related that al-Qāsim, one of the sons of Hārūn al-Rashīd, failed to take notice of the poet Abū l-cAtāhiya when passing by him on the road in a mounted cortège, although the poet did stand up to pay him respect, and the poet commented in an impromptu line of verse containing bitter satire about some mortal people’s conceitedness. When al-Qāsim was informed of the satirical comment, he arrested the poet, then cursed him, had him flogged, and put him in his private prison for this public allusion to his conceited behaviour.25 Another poet, known as Abū l-Yanbaghī, spent the last period of his life in prison as a consequence of composing hijāʾ against a high dignitary of the state; it is a telling detail of the story that the offended man managed to have the poet gaoled by setting the caliph al-Wāthiq (227–32/842–7) on him, by – what else? – misinforming the caliph that he too had been the target of a lampoon by the poet.26 The 93

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main purpose of incarceration being, besides punishing the offence, to remove the culprit from the public eye, we may perhaps regard the exile of an Andalusian poet for a lampoon as a related case. I am referring to a certain al-Ghazzāl, a court poet of the Cordoban Omayyad ruler cAbd al-Raḥmān II (206–38/822–52), who lampooned the celebrated singer Ziryāb, who enjoyed real ‘star status’ and the favours of the ruler at the court, a miscalculation for which he would have had to pay dearly by being banished from al-Andalus were it not for the intercession of some high dignitaries of the state on his behalf. However, his situation must have become irremediably precarious at the court, for he soon left the Iberian Peninsula anyway.27 Imprisonment might be just a prelude to the next kind of sanction – murder. The poet Abū l-Muẓaffar Mufliḥ b. cAlī al-Anbārī, who had been a protégé of the powerful vizier Ibn Hubayra, made the mistake of writing a lampoon, after the death of his patron, about some high-ranking individual (“yucarriḍu fīhi bi-bacḍ al-ṣudūr”), which promptly led to his arrest and imprisonment. After several rounds of severe corporal punishment, he died in the prison (561/1165–6).28 Murdering a poet for a hijāʾ work was neither very frequent nor very uncommon. In addition to actual executions, one also finds cases that did not lead to the slaying of the lampooner but are still very instructive for their clear indication of the very real possibility of such an outcome. An example is the case of a hijāʾ – more precisely, a pro-cAlid and by implication anti-ʿAbbāsid poem – composed by Bashshār b. Burd. Wishing to stay alive and apprehensive of revenge by the Caliph al-Manṣūr (136–58/754–75), the poet quickly realized it was wiser to suppress some highly satirical lines and, by changing the names in the poem, to take the edge off the work.29 Similarly, the celebrated poet Dicbil al-Khuzācī was not actually killed for his numerous lampoons against caliphs and viziers and other such powerful people, but was forever fleeing and hiding to escape such a consequence (wa-lam yazal marhūb al-lisān wa-khāʾifan min hijāʾihi li-l-khulafāʾ fa-huwa dahrahu kullahu hārib mutawārin). In fact, he composed a very outspoken satirical couplet on the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Muctaṣim (218–27/833–42), who immediately issued an order to arrest the poet, and in one version of the story the latter was scared enough to run as far as the oasis of Waddān in the Sahara to find a sufficiently remote refuge. According to one source, the short poem was actually not Dicbil’s work but was composed by an enemy of his and attributed to him with the aim of ruining him. Whichever way it was, the very substantial, fatal danger of lampooning a ruler is obvious from the story.30 Similarly, Ḥammād cAjrad (2nd/8th century) fled Baṣra and took refuge in a religious 94

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sanctuary after being sentenced to death (ahdara damahu) by a high-status aristocrat of the Hāshimī lineage for a lampoon he had written against him.31 The celebrated Ibn al-Rūmī (221–83/836–96) may have been poisoned on orders from none other than his own patron, a consequence of his penchant for composing satirical poetry.32

Two normative codes The remarkable variability of sanctions for what is fundamentally the same offence – insulting another man in verse – naturally raises a few questions concerning norms of behaviour, the punishment of transgressions, and notions of justified violence. Why would retaliation for abusive poetry take the form of word-for-word poetic retributions in some cases, violent physical reactions in others, and mild reproaches or nothing at all in yet other cases? Is there any identifiable pattern in the not negligible number of cases attesting to the possibility of pardoning the offence of hijāʾ? Furthermore, why was violent retaliation carried out sometimes in public and sometimes quite surreptitiously? Can one identify any constant concepts of morally acceptable behaviour involved in this motley collection of cases? More specifically, does the variation reflect only the huge geographical and historical diversity of Middle Eastern societies, or are other factors also involved? To venture some answers to these questions, first we will have to consider the two different codes informing ideals of conduct (and to some extent, actual conduct) among the medieval Muslim Arab élite: the traditional (and, of course, unwritten) ‘code’ of honour, and the ‘code’ based on the legal and ethical precepts of Islam.33 In pre-Islamic times the honour code was more or less the only source of norms for the production and reception of hijāʾ. This traditional Arabian honour code is clear: take revenge for slights of your honour and publicize the act as best you can, lest it should be thought that you lack the power to do so and enemies should take advantage. Of course, public revenge could take any number of forms, yet revenge it had to be. Rooted in pre-Islamic Bedouin society, these norms, if not always undiluted, survived the advent of Islam and all concomitant developments. A typical case of the application of the honour code is the murdering of the 6th/12th-century Iraqi poet Murajjā al-Baṭāʾiḥī, who had the daring to lampoon the king of the southern Iraqi marshlands – hardly a centre of urbanity: “[The king] Ibn Ḥammād, after he lampooned him, ordered that he should be killed. [The poet] was being entertained as a guest in a village when some uncouth [thug] came and thrust a spear into his back, which killed him.”34 Mark the way no attempt was made to conceal the murder – quite the contrary. This 95

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is, incidentally, very much like the ideal manner of executing a revenge killing as conceived by the honour-obsessed community of the Lebanese village Michael Gilsenan did his fieldwork in: a visible and unambiguously public act – carried out in, say, a courtroom – was considered absolutely imperative for the restitution of the offended group’s honour.35 The Islamic ideal is clear too, although rather more sophisticated, and also controversial in many details. Offending someone gratuitously is wrong; inciting hatred among Muslims is wrong; lying and slandering are wrong. On the other hand, criticizing a ruler truthfully is licit and right, indeed even advisable. As for sanctions, killing a man for considerations of personal honour is inadmissible.36 It must be emphasized, however, that these are mere principles; and Islamic legal practice in this respect, as in others, was far more diverse than legal theory. Fuqahāʾ tended to consider lampoons and all manner of defamatory poetry, speech and writing to belong to the category of qadhf (or ramy), ‘calumny’ or ‘slander’. This did not necessarily imply unanimity concerning the punishments appropriate for calumniators; in fact, schools of jurisprudence would rarely agree on the suitable punitive measures for particular acts of defamation, and whether the ḥadd (divinely ordained) or taczīr (disciplinary) type of punishment was applicable. A thorough analysis of the various legal schools’ views would go far beyond the scope of this chapter – all the more so since, as will be evident, the legal advices of the fuqahāʾ on ‘calumny’ would mostly remain just so much ink on paper – but it is still worthwhile to have a brief look at the subject.37 Many of the typical motifs of hijāʾ poetry could easily be conceptualized by jurisprudents as types of calumny, such poems being based on the attribution of dirty and unlawful acts to their targets (or the kin thereof). These motifs include accusations of unbelief, drinking and other kinds of profligacy, passive homosexuality, bestiality, as well as the predictable slanderous assertions about the targeted man’s mother. Taken literally, these poetic statements could easily be portrayed as constituting legally prosecutable slander: technically, they did accuse another person of an illicit practice contrary to the sharīca. Some schools of jurisprudence treated all or most of the aforementioned insults as being analogous with an accusation of zinā (adultery), which necessitates a ḥadd punishment, while other schools were less indiscriminate, regarding various accusations as categories apart. For instance, some respected authorities seem to have considered the questioning or denial of someone’s legitimate descent (al-nafy can al-nasab) – which would logically entail an accusation of harlotry directed to that person’s mother – as analogous to a legal claim of adultery, and thus subject to the ḥadd. Others disagreed, maintaining that such an extension was not legitimate. 96

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Comparable disagreement surrounded the other types of calumny serving as the stuff of lampoons.38 An issue particularly relevant for our discussion is that of tacrīḍ, or allusion, a very common device in hijāʾ. An interesting account cited by Ibn Ḥazm tells us that the Caliph cUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (13–23/634–44) applied the ḥadd punishment (consisting of eighty lashes) for calumny on cIkrima b. cĀmir b. Hishām for a hijāʾ poem in which he made an unflattering allusion to Wahb b. Zamca b. al-Aswad. The Mālikite school came to hold the view that allusions necessitated the same treatment and legal sanctions as full calumny, whereas the Shāficites and Ḥanafites had the opposite opinion.39 Religion did have some impact on popular attitudes. Hijāʾ and other types of slander were unequivocally classified as gratuitous aggression from a religious point of view, hence a reprehensible activity for a pious individual.40 This attitude accounts for the decision made by quite a few poets to quit or renounce the composition of lampoons, and possibly even try to destroy those already in circulation. Such a poet was, for instance, a certain Ḥayṣ-Bayṣ in the Saljūq era, who is said to have purified his dīwān of all his own invective poetry (nazzaha dīwānahu minhā), and would angrily object to the mention of any of it in his presence, a behaviour attributed by the anthologist al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī to his noble character.41 The anthologist al-Thacālibī mentions a poet who expressly asked him to omit all his hijāʾ products from the anthology Yatīmat al-dahr.42 The influence of religious ideals notwithstanding, it would be a gross misconception to assume that the Islamic moral code, in any of its variants, would automatically have the upper hand over the tribal code whenever the two normative systems clashed – witness the continuing custom of ‘honour killings’ in some Muslim communities, to take just one obvious example.43 Retaliation is not the only issue about which the honour code and Islam, respectively, advocated different ideals. The quality of ḥilm (longanimity, forbearance, moderation) also had dissimilar implications in the two normative systems, despite its basically positive value in both. Forgiving an offender was a distinct possibility in both the traditional honour code and that of Islam, but the latter stressed the virtue of such a course of action far more consistently, and on different grounds. On a theoretical level, both the Qurʾān and the ḥadīths (the traditions of the Prophet) clearly advise the suppression of anger (kaẓm al-ghayẓ) and forbearance.44 Little wonder, then, that appealing to religious sensibilities would often be the most obvious way of asking for pardon, whatever the offence.45 This clear principle, however, was somewhat complicated by the idea that a ḥadd punishment, which represents divine will, cannot be foregone by a human agent, therefore even the very target of a calumnious accusation may not forgive 97

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the calumniator, a view held by some Ḥanafites and by the Mālikites (with some reservations) but not shared by the Shāficites and Ḥanbalites. All this, of course, was dependent on a particular verbal attack being considered to be subject to ḥadd, an issue that has been discussed above.46 The honour code, as noted above, also allowed for the possibility of pardoning an offender. However, in practice the issue was fast intertwined with the concepts of power and impotence, and projecting an honourable image also depended, to a certain extent, on piety. People actually expected aristocrats to guard their honour jealously, and revenge slights; but they also expected aristocrats to be good Muslims, and show forgiveness whenever possible. Moreover, an aristocrat might well deem it, or make a show of deeming it, beneath contempt to react in any manner whatsoever to hijāʾ by a mere lowly poetaster.47 Whether resulting from magnanimity towards or disdain for the perpetrator, the display of clemency (ḥilm) by rulers in cases when anger and violent reactions would have been quite understandable is invariably mentioned in an approving, nay, admiring tone by the sources, and there can be little doubt that such acts enhanced, rather than jeopardized, one’s social standing and honour.48 Such is the tenor of an account about the lenient behaviour of the Sāmānid ruler of Transoxania Naṣr b. Aḥmad (301–31/914–43), who, even though awake to the secret hijāʾ compositions with which his court poet Ṭāhir b. Muḥammad al-Ṭāhirī targeted him, decided to reproach the poet only very mildly and then let the matter drop. However, the poet seems to have understood the lesson anyway, for he immediately stopped lampooning the ruler.49 The following account is another example of this attitude: None of the caliphs was more clement (aḥlam) and more patient with nuisances and opposition than al-Wāthiq. [. . .] [The famous singer] al-Masdūd composed two lines of hijāʾ about him, which he wrote down on a piece of paper. He also had another piece of paper on which he had written some request that he wished to submit to [the caliph]. However, he confused the two papers, handing to him the one which had the poem on it, thinking that it contained the request. [. . .] Having read the paper, [al-Wāthiq] knew at once that the reference was to him, and said to al-Masdūd: “You’ve confused the two papers; give me the other one and take this; and beware of ever doing a thing like this!” By God, he did nothing beyond saying these [words]!50

In the code of honour, forgiveness could bring about much acclaim, but only in the case of a demonstrated ability to take revenge. In the Islamic code, forgiveness was an absolute virtue, regardless of potency or otherwise.51 Religious discourse unequivocally advised clemency (ḥilm); and because of the existence of two equally valid codes, a mixed attitude seems to have emerged. Ḥilm was unquestionably a commendable trait, but 98

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it was rarely if ever exhibited devoid of displays of superiority and power (that is, mainly in the framework of a discourse of honour), for it was only a demonstration of the capability and potential willingness to discipline or crush the offender that prevented any misconstruction of forbearance as impotence.52 The same idea, not incidentally, is a recurrent Leitmotif in the poetry of al-Mutanabbī (early 4th/10th century), a veritable proponent of the traditional honour code.53 In fact, we even find a religious scholar like al-Shāficī expressing the opinion, juxtaposed to his predictable recommendation of forbearance, that longanimity is not commendable in every situation, especially in one involving gratuitous provocations; to quote his folkish way of putting it, “whoever is deliberately provoked and yet does not get angry is a donkey (man ustughḍiba wa-lam yaghḍab fa-huwa ḥimār).”54 The case of the blind 5th/11th-century Baghdadian poet Ibn Baḥr is illuminating in this respect. His life was eventually spared by the minister cAmīd al-Mulk, whom he had deeply offended with a lampoon, but not before he fainted and collapsed at the vizier’s scornful threats in front of tout le monde in the great man’s reception hall.55 The vizier thereby demonstrated his full ability to punish the offender, and could easily afford to pardon the pitiable wretch. Another good illustration is what befell a certain cAlī b. Jahm; this poet was crucified in Khurāsān by the Ṭāhirid ruling family (3rd/9th century) for a lampoon, but, just short of actually killing him, they took him off the cross and let him go.56 One can appreciate that, despite the eventual laudable gesture of forgiveness, the lesson was driven home to the general public: no mockeries about the Ṭāhirids please. In other words: the more powerful – and conspicuously powerful – a person, the more potential for longanimity. The wider the gap, socially and politically, between offender and offended, the greater the possibility of forgoing punishment, and the less likely the act to be mistaken for a lack of power.57 As an adage put it, “By forgiving, a powerful person increases his glory, and a lowly one increases his lowliness (cafw al-cazīz acazz lahu wa-cafw al-dhalīl adhall lahu).”58

Negotiating a proper response The coexistence of two partially opposed, normative systems allowed for a great deal of flexibility. The right combination of the two codes according to the circumstances had to be carefully designed in every single case, and thus need not have been the same on any two occasions. There having been no clear and unambiguous guidelines for the appropriate response to being targeted by lampoons – which themselves might run the whole gamut from mild to shockingly rude – every offended 99

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person had to weigh odds and risks, consider costs and possible profits, and balance all factors so as to determine a satisfactory course of action that would reflect sufficiently well on his character. Some reaction to a verbal effrontery was, naturally, inevitable, for the lack of a violent or otherwise conspicuous reaction was itself a response, if a passive one, and was as certain to comment on the person who adopted it as any grandiose gesture. Reactions to challenges would be constantly talked about, observed, interpreted and reinterpreted by the general public – let alone the participants of the events and onlookers – and no two persons’ assessments of the appropriateness of an action or reaction had to be necessarily identical.59 Whatever was done, or not done, to avenge a verbal offence would be talked about and become a khabar, ‘news’, and fodder for gossip; indeed, if a poet of repute initiated a conflict of this kind, the story might easily become a literary khabar (information, story, anecdote) as well, ensuring even greater circulation of the news that would continue either to tarnish or enhance the reputation of its protagonist. For instance, stories of magnanimous and stylish gestures of forgiveness towards offenders often became literary akhbār and found their place in the standard corpus of adab (belles-lettres), as attested by sections on c afw (‘forgiveness’) in such collections.60 The observation of Michael Gilsenan on the unceasing popular scrutiny of the conduct of antagonists involved in a blood feud appears to be valid for our material too: “Men are aware [. . .] of the views of others and of how their own behaviour is being discussed, judgments which may influence a group’s sense of itself and how it must act if it is to retain respect.”61 The basic expectations for the behaviour of an aristocrat on the receiving end of hijāʾ seem to have been within the discourse of honour rather than that of religion. It was expected that perceived insults should be avenged publicly in order to demonstrate the offended party’s capacity to defend his honour. That said, secondary factors – such as the existence of state authority, which prohibited, at least theoretically, the murdering of someone for a reason not justifiable according to religious law – might intervene to modify this basic pattern. Thus clandestine revenge or no revenge might often have to do with state authority: not everyone had the authority to silence an offending poet by drastic, violent means.62 Popular opinion also mattered: whether a particular act of retribution was likely to be viewed with approval by the public would almost certainly affect the choice of either a clandestine or a publicized revenge. In the light of our source material, it cannot be assumed that a resounding, brutal and public act of retaliation for hijāʾ would necessarily be the option that would bring the maximum benefit for the honour of an offended aristocrat. To use Michael Gilsenan’s 100

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wording for a different yet not totally dissimilar situation, we could say that “revenge in its proper form” was certainly preferable to “mere formless violence”63; and clemency with a demonstrated ability to hit the offender, as already discussed, could often bring greater rewards for the offended person’s reputation and reflect better on his character. As we have seen, there were various forms of revenge, as well as non-revenge, available to the offended person. The different possibilities (and their dependence on the temper of the lampoon’s target) are manifest in an account about the Iraqi poet Murajjā al-Baṭāʾiḥī (6th/12th century), to whom reference has already been made in this essay: Murajjā b. Battāh went to see [the ruler] Sayf al-Dawla [Ṣadaqa], and having entered his vestibule, he heard the latter’s voice reciting a verse [from a lampoon he had composed about him]. He immediately tried to flee, but Ṣadaqa had already noticed his presence. He presented himself, forgave [the poet], and gave him gifts, telling him nevertheless: “Don’t stay here, as you have composed a lampoon on [the high-ranking lady] Mubāraka and lied [in it by slandering her]. Some of her slaves are going to kill you.” [Murajjā] would not stay.64

Similar ambiguities and conflicting interpretations of possible outcomes are at the core of the following account of an incident provoked by a really vicious piece of hijāʾ composed by the poet Muḥammad b. al-Dawraqī (3rd/9th century) about the governor of Iṣfahān, Yaḥyā al-Khuzācī. The governor retaliated for the satire by putting the poet in gaol, but the latter managed to escape. What happened soon afterwards I quote verbatim from my source: Now, when Yaḥyā had been discharged [from his office] and went to Baghdad, he gave [Ibn al-Dawraqī] a lot of unique gifts, and awarded him generously [as a mark of his forgiveness and magnanimity]. Later on, he was appointed to govern Qazwīn, and he sent for Ibn al-Dawraqī [to ask him] to prepare for leaving together with him, promising him all manner of beneficence and good things. Coming [to see him], [the poet] said, “My master, how much will you pay me if I leave [Baghdad] with you?” He replied, “Ten thousand dirhams.” [The poet] said, “You’re very kind and generous; in fact you’d pay me my blood-money, for I don’t think I’d get as far as al-Nahrawān before you killed me. God will never see me do that, even if you paid me a hundred thousand dirhams, after all that I’ve said about you.” Yaḥyā replied, “Noble-minded and honourable people won’t do what you’re referring to, their custom being [the practice of] forgiveness, pardoning, and beneficence, even in excess; all they want by that is honourable mention.” [The poet] said, “My master, come off it; I shall see death face to face if I ever depart with you.” So [Yaḥyā] gave him the [promised] ten thousand there on the spot, and told him, “By God, if you go [with me], I’ll do this and that [good deed] to you.” But [the poet] replied, 101

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“I don’t dare to do that; I fear that you might get drunk, summon me and have me decapitated.”65

Whatever its influence, the honour code did have to make concessions to religion. In particular, the widespread utilization of the pretext of ‘impiety’ and ‘heresy’ to punish hijāʾ clearly shows the limits of the applicability of the honour code. It was a kind of double play: everyone but the most naïve would probably understand – sources do suggest so – that personal motives were involved while pretending not to; and thus the offended person’s honour was defended and his power reaffirmed, yet the dictates of Islamic morality were upheld too. The cases of recourse to the use of the pretext of zandaqa also show the difficulties of effecting a legitimate killing of an offender of honour (within the religious code), despite the strong incentive of doing so within the honour code. One of the best-known instances of such a manipulation of the sharīca for personal ends is the execution of the celebrated Bashshār b. Burd, which was apparently carried out on the grounds of his offences against religion (in one version, he mockingly sounded the call to prayer (adhān) in a state of inebriation and out of its appropriate time). The sources, however, leave no doubt that the real reason is to be sought elsewhere; and the contemporaries were clearly aware of it. The poet had composed a lot of lampoons against various high-status individuals in Baṣra, who nevertheless could not do much to silence him, but did shower the executioner with valuable gifts after the poet’s death to express their gratitude. Bashshār had even dared to lampoon the vizier, Yacqūb b. Dāwud (or, according to another version, the latter’s brother), thus making a powerful enemy who would eagerly wait for the opportunity to do away with him, which he found when the poet composed an obscene lampoon about the Caliph al-Mahdī (158–69/775–85) and made the mistake of reciting it publicly in a session of learned people. The vizier made sure the caliph should learn of the poem, thus arousing the latter’s fury and channelling it in the right direction.66 A much later (8th/14th century) example also illustrates the difficulties of killing a poet, however obnoxious, without finding a religiously justifiable cause – or rather pretext: There was in al-Lādhiqiyya a man known as Ibn al-Muʾayyad, who was a habitual composer of lampoons (hajjāʾ), from whose tongue no one could feel safe [emphasis added]. His religiosity was suspect, and he would nonchalantly talk ugly words of godlessness (ilḥād). Once he made some request to Ṭīlān the chief emir, which [the latter] did not grant to him. He then went to Egypt and there talked a lot of abominable things about [Ṭīlān], and then later he returned to al-Lādhiqiyya. Ṭīlān wrote to the qāḍī Jalāl al-Dīn, [asking] him to 102

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find a legal way (wajh sharcī) to kill [the poet]. The qāḍī invited [the poet] to his own home, and talked with him, coaxing his concealed godlessness out of him. So [al-Muʾayyad] spoke extremely sinful things, the least of which would have justified killing him. The qāḍī had put witnesses behind a curtain, who then recorded the poet’s utterances in a document, and it was certified by the qāḍī. [The poet] was imprisoned, and the chief emir was notified of the case. Eventually [the poet] was taken out from the prison and strangled to death at its gate.67

The utilization, or fabrication, of religious charges against an offender did not always ensure successful revenge; moreover, the possibility was certainly not available to everyone. I would hazard the guess that such a course of action was probably feasible only to rulers and politically very powerful individuals, precisely those people who had to guard their sharaf most jealously. The following story, which tells the fate of an Andalusian poet of the early 5th/11th century from the Valencia region, demonstrates that accusations of impiety may often not have sufficed to destroy an opponent, in which case the offended person had to resort to a covert, clandestine revenge killing instead of an overt, well-publicized act: Abū Jacfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Battī [. . .] had a filthy tongue; he composed no end of lampoons about people [emphasis added], and was throughout his life emigrating from one land after another, being afraid and wary of the authorities because people testified against him and accused him of heresy (zandaqa), atheism (ilḥād), the denial of the resurrection of the body, an excessive fondness for the books of Avicenna and a disinterest in and indisposition for the Qurʾān and the ḥadīths. He was [finally] found lying dead in a hole full of rotting meat and skins being devoured by the mischievous vermin and maggots.68

The ambiguities concerning the proper and honourable response to hijāʾ are not without parallels. The complex interplay of numerous uncertainties and possibilities determining every single case’s actual outcome may call to one’s mind Lawrence Rosen’s description of the evasive rules governing interpersonal relations in modern Sefrou (Morocco), social norms which, even if theoretically clear to everyone, allowed for a striking amount of negotiation and a constant process of individual interpretation in all situations, and thus assumed “an open, malleable quality” in everyday practice. Rosen is right to point out that in personal interactions, even hierarchically asymmetric ones, “individual activity is not reducible to a set of rules” and “[d]ifferent individuals may draw on the repertoire of relational possibilities differently and the resultant ties may or may not coincide with ideals expressed.”69 An even more relevant 103

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parallel is Michael Gilsenan’s description of the sequences of aggression and counter-aggression in cAkkār, Northern Lebanon. The episodes and the final outcome of the frequent blood feuds in this region could never be predicted in a mechanical way, and the manner of retaliating – or the grand gestures of reconciliation – was as important as the simple fact of retaliation: the “aesthetics of violence”70 was a fluid and evasive practice not easy to master. The general observations of the American sociologist Donald W. Ball are clearly applicable to our corpus of data on the phenomenon of violent retributions for hijāʾ: “[. . .] appearances which will generate the accordance of respectability in one situation may be precisely those which lead to assignments of a lack of respectability in another. It is for this reason that managing the appearance of respectability is always problematic; and it is therefore like women’s work – never done.”71 Part of the complexity results from the simultaneous acceptance of partially or totally conflicting norms and value systems, an example of which is the coexistence of the honour code and the code of conduct prescribed by the sharīca, discussed at length above. The two codes being situational, such a coexistence need not give rise to any acute sense of conflict or incongruity, and people will largely accept the validity of both systems.72 Moreover, even within one system of norms, actual behaviour will not be shaped by mechanical, straightforward rules. M. B. Clinard defines norms as “standardized ways of acting, or expectations governing limits of variation in behavior”. However, in actual practice those ideal ways of acting may not be so standardized and limits of variation may be found more variable than expected, especially in highly stratified and complex societies (such as medieval Middle Eastern metropolitan society). As he points out, not only do norms tend to have a margin of tolerance (which he terms ‘tolerance limit’), but even this margin is fluid and variable. Societal reactions to the violation of a norm are dependent on the particular situation in which it occurred and the status of the actors. Thus, acting morally and honourably is not so straightforward, in any society, as the usual discourse would suggest.73 Violating someone else’s reputation with invective poetry did not have identical and routine consequences, and reactions to this offence were anything but predictable. In short, hijāʾ was a gamble. The proper response to it could be just about anything, depending on the circumstances, and this despite the existence of a certain logic, certain underlying principles, to the whole issue. The point I wish to have made is not that very different norms for reacting to verbal violence existed in various geographical regions and historical epochs in the Arab world – that much 104

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must be obvious, despite the often scant data at our disposal. More noteworthy is the fact that different and contradictory norms coexisted even within the same historical situation and the same social setting, allowing for a great deal of manoeuvring and individual choice. Maintaining honour in the face of challenges – including verbal attacks like hijāʾ – was a constant negotiation rather than a mechanical conformity to a number of simple principles.

Notes 1. Michael Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society (London, New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996). 2. Geert Jan van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly: Attitudes towards Invective Poetry (Hijāʾ) in Classical Arabic Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 10. 3. Van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 6, 13. 4. Van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 38–40, and cf. note 10 below. 5. Quite illuminating is the vivid description of the horror felt and barely suppressed by the celebrated al-Farazdaq upon his learning from a visitor that his opponent Jarīr had sent a poem to the al-Mirbad market of Baṣra and that people had already started to recite it among themselves; as well as the relief al-Farazdaq displayed when told that the poem in question was about another person. See Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā al-Ṣūlī, Akhbār Abī Tammām, ed. Khalīl Maḥmūd cAsākir, Muḥammad cAbduh cAzzām, Naẓīr al-Islām al-Hindī (Cairo: Lajnat al-Taʾlīf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr, 1356/1937), 178. 6. Abū l-cAbbās cAbdallāh b. al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt al-shucarāʾ al-muḥdathīn, ed. cAbbās Iqbāl (London: Cambridge University Press, Luzac and Co., 1939 [facsimile edition]), 92. (The edited text has yuḥilluhu instead of yujilluhu, which I believe would be the accurate reading.) Also cf. G. Vajda, “Les zindīqs en pays d’Islam au début de la période abbaside,” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 17 (1938), 208, who mentions Abān’s reciprocating with lampoons of his own, which would obviously contradict Ibn al-Muctazz’s version of the incident. 7. cAlī Ṣadr al-Dīn b. Aḥmad b. Macṣūm al-Madanī, Sulāfat al-caṣr fī maḥāsin al-shucarāʾ bi-kull maṣr (Doha: Maṭābic cAlī b. cAlī, 1382/[1962–3]), 244. 8. I completely agree with van Gelder‘s observation that the truthfulness of a hijāʾ poem simply did not matter and no one really took as serious the outrageous accusations with which such poems were bursting. See van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 33. 9. The advisability of and popular preference for an easily memorizable and digestible style over an obscure classical one (regardless of the linguistic and poetic merits of either) were noted by the literary critic al-Jurjānī. See Abū l-Ḥasan cAlī b. cAbd al-cAzīz al-Qāḍī al-Jurjānī, al-Wasāṭa bayna l-Mutanabbī wa-khuṣūmihi, ed. Aḥmad cĀrif al-Zayn (Sousse, Tunis: Dār 105

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al-Macārif li-l-Ṭibāca wa-l-Nashr, 1992), 35; and van Gelder’s translation of the relevant passage in The Bad and the Ugly, 80–1 (“its content being readily understood and easily memorized; quick in clinging to the heart and cleaving to the soul”). A remarkable, if rather distant, modern parallel is the occasional ban on using the dialect in discussions of politics in the Egyptian newspapers of the late 13th/19th century. Political satire published in the Egyptian dialect provoked much harsher reactions by the authorities eager to suppress it than anything in classical Arabic. See Khālid al-Qishṭaynī, al-Sukhriyya al-siyāsiyya al-carabiyya, tr. and ed. Kamāl al-Yāzijī (2nd edn, London: Dār al-Sāqī, 1992), 198. My use of the adjective ‘vernacular’ in the above passage is not intended to mean that these medieval lampoons were composed in dialect instead of classical Arabic (although some of them might be). The concept of a clear-cut situation of diglossia in Arabic is a simplification; see Niloofar Haeri, “Form and Ideology: Arabic Socioliguistics and Beyond,” Annual Review of Anthropology 29 (2000), 66–7. 10. Abū l-Faraj cAlī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Iṣfahānī, K. al-Aghānī, ed. Yūsuf cAlī Ṭawīl, c Abd al-Amīr cAlī Muhannā, Samīr Jābir (2nd edn, Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1415/1995), 20:180–2. In another account, Dicbil al-Khuzācī discloses a further trick he employed to ensure his less-than-glorious triumph over al-Makhzūmī: he bribed the street kids with handouts of walnuts in exchange for their promise to keep vexing the other poet with the above line of hijāʾ. See ibid., 20:188. Dicbil was described as addicted to composing satirical poetry (kāna hajjāʾan khabīth al-lisān lam yaslam minhu aḥad). See Shihāb al-Dīn Abū cAbdallāh Yāqūt b. cAbdallāh al-Ḥamawī, Mucjam al-udabāʾ, ed. Iḥsān cAbbās (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1993), 3:1284. He had to face similar troubles himself during a visit to Qumm in Northern Iran, where a totally untalented local poet extorted quite an amount of money from him, threatening to make public an obscene lampoon he had written about him. Aware that the poem was likely to be popular because of its vernacular style (li-khiffatihi calā alsinat al-cāmma wa-l-ṣibyān), Dicbil did pay, but the poem circulated anyway, with plebeians, lowly people and slaves yelling it right into his face all the time, which eventually forced Dicbil to leave the town. See Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 125. For a detailed discussion of these and further cases, see van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 38–40. 11. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 4:243. The caliph al-Manṣūr is said to have considered womenfolk one of the three potential sources of offence that rulers would never forgive. See Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Bayhaqī, al-Maḥāsin wa-lmasāwiʾ, ed. Muḥammad Sawīd (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-cUlūm, 1408/1988), 422. A somewhat bizarre but evidently related case, involving as it does the issue of honour and repute, is the story of Abū Nuwās, who, having watched the young caliph al-Amīn swimming in but scanty attire in a pool, wrote a short poem expressive of his erotic appreciation of the sight. A friend assured the poet that should the verses leak to the public, he would most definitely pay with his life, and Abū Nuwās was wise enough to 106

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12. 13.

14.

15.

heed the advice. Another version of the story identifies the object of Abū Nuwās’s rapt verses as the caliph’s favourite mignon Kawthar – whichever variant is correct, it is obviously the caliph’s public image that is at stake, hence the immense risk for the poet. See Abū Hiffān cAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥarb al-Mihzamī, Akhbār Abī Nuwās, ed. cAbd al-Sattār Aḥmad Farrāj (Cairo: Maktabat Miṣr, n. d.), 101–2; Muḥammad b. Mukarram Ibn Manẓūr al-Miṣrī, Akhbār Abī Nuwās, ed. Muḥammad cAbd al-Rasūl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-Bustānī lil-Nashr wal-Tawzīc, 2000), 190. Other ways of damaging the honour of the ruler might be equally perilous. Divulging the intimate secrets, presumably discreditable, of the caliph al-Muctaḍid (279–89/892– 902) led to the execution of his boon-companion (nadīm) al-Sarakhsī in 286/899. See Anwar G. Chejne, “The Boon-Companion in Early cAbbāsid Times,” JAOS 85 (1965), 334. Ṣafī al-Dīn Abū l-Faḍl cAbd al-cAzīz b. Sarāyā al-Ḥillī, al-Kitāb al-cāṭil al-ḥālī wa-l-murakhkhaṣ al-ghālī, ed. Wilhelm Hoenerbach (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1956), 14–15. See for instance the story of a partisan poem against the cAbbāsid dynasty by Sudayf (or ascribed to him on purpose) and his being buried alive for it in Abū cAlī al-Ḥasan b. Rashīq l-Qayrawānī, K. al-cUmda fī naqd al-shicr wa-tamḥīṣihi, ed. cAfīf Nāyif Ḥāṭūm (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1424/2003), 62; and an anecdote on some verses by the Moroccan Muḥammad al-Fāzāzī in Emilio García Gómez, “Convencionalismo e insinceridad en la poesía árabe,” Al-Andalus 5 (1940), 35. Ibn Rashīq wryly remarks, in the passage referred to, that in his view the greatest possible idiocy for a poet is to risk his own life by composing verses of political criticism against the powers that be: wa-aḥmaq al-shucarāʾ cindī man adkhala nafsahu fī hādhā l-bāb aw tacarraḍa lahu wa-mā li-l-shācir wa-l-tacarruḍ li-l-ḥutūf? It is not to say, of course, that low-status people might not be the object of lampoons: for instance, the debauched poet Muṭīc b. Iyās reacted with an extemporized obscene lampoon when told of his girlfriend’s being together with a young man for doings easily guessed sans équivoque. However, it is unlikely that a slave-girl had to fear much more than a little teasing and mockery on account of the lampoon. See the case in al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 13:339. Abū cUthmān cAmr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, K. al-Bukhalāʾ, ed. Muḥammad Altūnjī (Beirut: Dār al-Jayl, 1414/1993), 99. For anecdotal as well as explicit statements of the fact that a man indifferent to his public persona need not be afraid of hijāʾ, see Shihāb al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Ibshīhī, al-Mustaṭraf min kull fann mustaẓraf, ed. Mufīd Muḥammad Qumayḥa (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-cIlmiyya, 1413/1993), 256. In his condemnation of malicious gossip, al-Ghazālī excepts people who lead an overtly dissipated life style, for they manifestly have no reputation to guard anyway, therefore protecting their ‘honour’ makes no sense. See Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ culūm al-dīn (Cairo: Dār Miṣr li-l-Ṭibāca, 1998), 2:191–2. 107

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16. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 13:260–1. 17. The custom of retaliating for lampoons with lampoons, with the ensuing poetic exchanges of mild or rough abuse, is known not only from the early Islamic period; for a relatively late string of such duels (between various c ulamāʾ of Mecca and the newly arrived Syrian poet Ghars al-Dīn al-Khalīlī), see Ibn Macṣūm, Sulāfa, 399–404. Arabic folklore in the modern period also yields examples. See for instance Ahmed Al-Shahi, Themes from Northern Sudan (London: Ithaca Press, 1986), 68–90; Steve C. Caton, “Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1990), 114–21; Abdullahi Ali Ibrahim, Assaulting with Words: Popular Discourse and the Bridle of Sharīcah (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 72. Poetic contests of various kinds were known by a variety of names in medieval Arabic culture. See van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 9. 18. On this point, cf. some brief but important remarks in van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 6. The fluid boundaries between verbal and physical violence and the possible transformation of the former into the latter are observed by Michael Gilsenan too, who observes that public excoriation and insult (sabb wa-shatīma) is the customary, all-but-ritualized first phase of a family’s response to the killing or wounding of one of its members, which may or may not develop into a full-fledged blood feud according to the circumstances. See Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 160–1. In the Yemeni highlands, abusive terms uttered in the course of the mildly satirical poetic duels called bāla immediately caused intervention by a third party, since verbal violence could easily and quickly turn into real violence between the competitors. See Caton, “Peaks of Yemen”, 120–1. 19. Passive homosexuality (ubna) was, of course, a staple of hijāʾ poetry, unlike the active role (liwāṭ) which, however deplorable from a religious point of view, was not usually considered nearly so harmful to a man’s honour. On this perception in various social settings, see Sabine Schmidtke, “Homoeroticism and homosexuality in Islam: a review article,” BSOAS 62 (1999), 260–1; and for modern Iraq, cf. cAlī al-Wardī, Dirāsa fī ṭabīcat almujtamac al-cirāqī (Baghdad: Maṭbacat al-cĀnī, 1965), 299, 322. 20. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 4:25–6. 21. al-Ibshīhī, Mustaṭraf, 110. Elsewhere, al-Shacbī is portrayed in an anecdote as far more lenient of abusive remarks, see Abū Muḥammad cAbdallāh b. Muslim b. Qutayba al-Dīnawarī, cUyūn al-akhbār, ed. Yūsuf cAlī Ṭawīl, Mufīd Muḥammad Qumayḥa (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-cIlmiyya, 1418/1998), vol. 1, part 1, 397. 22. Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 140. 23. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 4:242–3. 24. Abū Jacfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-umam wal-mulūk, ed. Nawāf al-Jarrāḥ (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1424/2003), 5:1820–1. 25. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 4:70. But for the intercession of Zubayda, the caliph’s 108

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26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

wife, the poet would have stood a fair chance of spending a very long period in gaol. Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 56. Abū l-Khaṭṭāb cUmar b. Ḥasan b. Diḥya al-Balansī al-Dānī, al-Muṭrib min ashcār ahl al-Maghrib, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī, Ḥāmid cAbd al-Majīd, Aḥmad Aḥmad Badawī (Cairo: n.p., 1993 [1st edn Cairo: al-Maṭbaca al-Amīriyya, 1954]), 147–8. Here I should like to thank Christian Lange, who has kindly called my attention to another case of banishment for poetry deemed slanderous that is recounted in Ibn Khallikān‘s Wafayāt al-acyān: the celebrated Saladin (564–89/1169–93) banished the poet Ibn c Unayn al-Anṣārī from Damascus for a qaṣīda in which he lampooned the prominent people of the city. This incident is also mentioned in van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 132. al-Kātib al-Iṣbahānī cImād al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Qurashī, Kharīdat al-qaṣr wa-jarīdat al-caṣr [al-Juzʾ al-Rābic], ed. Muḥammad Bahja al-Atharī (Baghdad: Dār al-Ḥurriyya li-l-Ṭibāca, Matbacat al-Ḥukūma, 1393/1973), 1:302. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 3:149–50, 211; Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥasan b. cAbdallāh al-cAskarī, al-Maṣūn fī l-adab, ed. cAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn (Kuwait: Maṭbacat Ḥukūmat al-Kuwayt, 1960), 162–4. A reverse process of reinterpretation is at work in a strange epistle whose Turkish author (11th/17th century) spares no efforts to prove, in a way that it is perhaps fair to call grotesque, that all of al-Mutanabbī‘s panegyrics addressed to the Egyptian ruler Kāfūr (355–7/966–58), were originally intended as lampoons. Obviously, it was embarrassing that the master of heroic odes should also have become noted for grandiloquent poems praising an arriviste of extremely humble origins, a mere black eunuch. In fact, it may have been an embarrassment for al-Mutanabbī himself, if we trust the authenticity of the citation in which the poet declares it legitimate to understand all his panegyrics on Kāfūr as hijāʾ. See cAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ḥusām al-Dīn ‘Ḥusāmzāda’, Risāla fī qalb Kāfūriyyāt al-Mutanabbī min al-madīḥ ilā l-hijāʾ, ed. Muḥammad Yūsuf Najm (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1413/1993 [1st edn 1392/1972]), 4ff. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 20:131–2; Ibn Rashīq, cUmda, 59–60; Abū Muḥammad c Abdallāh b. Muslim b. Qutayba al-Dīnawarī, al-Shicr wal-shucarāʾ, ed. Mufīd Qumayḥa (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-cIlmiyya, 1401/1981), 441. Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 23. Ibn Rashīq, cUmda, 59. Alternative explanations for his death, as usual, were also offered in the sources. See Beatrice Gruendler, Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry: Ibn al-Rūmī and the Patron’s Redemption (London-New York: Routledge-Curzon, 2003), 42, 45. For other cases of murder (or intended murder) for hijāʾ, see al-Iṣbahānī, Kharīda [al-Juzʾ al-Rābic], 2:532–3; Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 113–14. Obviously, insults in the course of casual conversation, especially when uttered in the presence of onlookers, could as easily lead to murder as a versified attack on honour. The cAlid 109

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33.

34.

35. 36.

aristocrat al-cAbbās b. Muḥammad b. cAbdallāh was beaten to death by Hārūn al-Rashīd himself with an iron rod simply for his having replied to the caliph’s rude abuse of his mother in comparable style. See Abū l-Faraj cAlī b. al-Ḥusayn al-Iṣfahānī, Maqātil al-ṭālibiyyīn, ed. al-Sayyid Aḥmad Ṣaqr (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aclamī li-l-Maṭbūcāt, 1408/1987), 412–13. The concept of ‘honour’ is often taken to mean a set of ideas and resultant patterns of behaviour that are thought to be typical of Mediterranean societies. The actual manifestations of such a broad concept are, however, highly variable, and must be examined and analysed separately for every particular social setting. See Michael Herzfeld, “Honour and Shame: Problems in the Comparative Analysis of Moral Systems,” Man (New Series) 15 (1980), 340, 343–9; and cf. Eric R. Wolf, “Kinship, Friendship, and Patron–Client Relations in Complex Societies,” in The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, ed. Michael Banton (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966), 8, for the common denominators in this variation. This is also true within the Arab world; for actual variations on what is meant by sharaf, cf. Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 189–92; Unni Wikan, Behind the Veil in Arabia: Women in Oman (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1991 [1st edn 1982]), 148–51, 165–7; Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press 1999 [1st edn 1986]), 85–97; Gabriele vom Bruck, “Being Worthy of Protection: The Dialectics of Gender Attributes in Yemen,” Social Anthropology 4 (1996), 148. al-Iṣbahānī, Kharīda [al-Juzʾ al-Rābic], 2:532–3. A comparable case of a violent reaction apparently based entirely on the honour code – although the verbal aggression here is not a lampoon but simple, casual insults – is the story of a young page of the Daylamī warlord cAlī b. Wahsūdhān, the governor of Iṣfahān, an incident that took place in 304/916–17. Having made the discourtesy of talking to the chief tax-collector Aḥmad b. Siyāh without dismounting from his horse, the page-boy received a contemptuous reply addressing him as a catamite. The ghulām went to his master to complain of the insult, but cAlī told him that the insult was not unwarranted, as only a catamite would put up with such abuse without killing the offender. The page immediately went to find Aḥmad b. Siyāh and murdered him in public. The aftermath of the incident is interesting too: the governor was held responsible, fairly enough, for the honour killing and the ruler removed him from office. See Abū cAlī Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Miskawayh, Tajārib al-umam, ed. H. F. Amedroz (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1332/1914), 1:39. Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 168–9. It was contrasted to the honour of the Prophet, which should be defended against malicious attacks and slander – according to some schools of law even by killing the offender. See Abū Muḥammad cAlī b. Aḥmad b. Sacīd b. Ḥazm al-Andalusī, al-Muḥallā bi-l-āthār, ed. cAbd al-Ghaffār Sulaymān al-Bundārī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n. d.), 12:431ff., esp. 434 (quoting the 110

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37.

38.

39. 40.

words of the Caliph cUmar b. cAbd al-cAzīz: fa-innahu lā yaḥullu qatl imriʾ muslim yasubbu aḥadan min al-nās illā rajulan sabba rasūl Allāh). Such extreme measures were not considered to be applicable to any other case. A Mālikī source, however, prescribes somewhat more severe measures to protect the good name of the first four caliphs than that of an ordinary Muslim, although the whole issue seems to have been obscure enough to be an object of legal riddles. See Burhān al-Dīn Ibrāhīm b. Farḥūn, Durrat al-ghawwāṣ fī muḥāḍarat al-khawāṣṣ (alghāz fiqhiyya), ed. Muḥammad Abū l-Ajfān, cUthmān Biṭṭīkh (Cairo, Tunis: Dār al-Turāth, al-Maktaba al-cAtīqa, n.d.), 311. As many themes of slander might not necessarily be thought to be subject to a ḥadd punishment (apart from false accusations of adultery, whether in a legal framework or in verse and prose literature, which clearly were), this problem would often be discussed in the section on taczīr. For a general, introductory note to this issue, cf. Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥallā, 12:219–20. I am indebted to Christian Lange for calling my attention to the abundance of material on abusive speech acts in works of jurisprudence and collections of fatāwā and their likely location in the discussions of taczīr. Even though I have not been able to access the particular Ḥanafī sources he specified, I owe to him the very idea of consulting this type of source. The one religious work that I had perused beforehand, the Iḥyāʾ culūm al-dīn, does contain an interesting section on what its author calls āfāt al-lisān, ‘the calamities of the tongue’, including abusive speech and malicious talk and slander (see al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 2:133–205, esp. 150–3, 164–5), but it is heavily ethical in tone, and fatāwā-type works, as one would expect, are far more concrete and practical in their approach. The Muḥallā of Ibn Ḥazm, while naturally focusing on the author’s Ẓāhiriyya legal school and thus hardly representative of mainstream Muslim doctrine and praxis, is characterized by a polemical tendency that results in the inclusion of the opposed views of the other schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Thus, it can be said to offer a good overview of the legal controversies surrounding the subjects of defamation, abuse and calumny. (Controversies that do not exactly seem to corroborate van Gelder’s assertion that Islamic legislation on defamation was relatively undeveloped; see The Bad and the Ugly, 33. The actual influence of that legislation on practice is, of course, a different matter.) Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥallā, 12:220–51; Abū l-cAbbās Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. c Abd al-Ḥamīd b. cAbd al-Salām b. Taymiyya, al-Fatāwā al-kubrā, ed. Muḥammad cAbd al-Qādir cAṭā, Muṣṭafā cAbd al-Qādir cAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-cIlmiyya, 1422/2002), 3:414–45, 438. Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥallā, 12:238–45, esp. 238 for the story on cUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb and the lampooner, and 239–41 for a discussion of actual typical kinds of abusive allusion. Very instructive is the apparent uneasiness of Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī about the legitimacy or otherwise of his composing a book on the shameful 111

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41.

42.

43.

44.

45. 46.

characters of two respected viziers, as is his correspondingly eager listing of previous intellectuals (and many hijāʾ poets) who have, at one time or another, done essentially the same – a littérateur’s way of using human shields? See Abū Ḥayyān cAlī b. Muḥammad al-Tawḥīdī, Akhlāq al-wazīrayn, ed. Muḥammad b. Tāwīt al-Ṭanjī (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1412/1992), 66–74. al-Kātib al-Iṣbahānī cImād al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Qurashī, Kharīdat al-qaṣr wa-jarīdat al-caṣr [al-Qism al-cIrāqī], ed. Muḥammad Bahja al-Atharī (Baghdad: Maṭbacat al-Majmac al-cIlmī al-cIrāqī, 1375–84/1955–64), 1:349–50. For further data on Ḥayṣ-Bayṣ, cf. Yāqūt, Udabāʾ, 3:1352–5. Abū Manṣūr cAbd al-Malik b. Muḥammad al-Thacālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-caṣr, ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn cAbd al-Ḥamīd (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-cIlmiyya, 1399/1979), 4:433. At times, even without anyone’s bidding, anthologists would think twice before including certain hijāʾ works in their collections, and finally desist out of either fear or a sense of propriety and religious rectitude. See for instance al-Iṣbahānī, Kharīda [al-Qism al-cIrāqī], 2:84; idem, Kharīda [al-Juzʾ al-Rābic], 1:208. Sometimes the authorities might attempt to stop the circulation of certain lampoons, apparently because of the social unrest they had the potential of stirring. Thus, upon the death of Abū l-Qāsim cAlī al-cAbsī, a widely feared (marhūb al-shabā) poet of Baghdad, described as a compulsive and prolific producer of obscene satires (badhīʾ al-lisān), the reigning caliph sent his agents to the house of the deceased to confiscate and destroy his poetic heritage, which they could do only incompletely. See al-Iṣbahānī, Kharīda [al-Qism al-cIrāqī], 2:54. It is also noteworthy in this respect that in Gilsenan‘s study religious considerations as a tempering influence on the outbreak and subsequent direction of feuds and other violence seem to be conspicuously absent. Van Gelder also stresses that Islam could not replace the older anthropocentric ethos based on concepts of honour and shame, although he does not pursue the issue much further; see The Bad and the Ugly, 13–14. See Qurʾān 3:134, 7:199, 24:22, 25:63; and Nāṣir al-Dīn Abū Sacīd c Abdallāh b. cUmar al-Bayḍāwī, Anwār al-tanzīl wa-asrār al-taʾwīl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-cIlmiyya, 1408/1988), 1:180, 372; 2:119, 146; al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī Abū l-Qāsim Ḥasan b. Muḥammad, Muḥāḍarāt al-udabāʾ wa-muḥāwarāt al-shucarāʾ wa-l-bulaghāʾ, ed. Riyāḍ cAbd al-Ḥamīd Murād (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1425/2004), 1:458, 465, 470. An adage in the cUyūn al-akhbār seems like a very concise summary of the religious approach to forgiveness: “If you punish [someone], you reward [him for his offence]; if you forgive, you do [extra] good; and forgiving is more like piety [in c āqabta jāzayta wa-in cafawta aḥsanta wa-l-cafw aqrab li-l-taqwā].” The last phrase is a verbatim quotation from Qurʾān 2:237. See Ibn Qutayba, c Uyūn, vol. 1, part 1, 177. E.g. al-Rāghib, Muḥāḍarāt, 1:483. On this problem, see Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥallā, 12:253–7. In certain circumstances, 112

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47.

48.

49. 50. 51.

52.

even the Mālikites apparently allowed for the possibility of forgiving qadhf. See for instance Ibn Farḥūn, Durra, 312. On this point, see van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 17, 61, and cf. a typical two-line piece of hijāʾ (by Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābiʾ) based on the motif of not deigning an answer to a lampoon by a contemptible person in Yāqūt, Udabāʾ, 1:154. For a brief discussion, in a letter by Ibn Shuhayd, of the difficulty of even arousing the wrath of an aristocrat by abusive speech (wa-lihādhā ṣāra sabb al-ashārif casīran cawīṣan . . . etc.), see Abū l-Ḥasan cAlī b. Bassām al-Shantarīnī, al-Dhakhīra fī maḥāsin ahl al-Jazīra, ed. Sālim Muṣṭafā al-Badrī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-cIlmiyya, 1419/1998), 1:147. Cf. also al-Rāghib, Muḥāḍarāt, 1:463 on not having to react to lowly challenges. In the community that Gilsenan studied, men of honour would not answer to challenges from certain individuals classified as asocial and troublesome. See Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 180. Occasionally, a person of high status might even be reproached by friends and acquaintances for not being patient enough to forgive a lowly lampoon forger. See for instance Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 140 (fa-cūtiba fī dhālika). High-ranking people notorious for the callousness of their hearts would inspire horror and loathing instead of admiration, as stories about the ruthlessness of cAbdallāh b. Mucāwiya, a great-great-grandson of cAlī b. Abī Ṭālib attest. Despite his noble descent, influence and wealth, he horrified people with his studied nonchalance during floggings and other deadly and horrific punishments done to people who had incited his anger. See al-Iṣfahānī, Maqātil, 153–4. For similar stories on the unpopularity of unnecessary harshness displayed by persons of high status, and the consideration of abusive speech as unbecoming for them and dishonourable, see Miskawayh, Tajārib, 1:62–3, 71, 90, 267. The Turkish military commander of the caliph al-Rāḍī (322–9/934–40) even hired a respected man to help wean himself off his harsh temper and fits of anger, which he recognized were a disgrace and an embarrassing shortcoming. See ibid., 1:417–18. Significantly, Ibn Qutayba discusses the issue of ḥilm and its opposite ghaḍab (anger) within the chapter on lordship and supremacy (kitāb al-suʾdad), sandwiched between the topics of intellect and glory. See Ibn Qutayba, cUyūn, vol. 1, part 1, 396–406. al-Thacālibī, Yatīma, 4:69–70. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 20:306–7. Al-Maʾmūn was also noted for his displays of leniency. See al-Ibshīhī, Mustaṭraf, 127–8, 199–200. See a long section on the virtues of forgiveness and clemency from an Islamic point of view in Abū l-Qāsim b. Riḍwān al-Mālaqī, al-Shuhub al-lāmica fī l-siyāsa al-nāfica, ed. cAlī Sāmī al-Nashshār (Casablanca: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1404/1984), 101–10. On this point, cf. for instance Ibn Qutayba, cUyūn, vol. 1, part 1, 400 and also 449 sqq. (the section under the title Bāb al-tawassuṭ fī l-mudārāt wa-l-ḥilm); and al-Rāghib, Muḥāḍarāt, 1:492–503 (the section entitled Wa-mimmā jāʾa fī dhamm al-ḥilm wa-madḥ al-ciqāb). Clemency seemed to many a powerful 113

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53.

54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

person to be dangerously and unacceptably close to a humiliating inability to deter aggressions, and was therefore, for these people, better avoided. See Ibn Qutayba, cUyūn, vol. 1, part 1, 407. Such ambiguities are nicely put in a letter in which the Andalusī intellectual Abū Ḥafṣ b. Burd the Elder complains of the audacity and recalcitrance of some state officials towards their overlord al-Muẓaffar b. Abī cĀmir in the following manner: “I suppose that the only reason they dare take such liberty with us is God’s gift to us, namely our clemency despite our power, and our suppression of anger [alḥilm maca l-maqdira wa-l-kaẓm cinda l-ḥafīẓa].” See Ibn Bassām, Dhakhīra, 1:65. The theme of the ruler’s praiseworthy clemency recurs elsewhere too in the official correspondence composed by Abū Ḥafṣ (maca anna l-ḥilm wa-l-kaẓm min akhlāqihi); and the vizier Abū Ḥafṣ b. Burd the Younger also mentions the topic in a strangely phrased letter offering indemnity (amān): “Were it not for [. . .] our wish that [our] forgiveness combined with power should discipline you [rajāʾunā an yakūna l-cafw calā l-maqdira taʾdīban lakum], your blood would be lapped up by the predators of the battleground, and your flesh devoured by the hyaenas of the desert . . .” See ibid., 1:69, 311. For other instances of the juxtaposition of the concepts of ‘forgiving’ and ‘power’, ‘ability’ in a similar sense, see al-Rāghib, Muḥāḍarāt 1:456, 458, 466–8; Yāqūt, Udabāʾ, 5:2104. See for instance Dīwān al-Mutanabbī (15th edn, Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1414/ 1994 [1st edn 1377/1958]), 164 (kullu ḥilmin atā bi-ghayri qtidārin ḥujjatun lājiʾun ilayhā l-liʾāmu), 210 (mina l-ḥilmi an tastacmila l-jahla dūnahu idhā ttasacat fī l-ḥilmi ṭuruqu l-maẓālimi), 372 (wa-waḍcu l-nadā fī mawḍici l-sayfi bi-l-culā muḍirrun ka-waḍci l-sayfi fī mawḍici l-nadā). al-Rāghib, Muḥāḍarāt, 1:460. c Alī b. al-Ḥasan b. cAlī al-Bākharzī, Dumyat al-qaṣr fī cuṣrat ahl al-caṣr, ed. Muḥammad Altūnjī (Beirut: Dār al-Jayl, 1414/1993), 1:370–2. Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 151. For the exact reverse, cf. Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 164–6 on the pressing necessity for a group of small landholders (aghawāt) to revenge the wounding of one of their family by a peasant in a spectacular, uncompromising and unequivocally violent manner in order to emphasize the status difference between themselves and the peasant class (fallāḥīn), a gap which was actually becoming increasingly negligible. It is a universal sociological pattern that uncertainty about a group’s actual status and attendant privileges tends to lead to a heightened sense of stressing status distinctions in the face of threats ‘from below’. See William A. Foley, Anthropological Linguistics: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 310. al-Rāghib, Muḥāḍarāt, 1:468. Although concerned with gross insults instead of hijāʾ, an account about the forbearance of al-Muhallabī, the vizier of the Būyid Mucizz al-Dawla (334– 56/945–67), is very instructive. The passage, which sounds quite realistic to me, tells of the differing interpretations of al-Muhallabī and his interlocutor 114

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60.

61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66.

67.

concerning the appropriate attitude to the constant insults and abuses coming from the ruler. See Miskawayh, Tajārib, 2:146. See for instance Ibn Qutayba, cUyūn, vol. 1, part 1, 175–6 (al-Maʾmūn with Ibrāhīm b. al-Mahdī), 177–8 (Mucāwiya with Rawḥ b. Zinbāc), 397 (Mucāwiya with an unidentified man); al-Rāghib, Muḥāḍarāt, 1:458 (Qays b. cĀṣim with an unidentified man), 459 (cUmar b. cAbd al-cAzīz with an unidentified man); etc. Of course, whether, how and in what circumstances these incidents actually took place is extremely uncertain, but what concerns us here is only the way they are presented in the collections – as accounts of admirable conduct. Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 172, and also 159, 164. The great Sevillan poet Ibn cAmmār was hated and detested by a lot of people on account of his obscene satires, yet no one was able to harm him as long as he enjoyed the favour and protection of the ruler al-Muctamid (461–84/1069–91). See for instance Ibn Diḥya, Muṭrib, 169. When he turned against his powerful protector and lampooned even him, he was eventually gaoled and killed. See Ibn Bassām, Dhakhīra, 2:247–57; María Jesús Rubiera Mata, Literatura hispanoárabe (Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1992), 89–93. Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 161. al-Iṣbahānī, Kharīda [al-Juzʾ al-Rābic], 2:546. Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 159. al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, 3:240–5; al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 5:1684; Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 2–3; Ibn Qutayba, Shicr, 392; and cf. Vajda, “Les zindīqs,” 198– 204. A comparable case is that of a poet nicknamed al-cAkawwak, who in one version of the account of his death was killed for offending al-Maʾmūn’s sense of honour, but on the pretext of some hyperbolic phrases of praise that could be interpreted as signs of impiety. See Ibn al-Muctazz, Ṭabaqāt, 76–7. I believe the most likely real reason of Abū Nuwās’s confinement(s) in prison is also his having offended the dignity of some high dignitary – probably the vizier al-Faḍl b. al-Rabīc, or his father, or else Sulaymān b. al-Manṣūr (the reigning caliph’s grandfather’s brother) – who then took advantage of the poet’s scandalous life style and utterances to persuade the caliph to put him behind bars. See Abū Hiffān, Akhbār, 45–7, 106–7; Ibn Manẓūr, Akhbār, 107–8. On accusations of zandaqa as a weapon of political opportunism, see M. Fierro, “El proceso contra Ibn Ḥāṭim al-Ṭulayṭulī (años 457/1064– 464/1072),” Estudios Onomástico-Biográficos de al-Andalus 6 (1994), 207. Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 2001), 48. (It is interesting to note that in early 8th/14th-century Syria, the Qays and Yaman factions involved in never-ending tribal vendettas seem to have consciously applied legal subterfuges to put a veneer of Islamic legality on the actual impunity of revenge killers. See a petition for a fatwā in this matter in Ibn Taymiyya, Fatāwā, 3:392.) In this context, it must be added that to procure a fatwā legitimizing the killing of someone on religious pretexts would often prove difficult 115

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68. 69.

70. 71. 72.

73.

even for a ruler, as many fuqahāʾ would not be willing to be accomplices in a hideous crime, and then it took time to find one who would play along. For a very interesting case involving the justification of the unlawful nullification of a guarantee of indemnity granted to the cAlid descendant Yaḥyā b. cAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan by Hārūn al-Rashīd, see al-Iṣfahānī, Maqātil, 401. Also cf. M. Isabel Fierro, “Andalusian ‘Fatāwā’ on Blasphemy,” AI 25 (1990), 115–16 for the application of what seems to have been a minority ruling among the corps of the fuqahāʾ. Ibn Diḥya, Muṭrib, 124. Lawrence Rosen, Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1, 163–4. For instance, while the concept of ḥaqq, “right/ obligation” was on everyone’s lips all the time, actual events would leave no doubt as to the extent to which the concept was negotiable and open to differing interpretations by individual social actors. See ibid., 69. Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches, 167. Donald W. Ball, “The Problematics of Respectability,” in Deviance and Respectability: The Social Construction of Moral Meanings, ed. Jack D. Douglas (New York, London: Basic Books, 1970), 339. A comparable example of such an ambiguous attitude is described by the sociologist cAlī al-Wardī in his discussion of Iraqi urban society in the Ottoman era, in which the totally opposed cultural ideals embodied by the aggressive urban brigands (ashqiyāʾ) and the ultra-pious (akhyār), respectively, were held in equally high esteem by the populace; see al-Wardī, Dirāsa, 295. See also Lila Abu-Lughod, “Shifting politics in Bedouin Love Poetry,” in Language and the Politics of Emotion, ed. Catherine A. Lutz, Lila Abu-Lughod (Cambridge, Paris etc.: Cambridge University Press, Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1990), 32–6, and AbuLughod, Veiled Sentiments, 234–8, 250–4 on the contradictory ideals and values simultaneously upheld by the Egyptian Bedouins among whom she conducted her fieldwork. Marshall B. Clinard, Sociology of Deviant Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), 9, 11–2, 19–20; Jack D. Douglas, “Deviance and Respectability: The Social Construction of Moral Meanings,” in Deviance and Respectability: The Social Construction of Moral Meanings, ed. Jack D. Douglas (New York, London: Basic Books, 1970), 15–16.

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5

Reveal or conceal: public humiliation and banishment as punishments in early Islamic times Everett K. Rowson*

The Kitāb al-aghānī (Book of Songs) by Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (d. ca 363/972) includes a lengthy biography of the Umayyad poet al-Aḥwaṣ (d. ca 110/728), which is replete with amusing stories about his profligacy and flippancy, and the trouble he repeatedly got himself into with the local authorities in Medina.1 One of the more striking (and convoluted) of these stories may be summarized as follows. Al-Aḥwaṣ paid a visit to the caliph al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 86–96/705–15) and offered him a panegyric. The caliph gave him lodging and ordered that his kitchens be put at his disposal. Al-Aḥwaṣ then proceeded to attempt to seduce some of the caliph’s slave boys, who worked for him as bakers.2 Also staying with the caliph was a man named Shuʿayb, who apparently got wind of what was going on. Fearing exposure, and looking for a way to get this man out of the way, al-Aḥwaṣ took advantage of the fact that Shuʿayb had quarreled with one of his (Shuʿayb’s) clients, and he persuaded this client to go to the caliph and tell him that Shuʿayb had attempted to seduce him. The caliph, however, was suspicious, and immediately queried Shuʿayb himself, who denied the allegation and suggested that the client be roughed up a bit until he came out with the truth – which he did, admitting that al-Aḥwaṣ had put him up to it. Then the head of the bakeries informed the caliph that al-Aḥwaṣ had himself been attempting to seduce the baker boys. The caliph sent al-Aḥwas back to Medina, his home town, with orders to the local governor, Ibn Ḥazm, to give him a hundred stripes, pour olive oil over his head, and expose him to public humiliation by standing him on bags of figs – what were known as bulus * This chapter is a slightly expanded and updated version of a paper delivered at the 1998 annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. I thank the editors of this volume for inviting me to publish it here.

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– in the market.3 Typically, al-Aḥwaṣ used the occasion to declaim defiant verses to the onlookers, beginning No disaster is there which befalls me, But exalts me and elevates my status – 4

as well as others mocking the governor, Ibn Ḥazm, for the low birth of his female ancestors.5 According to a follow-up account, Ibn Ḥazm went beyond flogging al-Aḥwaṣ and parading him (ṭāfa bihi) for public ridicule, and sent him off, naked, in a camel-litter, to the Red Sea island of Dahlak, where he languished in exile for several years, until freed by the Caliph Yazīd II (r. 125–26/743–34) at the instance of his favorite slave-girl, Ḥabāba.6 That no great claims can be made for the precise historicity of this entire incident will come as no surprise to anyone who has dealt with the materials preserved in the Kitāb al-aghānī from pre-ʿAbbāsid times. In fact, Abū l-Faraj offers quite a number of variant accounts, which disagree on the identity of the caliph, and of the Medinese governor who punished al-Aḥwaṣ with flogging, public humiliation, and/or banishment to Dahlak, as well as on the nature of the offense that occasioned the punishment.7 Besides the story of the baker’s boys, we are told that the poet incurred the wrath of the authorities for his persistent declamation of love poetry about aristocratic ladies (tashbīb or nasīb);8 for vaunting his ancestry over that of the Prophet’s own family in verses he recited to the celebrated Sukayna, daughter of the Prophet’s son al-Ḥusayn;9 for his own sexual profligacy, including an incident in which he attempted (unsuccessfully) to persuade a female acquaintance to let him take advantage of a hole she had drilled through the wall of her house to be able to communicate with her (beautiful) neighbor in the adjacent one;10 and for his blatant homosexual adventures that led him to declare, “When I am of a mind for it, I don’t care whether I meet up with an active sodomite, a passive sodomite, or a heterosexual fornicator.”11 He was also reported to have shown up for parties occasionally in feminine (or at least effeminate) attire,12 and to have kept as his paramour a young slave boy whom he referred to as “Umm Jaʿfar”.13 Reports on al-Aḥwaṣ’s scandalous career are of potential value to scholars in a number of ways, not least with regard to questions of gender, homoeroticism, and cross-dressing. But they also serve as illustrations of two fairly common forms of punishment in the Umayyad period – public humiliation and banishment – that themselves merit further comment. A quick (and by no means comprehensive) review of some of the available evidence prompts three observations in this regard. First, both punishments are especially, although not exclusively, associated with offenses involving questions of sex and gender. Second, neither is very well integrated 120

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into the systematic discussions of crime and punishment in the later legal literature. And third, these two punishments tend to be paired, despite an apparent contradiction between displaying offenders to the public at large and hiding them away in remote places of exile. Public humiliation – the term consistently used is tashhīr, literally, ‘making notorious’ – seems to have been a response mostly (and appropriately enough) to making scandal.14 As love poetry, song, and general frivolity flourished in late 1st/7th- and early 2nd/8th-century Ḥijāz, it was one measure the governors of Mecca and Medina could take to control the poets’ cheeky verses about noble ladies. Besides al-Aḥwaṣ, for instance, al-Walīd and his governor Ibn Ḥazm unleashed their wrath on the poets Jarīr and ʿUmar b. Lajaʾ for “slandering and angering respectable women” by flogging them and standing them on the bulus tied together.15 Somewhat later, also in Medina, the notorious transvestite singer al-Dalāl was caught entertaining a drinking party of the city’s rambunctious youth and cavorting with one of their slave boys; the governor asked him, “Was your house too confining, so you had to go out and pursue your depravity with this boy in the desert?” When al-Dalāl replied, “If I had known you would be jealous and want to pursue depravity with us indoors I would never have left my house!” the governor ordered him stripped, flogged, and paraded around town with the boy.16 In other cases, it was simply going too far with their abuse poetry (hijāʾ) that got the poets into trouble, as with Ibn Mufarrigh (d. 69/689), whose repeated attacks on the governor of Sijistān, ʿAbbād b. Ziyād, and his family led to his being given a powerful laxative and then paraded around Basra tied to a cat and a pig;17 of course, hijāʾ poetry often enough had its sexual component, as with Ibn Mufarrigh’s vivid verses accusing Ibn Ziyād of passive pederasty (ubna).18 And al-Aḥwaṣ suffered, again, for directing his barbs against the deposed governor of Khurāsān, Yazīd b. al-Muhallab, by having wine poured over his head and his hair and having his beard shaven and being publicly flogged.19 Our evidence for the imposition of banishment is relatively more copious, and more varied (as is the terminology: although the most common term is nafy, we also find tasyīr, taghrīb, ikhrāj, ibʿād, and ijlāʾ). Much of the evidence has been collected by Khalīl ʿAthāmina in a valuable article published in 1984.20 Here the classic, and precedent-making, case is that of the transvestite Hīt. According to the story, preserved in ḥadīth collections as well as the anecdotal literature, Hīt was allowed free access to the Prophet’s private family quarters, on the assumption of his lack of sexual interest in the women. On the eve of the conquest of al-Ṭāʾif, however, the Prophet overheard him recommending a woman in the besieged town as a prospective marriage partner to one of the combatants in such voluptuous 121

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terms that he henceforth forbade him, and other transvestites, to visit the women, and banished him to a remote spot outside Medina. (Some later versions of this story make it quite clear that what was at issue here was the women’s chastity and respectability, not Hīt’s oddity in terms of gender deportment per se. The sources differ on his later fate; most agree that his exile continued under the first three caliphs, although one of the three, bowing to local pressure, allowed him to enter Medina once a week to beg for food.)21 The Prophet also, as is well known, sent a number of his enemies among the poets into exile for mocking him in their verses. Under the Caliph ʿUmar we hear of other uses for banishment, including as punishment for the drinking of wine – rather surprisingly so, since developed legal doctrine was to specify flogging, most precisely, as the required punishment for this ḥadd offense. One of those exiled by ʿUmar was the poet Abū Miḥjan, who was apparently sent off to an island, although there is dispute about its identity and location.22 Interestingly, according to Yāqūt (d. 626/1229) in his geographical dictionary, one of these places, Ḥaḍawḍā, is said to be where the pre-Islamic Arabs banished their ‘khulaʿāʾ’ – that is, profligates who thumbed their noses at societal conventions – so perhaps there is a significant pre-history to this pattern of offense and response.23 In another case, that of a drinker named Rabīʿa b. Umayya, ʿUmar’s policy backfired: this man was exiled to Khaybar, but he then apostacized to Christianity and fled to the Byzantines, leading ʿUmar to declare that he would never again impose banishment on anyone.24 It is not clear that ʿUmar’s policy worked much better in another, particularly interesting case, that of Naṣr b. al-Ḥajjāj, who is said to have been a man of such breathtaking beauty that the ladies swooned over him (in verse, of course), so that the caliph felt obliged to take steps to protect their morals. He first had Naṣr’s hair shaven, but that did nothing to diminish his beauty, and even when he was given a turban his eyes continued to bewitch the women, and ʿUmar decided on the extreme measure of having him exiled to Basra. While protests were not lacking that Naṣr had done no wrong and hardly merited such a punishment, ʿUmar felt, it seems, somewhat vindicated when Naṣr and the wife of the deputy governor in Basra became enamored of one another, resulting in his further banishment to Fārs, where he took up with a local aristocratic lady.25 Our sources also mention, albeit with less detail, the case of another handsome man whom ʿUmar banished to Basra, as well as that of a man who foolishly engaged in some rather innocent dalliance with some Medinese women whose husbands were away on campaign and was packed off to Oman.26 In his survey of these and other cases, ʿAthāmina stresses that it was only ʿUthmān who began to wield the weapon of banishment against his 122

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political opponents (except insofar as the Prophet’s measures against hostile poets count as such), and that this policy, directed especially against those who were protesting his indulgence in nepotism, was controversial. The Umayyads, however, used it widely, and the island of Dahlak became a particularly important colony for exiles. Perhaps its most famous detainee was the ex-governor of Khurāsān, Yazīd b. al-Muhallab (d. 102/720), exiled there (albeit only briefly) by the Caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–720) for failing to remit the fifth of his booty to the central treasury. It appears, however, that even at that date Yazīd’s fate was seen as more appropriate to moral than to political offenders: having been clothed in wool, mounted on a camel, and paraded before the troops before being sent off, Yazīd cried, “Have I no kinsmen (to defend me)? Why should I be transported to Dahlak? Only those guilty of depravity, vice, and theft (al-fāsiq al-murīb al-khārib) are sent to Dahlak!”27 If we now turn from such rather scattered (and, clearly, not entirely dependable) accounts of actual cases of public humiliation and banishment to what the later legal literature has to say about such punishments, we find considerably less than a perfect fit. Although some precedents are recognized and given their due, on the whole these punishments are treated in rather scattershot fashion, when brought up at all, and the offenses specified as occasioning them are rather different from what we find in our anecdotal material. In part, of course, this is due to the nature of legal treatments of punishment in general. These are divided into the two major categories of ḥadd and taʿzīr, the former being restricted to a closed set of infractions – fornication, false accusation of fornication, theft, highway robbery, and wine-drinking – for which the penalties, mostly derived directly from the Qurʾān, were very precisely defined, while the specifics of the latter, generally imposed for lesser offenses, are by and large left to the discretion of the judge. Speaking at a theoretical level, the jurisprudents normally assumed that a taʿzīr punishment would consist of flogging (how many stripes being permitted remaining controversial), although they did allow for the possibility of both banishment and public humiliation, as well as imprisonment, under this rubric, but usually without further specification or correlation with individual offenses. The one offense for which some jurisprudents did specifically mandate public humiliation (that is, tashhīr) was bearing false witness (shahādat zūr). For this they had precedents in the āthār literature, although not from the Prophet himself. ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827), in his Muṣannaf, gives ten reports on such a penalty being inflicted on false witnesses, none of them mentioning the offender by name, and most of them imposed by either the Caliph ʿUmar or the semi-legendary judge Shurayḥ. 123

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For example, we are told that ʿUmar ordered his governors in Syria to give the false witness forty stripes, blacken his face, shave his head, and imprison him a long time – but this report is rejected by others; similarly, it is reported that when such an offender was brought before Shurayḥ, he removed his turban, slapped him a number of times with a scourge, and sent him to the mosque to be made known to the people.28 Evidently relying on such reports, the Shāfiʿī jurist al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058) in a discussion of taʿzīr in his al-Aḥkām al-sulṭānīya declares it permissible for a false witness to be stripped except for a loin-cloth and paraded before the people while announcing his crime, so long as this is a repeat offense and he has not repented; further, it is permitted to shave his hair, but not his beard, while there is controversy over whether it is permitted to blacken his face (although most jurists do allow it).29 The Ḥanbalī Ibn Qudāma (d. 620/1223) offers a bit more detail, and a few more alternatives: while the false witness is to be presented to the people, his face is not to be blackened, nor is he to be mounted (the implication is probably that he is not to be mounted backwards on a donkey), nor is he required to declare his own offense. On the other hand, Ibn Qudāma reports that an early judge in Basra ordered shaving half the head of the false witness, blackening his face, and parading him through the markets accompanied by the one he witnessed for, followed by one day’s imprisonment. After adding a few other variations from transmitted early reports, Ibn Qudāma concludes that the Sharīʿa offers no real specification (taqdīr sharʿī) in this matter.30 Nowhere in the legal literature I have consulted does public humiliation merit a discussion outside this narrow topic of false witnessing. Similarly, the legal discussions of banishment point, on the whole, in a rather different direction from what we encounter in the anecdotal literature. Here, for convenience, we can turn to al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820), who includes a section on banishment (nafy) in his Kitāb al-Umm, specifying three grounds for it in the Qurʾān and ḥadīth.31 First, there is the sole Qurʾānic instance of the term, at 5:33: “The punishment of those who wage war against God and His Messenger and strive to cause corruption in the land is that they be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or be banished from the land (yunfaw min al-arḍ).” Despite the pregnant phrase “corruption in the land”, this reference is set aside as not referring to real banishment but rather to pursuit of those who flee their deserved punishment.32 Al-Shāfiʿī’s other two proof-texts for the punishing with banishment come from the ḥadīth. The first, which is more ‘confirmed’ (thābit), is the famous Prophetic pronouncement prescribing one hundred stripes and a year’s banishment for the virgin guilty of fornication (zinā) – a 124

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ḥadīth rejected by the Ḥanafīs but accepted by the other schools. It is in this context that almost all legal discussions of nafy are to be found, mostly because of the conflict over it among the schools. Al-Shāfiʿī’s third instance is the ḥadīth concerning the transvestite Hīt (and, as in some other versions, his companion Mātiʿ), which al-Shāfiʿī insists all his colleagues accept as authentic, although he grants that it is less unimpugnable than the one on zinā. Al-Māwardī, in his chapter on taʿzīr, makes no reference to either zinā or the transvestite precedent, but presents banishment as an alternative to imprisonment for disciplining (taʾdīb) and moral rectification (taqwīm), “if his offenses are liable to attract others, by contagion, and lead to harm for them”. On the question whether the offended party’s forgiveness of the offender necessarily cancels imposition of the taʿzīr penalty by the authorities, al-Māwardī prefers the view that it does not, since, he says, “moral rectification counts as one of the rights of public welfare” (al-taqwīm min ḥuqūq al-maṣlaḥa al-ʿāmma). Although he does not elaborate on this point, it seems to me that this formulation does point, obliquely, toward an essential aspect of banishment (as well as public humiliation) as actually practiced: while the legal discussions of crime and punishment (ḥadd and taʿzīr) are generally dominated by considerations of ‘the rights of God’ and ‘the rights of persons’ (ḥuqūq Allāh and ḥuqūq al-ʿibād), and thus reflect a very individualistic view of offenses – as sins, if you will, rather than crimes – these ‘rights of public welfare’ show an awareness of the need for particular measures to protect the community at large in some instances. Public welfare is also appealed to in other legal discussions of punishment by banishment, although in somewhat different terms. For example, the Mālikī exegete al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1272), in the section of his Qurʾānic commentary on 4:15–16, which concerns the law regarding fornication (zinā), includes an excursus on banishment and the conflict over it between the Ḥanafīs and the other schools.33 He mentions ʿUmar’s statement that he would “never again” banish anyone after his debacle with the wine-bibber Rabīʿa, but deflects it as referring only to punishment for wine, not zinā. Supporting banishment as a punishment supplementary to flogging for virgins who commit zinā, al-Qurṭubī comments that this was a pre-Islamic measure for those guilty of transgressions against women in general, restricted then by Islam to this specific offense. He then restricts it further, however, limiting it only to free male offenders. Slaves, he says, are exempted, because in their case banishment would amount to a punishment for their (guiltless) owners, which would be unjust. And women are exempted because banishment would be an occasion for them to fall precisely into the sin for which they were banished – sexual immorality – 125

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since they would no longer be protected through seclusion inside a family unit as they should be. He thus concludes, using the technical terminology of legal theory, that public welfare (maṣlaḥa) restricts (takhṣīṣ) the general prescription (ʿumūm) of the ḥadīth. Finally, the Ḥanafī jurisprudent al-Kāsānī (d. 587/1191), arguing, with Abū Ḥanīfa, against imposition of the banishment punishment for virgins who commit zinā, maintains that for both sexes banishment would be an inducement to further acts of fornication, “since in one’s own town one is restrained by shame in front of his kin”, backing up this argument with a statement from ʿAlī that “Exile is a temptation (al-taghrīb fitna)”. In order to deflect arguments from precedent that the Prophet’s Companions did in fact prescribe banishment in some instances, he insists that these can be explained in terms of public welfare – maṣlaḥa – and thus fall under the rubric taʿzīr, rather than the ḥadd penalties prescribed for zinā in general.34 It would appear, then, that although such measures as banishment and public humiliation did not fit entirely comfortably into the moral system of the Sharīʿa developed by the jurisprudents, the latter did recognize the historic and ongoing practical value of such sanctions in the interests of preserving public morality. Given prevailing mores, this meant largely, although not entirely, preserving the dignity, and chastity, of women. Not only the poets’ tashbīb, but also the transvestites’ transgression of the lines of gender segregation, offended against the dictates of public morality; abuse poetry (hijāʾ) that went too far was also potentially destructive to the social fabric. The solution was ostracism. Public exposure had the effect, not so paradoxically, of casting out the offender from respectable society, just as did, more drastically, banishment. The latter was hardly a practical solution when exile merely moved the offender from one part of the Islamic community to another – this was an experiment that failed – but banishment to a remote spot (such as the penal colony at Dahlak) could be effective, and otherwise one could substitute imprisonment – which is what in fact happened with egregious moral offenders (especially poets) in later periods, beginning with the ʿAbbāsids. That political offenses came to fit comfortably into the same pattern makes sense, since nothing would be seen by the authorities as more destructive to the social fabric than political rebellion. On this latter point, however, the legists were largely silent (which is not, on the whole, very surprising). The fine study by Christian Lange on public humiliation in later periods35 makes a fundamental long-term continuity in the practice (and theory) abundantly clear, and a similar continuity may be posited for banishment.36 One curious aspect of the continuity in tashhīr practice, not alluded to by Lange, may serve here as a concluding remark, namely, an odd link with the 126

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‘effeminates’ (mukhannathūn) of premodern Islamic societies.37 Shmuel Moreh has noted a passage in the unpublished history of Ibn Ẓāfir (d. 613/1216 or 623/1226) describing how a baker convicted of treason in early 4th/10th-century Bukhārā was subjected to tashhīr with mukhannathūn “before him” (bayna yadayhi), presumably parading in front of him and ridiculing him;38 and the historian al-ʿUtbī (d. ca 427/1036) describes another occasion, later in the century, in which battle captives being brought to Bukhārā were met by “mukhannnathūn with tambourines and spindles, rather than swords and spears”, in apparent mockery of the ceremony of taqlīs, in which the populace would turn out to greet a victorious army.39 In ʿAbbāsid Fusṭāṭ, on the other hand, we are informed by the historian al-Kindī (d. 350/961) that in the year 242/856 the governor subjected the local effeminates (here muʾannathūn rather than mukhannathūn) themselves to both banishment and tashhīr (as well as flogging).40 Sixty years later, however, they were still there (or had returned), as al-Kindī notes that in 300/913 the governor commanded that on the festival of Mihrajān the muʾannathūn be assembled, and then “ordered them to display (their) string, wind, and percussion instruments, and put them on parade (shahharahum) in their finery, and they circled around the congregational mosque in al-Fusṭāṭ”.41 Despite the use of the term shahhara, this does not seem to be a punishment, but rather a celebration. And a century later the Egyptian historian al-Musabbiḥī records that in 414/1023 a mukhannath was punished with both flogging and tashhīr – not, however, it seems for being a mukhannath but rather for pimping five women out of his house.42

Notes 1. Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, K. al-Aghānī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 4:40–58. 2. Abū l-Faraj’s account states explicitly that al-Aḥwaṣ desired the boys to take the active role in sodomy with him (yurīduhum an yafʿalū bihi). 3. On the bulus, see Edward William Lane, An Arabic–English Lexicon (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1863–93), s.v. 4. Mā min muṣībati nakbatin umnā bihā / illā tuʿaẓẓimunī wa-tarfaʿu shānī. 5. K. al-Aghānī, 4:44. 6. Ibid., 4:45, 49. 7. These accounts are fully reviewed by Karel Petráček, “Das Leben des Dichters al-Aḥwaṣ al-Anṣārī,” Orientalia Pragensia 7 (1970), 23–57. 8. K. al-Aghānī, 4:48. 9. Ibid., 4:43. 10. Ibid., 4:47. 11. Ibid., 4:43: idhā akhadhtu ṣarīrī lam ubāli ayya l-thalātha laqītu nākiḥan aw mankūḥan aw zāniyan. The line is very ambiguous, but in context 127

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12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

(it immediately follows a claim that al-Aḥwaṣ was maʾbūn, pathologically given to passive sodomy) this would appear to be the meaning. Petráček, “Leben,” 35, translates “Ich kümmerte mich nie darum, welche der folgenden drei Frauen ich traf: verlobte, verheiratete oder ehebrecherische,” which can hardly be right. K. al-Aghānī, 4:51. In the immediately following anecdote the caliph ʿAbd alMalik is quoted calling al-Aḥwaṣ an effeminate or transvestite (mukhannath). Ibid., 18:198. In this passage Abū l-Faraj cites reports that “Umm Jaʿfar” and “ʿĀtika,” to both of whom al-Aḥwaṣ addressed numerous amatory poems, were both in fact males. On the other hand, he elsewhere devotes an entire section of his book (6:253–9) to reports about al-Aḥwaṣ and Umm Jaʿfar, whom he identifies as a freedwoman of ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar b. Abī Ṭālib, giving her full name and genealogy. The two accounts are not necessarily incompatible, however, since one of the reports in the latter section makes it clear that al-Aḥwaṣ did not actually know (the real) Umm Jaʿfar. On this see Hilary Kilpatrick, Making the Great Book of Songs: Compilation and the Author’s Craft in Abû l-Faraj al-Iṣbahânî’s Kitâb al-aghânî (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 162–3. For an extensive and insightful examination of tashhīr in later centuries, including a much more thorough treatment of the legal literature than is offered here below, see Christian Lange, “Legal and Cultural Aspects of Ignominious Parading (Tashhīr) in Islam,” ILS 14 (2007), 81–108. K. al-Aghānī, 7:69, and for discussion and other references see Geert Jan ven Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly: Attitudes towards Invective Poetry (Hijāʾ) in Classical Arabic Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 31. K. al-Aghānī, 4:65. For a fuller discussion, see Everett K. Rowson, “The Effeminates of Early Medina,” JAOS 111 (1991), 671–93. K. al-Aghānī, 17:56, cited by van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 29. K. al-Aghānī, 17:67. Ibid., 4:52. Khalīl ʿAthāmina, “ʿUqūbat al-nafy fī ṣadr al-Islām wa-l-dawla al-Umawiyya,” al-Karmil 5 (1984), 55–80. For full discussion, and references, see Rowson, “Effeminates.” On Abū Miḥjan, see EI2, s.v. Abū Miḥdjan, 1:140 (N. Rhodokanakis/Ch. Pellat); K. al-Aghānī, 21:137–43. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, n.d.), s.v. Ḥaḍawḍā. ʿAthāmina, “ʿUqūbat al-nafy,” 64; Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt al-kubrā, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 3:213; al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān (Cairo: Dār alQalam,1966–7), ad 4:15–16. For full references and discussion see ʿAthāmina, “ʿUqūbat al-nafy,” 62–4. Ibid., 64–5 (on Abū Dhiʾb and Jaʿda al-Sulamī, respectively). Al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. M. J. de Goeje et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901), 2:1350–2. 128

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28. ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, al-Muṣannaf, ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī (Beirut: al-Majlis al-ʿIlmī, 1970), 8:325–6. 29. Al-Māwardī, al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1973), 236–9. 30. Ibn Qudāma al-Maqdisī, al-Mughnī, ed. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥulw (Cairo: Hajar, 1992), 14:260–4. 31. Al-Shāfiʿī, al-Umm, ed. Muḥammad Zuhrī al-Najjār (Cairo: Maktabat al-Kulliyyāt al-Azhariyya, 1961), 6:146. 32. Other legists tied this verse directly to the crime of highway robbery (qaṭʿ al-ṭarīq) and saw nafy, variously interpreted, as the appropriate ḥadd penalty for it. See Khaled Abou El Fadl, Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 47–60. 33. Al-Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ, ad 4:15–16. 34. Al-Kāsānī, Badāʾiʿ al-ṣanāʾiʿ fī tartīb al-sharāʾiʿ (Beirut: Dār al-KitābalʿArabī, 1974), 7:39. 35. See note 14 above. 36. Abundant evidence for both practices may be found, in particular, in Uriel Heyd’s Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). 37. I first called attention to this link in my “Gender Irregularity as Entertainment: Institutionalized Transvestism at the Caliphal Court in Medieval Baghdad,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, ed. Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 64–5. 38. Shmuel Moreh, Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in the Medieval Arabic World (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 75. 39. Al-ʿUtbī, al-Yamīnī, ed. Iḥsān Zanūn al-Thāmirī (Beirut: Dār al-Ṭalīʿa, 2004), 77. 40. Al-Kindī, K. al-Wulāt wa-kitāb al-quḍāṭ, ed. Rhuvon Guest (London: Gibb Memorial Series, 1912), 202–3 (amara . . . bi-ikhrāj al-muʾannathīn min Miṣr wa-ḍarbihim wa-nafyihim wa-an yuṭāf bihim). 41. Ibid., 269. There are problems with the text, however. Guest’s edition reads “wa-amara Takīn fī yawm [Nawrūz wa- (added by Guest from a parallel passage in al-Maqrīzī’s Khiṭaṭ)] Mihrajān bi-jamʿ al-muʾannathīn wa-amarahum bi-iẓhār al-maʿāzif wa-l-mazāmīr wa-l-ṭubūl wa-shahharahum fī libāsihim wa-ṭāfū l-Fusṭāṭ ʿalā l-masjid al-jāmiʿ kāna dhālika yawm al-thulāthāʾ li-sabʿ khalawna min Dhī l-Qaʿda sanata 300.” This date corresponds to late June, which fits neither Nawrūz (in March) nor Mihrajān (in September). 42. Al-Musabbiḥī, Akhbār Miṣr, ed. W. G. Millward (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma lil-Kitāb, 1980), 187.

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6

Emulating Abraham: the Fāṭimid al-Qāʾim and the Umayyad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III Maribel Fierro*

The Lamb tympanum of San Isidoro church at León (photo by J. I. Murillo Fragero)

Abraham’s sacrifice in Christian Medieval Iberia The image included here representing the sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham belongs to the tympanum of the Church of San Isidoro in León. In a pioneering study of this unique iconography in Romanesque art, John Williams pointed out that this Abraham relief is substantially more than a typological partner for the Agnus Dei, as it mainly stresses the opposition between Muslims and Christians – and the Christians’ ultimate victory – * This paper was presented in the seminar “The public display of violence in Islamic societies” (CSIC-Madrid, 15–16 June 2006) and also in the Mellon Sawyer seminar on “Violence and Authority: Comparative Studies on European, Byzantine and Islamic States and State Building,” organized by P. Sijpesteijn and Ch. Robinson (Oxford University, 13 February 2007). The comments and suggestions made on both occasions have greatly enriched my paper.

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at the time of Alfonso VII (r. 1126–57).1 Ishmael – Abraham’s other son by his concubine Hagar – and Hagar are the figures appearing on the left side; they stand as representations of the Arab and Muslim ‘other’. Sarah’s presence on the right side is the counterpart to Hagar, while Isaac rides forward to assume his crucial role in the sacrifice which foretells the final redemptive act of Christ. A trend within Muslim tradition held that it was really Ishmael, the first born, who was intended for the sacrifice, and it is this possibility that is strongly denied in the tympanum. The representation of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in the church of a royal complex in León thus served to express the righteousness of the Christians’ fight against the Muslims and assured them their final triumph. If the proposal for an earlier dating of the tympanum (Urraca’s reign, ca 1080–1126) is accepted,2 an additional meaning – or even the main message – may have been dynastic legitimacy: Urraca would have intended to point to the illegitimacy of her half-brother Sancho, born out of the union of her father Alfonso VI to a Muslim concubine. The roles and destinies of Ishmael and Isaac thus appear as productive choices for representing contemporary concerns about Christians and Muslims: after all, Isaac – as Abraham’s son destined for sacrifice – and his progeny had been promised multiplication and victory over their enemies (Gen. 22:16–17). The power of Abraham’s model to serve present needs finds another reflection in 11th-century Christian Iberia. The King Sancho Ramírez of Aragón offered his own son Ramiro, together with other presents, to the monastery of Saint-Pons de Thomières in 1093, an offering recorded in a document in which the king explicitly compared his action to that of Abraham, stating that, like the Biblical patriarch, he wanted to ‘donate’ his own son in order to propitiate victory over the enemies of the Christians.3 Before Sancho Ramírez’s striking action, another ruler in the Iberian Peninsula is said to have followed the Abrahamic precedent, carrying it further than Abraham did.

The execution of ʿAbd Allāh, son of the Umayyad Caliph ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III On 10 Dhū l-Ḥijja 338/5 May 950 (or 339/951 according to some sources),4 the Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (r. 300–50/912–61), who had proclaimed himself caliph in the year 316/929, adopting the caliphal title of al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh, ordered his son ʿAbd Allāh to be executed. ʿAbd Allāh was the uterine brother of the future Caliph al-Ḥakam II, who had been named heir to the caliphate at a very 131

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early age.5 Accused of conspiracy against his father, ʿAbd Allāh was arrested together with other people, among them the jurist of Shāfiʿī leanings Abū ʿAbd al-Malik Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Barr, who was also executed.6 ʿAbd Allāh himself is described in the sources as a Shāfiʿī, while his piety and asceticism are also noted. An 8th/14th-century source, the Dhikr bilād al-Andalus, gives the following narrative of ʿAbd Allāh’s execution: The Commander of the Faithful ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Nāṣir gave death to his son ʿAbd Allāh because he had tried to rebel against him [al-qiyām ʿalayhi], having been acknowledged by the majority of Cordobans for his virtue, religiosity, culture, generosity and wide learning, including fiqh, ḥadīth, lexicology, poetry, mathematics and medicine. Moreover, this ʿAbd Allāh rejected the oppression [jawr] and the shedding of blood [safk al-dimāʾ] of his father. Because of all this, he was pledged obedience. Having been informed of all this before the plan was carried out, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān put ʿAbd Allāh in prison and sentenced to death all those who had followed him. When the day of the Feast of Sacrifice came, he ordered his son to be brought to the open air oratory [muṣallā] where he was brought to the ground and slain [dhubiḥa] in his presence.7

According to Ibn Saʿīd (d. 685/1286), the caliph would have slain his son ʿAbd Allāh with his own hands.8 Al-Subkī (d. 771/1370) and al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1362) record that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III would have openly stated that his son was his sacrificial animal (uḍḥiyya) for the Festival, urging his entourage to sacrifice the rest of the conspirators.9 ʿAbd Allāh’s execution as a sort of substitute sacrifice on 10 Dhū l-Ḥijja – when the Festival of Sacrifice (ʿīd al-aḍḥā) is celebrated in the Islamic world by sacrificing an animal – is not mentioned in all the sources that record his biography.10 Those which omit it are Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), and following him al-Ḥumaydī (d. 488/1095) and al-Ḍabbī (d. 599/1203). As regards Ibn Ḥayyān (d. 469/1076), the most important historian for the Umayyad period in al-Andalus, the part of his Muqtabis dealing with the years 338–39/950–51 is missing in the unicum that deals with ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s reign (Muqtabis, vol. V).11 The ‘sacrificial’ execution is first documented from the 7th/13th century onwards by Ibn al-Abbār (d. 658/1260), Ibn Saʿīd, the anonymous author of Dhikr bilād al-Andalus, al-Subkī, al-Ṣafadī and al-Maqqarī (d. 1041/1632). Ibn ʿIdhārī (d. 695/1295), who characterizes ʿAbd Allāh’s ‘episode’ as one that was meant by God as a trial for his father (ibtilāʾ), stresses that a shocking or atrocious punishment (afẓaʿ al-ʿiqāb) was quickly imposed on the conspirators, while ʿAbd Allāh’s execution was postponed for some time, until his eventual decapitation (ṭawwaqahu l-ḥusām). On his part, Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1374) does mention ʿAbd Allāh’s involvement in a conspiracy against the caliph, but omits any reference to the Festival of Sacrifice. 132

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Ibn Saʿīd mentions as his sources for ʿAbd Allāh’s biography alḤumaydī’s Jadhwa, al-Mushib fi akhbār faḍāʾil ahl al-Maghrib by al-Ḥijārī (6th/12th century) – a lost work which served as the basis for Ibn Saʿīd’s Mughrib12 – and the Taʾrīkh by al-Raqīq. Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. al-Qāsim b. al-Raqīq al-Qayrawāni (d. after 418/1027–28) was secretary of the Zīrids, who ruled Ifrīqiya in the name of the Fāṭimid caliphs after they left for Egypt. His historical work is lost, but was extensively used by many Eastern historians such as Ibn Shaddād, Ibn al-Athīr, al-Nuwayrī and al-Maqrīzī, as well as by Westerners such as Ibn al-Abbār, al-Tijānī, Ibn ʿIdhārī and Ibn Khaldūn. Al-Raqīq is known for his pro-Fāṭimid outlook.13 The extent to which his Ismāʿīlī sympathies may have influenced the ‘sacrificial’ rendering of ʿAbd Allāh’s execution will be discussed in the conclusions. A related issue is that the information that has reached us about the alleged conspiracy led by ʿAbd Allāh against his father the caliph is very scanty. Al-Ḍabbī (biography no. 949),14 perhaps following al-Raqīq, mentions that ʿAbd Allāh was killed after many had pledged obedience to him because of his high quality of soul (adab) and his virtue (faḍl). Ibn ʿIdhārī points to the future al-Ḥakam II’s responsibility in accusing his own brother of conspiring against the caliph. Ibn Ḥazm, our earliest source, only says that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III killed his son because he had heard that ʿAbd Allāh had censored his tyrannical behaviour. As quoted above, according to the author of Dhikr bilād al-Andalus (who in this point seems to be following Ibn Ḥazm), ʿAbd Allāh’s opposition to his father, the ruling caliph, was based on his rejection of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s oppression (jawr) and his shedding of blood (safk al-dimāʾ). Now, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s violence does not seem to have been very different from what was customary at the time: many a Christian enemy and Muslim rebel were decapitated, and public crucifixions of those enemies considered especially dangerous were carried out often. In some cases there may have been an excess of cruelty, as in the case of the penalty inflicted on some of the traitors at the battle of Simancas, who were publicly crucified on 10 Dhū l-Ḥijja 327/26 September 939.15 What ʿAbd Allāh may have had in mind, however, were the heinous crimes criticized by Ibn Ḥazm. Ibn Ḥazm compared ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III with his ancestor al-Ḥakam I (r. 180–206/796–822), stating that he resembled him in his way of indulging in sin and carrying out doubtful acts, abusing his subjects, devoting himself only to pleasure and not paying attention to the shedding of blood. He hung the sons of the black men [awlād al-sūdān] in the waterwheel of his palace as if they were buckets for extracting water, causing 133

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their death [. . .] And this without mentioning other bad things he did in secret, that God knows best.16

Among those things he was surely counting ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s killing of two of his slave concubines, as recorded by Ibn Ḥayyān. Ibn Ḥayyān also tells how al-Nāṣir terrorized people by keeping lions to punish them, thus imitating the “tyrannical kings of the East”, although he adds that these lions – which were housed in a special part of the royal palace – were probably never used, their existence being enough to instil fear in the hearts of people.17 This cruel behaviour on the part of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III – who had to fight fiercely and for a long time against his many enemies in order to mend the shattered rule he had inherited from his grandfather – may have been used as a rationale on the part of ʿAbd Allāh and his followers in order to swing public opinion on their side, while ʿAbd Allāh’s motive may have just been his desire to secure for himself a reign that his father had bestowed upon his brother al-Ḥakam.

Execution as sacrifice? During the month of Dhū l-Ḥijja, as already indicated, the rituals of the pilgrimage to Mecca take place and on that specific day of the month, pilgrims sacrifice an animal – usually a ram – at Minā. On the same day, everywhere in the Islamic world, Muslim men equally sacrifice an animal. The Festival of Sacrifice and the Festival of the Breaking of the Fast constitute the two major Islamic religious festivals. If ʿAbd Allāh was killed on 10 Dhū l-Ḥijja, as stated by Ibn al-Abbār, Ibn Saʿīd, the author of the Dhikr and al-Maqqarī – following al-Raqīq – the date was obviously not chosen at random, nor was the place where the execution was carried out. In fact, the muṣallā – that is, the open-air oratory that existed in Córdoba as well as in other capitals – was the place where the sacrifice of animals performed during the Festival of Sacrifice usually took place. ʿAbd Allāh was thus clearly executed in a way that suggested that his person stood in the place of the sacrificial animal, while his father – according to one source – performed the sacrifice himself. This was by no means a normal procedure, nor a usual way for rulers to get rid of pretenders or opponents. The verb dhabaḥa (‘to slaughter, sacrifice’) has been shown to feature frequently in modern narratives of violence: Its metaphoric power moves the event into a sacred mode, differentiating it from the everyday. The word gives a far stronger sense of ritualized and ritu134

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alizing action than does the ordinary term qatal, which is as often employed for striking the opponent as for actually ‘killing’ him. The ‘slaughter’ trope is used to sanctify the act of revenge and to stress its purificatory and meritorious quality as well as its obligatory nature. The speaker makes the gesture of cutting an animal’s throat [. . .] A further effect of the word dhabaḥ is thus to animalize the victim in a very particular way, and with a very particular referent, and to image him as totally vulnerable to the act and power of the sacrificer who uses him for his own cleansing.18

As for medieval narratives, we do find references to the fact that those who wanted to get rid of someone compared their enemies to sacrificial rams, that is, to the animal chosen for the sacrifice, thereby signifying that they would like that enemy to be killed and that they thought of him as an animal. For example, this is what Muṭarrif, the son of the Umayyad amīr ʿAbd Allāh, said of a number of jurists whom he thought as his enemies and wanted to get rid of.19 This is also the comparison used by the poet Abū Isḥāq al-Ilbīrī to refer to Ibn Naghrela in his famous anti-Jewish poem that helped to build the climate of opinion that led to the pogrom in Granada in the year 459/1066.20 These are two cases of comparison of the enemy with a sacrificial ram, but the intention was limited to words, without being carried out in all its implications. There is, however, a famous case before ʿAbd Allāh’s execution that could be taken as a precedent.21 Jaʿd b. Dirham,22 a native of Khurāsān who spent most of his life at Damascus, was accused of holding Muʿtazilī views and associated with the ‘heretic’ Jahm b. Ṣafwān. His followers – described as beardless men, a characteristic borrowed from the portrait of the Manichean Elect – accused the Prophet of lying and denied resurrection. Some of the sources on this case mention that the execution was carried out on the Festival of Sacrifice (ʿīd al-aḍḥā), when Jaʿd was substituted for the usual ritual sacrificial animal.23 The Caliph Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–25/724–43) would have ordered his governor Khālid al-Qasrī to put Jaʿd to death on that day. The sources vary on the place and date of his execution (Kūfa or Wāsiṭ, 124/742 or 125/743)24 and do not specify who actually slew him. Jaʿd b. Dirham is said to have had close connections with the last Umayyad caliph, Marwān II (r. 127–32/744–50), as some sources state that Marwān’s mother was Jaʿd’s sister. One of the laqabs applied to Marwān II – the most famous being al-ḥimār – was al-Jaʿdī, which is said to refer to the fact that Jaʿd b. Dirham had been his tutor (muʾaddib), raising Marwān as his own son.25 Teophanes stated that the Caliph Marwān II was influenced by the Ḥarrānians26 and some sources connect Jaʿd with Ḥarrān, the place where Abraham was born, according to Islamic tradition.27 Ḥarrān was a pagan 135

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centre which came to be associated with the Sabians mentioned in the Qurʾān and with gnostic and hermetic learning. Among the practices attributed to the Ḥarrānians is the ritual killing of children.28 Ḥarrānian knowledge had some place in the intellectual developments occurring during the reign of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III,29 but any connection here would be fanciful.

Sacrifice as polemics? The rivalry between Umayyads and Fāṭimids, the Fāṭimids’ execution of the Man of the Donkey (ṣāḥib al-ḥimār) and the Fāṭimid celebration of the Festival of Sacrifice30 The possible connection of ʿAbd Allāh’s execution with the rivalry between the Umayyads and the Fāṭimids during the 4th/10th century will now be explored. When the eighth Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, came to power in the year 300/912, he had to face powerful enemies both inside and outside. On the other side of the Straits, the traditional enemies of the Umayyads, the Shīʿīs – in their Ismāʿīlī version – had managed in 296/909 to establish a caliphate rival to that of the ʿAbbāsids. Since then, they had become a serious military, political and religious threat to Umayyad influence and authority in North Africa. The new caliphs claimed direct descent from the Prophet Muḥammad through his daughter Fāṭima – hence their appellation as Fāṭimids – and his cousin and son-in-law ʿAlī. They also claimed to be the bearers of the Prophet’s charismatic gifts, including the ability to perform miracles, infallibility and supernatural knowledge.31 The Umayyads could not but react to the very strong claims for religious and political authority and guidance made by the Fāṭimids, whose missionaries entered the Iberian Peninsula on several occasions. The Fāṭimids even managed to attract to their side the most important internal rebel, the muwallad ʿUmar b. Ḥafṣūn (d. 305/918), who at a certain point in his career ordered the khuṭba in the mosque of his stronghold Bobastro to be pronounced in the name of the Fāṭimid caliph.32 In fact, it was because of the Fāṭimids that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III was chosen as successor of the amīr ʿAbd Allāh (r. 275–300/888–912) – who was his grandfather – at a time when the survival of the Umayyad dynasty was in serious danger and the need to find a restorer of former power and prestige was pressing. Abū l-Muṭarrif ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III bore the kunya and the name of the founder of the Umayyad amīrate in al-Andalus, that young man who had escaped the massacre of the Umayyads at the hands of the ʿAbbāsids after the fall of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwān II. Abū l-Muṭarrif ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muʿāwiya, who became ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I (r. 136

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138–72/756–88), sought refuge first in North Africa among the Berbers of the tribe to which his mother had belonged and then in the Iberian Peninsula, where Umayyad clients (mawālī) gave him military support to establish his rule there. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I, the first Umayyad amīr of al-Andalus, was the grandson, not the son, of a caliph. Because of this, of all the possible candidates to succeed the amīr ʿAbd Allāh, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III was chosen, as he would succeed not his father, but his grandfather. Besides other features he was supposed to have in common with his ancestor ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III could thereby be presented as the new ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who would re-conquer al-Andalus from its rebels, in the same way in which ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I had conquered it some 150 years earlier.33 If this image as a new ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was directed primordially to an internal audience, the fact that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III was the eighth Umayyad to rule and that his reign started at the turn of a new century came in very handy to counteract Fāṭimid propaganda. The importance of the number seven was well known among the Fāṭimids, who were Sevener Shīʿīs and whose prophetology and imamology were based on that number.34 For their part, the Umayyads of al-Andalus could claim that their new ʿAbd al-Raḥmān was closing a cycle of seven Umayyad amīrs and – hopefully – inaugurating a new cycle of seven, in the same way that the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus had been fourteen, with ʿUmar (II) b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–20) – the only Umayyad who enjoyed a good religious reputation – as the eighth caliph, having reigned also at the turn of a century. If the Ismāʿīlīs expected the appearance of the Mahdī in the year 300, in that same year ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III started his rule, and he took care to proclaim that he was there to renew (yujaddid) lost religious traditions and to put an end to dangerous innovations that had caused Muslims to deviate from the message of the Prophet.35 The Fāṭimid caliph was, of course, responsible for altering religion by claiming quasi-divine and prophetic status, a belief that led those Muslims who followed it to eternal damnation.36 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III strove to counteract Fāṭimid claims to religious and political authority in many other ways. He adopted the caliphal title, claiming the inheritance of his ancestors, the Umayyad caliphs of Damascus. The new town he built outside Córdoba, called Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ – a name that appropriated the nickname of Fāṭima, the Prophet’s daughter, known as al-Zahrāʾ (“the radiant one”) – was conceived as a Paradise on earth and aimed to show that the Umayyad caliph ensured salvation in this and the other world.37 The Fāṭimid doctrine was esoteric (bāṭinī), even if the Fāṭimid caliphs could not stop Sunnī exotericism continuing among the people they ruled. For his part, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III chose a representative of the Ẓāhirī (exoteric) legal school as his official preacher and 137

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chief judge (Rabīʿ II 339/September 950), while continuing the traditional Umayyad support for Mālikism, but also allowing for some time the spread of Shāfiʿism, thereby proving his Sunnī legal pluralism in opposition to Fāṭimid claims that truth resided only in their Ismāʿīlī doctrine. The powerful network of Sunnī scholars (ʿulamāʾ) in al-Andalus, closely linked to the Umayyad dynasty but independent from it, starkly contrasted with the Fāṭimid world of scholarship, where those involved in the transmission of knowledge were propagandists (duʿāt) directly dependent on the imām whose wisdom they were supposed to transmit.38 In the year 334/946, the Fāṭimid caliph al-Qāʾim had named his son Ismāʿīl as his heir.39 Al-Qāʾim died in 335/946 and his son succeeded him, adopting the title al-Manṣūr (“The Victor”, r. 335–41/946–53) in 336/947, after he had put an end to the rebellion of the Berber leader Abū Yazīd,40 known as “the Man of the Donkey” (ṣāḥib al-ḥimār). This Zanāta (Ifrān) Berber, called Abū Yazīd Makhlad b. Kaydād, was a Khārijī who had rebelled around the year 332/944. He managed to conquer Kairouan, where he minted coins in his name. But he was unable to conquer Mahdiyya, the fortress built by the Fāṭimids at the beginning of their reign, and the place where the Fāṭimid caliph al-Qāʾim had taken refuge. When Ismāʿīl came to power, it was not clear who would eventually have the upper hand, but in the year 335/946 he managed to defeat Abū Yazīd, who had to flee from Kairouan. Abū Yazīd had sent ambassadors to Córdoba in order to acknowledge the Umayyad caliph and thereby obtain his military aid against the Fāṭimids.41 That aid, however, came too late, after Abū Yazīd had already been killed (in 336/947). This defeat of the Man of the Donkey was transformed in a proof of the legitimacy of the Fāṭimid dynasty and of the truth of the Fāṭimid doctrine. Abū Yazīd was portrayed as the Dajjāl, the Anti-Christ who would cause upheaval before the appearance of the Messiah or Mahdī, who would eventually defeat him. By being identified with the eschatological figure of al-Dajjāl, Abū Yazīd was not merely a rival who supported an alternative view of Islam and who sought to gain political power. He was the Great Enemy, whose defeat opened the road for the consummation of God’s destiny. Having vanquished him, the Caliph Ismāʿīl al-Manṣūr himself became a Messianic figure: he was the vanquisher of evil who inaugurated a new age, ruled over by the Fāṭimid dynasty until the end of time.42 Before the defeat of Abū Yazīd, Ismāʿīl had ordered that a wooden cage be built to imprison him in.43 Abū Yazīd was wounded and taken captive. He was interrogated by Ismāʿīl in person, and, in his last dispute, defended his Khārijī religious ideas and his conception of Fāṭimid tyranny. Abū Yazīd died of his wounds four days after having been made prisoner and, 138

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on the day of his death (29 Muḥarram 336/19 August 947), Ismāʿīl – who had kept secret his father al-Qāʾim’s death – proclaimed himself caliph with the title al-Manṣūr bi-Naṣr Allāh (the Victor with God’s help). Abū Yazīd’s skin was stripped off and preserved in salt. His corpse was split in two, brought along, and afterwards was carried on camelback through the streets of every city, with someone seated behind him in the saddle to hold him upright, while ear-boxing apes, specially trained for this purpose, beat him and pulled his beard. When al-Manṣūr made his triumphal entry in Kairouan in January 336/948, he had the flayed corpse of Abū Yazīd, dressed in a white shirt and a high heretic’s cap, paraded on a camel with the apes on his shoulders, a macabre spectacle that was offered to the population of the town.44 The same punishment was inflicted in 335/946 on a young man of Kairouan who claimed to be a prophet: Ismāʿīl had him led about the camp with four of his companions; then he was flayed alive, and his skin was stuffed with straw.45 The kind of punishment suffered by Abū Yazīd and the false prophet at the hands of the Fāṭimids seems to replicate the punishment inflicted on Mani, the founder of Manichaeism (most probably killed between 271 and 274 AD), by the Sassanian king Bahrām. Here is the story as told by al-Tabari:46 Mānī the Zindīq summoned him [Bahrām] to his religion. So Bahrām enquired exhaustively into Mānī’s beliefs, and found that he was a propagandist for Satan. So he ordered him to be executed and his body to be skinned and stuffed with straw, and then for it to be hung from one of the city gates of Junday Sābūr, which is [because of this] called Mānī’s Gate. He also killed his followers and those who had joined his faith.47

When Abū Yazīd escaped from Kairouan48 and took refuge in his fortress of Kiyāna (afterwards Qalʿat Banī Ḥammād), the Fāṭimid Ismāʿīl besieged him there from Shaʿbān 335/March 947 onwards. On 1 Shawwāl/25 April, he preached the sermon on the occasion of the Breaking of the Fast on a festival square which had been set up specifically for this purpose (in this sermon he continued to uphold the fiction that his father was still alive). On 10 Muḥarram/2 July, the Festival of the Sacrifice was held: Ismāʿīl appeared in festive robes on the festival square; clad in splendid red, with a yellow turban and a long train hanging from his turban [dhuʿaba], he led the prayer under a yellow pavilion, preached the sermon, and then slaughtered a she-camel with his own hands.49

There is no clear evidence that this personal involvement of the Fāṭimid caliph in the celebration of the Festival of Sacrifice had happened 139

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before.50 It is recorded in the case of al-Manṣūr’s successor, al-Muʿizz (r. 341–65/953–75), that “the Imam, clad entirely in red, butchers several camel mares with his own hands, and at both festivals he gives a banquet for the inhabitants of the palace of al-Manṣūriyya.”51 The same practice is also attested after the Fāṭimids moved their capital from Ifrīqiya to Egypt, where they founded al-Qāhira (Cairo).52 Descriptions of the Festival of Sacrifice inform us that the festival was usually celebrated for three days, corresponding to the ayyām al-tashrīq of the pilgrimage. The caliph would sacrifice at both the muṣallā and the ritual slaughterhouse (manḥar): The caliph, wazir, and other dignitaries would stand on a platform, surrounded by the muḥannak eunuchs. A servant led one animal to the platform and the chief qadi, who held the end of the spear, placed the tip on the animal’s throat. Then the caliph pierced the animal’s throat. This was repeated until all the animals had been sacrificed.53

The practice was later followed by the ʿAlawī dynasty (who came to power in 1078/1668) in Morocco and has continued until today: The king emerges from a mosque, white robes gleaming. Robed men close in around him, encircling him in a great body of white. Briefly the circle breaks open to give entry to a ram; its fleece is pure white, its horns are mighty, its dark eyes are boldly encircled in black. Often the ram tosses its head grandly as it is led to the center. Two men seize the ram, force it on its back, turn its head toward Makka, and hold it fast. The king takes a knife in his right hand, utters God’s name, and plunges the knife deeply into the ram’s throat. The blood spurts, the ram struggles, then in a surge of life manages to stand up, only to collapse on its side in a pool of blood, heart still pounding. The whole of the nation watches this bleeding ram, for in its dying lies their hope.

In the study from which this quotation is taken,54 the anthropologist M. E. Combs-Schilling analyses the role played – among other rites such as marriage – by the Festival of Sacrifice in the religious legitimization of political power in a specific area of the Islamic world, that is, Morocco. Combs-Schilling, who mistakenly thinks that the practice of having the Moroccan king sacrifice the ram on behalf of the community of believers as a whole was an innovation of the ʿAlawīs, interprets this practice as a powerful legitimizing tool: Through the innovation, the ʿAlawi monarchs became the sacrificial link between God and nation, the means by which God could see the collectivity’s faith and grant his favor. Through the performance, the Moroccan monarchs inserted themselves into the single most powerful canonical ritual in Islam and into the mythic foundations upon which it rests. 140

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Muslims throughout the world participate in the Great Sacrifice. Each year Muslims on pilgrimage in the Arabian Peninsula and Muslim heads of household throughout the lands take a knife in their hands and slay an animal on behalf of their families. But the ʿAlawi monarchs instituted a new level of sacrifice, a national level, which they personally performed. Morocco’s sharifi caliph became the only head of any major Muslim state to himself slit a ram’s throat on behalf of the political community he leads [. . .] It seems likely that Mawlay Ismaʿil began the practice, though it is plausible that he reinstituted a practice that earlier Moroccan monarchs had performed, a practice for which documentation is obscure or nonexistent [. . .] It is [. . .] the most powerful ritual support of the Moroccan monarchy. It bolsters the king’s legitimacy by having him perform the most dramatic action in which humans can engage for the most noble of purposes, the causing of earthly death in order to overcome the limits of earthly life, in order to connect with the divine.55

We have seen that the ʿAlawī rulers were not the first in publicly performing the ritual sacrifice on 10 Dhū l-Ḥijja, since the Fāṭimids did it before them. As the ʿAlawīs’ claim to rule was mainly based on their being descendants of the Prophet, they may have been imitating their predecessors, although the ʿAlawīs were not Shīʿīs. It is perhaps not meaningless that both in the Fāṭimid and the ʿAlawī case, the ruler who started the practice of personally performing the sacrifice bore the name Ismāʿīl. As for the Fāṭimids, the sacrifice was carried out in the muṣallā, situated during the Egyptian period near the northern walls of Cairo. Paula Sanders records how the Caliph al-ʿAzīz (r. 365–86/975–96) ordered the construction of benches from the palace to the muṣallā and commanded the Ismāʿīlīs, seated according to rank, to sit on the benches and recite “God is most great” so as to create a continuous sound from the palace to the muṣallā, a way of sacralizing the procession route. The prayer for the Festival of Fast Breaking and the Sacrificial Festival has neither a first call to prayer nor a second call to prayer; thus uttering “God is most great” is the beginning of the prayer: the procession itself was now part of the prayer. But there was more to it, as Sanders explains: The allegorical interpretation (taʾwīl) of the festival in Ismāʿīlī thought makes the connection among the procession, the prayer, the construction of the ritual city, and the centrality of the Imam even more plausible. Two works of the Fatimid jurist and ideologue al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), The Pillars of Islam (Daʿāʾim al-Islām) and The Allegorical Interpretation of the Pillars (Taʾwīl al-daʿāʾim), designate three festivals, which are Friday prayer (al-jumʿa), the Festival of Fast Breaking (ʿīd al-fiṭr) and the Sacrificial Festival (ʿīd al-aḍḥā). Each festival has an esoteric (bāṭin) paradigm: that of the Friday prayer is the call or mission (daʿwa) of Muḥammad, which is also the call to the hidden Imams; of the fast of Ramadan, concealment (al-kitmān wa’l-satr); of 141

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the breaking of the fast, the mahdī (rightly guided one) and the revealing of the hidden mission; of the sacrificial feast, the qāʾim (riser). These ritual observances thus symbolized the Imam himself. In his Allegorical Interpretation, al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān makes explicit the connection between the festivals and their paradigms of the mahdī and the qāʾim. In the Pillars, he prescribes that the prayer for the two festivals should be neither in a house nor in a mosque but in an open place, and he says that one should bring out arms (silāḥ) to the prayer. The paradigm (mathal) of going out to prayer (al-khurūj li’l-ṣalāt) and taking out arms (ikhrāj al-silāḥ) is striving against the enemies (jihād). He explained it further by requiring that the prayer be held in an ‘open field’ (al-baraz), that is, the muṣallā. These ideas were current even in the North African period of the caliphate and are probably the appropriate intellectual climate in which the story of the master of the ass (ṣāḥib al-ḥimār, i.e., the Kharijite Abū Yazīd) should be viewed. The creation of an historical fiction demonstrating that the muṣallā was a symbolic battleground gave the muṣallā a particular charge that carried over into the Egyptian period of the caliphate.56

This connection of the muṣallā with Abū Yazīd needs some explanation. Shortly after the Fāṭimids took power in Ifrīqiya in the year 296/909, in 303/916 they had started building a town near the sea, al-Mahdiyya, to serve them as refuge against disturbances from the Sunnī population and other possible enemies. The uncultivated stretch of land between the land wall of the city and the suburb of the Zawīla – on the narrow area connecting the peninsula with the mainland – served as a festival and prayer square (muṣallā) on the two highest festivals, the Breaking of the Fast and the Festival of Sacrifice. This muṣallā was more than simply a site for festival prayer. When al-Mahdī built his capital city al-Mahdiyya, he ordered an arrow to be shot from the wall of the city westwards. He then ordered a muṣallā to be build where it landed, saying: “The master of the ass (ṣāḥib al-ḥimār) will arrive here”, referring to the Kharijite rebel, Abū Yazīd, an avowed enemy of the North African Fatimid state. The prophecy was fulfilled when Abū Yazīd was stopped at the muṣallā when he attacked al-Mahdiyya. Given the amuletic power attributed to the muṣallā in this historicized legend, it is probably no coincidence that the muṣallā at Cairo was built outside Bāb al-Naṣr, the gate that was the city’s most vulnerable point of attack.57

The muṣallā was therefore for the Fāṭimids an eschatological battle-place (malḥama) connected with the memory of Abū Yazīd’s defeat and the festivals were the moments when battle took place, so that participants were expected to bring their weapons. At the Festival of Sacrifice – associated with the Fāṭimid victory over the Man of the Donkey – the esoteric 142

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(bāṭin) paradigm of the caliph was the eschatological figure of the Riser (al-qāʾim). However, the most evident association was with the figure of Abraham.

The Abraham model: sacrifice and circumcision The prophet Abraham, Ibrāhīm in Arabic, is called in the Islamic tradition “God’s friend” (khalīl Allāh) and also ḥanīf, a much disputed term that is usually understood to refer to Abraham’s adherence to monotheism. According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muḥammad viewed himself as the sole heir of that original and undistorted monotheism, the dīn Ibrāhīm, and his biography was modelled in many points on that of Abraham, his predecessor (their physical appearances and footprints were identical, both experienced migration, both received the word of God in the same month, and just as Abraham transformed Mecca into a sacred precinct, so did Muḥammad with Medina).58 Abraham allowed the Prophet to insert himself and the Arabs into biblical sacred genealogy: the Arabs were considered to be the descendants of Ismāʿīl, the son Abraham had with his slave concubine Hagar, and who was his firstborn. This ancestry and precedence involved a polemical stance against the Jews, who considered themselves the descendants of Isaac (in Arabic Isḥāq), the son Abraham had with his wife Sarah.59 With their involvement in the ritual of the Festival of Sacrifice mentioned above, the Fāṭimid caliphs were linking themselves with Abraham, considered to have been the founder of the pilgrimage rituals in Mecca, including sacrifice. The sacrifice of an animal (usually a ram, but there are other possibilities, as shown by the choice of a camel by the Fāṭimids) is an important element of the pilgrimage rituals and, as already indicated, while it takes place in Minā, it is also performed in the rest of the Islamic world.60 The pilgrimage sacrifice is usually linked in Islamic tradition with the episode of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son, an episode narrated in Qurʾān 37:101–7: Then We gave him the good tidings of a prudent boy; and when he reached the age of running with him, he said, ‘My son, I see in a dream that I shall sacrifice thee; consider, what thinkest thou?’ He said, ‘My father, do as thou art bidden; thou shalt find me, God willing, one of the steadfast.’ When they had surrendered, and he flung him upon his brow, We called unto him, ‘Abraham, thou hast confirmed the vision; 143

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even so We recompense the good-doers. This is indeed the manifest trial.’ And we ransomed him with a mighty sacrifice [dhibḥ ʿazīm], and left for him among the later folk ‘Peace be upon Abraham!’61

Muslim sources record two divergent views regarding who was Abraham’s son intended to be sacrificed (al-dhabīḥ) and eventually ransomed (al-mufaddā).62 As Bashear and others before him have indicated, this and other connected issues were crucial in the process of the emergence of Islam as an independent national Arabian religion related to Ibrāhīm through his son, Ismāʿīl, father of the Arabs, and of sanctifying Mecca as a place connected with the Abrahamic ritual of sacrifice which is symbolically repeated by Muslims during the ḥajj ritual.63

One view basically agrees with Genesis 22, where the name Isaac (Isḥāq) is explicitly stated.64 The intended sacrifice would have taken place outside Arabia, in al-Shām (Greater Syria) or even Jerusalem.65 The other view insists that Ismāʿīl was intended and usually links the sacrifice with Abraham’s stay in Mecca, thereby allowing for the connection with the pilgrimage rituals, a connection that took some time to become firmly established. For example, a tradition describes how Abraham sacrificed the ransom animal (an antelope in this particular tradition) and states that it was done in Minā “where beasts are (ritually) slaughtered today”.66 The ransom animal, also said to have been a billy goat (tays), eventually became the standard “white, prime, horned” ram (abyaḍ, aʿyan, aqran) mentioned in Combs-Schilling’s quotation, with a further development identifying it with the same one sacrificed by Adam’s son which had been since then stored in Paradise.67 A variant recorded by al-Ṭabarī adds that what was meant by Qurʾān 37:107 was not only the ransom on that specific occasion, but sacrifice according to Abraham’s religion, “which is the sunna until the Day of Resurrection”, to be followed by the believers. 68 I have mentioned before the similarities drawn in Muslim sources between Abraham and Muḥammad. The latter, according to a report attributed to the first Umayyad Caliph Muʿāwiya, was called “son of the two sacrifices” (ibn al-dhabīḥayn): ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, the Prophet’s grandfather, would have vowed to sacrifice one of his sons and the choice fell on ʿAbd Allāh, who was ransomed by one hundred camels.69 In the case of Abraham, when he received the good news that either Isḥāq or Ismāʿīl would be born, he vowed to sacrifice his son. When the latter grew up, Abraham was reminded to fulfil his vow. Having been informed his son, Isḥāq or Ismāʿīl, accepted to 144

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be sacrificed, requesting his father to bind him tight and sharpen the knife.70 A few sources do not record God’s order to Abraham to fulfil his vow, but record that he dreamt of the sacrifice for three consecutive nights.71 Here is a summary of the story as told in different sources: when Abraham heard that he was to be granted a son, he swore he would sacrifice the child to God. Hence, when Isḥāq/Ismāʿīl grew up, Abraham was visited in a dream and told to fulfil his vow. So he said to his son: “Let us go and offer sacrifice to God.” He took a knife and a rope and set off with him until, when he had taken him amongst the hills, the youth said: “Father, where is your sacrifice?” He said: “My son, I see in a dream that I sacrifice you; consider what is your view?” He replied: “Father, do as you are commanded; you will find me, God willing, submissive.” Then Isḥāq/Ismāʿīl said to him: “Father, bind me tightly lest I tremble. Draw your robe back from me lest it be spattered with my blood, and Sarah/Hagar see it and be grieved. Draw the knife quickly across my throat so that death be light upon me. When you return to my mother, give her my greeting.” (The son would have also asked his father not to sacrifice him while looking at his face lest he should feel compassion and fail to take his life.) Abraham approached him, kissing him, having bound him. He was crying and so was his son. Then he drew the knife across his throat but the knife did not cut; God had placed a sheet of copper upon his throat. When he saw this he turned him onto his forehead and cut at the back of his neck. There was a call: “Abraham, you have fulfilled the vision, truthfully!” He turned round and there before him was a ram. Then God said: “We ransomed him with a great sacrifice.”72 The prophet Abraham is also considered to have instituted the practice of circumcision,73 and in this domain again the Fāṭimid caliphs established a connection with him. By the year 349/960, al-Muʿizz “could [. . .] justly maintain that from the Atlantic to the Indus, believing followers were heeding his every word and waiting for his appearance in the East”74 after having established control on the central Maghreb. It was then that muezzins were ordered to use only the Shīʿī call to prayer and other Ismāʿīlī practices considered innovations by the Sunnīs. A great festival, celebrated throughout the empire in the spring of 351/962, marked the successful conclusion of the ventures in the Maghreb. The sons of the caliph had to be circumcised and the occasion was chosen for all the children in the realm to be also circumcised. In spite of the heavy costs, ten pavilions were raised in the great court of the palace; every day, with the Imam attending the ceremony, between five thousand and ten thousand boys were circumcised. The purpose of this great circumcision festival was clearly to weld the entire Muslim population of the empire, Sunnī and Ismāʿīlī, into one single community (umma) under one imām.75 Al-Muʿizz saw himself, as he expressly stated to the Qāḍī 145

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al-Nuʿmān, as the successor to Abraham and the Prophet Muḥammad. In view of his success, he could now think himself very close to his goal, the unification of Islam. Counting his three predecessors in Salamya, he was indeed the seventh successor (khalīfa) of Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, whom the Ismāʿīlīs of the East expected to be the last before the reappearance of the Mahdī-Qāʾim; perhaps al-Muʿizz himself harboured similar hopes.76

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III as Abraham and al-Qāʾim Was the Umayyad Caliph ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III trying to counteract the association between the Fāṭimid caliph and Abraham by presenting himself as closer to that prophetic model with the execution of his son during the Festival of Sacrifice? We know that he also tried to present himself as the true qāʾim (an eschatological figure associated with the Festival of Sacrifice in Fāṭimid doctrine): ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III used the title al-Qāʾim at least for some time in letters sent from Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ.77 If the victory over Abū Yazīd represented the truth and legitimacy of the Fāṭimids, that same victory had important repercussions against Umayyad legitimacy. Now, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān could also claim to have defeated some false prophets (one appeared in Lisbon in 332/944), while the remodelling of his palatine town of Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ according to Paradise symbology was another way to counteract the eschatological benefits acquired by the Fāṭimids with the defeat of the Man of the Donkey (note that the last Umayyad caliph of Damascus had been known by the sobriquet al-ḥimār). But the most dramatic way to show that prophetic inheritance belonged to him could have been the execution of his son ʿAbd Allāh (consider that the name corresponds with that of the Prophet Muḥammad’s father, who would have been vowed as sacrifice by ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib). By slaying his son on the day of the Festival of Sacrifice78 in the muṣallā of his capital, the Umayyad caliph would have clearly presented himself in the role of Abraham, who was commanded by God to slay his son and promised in return that his seed was to last forever. For the Umayyads – both in Syria and al-Andalus – to model themselves after the Prophet Abraham has been proved to have been of great importance.79 However, if ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s model was Abraham, why did he slaughter his own son, an act that Abraham was willing to perform but which he eventually did not? Abraham did not ask the reason for God’s command, showing his unconditional willingness to perform the deed. But when he was about to kill his son, God intervened, substituting the human victim by an animal. This is the standard story. The son, whoever it was, was one of the righteous. It would have appeared difficult to accept that he 146

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could be slaughtered. However, among the Jews circulated a version that had Isaac being slaughtered,80 and this version was used by Jews in the Middle Ages, for example, to draw comfort after the terrible massacres of the Crusader period: Abraham slaughtered his righteous son Isaac not only once but twice, so that a righteous people – the Jews – could endure being persecuted and murdered, because persecution and murder were not a sign of God’s wrath, but of His love and choice.81 ʿAbd Allāh, the son of the caliph, is portrayed in the sources as an ascetic and learned man, whose only fault seems to have been his alleged conspiratorial activities against his father. But could it be that he was originally presented as a righteous son whose sacrifice indicated God’s favour? The execution of other people involved in the same conspiracy does not fit well with this interpretation. There is another tantalizing possibility. Since the year 317/930 the Black Stone had been taken from Mecca by the Qarmatians, an act that caused much scandal and great sorrow in the Islamic world, including al-Andalus. In fact, its theft had been used by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III to give support to his caliphal claim, pointing out that the ʿAbbāsids were not fulfilling their role as protectors of the holy sanctuary of Islam. However, the Black Stone was restored to its place in Mecca in the year 339/950, around the time that ʿAbd Allāh’s execution is said to have taken place. His sacrifice could have been presented as a purificatory act that helped to bring about that propitious restoration. Combs-Schilling has seen in the present practice of the ʿAlawī ruler of personally sacrificing a ram an adequate way for the Moroccan king not only to remain linked to the symbolic values of Islam (contrary to what happened with the Shah of Iran, who stupidly “handed popular Islam to the opposition”), but also as a means of Islam’s popular reproduction, a regenerator of Muslim symbols and practices: “In sacrifice, the male heads of households dress in white robes, take a knife, and break open the thin white skin of the still ram’s neck so that the lifeblood can flow and the hope of transcendent life can be gained.” The anthropologist sees this action as converging with that of sexual intercourse after marriage: “Ibrahim’s sacrifice and the ritual of first marriage show the Prince of the Faithful to be the archetypal man who stands before the population in pure white robes spilling the blood of ram and bride so that regeneration may occur. The image is riveting. He is the ‘white one’ who, through guided pain and violence, brings hope. What is due to him is honor and obedience, and the modeling of one’s behavior on his in daily life.”82 This may also have been what ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III had in mind during the execution of his son. However, in the context of the extreme violence of his reign, it just added to the terror that he instilled in his vassals. 147

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By way of conclusion: topoi of violence As suggestive as the proposals made here may appear,83 they must remain speculative, as there is no way to prove that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III did really execute his son on the Festival of Sacrifice as a substitute sacrificial animal.84 The fact that al-Raqīq very probably is the originator of the story seems to point to Fāṭimid propaganda against the Umayyads,85 later incorporated by both Eastern and Western biographers of ʿAbd Allāh. But even if this was the case, we have here something that may lead us to still unexplored territory. At the beginning, I drew attention to the silence of the earliest extant sources on ʿAbd Allāh’s execution on the Festival of Sacrifice. Ibn Ḥazm could have passed in silence over an execution that went beyond any acceptable limits, driven by his well-known pro-Umayyad stance.86 Note, however, that Ibn Ḥazm himself was very critical of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s use and abuse of violence, of which he gives some examples while hinting at others. In fact, what some of the sources on the first Umayyad caliph of al-Andalus convey is a clear picture of a violence that is entirely out of the ordinary, a violence that stretched the accepted limits and thus became cruelty.87 This has led to contemporary ‘psychiatric’ interpretations of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s personality.88 Given the dangers he had to face, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s violence could be easily rationalized as pragmatic. Violence itself was part of the political and religious rivalry between Umayyads and Fāṭimids. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III had accused the Fāṭimids for their killing of the missionary (dāʿī) Abū ʿAbd Allāh, thanks to whom they had been able to establish their rule in North Africa, reproaching them for the ingratitude shown against their loyal servant. The caliph al-Muʿizz retorted that al-Nāṣir did not know the true reasons which had led to Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s execution and that he also ignored the efforts the first Fāṭimid caliph, al-Mahdī, had made in order to save him. Al-Muʿizz added that al-Nāṣir could not distinguish between two types of execution: on the one hand, there was execution ordered because of resentment, revenge or tyranny; on the other hand, there were executions that were lex talionis, due punishment and purification, the execution of the dāʿī Abū ʿAbd Allāh being an example of the latter. Al-Muʿizz assimilated this to the punishments inflicted by God on His prophets: Adam, Jacob, Jonas, Job, David and Salomon had been punished for crimes committed by them; if they had, a mere missionary could also be subject to punishment. Al-Muʿizz also compared the execution to the punishments meted out by the Prophet Muḥammad – in spite of his clemency and mercy – to those Muslims who had transgressed against the divine law.89 The Fāṭimids had arrived on the North African scene bringing with 148

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them Messianic expectations and revolutionary hopes of a reversal of the extant order. Violence was inescapable in that context. As is suggested by Yaacov Lev’s study in the present volume, Fāṭimid revolutionary violence necessarily evolved to meet the needs of the polity they created, but in itself it did not need much explanation: revolutions do go hand in hand with violence. The reverse of this coin should also be taken into consideration. Revolutionary violence is provoked by its enemies’ violence or has to be legitimized by imputing violence to its enemies. These enemies, for their part, claim to engage in violence in order to stop revolution or counteract it. Annliese Nef’s analysis of the violence imputed by the sources to the Aghlabid amīr under whose reign the Fāṭimid revolution began shows many links to the out-of-the-ordinary violence attributed to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III. I have also noted similarities between certain reports regarding the end of the Syrian Umayyads and the struggle between the Fāṭimids and the Cordoban Umayyads. We may be dealing here with topoi that shed light on the ways in which revolutionary violence and its counterpart were made sense of in Islamic contexts. This field, the narratives employed in Islamic literature to portray the violent ends and beginnings of new dynasties, still requires further investigation.

Notes 1. John Williams, “Generationes Abrahae: Reconquest Iconography in Leon,” Gesta 16,2 (1977), 3–13. A Spanish translation can be found in El tímpano románico: Imágenes, estructuras y audiencias, ed. R. Sánchez Ameijeiras and J. L. Senra Gabriel y Galán (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, Consellería de Cultura, Comunicación Social y Turismo, 2003), 155–80. 2. Therese Martin, “Un nuevo contexto para el tímpano de la portada del Cordero en San Isidoro de León,” in El tímpano románico, 183–205. The early dating here proposed is based on reasons that to me remain unconvincing, whereas Williams’s later dating is now upheld and brought to an even later date by the research carried out by Luis Caballero Zoreda and his team on San Isidoro, on which see J. I. Murillo Fragero, Arqueología de la Arquitectura: Basílica de la Real Colegiata de San Isidoro de León: Lectura de paramentos: Alzados de la nave norte y central y fachada sur (unpublished report, Madrid: CSIC, 2006), 30–2. 3. Serafín Moralejo, “Artistas, patronos y público en el arte del Camino de Santiago,” Compostellanum 30 (1985), 395–430, esp. 412–13. 4. The sources (see below, note 10) that give the date 338/950 are Ibn al-Abbār, Ibn ʿIdhārī and Ibn al-Khaṭīb; for their part, Ibn Saʿīd, al-Ṣafadī and al-Maqqarī give the date 339/951 (the Dhikr bilād al-Andalus gives an erroneous date, viz., the year 308/921). 149

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5. After being singled out to accompany the caliph in a number of expeditions, by the year 331/943 al-Ḥakam was the only son of the caliph living in the palace in Cordoba. See Ibn Ḥayyān, Muqtabis, vol. 5, ed. Pedro Chalmeta, Federico Corriente and Mahmud Sobh (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura, 1979), 221, 237. Cf. the Spanish translation by Federico Corriente and María Jesús Viguera, Crónica del Califa ʿAbdarraḥmān III An-Nāṣir entre los años 912 y 942 (al-Muqtabis V) (Zaragoza: Anubar, 1981), 247, 263. 6. María Jesús Viguera, “La Historia de alfaquíes y jueces de Aḥmad b. ʿAbd al-Barr,” Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos (Madrid) 23 (1985–6), 49–61. The date given for his execution is also 10 Dhū l-Ḥijja, in this case of the year 338/950. 7. Dhikr bilād al-Andalus (Una descripción anónima de al-Andalus), ed. and tr. L. Molina, 2 vols (Madrid: CSIC, Instituto “Miguel Asín”, 1983), 134 (tr. 172). 8. Ibn Saʿīd, al-Mughrib fī ḥulā l-Maghrib, ed. Shawqī Ḍayf, 2 vols (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, [1955]–1964), 1:182–3. 9. Al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad al-Ṭanāḥī and ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Muḥammad al-Ḥilw, 5 vols ([Cairo]: Maṭbaʿat ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, [1964–76]), 3:309–10 (no. 198). As ʿAbd Allāh was a Shāfiʿī in a land (al-Andalus) hostile to legal schools other than Mālikism, al-Subkī seems to want to emphasize the ‘martyrdom’ to which the conspirators (some of whom are described as Shāfiʿīs) were subject. 10. These sources – in chronological order – are: Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), Jamharat ansāb al-ʿarab, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1962), 100, 102; al-Ḥumaydī (d. 488/1095), Jadhwat almuqtabis, ed. Muḥammad b. Tāwīt al-Ṭanjī (Cairo: Maktab Nashr al-Thaqāfa al-Islāmiyya, [1952]), no. 555; al-Ḍabbī (d. 599/1203), K. Bughyat al-multamis fī taʾrīkh rijāl ahl al-Andalus, ed. Francisco Codera and Julián Ribera (Madrid: Rojas, 1885), nos. 932, 949; Ibn al-Abbār (d. 658/1260), al-Ḥulla al-siyarāʾ, ed. Ḥusayn Muʾnis, 2 vols (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1963), 1:206–8 (no. 78); idem, al-Takmila li-Kitāb al-ṣila, ed. Francisco Codera, 2 vols (Madrid: Rojas, 1887–9), no. 1250 [also ed. ʿIzzat al-ʿAṭṭār al-Ḥusaynī, 2 vols (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānajī, 1375/1955–6), no. 1913; and also ed. ʿAbd al-Salām al-Harrās, 4 vols (Casablanca: n.d.), 2:231–2 (no. 64)]; Ibn Saʿīd (d. 685/1286), al-Mughrib, 1:182–3; Ibn ʿIdhārī (d. 695/1295), K. al-Bayān al-mughrib fī akhbār mulūk al-Andalus wa-l-Maghrib, ed. G. S. Colin and E. Lévi-Provençal, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1948–51), 2:217; al-Subkī (d. 771/1370), Ṭabaqāt, 3:309–10 (no. 198); al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1362), al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt (Wiesbaden: In Kommision bei Franz Steiner Verlag, 1962–), 17:244–5 (no. 228); Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1374), K. Aʿmāl al-aʿlām fī-man būyiʿa qabla l-iḥtilām, ed. E. Lévi-Provençal (Beirut: Dār al-Makshūsh, 1956), 39; Dhikr bilād al-Andalus, 134 (tr. 172); al-Maqqarī (d. 1041/1632), Nafḥ al-ṭīb min ghuṣn al-Andalus al-raṭīb, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās, 8 vols (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1968), 3:582–3. Recent studies of this case are found in Maribel Fierro, La heterodoxia en al-Andalus durante el periodo omeya (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de 150

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11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Cultura, 1987), 127, and in the entry devoted to ʿAbd Allāh in Enciclopedia de al-Andalus: Diccionario de autores y obras andalusíes, ed. Jorge Lirola Delgado and José Miguel Puerta Vílchez ([Seville]: Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía-Fundación El legado andalusí, 2003), 1:324–5 (no. 161 [J. Lirola], with references to other secondary sources). Ibn Ḥayyān quotes the K. al-ʿAlīl wa-l-qatīl fī akhbār Banī l-ʿAbbās written by ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Nāṣir in Muqtabis II-1, ed. Maḥmūd ʿAlī Makkī (Riyadh: Markaz al-Malik Fayṣal li-l-Buḥūth wa-l-Dirāsāt al-Islāmiyya, 1424/2003), 156r. Cf. the Spanish translation by Maḥmūd ʿAlī Makkī and Federico Corriente, Crónica de los emires Alḥakam I y ʿAbdarraḥmān II entre los años 796 y 847 [Almuqtabis II-1] (Zaragoza: Instituto de Estudios Islámicos y del Oriente Próximo, 2001), 220, n456. On the work and its author, see Francisco Pons Boigues, Ensayo biobibliográfico sobre los historiadores y geógrafos arábigo-españoles (Madrid: S. F. de Sales, 1898), 221 (no. 178). EI2, s.v. Ibn al-Raḳīḳ, 3:903a (M. Talbi). In the biography no. 932, al-Ḍabbī follows al-Ḥumaydī, who does not make any mention of ʿAbd Allāh’s death. Maribel Fierro, “Violencia, política y religión en al-Andalus durante el s. IV/X: el reinado de ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III,” in Estudios onomásticobiográficos de al-Andalus XIV: De muerte violenta: Política, religión y violencia en al-Andalus, ed. M. Fierro (Madrid: CSIC, 2004), 37–102, at 61–3. Ibn Ḥayyān, Muqtabis V, 23 (tr. 40). The punishment of attaching people to waterwheels is mentioned in the eschatological literature as a punishment suffered in hell. For references, see Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 148 n67. Ibid., 24–5 (tr. 41–2). Michael Gilsenan, Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996), 160. I owe this reference to Zoltán Szombathy. Fierro, Heterodoxia, 102. Bernard Lewis, “An Anti-Jewish Ode,” in Islam in History: Ideas, Men and Events in the Middle East (London: Alcove Press, 1973), 158–65. This case is analysed by Gerald Hawting in this volume. Hawting also mentions a later episode, that of the ritual slaughtering of Christian prisoners in Mecca at the time of the Crusades. EI2, s.v. Ibn Dirham, 3:747b–748a (G. Vajda); TG, 1:41, 417, 439, 456; 2:449–58, 495; 3:72; 4:389, 417, 422, 614, 620, 627. Gerald R. Hawting, The First Dynasty of Islam (London–Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986), 82. See also Ignaz Goldziher, “Die Gottesliebe in der islamischen Theologie,” Der Islam 9 (1919), 144–58. The date may be significant, as the year 125 had eschatological connotations. 151

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25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38.

See Ibn Waḍḍāḥ, K. al-Bidaʿ, ed. and tr. Maribel Fierro, Tratado contra las innovaciones (Madrid: CSIC, 1988), no. XI, 16a and the references given there. EI2, s.v. Marwān II, 6:623a–625a (G. R. Hawting). TG, 2:455. In our days, the area is still connected with the sacrifice of children. See Carol Delaney, Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Jan Hjärpe, Analyse critique des traditions arabes sur les Sabéens harraniens (Uppsala: Skriv Service AB, 1972), 101–5. The practices of human sacrifice among the pagans, Jews and Christians have been recently analysed in Karin Finsterbusch, Armin Lange and K. F. Diethard Römheld (eds), Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Jan Bremmer (ed.), The Strange World of Human Sacrifice (Leuven: Peeters, 2007). Maribel Fierro, “Bāṭinism in al-Andalus: Maslama b. Qāsim al-Qurṭubī (d. 353/964), author of the Rutbat al-ḥakīm and the Ghāyat al-ḥakīm (Picatrix),” SI 84 (1996), 87–112. Part of what follows here is taken from Maribel Fierro, Abd al-Rahman III: The First Cordoban Caliph (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005); eadem, “The Movable Minbar in Cordoba: How the Umayyads of al-Andalus Claimed the Inheritance of the Prophet,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 33 (2007), 149–68. Heinz Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids, tr. Michael Bonner (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 346–54. Paul Walker, “The Identity of One of the Ismaili Dāʿīs Sent by the Fatimids to Ibn Ḥafṣūn,” Al-Qanṭara 21 (2000), 387–8. Fierro, Abd al-Rahman III, 37–41; eadem, “Por qué ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III sucedió a su abuelo el emir ʿAbd Allāh,” Al-Qanṭara 26 (2005), 357–69. Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi, 17–22. Fierro, “Por qué ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III sucedió a su abuelo”; eadem, “Sobre la adopción del título califal por ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III,” Sharq al-Andalus 6 (1989), 33–42, especially 39. On ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III’s legitimization, see also Gabriel Martinez-Gros, L’idéologie omeyyade: La construction de la légitimité du Califat de Cordoue (Xe–XIe siècles) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1992); Janina Safran, The Second Umayyad Caliphate: The Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in al-Andalus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). Ibn Ḥayyān, Muqtabis V, 221 (tr. 247), 237 (tr. 263). Maribel Fierro, “Madīnat al-zahrāʾ, el Paraíso y los fatimíes,” Al-Qanṭara 25 (2004), 299–327. See a more detailed treatment of this in Maribel Fierro, “La política religiosa de ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III,” Al-Qanṭara 25 (2004), 119–56 and eadem, “Why Do Religious Scholars Write about Themselves? The Case of the Islamic 152

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39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

West in the Fourth/Tenth Century,” Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 58 (2005), 403–23. Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi, 310. Ibid., 298–325; Michael Brett, The Rise of the Fāṭimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Tenth Century CE (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 165–75. María Jesús Viguera, “Los Fatimíes de Ifriqiya en el Kitāb al-ḥulla de Ibn al-Abbār de Valencia,” Sharq al-Andalus 2 (1985), 9–37. Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids, 170–1. The building of cages to keep prisoners is also attested under the Norman kings of Sicily. See J. Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal Diwan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 81. Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi, 322, 324. Ibid., 317. Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, tr. C. E. Bosworth, The History of alTabari 5: The Sāsānids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 45; EI2, s.v. Mānī b. Fāttik, 6:421 (C. E. Bosworth). The same kind of death was meted out to Ismaʿīlīs at the hands of nonIsmāʿīlīs. See EI2, s.v. Ibn ʿAttāsh, 3:725b (B. Lewis). I am following Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi, 320. Ibid. Ibid., 160, 220. Ibid., 354. What follows is taken from Paula Sanders, Ritual, Politics and the City in Fatimid Cairo (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 49–50 (see also 25, 26, 47, 128, 131). Marius Canard, “Le cérémonial fatimite et le cérémonial byzantin: essai de comparison,” Byzantion 21 (1951), 355–420 [repr. in Byzance et les musulmans de Proche Orient (London: Variorum Reprints, 1973)], at 403, had already pointed out the personal involvement of the Fāṭimid caliph in the Festival of Sacrifice. Sanders, Ritual, Politics and the City, 49–50. M. E. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances: Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 268–75. See also Jocelyn Dakhlia, Le divan des rois: Le politique et le religieux dans l’Islam (Paris: Aubier, 1998), 268–75. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances, 223. Sanders, Ritual, Politics and the City, 49–50. Ibid., 45. Khalil Athamina, “Abraham in Islamic Perspective: Reflections on the Development of Monotheism in Pre-Islamic Arabia,” Der Islam 81 (2004), 184–205, at 203–4. René Dagorn, La geste d’Ismaël d’après l’onomastique et la tradition arabe (Geneva: Droz, 1981); Sahri L. Lowin, The Making of a Forefather: 153

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60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77.

Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives (Leiden: Brill, 2006). M. Esperonnier, “La sunna du sacrifice: les recommandations d‘Ibn al-Hagg al-ʿAbdari,” Revue des études islamiques 50 (1982), 251–5. The translation is that of A. J. Arberry. For a general treatment, see Y. Moubarac, Abraham dans le Coran (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958). Among the studies devoted to this issue, see Norman Calder, “From Midrash to Scripture: The Sacrifice of Abraham in Early Islamic Tradition,” Le Muséon 101 (1988), 375–402; Reuven Firestone, “Abraham’s Son as the Intended Sacrifice (al-Dhabīḥ, Qurʾān 37:99–113): Issues in Qurʾānic Exegesis,” Journal of Semitic Studies 34 (1989), 95–131; Suliman Bashear, “Abraham’s Sacrifice of His Son and Related Issues,” Der Islam 67 (1990), 243–77; Frédéric Manns (ed.), The Sacrifice of Isaac in the Three Monotheistic Religions (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1995). Bashear, “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” 244. The article is a detailed discussion of those issues. This view had noteworthy partisans in the Islamic West and was held by authors of the 6th/12th and 7th/13th centuries such as the Qāḍi ʿIyāḍ, al-Suhaylī and al-Qurṭubī. See Bashear, “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” 276. Ibid., 259, 265. Ibid., 251, 261; see also 263, 264–5, 267–8. Ibid., 262, 254, 260, 268–70. Ibid., 268–9. Ibid., 245. A detailed treatment of these issues can be found in Calder, “From Midrash to Scripture”. See also Bashear, “Abraham’s Sacrifice,” 255, 262. Ibid., 271. I freely follow here Calder, “From Midrash to Scripture,” 377–8, 391. The issue of the position adopted by Abraham in order to carry out the sacrifice was dealt with in different ways. See Athamina, “Abraham in Islamic Perspective,” 198: “The circumcision ceremony is considered the most important act of purification in Islamic tradition. When God commanded Abraham to purify himself, he went to perform ablution (wuḍūc,), an act of purification performed by Muslims before a prayer. God commanded him to purify himself again, and he removed his impurities. When God commanded him a third time, he went and was circumcised.” Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi, 401. Cf. for a different period, Derin Terzioglo, “The Imperial Circumcision Festival of 1582: An Interpretation,” Muqarnas 12 (1995), 84–100. Here I have followed Halm, The Empire of the Mahdi, 403. The construction of this palatine town began in 329/940–41, but the main Hall was built between 342/953–54 and 345/956–57, when al-Muʿizz was the Fāṭimid caliph. On cAbd al-Raḥmān III’s use of the title al-Qāʾim, see Fierro, “Sobre la adopción”. 154

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78. It was not the first time that an execution had taken place on that day. As noted above, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III had chosen 10 Dhū l-Ḥijja 327/28 September 939 as the day to publicly crucify alive those military men who had failed him in the battle of Simancas. See Fierro, “Violencia, política y religión,” 63. 79. On this see Uri Rubin, “Prophets and Caliphs: The Biblical Foundations of the Umayyad Authority,” in Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, ed. H. Berg (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 73–99; Fierro, “The Movable Minbar in Cordoba.” 80. Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah, tr. Judah Goldin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967 [repr. Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Lights, 1993]). I owe this information to Ch. Melchert. 81. The inquiries I have made about a possible similar interpretation of Abraham’s sacrifice among extreme Shīʿīs and Ismāʿīlīs have led to no result for the moment. Both their experience and doctrines could have led to such a development, in the same way in which – as Todd Lawson has shown in a paper presented in the XXIV Conference of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants (Leipzig, 24–8 September 2008) – Ismāʿīlī Muslims from at least the 4th/10th century onwards taught that Jesus had indeed been crucified. 82. Combs-Schilling, Sacred Performances, 219, 295, 303. 83. A ‘Christian’ interpretation of ʿAbd Allāh’s sacrifice – one related to the issue of expiation – may also be put forward that could fit into the context of the times, but this I leave for another occasion. 84. Gerald Hawting reaches the same conclusion regarding Jaʿd’s case. 85. There is another instance that may be interpreted in the same way, namely the Fāṭimid accusation that the Umayyad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I had ordered the hand of his loyal servant Badr to be amputated, an accusation of which there is no trace whatsoever in other sources. See Fierro, “Violencia, política y religión,” 96. 86. Abdel Magid Turki, “L’engagement politique et la théorie du califat d’Ibn Ḥazm (384/456–994/1063),” Bulletin d’Études Orientales 30 (1978), 221–51 [repr. in Théologiens et juristes de l’Espagne musulmane: aspects polémiques (Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1982), 69–90]. 87. Daniel Baraz, Medieval Cruelty: Changing Perceptions, Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). 88. Cf. Fierro, “Violencia, política y religión,” 98. 89. Heinz Halm, “La réfutation d’une note diplomatique du calife ʿAbdarrahman III par la cour du calife fatimide al-Muʿizz,” in Saber religioso y poder político: Actas del Simposio Internacional (Granada, 15–18 octubre 1991) (Madrid: IHAC/CSIC, 1994), 117–26, at 124; M. Yaloui, “Controverse entre le Fatimide al-Muʿizz et l’Omeyyade al-Nasir, d’après le Kitab al-majalis wa-l-musayarat du cadi Nuʿman,” Cahiers de Tunisie 26 (1978), 7–33, at 19. The Arabic text is found in Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, K. al-Majālis wa-l-musāyarāt, ed. M. al-Yaʿlāwī (2nd. edn, Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1997), 169–72. 155

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7

Where on earth is hell? State punishment and eschatology in the Islamic middle period* Christian Lange

The relationship between violence in this world and the next world in the Islamic tradition can be conceptualized from a number of analytical angles. One might ask, for example, to what extent Muslim thinkers have considered punishment in this world to atone for sins and thus forestall punishment in the hereafter. Opinions on the matter differed considerably. While some jurists believed that the discretionary punishment of the judge (taʿzīr) served as an expiatory act (kaffāra) for the punished individual, some Ḥanafī scholars were of the opinion that not even the divinely ordained punishments (ḥudūd) could expiate sins.1 Here, however, a different approach to the topic is taken. The emphasis is not on theological or legal discussions of the sequence of this-worldy and other-worldy violence but rather, on their structural similarities, viz., their synchronic relationship. Broadly stated, the basic hypothesis pursued in the following pages is this: representations of violence in the Islamic eschatological imagination mirror the structural processes and symbolic imagery of state violence as it was enacted in the socio-political context in which these representations were circulated and given a literary form. As will be argued, hell was often conceived not as a part of the ‘next’ world at all; rather, it was seen as an imaginary ‘other’ world which was coterminous, in spatial, temporal and conceptual terms, with this world. In Western secondary literature, the Muslim hell has often been described as the mirror image of paradise. Here, in contrast, hell will be regarded as an imaginary reflection of life on earth. * Early drafts of this article were presented at the seminar ‘The public display of violence in Islamic societies’ (CSIC-Madrid, 15–16 June 2006) and at the 2006 meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (Boston, 27 November 2006). I am grateful for the valuable comments I received on both occasions.

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Traditions of salvation uncertainty in Sunnī Islam Violence in the history of Islamic societies is usually studied inasmuch as it is directed against non-Muslims. Equally interesting, however, is the question of how Muslim states and their subjects conceptualized and implemented an economy of discipline and punishment directed against themselves. With regard to the phenomenon of other-worldy punishment, one must therefore know to what extent, if any, Muslims felt threatened by the prospect of retributive justice in hell. There was little doubt that the unbelievers (kuffār) would suffer in hell; the Qurʾān stresses this point repeatedly. However, did this mean that the average believer was exempted from the torments of jahannam? The Western study of Islamic theology has traditionally emphasized the large degree of salvation certainty offered by ‘orthodox’ Sunnī doctrine. Ignaz Goldziher characterized what he held to be “Islamic orthodoxy” in this regard as “pure optimism” (der reine Optimismus).2 In a similar vein, Jane Smith and Yvonne Haddad, in their classic account of Muslim beliefs about the afterlife, state that “popular belief chose to see that all but the most sinful will be saved”.3 According to this perception, while faith (īmān) by and large ensures salvation,4 there are a number of factors which are apt further to increase the Muslim certitudo salutis. Not only can good actions atone for bad actions (a mechanism which the Muʿtazila called iḥbāṭ) but a plethora of expiatory acts (kaffārāt) are at the disposal of the believers; punishment of the Muslim sinner will only be temporary; and, perhaps most importantly, all believers will benefit from the Prophet’s intercession, his shafāʿa.5 This picture results largely from a tendency to study Muslim beliefs through the lens of scholastic theology (kalām). Indeed, it would be difficult to dispute that Sunnī kalām, especially after the demise of the Muʿtazilite school and the rise of Ashʿarī-Māturīdī orthodoxy in the 4th/10th century, tended to speak the language of salvation certainty. Arguably, however, punishment in hell played a much more important role in Sunnī Islam, especially on the level of popular belief, than has hitherto been realized, or than scholars like Smith and Haddad are willing to concede. To stress God’s mercy to the near-exclusion of His wrath, as Smith and Haddad do, sits well with a generally sympathetic view of the Muslim God as a god of mercy. However, the danger of this positive stereotype is that it can easily be converted into a negative one. Muslims, as the Dominican monk Riccoldo da Monte Croce wrote in the 13th century, are only cut out for an “easy and broad way” (via lata et spatiosa) towards salvation.6 Salvation anxiety thus appears as the exclusive 157

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province of Christians, or, in the post-Reformation context, as a badge of honor worn by those self-searching Protestants Max Weber wrote about in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.7 In the following, a brief overview of Sunnī traditions expressive of a feeling of salvation uncertainty is therefore provided, particularly in regard to the Sunnī doctrine of sins, eschatological ḥadīth, and Qurʾānic commentaries (tafsīr) dealing with the question of the location of hell.8 Theologically speaking, the question of who among the members of the Muslim community enters hell hinges on the definition of what constitutes a grave sin (kabīra). There was much debate among theologians about under what circumstances sins could be forgiven, or whether sinful Muslims awaited a temporary, purgative punishment in the hereafter. However, prima facie, all agreed that grave sins were a ticket to hell. Compiling lists of grave sins was an important preoccupation of Muslim scholars from early on. For example, ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827) relates a tradition from Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68/687), who is credited with holding that the grave sins are closer to seven hundred than to seventy.9 Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), in what is perhaps the best-known work on the topic, discusses seventy-five grave sins in his “Book of Grave Sins”, the Kitāb al-kabāʾir. Significantly, he notes in his introduction that his goal in writing his book is to limit the number of grave sins.10 This indicates that much larger numbers circulated. And indeed, dissatisfied with Dhahabī’s work, Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī (d. 974/1567) wrote a list of 467 grave sins.11 No formal definitions of grave sins appear to have existed that could have limited their scope. A statement attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās has it that a major sin is “everything for which God has prescribed a fixed punishment in this world and the Fire in the hereafter” (kullu mā awjaba llāhu al-ḥadda fī l-dunyā wa l-nāra fī l-ākhira).12 This statement appears to reverse cause and effect: the emphasis is not on defining what kind of sinful behavior will be punished in hell, but on the inference of what constitutes a grave sin from the punishments meted out in the hereafter. It is as if, paradoxically, punishment does not follow from sin, but sin from punishment. The formula attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās is a commonly accepted definition that appears in the works of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/998), Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), Ibn al-Jawzī (597/1200) as well as Dhahabī.13 In consequence, unhampered by commonly acknowledged formal criteria, the eschatological literature developed into a more and more complex and rich collection of visions of punishment in the hereafter. In addition to the salvific scepticism manifest in the lists of grave sins, fear of punishment in hell is an integral feature of eschatological ḥadīths, 158

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such as those that one finds in the eschatological treatise of ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qāḍī,14 Ghazālī’s al-Durra al-fākhira (“The Precious Pearl”)15 or, to cite a later example, Ibn Rajab’s (d. 795/1393) al-Takhwīf min al-nār (“Arousing Fear of the Fire”).16 A perusal of these works makes it abundantly clear that unbelievers are by no means the only group of people in hell. Eschatological ḥadīths reckon with a large number of Muslims who suffer punishment in the Fire for a variety of reasons, and in a variety of ways.17 Stories about the Prophet’s famous night journey from Medina to Jerusalem and into heaven and hell further expand the list of Muslim sinners in hell. Discussions of grave sins in Islam typically fail to address this dimension of the topic.18 At stake here is a feeling of the troubling nearness of hell. This can also be illustrated by discussions in the exegetical literature about the physical location of hell. Exegetes and commentators spend considerable effort in debating whether hell is a part of this world already or whether it partakes of a different reality altogether. For if hell is not only coexistent with this world (a view that became the majority position among the Ashʿarites),19 but also spatially contiguous with it, then punishment for sins can indeed appear “closer to you than the strap of your sandal”, as one ḥadīth puts it.20 As one may legitimately have asked, where on earth is hell? The Andalusī eschatologist Qurṭubī, writing in the 7th/13th century, devotes a whole chapter of his eschatological manual al-Tadhkira fī aḥwāl al-mawtā wa-umūr al-ākhira (“Memoir about the Conditions of the Dead and the Last Things”) to the fact that “hell is on this earth” (innā jahannam fī l-arḍ).21 Qurṭubī relates, for example, that one should not perform the ritual ablution with sea water because it is a layer of hell, presumably the top layer. He concludes that “hell is to be found on the face of the earth”, but he also hastens to add that “only God knows its exact location and where on earth it is”.22 However, not all medieval exegetes and traditionists could be satisfied with such a restrained view of the issue. Concrete theories circulated as to where the entry to hell was to be found. Some believed that the sulphurous well of Barhūt in Ḥadramawt valley in Yemen was the gate to the nether regions.23 Others argued that the entrance to hell was in Gehinnom valley (the biblical valley of Ennom24) near Jerusalem, somewhere between the eastern wall of the temple precinct and the Mount of Olives.25 Popular geography located the entry to hell in other parts of the world, including in Afghanistan.26 In sum, what emerges from this body of literature, the collections of grave sins and the traditions about hell, is a marked scepticism with regard to the Muslims’ prospect for salvation, written in an entirely different register of confidence than the optimistic promise of salvation in the credal 159

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statements of the mutakallimūn.27 Taken together, these sources work as potent reminders of punishment in the other world. As Ghazālī exhorts his readers, “your coming unto it [viz., hell] is certain, while your salvation therefrom is no more than conjecture”.28 Elsewhere, Ghazālī illustrates this dire warning with the following story: On the Day of Judgment, God calls out to Adam to pull out from among his progeny those who are consigned to the Fire. Adam asks, “How many, O Lord?” The terrifying answer is, “Of every thousand, nine-hundred and ninety go to the Fire.”29

Publicness and shame on the Day of Judgment and in hell In the eschatological imaginaire of medieval Islam, punishment of Muslims in the other world is thus conceived of as a real threat. There is a tangible fear of becoming the target of divine acts of violence after death. This is not an ever-present fear, perhaps, but rather, a nagging suspicion that things might go terribly wrong after all. Muslims living under the kind of militarized governments typical of late medieval Islamic societies felt haunted by the spectre of state violence in a rather similar way. It would be an exaggeration to say that life in the medieval Muslim polity, for example under the Saljūqs of Iran and Iraq, was constantly threatened by acts of violence of the state against its subjects. The flourishing of urban culture and economy in the Saljūq cities, which could only come about on the basis of a measure of security of life and property, speaks a different language.30 State punishment appears to have been sporadic, serving as a show of force for the ruler. But unpredictable and ruthlessly violent it was, and surely apt to inspire fear. In order to shed more light on the structural similarities of this-worldly and other-worldy punishment in medieval Islam, let me first note a general characteristic of punishment in the Muslim hell, the fact that it is eminently public. In the eschatological imagination, the punishments in hell are carried out in the open, they are fully visible to the eye of the beholder. Visitors to hell, such as the Prophet Muḥammad during his night journey, people with dream-visions of hell, or the poet Ibn al-Qāriḥ in Maʿarrī’s (d. 449/1058) Risālat al-ghufrān (“The Epistle of Forgiveness”), are spectators of a public spectacle of torment and annihilation. The audience of punishment in hell is in fact not only constituted by the heroes of underworld journeys. Also included are the authors and collectors of eschatological traditions, as well as all listeners and readers of such stories. Those studying the eschatological manuals and those listening to public preachers telling stories about infernal punishment all crossed the (imaginary) border that separated private from public. In a context in which notions 160

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of shame and honor were avidly defended, the eschatological imagination offered a thrilling look at what was otherwise veiled from sight. The genealogy and character of the public/private divide in Islam is a field of inquiry which scholars of Islam have only begun to explore.31 For lack of a better definition, one may distinguish between three levels on which such a divide was operative. On the level of the human body, shame zones (ʿawrāt) delineated that which might be seen from that which must not be seen, as well as that which ought to be veiled from that which did not have to be veiled. On the level of space, privacy could be defined as the inviolability (ḥurma) of households, or of sacred precincts within the city (for example, of the ḥaram in Mecca, of certain ṣūfī shrines, or of the caliphal residence in Baghdad). Finally, there is also a level on which honor and social rank are defended against the public gaze. The right not to be slandered and not to have one’s sins revealed to the public is a major concern of Muslim law and ethics. In all these respects, the privacy of the inhabitants of the Muslim hell is systematically destroyed and given over to public ignomy. The Qurʾān states repeatedly that sinners will suffer exposure and shame.32 The Last Judgment takes place “on a day when the secret things are inspected” (yawma tublā al-sarāʾir) (86:9). This is one of the forty names in Ghazālī’s list of names of the Day of Judgment in the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (“Revification of the Religious Sciences”).33 Ghazālī explains that this will be “the day when the secret things are revealed and what was hidden is made plain, and when the veils are lifted”.34 According to the Qurʾān, ignomy (dhilla) is the lot of the sinners at the Day of Judgment (10:26, 58:5); they will meet humiliation (ṣaghār) (6:124) and will be debased (muhān, 25:69) and disgraced (dākhir, 40:60) in hellfire. As for the ḥadīth, the eschatologist Qurṭubī devotes a separate chapter to “the disgrace (faḍīḥa) of the wicked and treacherous at the moment of standing (before God)”.35 Perhaps the most obvious infliction of shame on the sinners is their nakedness. The idea is adumbrated by the Qurʾān (22:19), which speaks of the fiery clothes of the damned standing before God as being cut to pieces (thiyābun quṭṭiʿat min al-nār). A tradition describes how on the Day of Judgment in Jerusalem, “people will be gathered, walking barefoot, naked, uncircumcised, and completely hairless” (yuḥsharu l-nās ḥufāt mushāt ʿurāt ghuralan mā ʿalā aḥad minhum ṭiḥliba).36 In a dream vision related by Qushayrī (d. 465/1072), people are seen sitting naked in hell’s black mansions, buildings which clearly do not afford a sense of privacy.37 In general, it appears, the sufferers in the Fire are naked.38 Traditions in the eschatological manual attributed to ʿAbd al-Raḥīm al-Qāḍī time and again 161

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stress the debasement of the sinners: even people’s genitals (furūj) will be openly visible in hell, and the women in the Fire will cry out: “What disgrace [faḍīḥa]! Beware, the veil of shame is ripped apart [hatk al-sitr]!”39 According to Ibn al-Jawzī, “people are veiled [mastūr] in this world . . . but on the Day of Judgment, God will bring to light every secret”.40 The disgrace and shame, and indeed the loss of social rank, of those confined to the Fire is perhaps most eloquently expressed by the facial mutilations that they undergo. The human face, the seat of honor in the Arabo-Islamic tradition, is often the direct object of punishment, for example when the punisher angels, the zabāniyya, beat the sinners’ faces (Qurʾān 8:50, 47:27). In other instances, the faces of the denizens of hell are monstruously disfigured.41 Last but not least, faces in hell are blackened, both by the charring heat of the Fire and by the shame of being publicly punished, for “to blacken someone’s face” (sawwada wajhahu) is an old Arabic idiom denoting the idea of dishonor and loss of social status.42 In sum, the disclosure or even the complete annihilation of one’s privacy is an integral element in the terrible trial inflicted on the sinners in the other-world. Descriptions of the public disgrace of sinners on the Day of Judgment and in hellfire both reflect and inform what could be termed the Islamic ethos of anti-exhibitionism. Medieval Islamic culture’s rules of modesty, its stress on the sacredness of privacy in general, influenced the formation of the eschatological imagery. On the one hand, then, there was a transfer from context to text. On the other hand, text also reinforced and shaped context. The audiences of eschatological narratives were reminded of their own duty to keep proper appearances and to defend the private sphere from intrusions from the outside. By the same token, one could speculate whether, if punishment in the Muslim hell was conceived as an instance of public violence, rituals of public violence in medieval Islam mirrored hellish punishments. In the following sections, evidence will be adduced that can help to turn this speculation into a more solid hypothesis.

Infernal punishers in Islamic history43 In the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries, during the persecutions of Niẓārī Ismāʿīlīs under the Saljūqs, a number of them were put to death at the stake in public auto-da-fés. When Ismāʿīlīs were burned at Iṣfahān in 494/1101, the man in charge of the burning pits was nicknamed Mālik by the people, in reference to the chief guardian angel in hell.44 In the Qurʾān, Mālik and his minions, the zabāniyya, guard the gates of hell (39:71) and are set to watch over the fire (74:31). The zabāniyya are an unpleasant lot, to say the 162

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least. According to tradition, they have repulsive faces, eyes like flashing lightning, teeth like cow horns, lips hanging down to their feet, and they dress in black clothes and exude a rotten breath.45 Attired in garments of fire, they seize wicked souls as they depart from the body46 and then drive the sinners into the Fire with iron rods (cf. Qurʾān 22:21).47 They slit the corners of the sinners’ mouths with sharp hooks (kalālīb).48 Mālik, the chief zibnī (sg. of zabāniyya), is described as being very ugly and chronically ill-mooded, in fact he is choleric, “made of the wrath of God”.49 He guards the entry to hell, its first gate, ushering people into the Fire.50 Mālik is not the lord of hell, like Satan in the Christian tradition, but rather a relatively low-ranking angel and in all respects a submissive agent of God’s will.51 It is interesting to note that, despite their ugliness and general nastiness, the gaolers of hell are angels. They are, as it were, on the side of power. In a sense, they are agents of God’s siyāsa, His terrifying but ultimately just use of punishment.52 Calling the executioner of Ismāʿīlīs at Iṣfahān Mālik no doubt served to drive home the point that the Ismāʿīlīs’ punishment was deserved. Other examples of how the agents of the repressive state apparatus, its executioners, floggers and security personel, were compared to hell’s staff are ready at hand. A well-known eschatological ḥadīth has it that “the policemen and the court sheriffs are the dogs of hell” (al-shuraṭ wa l-jalāwiza kilāb al-nār).53 The shuraṭ were commonly the patrolmen of the military governor, called shiḥna in Saljūq times, of the greater urban centres. The jalāwiza (sg. jilwāz) also belonged to the police forces; more particularly, they seem to have acted as court sheriffs, physically enforcing adjudication.54 The tradition can be understood in a number of ways. First, it indicates that policemen and court sheriffs will be turned into dogs as their punishment in hell, in the same way in which other sinners, by the metamorphosis known as maskh, are turned into monkeys, pigs, or other animals.55 Another way of reading the tradition is that policemen and court sheriffs will be dogs in hell who torment the sinners. Hell is imagined to employ an astonishing array of animal punishers; dogs would fit in rather well. Finally, there is a third way of understanding the tradition, namely, that the policemen and court sheriffs of this world are like those punishing dogs in hell. Let us assume for a moment that in fact all these interpretations could be, perhaps even were meant to be, sousentendu. What is remarkable about this tradition, then, is that it talks about this world and hell not so much as a sequence of two separate events, but rather, as the two coterminous sides of human existence. A similar logic seems at work in a tradition preserved by Muslim (d. 261/875). The Prophet, reminiscing about his night journey, notes 163

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that “there are people in the Fire . . . who have whips [siyāṭ] like tails of cows with which they beat the people”.56 It is unclear whether the beating occurs in hell, in which case the Prophet’s words would seem to refer to the zabāniyya, or whether the beating is a punishment that takes place on earth, and is in turn punished in hell. Both readings appear possible. Who, then, are the people “with whips like the tails of cows”? The phrase brings to mind a passage in a manual for the market inspector (muḥtasib) by the Syrian author Shayzarī (d. 589/1193). Shayzarī describes the beating instrument known as dirra as “a whip made of ox or camel hide, filled with date stones”.57 Pious lore had it that ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, often portrayed as a proto-muḥtasib, carried a dirra around all the time, in order to admonish people.58 What the tradition expresses is a reaction against the use of the dirra, an instrument of discipline wielded most notably by the local policemen and the muḥtasib.59 This is how Ibn al-Jawzī understood the tradition, explaining that the men “with whips like cow tails” are the people of the police (aṣḥāb al-shurṭa).60

Burning as public punishment in Islamic history According to a prophetic saying, fire was a punishment reserved uniquely for hell.61 To this day, the tradition is rather well known. The Indian scholar of Islam Amitav Gosh, in his anthropological memoir In an Antique Land (1993), relates a telling anecdote in this respect. Gosh recounts his encounter with one of the women in a little village in the Egyptian delta: [A]ll of a sudden her eyes focused brightly on me, and she stretched out a thin, bony finger and tapped me on the shoulder. “Tell me,” she said. “Is it true what they say about you? That in your country people burn their dead?” “Some people do,” I said. “It depends.” “Why do they do it?” she cried. “Don’t they know it’s wrong? You can’t cheat the Day of Judgement by burning your dead.”62

The skandalon of the human (mis)appropriation of God’s preferred tool of punishment is caught with vivid expression in Gosh’s anecdote, which may indeed reflect a certain cultural predilection against the practice. However, with regard to the political and judicial history of Islam, was there really a strong rejection of execution by burning? Evidence from historiography from the time of Ṭabarī to (at least) the chronicles of the 6th/12th century suggests otherwise.63 The historian and theologian Ibn al-Jawzī relates an incident from the year 530/1135 which took place in the courtyard of the Friday mosque in East Baghdad: 164

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A Muslim woman was brought forth who had been indicted although she was deemed good. A reed basket [ḥalla min al-qaṣab] was brought and the woman made to stand in it. The naphta thrower [naffāṭ] put fire to her and the basket went up in flames. The woman, however, made it out of it naked [kharajat al-marʾatu hāribatan ʿuryānatan]. She was pardoned. The fire had burned her only partially.64

As one gathers from this passage, there was a certain protocol to public burnings in 6th/12th-century Baghdad. This involved a person called naffāṭ, a colleague, it appears, of the executioner in Iṣfahān known as Mālik. The burning had its own penal theatre, namely, the courtyard of the Friday mosque. This supremely important urban space was traditionally the seat of the Islamic judge, the qāḍī, at least according to the Ḥanafī school of law,65 whose members tended to claim judgeship in Baghdad under the Saljūqs.66 Finally, the use of a reed basket in which the woman was made to stand suggests a habitual pattern, a technique for public burnings as a ritualized form of execution. What needs to be emphasized here, however, is the eschatological context of the incident. The way in which Ibn al-Jawzī describes this failed attempt at incineration is strangely reminiscent of a story preserved in a number of eschatological manuals: There is a man in the Fire whose cries are so loud that his voice is raised above that of any other of its inhabitants. He comes out, burned black, and God says to him: “Why is your voice louder than that of the other people in the Fire?” He replies, “O Lord! You have held me accountable [ḥāsabtanī] but I have not given up hope of Your mercy!” So God says: “Who despairs of the mercy of his Lord save those who have gone astray? [Qurʾān 15:56] Go, for I have forgiven you!”67

Note that the woman in Ibn al-Jawzī’s story “was deemed good”, or in any case not totally corrupted like those who “dwell in the Fire everlastingly” (Qurʾān 2:39). Also, as Ibn al-Jawzī takes care to note, the woman was burned only partially. This insinuates that she was not yet beyond salvation, that is, beyond the stage where the burnings could be undone. Like the flames that envelop sinners in hell, the earthly fire used in burnings at the stake had a purgative effect. In fact, the woman in Ibn al-Jawzī’s account resembles those naked people in eschatological ḥadīth who make it out of the Fire and are thrown down next to the river of life (nahr al-ḥayyāt) to be washed clean from their black marks by the inhabitants of paradise: The monotheists [ahl al-tawḥīd] will be punished in hellfire until they are charcoal [ḥumam] in it. Then the divine mercy will catch up with them, they will be brought out and left at the gates to paradise. The people of paradise will splash 165

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water on them, and they will sprout forth like refuse born upon a torrent of mud. Then they will enter paradise.68

Whether Ibn al-Jawzī, consciously or not, clad this event in eschatological terms, or whether in turn eschatological notions had determined the way in which the punishment was carried out (and then aborted), is impossible to decide. However, there can be little doubt about the conceptual link between the ways in which people in the Saljūq period acted out punishment in this world and how they thought about punishment in that world. In the following, I would like to offer one final instance of this dialectical relationship between representation and reality, between eschatology and history.

Black faces and punitive amulets Mention has already been made of the black faces of sinners in hell. Medieval Islamic legal culture knew of one punishment which literally translated this image into action. This was the practice of face-blackening (taswīd al-wajh), which one encounters in the chronicles as an element of punitive parading (tashhīr).69 Tashhīr (lit. ‘to make notorious’) usually consisted in showing criminals around the city on a donkey, cow or camel, often seated backwards and with demeaning signs and symbols attached to their bodies. The practice was yet another public spectacle of punishment in medieval Islam. The ruling authorities, in their attempt to assert control over the urban landscape, made sure that punitive parades passed by the most important spots of the city. In 5th/11th- and 6th/12th-century Baghdad, tashhīr processions would start on the eastern side of the river, near the palace or the Bāb al-Nūbī,70 lead over the Tigris to the western shore and the suburbs, including al-Karkh, and then return to the eastern side.71 The faces of the victims of tashhīr were besmeared with soot scraped from the bottom of cooking pots (sukhām al-qidr),72 or coated with embers (ḥumam).73 As noted, the Arabic idiom “to blacken someone’s face” (sawwada wajhahu) expresses the idea of dishonoring, or shaming. However, the symbolism of face-blackening in tashhīr processions was also eschatological. The blackened faces of sinners standing before the divine court of justice is a Qurʾānic topos (3:106, 39:60). The faces of the denizens of hell are scorched by the Fire (14:50, 21:39, 23:104, 27:90, 33:66), but also dust (ghabara, 80:40) and earth (qatar, 10:26) make faces black. The eschatological ḥadīth and Qurʾān commentaries improvise amply on this theme. Ghazālī has it that the faces of the doomed are “blacker than charcoal”.74 Eschatological reports about blackened faces circulated so widely that it is not impossible to assume that they could have been on the minds of 166

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those witnessing, or enacting, the public ritual of tashhīr. Ibn al-Jawzī relates a sermon in the year 520/1126 by the caliph al-Mustarshid, delivered in front of the Baghdad populace. The caliph, in the face of an impending attack by the Saljūq sulṭāns Maḥmūd and Sanjar, evoked the coming of the Day of Judgment to the congregation: “Fire will scorch the faces of the rebels [talfaḥu wujūha l-ʿuṣāt al-nār]. Nobody will be spared from God’s punishment except those whom He forgives.”75 Other elements suggest that tashhīr processions were enacted as eschatological dramas. During punitive parades, criminals were followed by a government agent charged with flogging them, thus driving them on to continue their ignominious journey through the city.76 This may have evoked the image of the zabāniyya ushering people to the Land of the Concourse, beating them with iron rods.77 In 431/1040, when Bādīs, the ruler of Granada, paraded his vizier Abū l-Futūḥ al-Jurjānī, a “harsh and fat black servant” (aswadu faẓẓun ḍakhmun) followed Abū l-Futūḥ, slapping him without interruption.78 Under the Fāṭimids, as Maqrīzī reports referring to an incident in 521/1127, tashhīr processions were accompanied by “torch-bearers in the guise of angels” 79 – a reference, it appears, to the fire-guarding punisher angels in Hell. Special signs could be attached to the bodies of tashhīr victims. Sometimes the convicted were made to carry demeaning amulets, made of strings of animal skin or of dung.80 During the famine of the year 494/1100 at Damghān, a man was publicly paraded for cannibalism (he had been caught red-handed cooking up a young boy). The sources tell us that the hand of the boy was fastened to the neck of the man during the parade.81 A couple of years later at Baghdad, a grave robber carried his own amputated hands.82 The practice survived into Ottoman times and found its way into the Ottoman Criminal Code promulgated under Suleyman the Magnificent (r. 927–74/1520–66). According to the Code, a person convicted of stealing a chicken was to be paraded with the stolen chicken hanging from his neck.83 Fraudulent merchants were to be led around with their faulty goods hanging from a thread fastened to their pierced noses.84 Such practices hark back directly to the Qurʾānic promise that “that which they held on to will be tied to their necks on the Day or Resurrection” (3:180). The eschatological manuals give multiple examples: as the sinners convene before God’s court of justice, their sins are recognizable by the signs they carry around their necks. A jug will be hung from the neck of the drunkard, or the string-instrument known as ṭunbūr is put on his shoulders.85 The ʿūd player will be resurrected with an ʿūd in his hand, the reed pipe player with a reed pipe.86 The thief carries around his neck the stolen object.87 More examples could be given.88 “Bring to mind an image of yourself”, 167

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Ghazālī exhorts his readers, “as you stand naked, uncovered, outcast and ashamed, bewildered and dazed, awaiting the Judgment which will decide your rapture or misery.”89 Such was the state of sinners before God’s throne, ready to receive their verdict and be handed over to the zabāniyya; such was also the state of the victims of tashhīr, who, at the end of their ignominious exposure, were often led on to their place of execution.

Conclusion One should be careful in one’s understanding of medieval Muslim punitive practices and not take too much license in attributing to them a symbolic structure of which medieval Muslim writers could not have conceived themselves. In the European context, Mitchell B. Merback has rightly warned against the excesses of “ersatz anthropology” practiced by historians of “old punishment studies”.90 In response to such warnings, one could argue that the study of public violence in Islam, including its juridical history, is desperately lagging behind the relative wealth of studies of the history of Western juridical violence, let alone studies of its symbolic and representational aspects.91 Looked at from this perspective, any sustained attempt to interpret the social meaning of public forms of violence in Islam can only be welcomed as a step in the right direction. However, Merback’s words of caution should be taken seriously. It is therefore necessary to ask whether medieval Muslim commentators were silent on the symbolism of public violence, or whether at least they had an inkling of the structural similarities of historical and eschatological punishment. Concrete instances of such conscious conceptual transfers from religious imagery to historical reality (and vice versa) appear to be rare. However, they did occur. For example, Qurṭubī relates a tradition according to which people who fail to pay the alms-tax due for possession of camels will carry braying camels around their necks on the Day of Judgment.92 He goes on to explain that God has fashioned punishments on the Day of Judgment “according to what people are familiar with and according to what they understand”, and he explains that criminals are often shown around with [a sign of] their crime [yuṭāfu bi-l-jānī maʿa jināyatihi]. Some of the ʿulamāʾ are of the opinion that what the perfidious [ghāll] is made to carry [on the Day of Judgment] is a metaphor [ʿibāra] for the seriousness [wizr] and for the notoriousness of the affair. That is, on the Day of Resurrection, God makes public [shahhara] his situation, in the way in which he would be made public if he [really] were to carry a braying camel [. . .] I say, however, that this is relinquishing reality [ḥaqīqa] for metaphor [majāz] and similitude [tashbīh].93 168

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Qurṭubī is clearly aware of the fact that descriptions of other-worldly punishments in the tradition are rather similar to mundane penal practices. He explains this as a mercy from God, so that people may understand and appreciate the other world within the conceptual horizon they have gained in this world. Qurṭubī goes half way in admitting that the other world is in fact little more than the reflection of habitual patterns of human thought and action on earth. Not surprisingly, he does not argue that eschatology is a human fabrication with no reality of its own. Rather, he stresses the didactic function of eschatological imagery. In fact, in the eschatological worldview, mundane reality is always open to the possibility of serving as a sign (āya) of the other world: Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/998) recommended visits to the bathhouse because the heat therein is reminiscent of “the biting pain of hellfire and of the surrounding darkness – because in regard to darkness, the bathhouse is very similar to hell: beneath you the heat, above you darkness.”94 Instances of public violence no doubt were particularly apt vehicles to reflect on one’s own prospects of salvation or punishment. Whether actively as victim or passively as spectator, rituals of punishment could be read as reminders of the other world. It was on these grounds that Ghazālī urged believers actively to seek exposure to the trials and tribulations of life on earth. As he mused, the intelligent believer never beholds a tribulation without recalling the tribulations of the other world . . . Never should a believer forget the punishments, torments and calamities of the other world, for it is they which arouse fear: whoever is not in a state of humility, sickness, poverty and tribulation will forget the other life, which will therefore fail to be manifest in his soul or prevalent in his heart. It is for this reason that the believer should suffer a trial, or witness the trial of others.95

Even though Ghazālī wrote with other, rather less violent trials in mind,96 punitive spectacles such as public burnings or ignominious parades effortlessly fulfiled the potential of “recalling the tribulations of the other world”. They could in fact function as comprehensive rituals that conveyed articles of faith about the other world, and the punishments suffered therein, to a broader audience. In the medieval West, the obvious religious analogy of the spectacle of public punishment was the crucifixion of Christ and the two thieves.97 In medieval Islam, at least in the Sunnī tradition, the analogy was the great gathering before God’s tribunal of justice on the Day of Resurrection and the resulting punishment of sinners in hell. However, it remained open to debate how exactly one was to interpret the nexus of earthly punishment and eschatology. Qurṭubī and Ghazālī 169

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were keen to emphasize the moral-didactic function of earthly tribulations. However, other groups in medieval Muslim society preferred different readings of the punitive ritual, thus attempting to benefit from its meaningmaking power. From the point of view of the ruling authorities, punishment’s eschatological symbolism could help to deflect resistance against the state’s monopoly over violence. To clothe executions and all spectacular forms of public violence into an aura of the sacred was a tactic of social control. The link of punishment by the state with other-worldy punishment drew attention away from the suffering of the punished individual, transforming spectacles of pain into edifying experiences for the audience. An attitude of quietism was thus encouraged, based on the notion that punishment by the state was in the eternal order of things. On the other hand, this state-imposed symbolism of public violence could be subverted. If hell was used as an interpretive screen for the actions of the repressive state apparatus and its agents, then suddenly policemen turned into hellish beasts, market inspectors became reincarnations of the zabāniyya, and an executioner might end up being compared to hell’s chief torturer. Such analogies shed a not-so-favorable light on the nature of government, and expressed a measure of discontent with political power. Social and political power relations thus were painted on the canvas of the punitive ritual. However, beyond this struggle for interpretive hegemony over the public sphere, the conceptual link of life on earth with the torments of hell is expressive of yet another, existential dimension of human experience. The troubling nearness of hell, to which this chapter has earlier alluded, may have served as a kind of weltanschauung, a conceptual framework within which people thought about their often precarious lives. The militarization of government under the Turkic regimes of the Būyid and post-Būyid periods put severe psychological strains on the minds of the subjects of political rule.98 Life in such times no doubt was difficult; occasionally, it bordered on the hellish. For example, the poet Anvarī (d. ca 560/1164), lamenting the destruction of his native Khurāsān at the hands of Turkic tribesmen, flatly stated that Iran had become a hellish place (Īrān . . . az ẓulm-i Ghuzzān shud chū saqar).99 Anvarī’s younger contemporary ʿAṭṭār (fl. end 6th/12th c.), in his Muṣībatnāma (“Book of Sorrows”), described at length the human sufferings and tribulations that make life on earth unbearable except for madmen and holy fools.100 This pessimistic view of human existence has its parallels in Western literature. One need not think only of the ‘moderns’ Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, or Cioran. The conceptual link between hell and human society is also manifest in earlier European 170

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examples, and it is difficult to think of a better conclusion to this chapter than Marlowe’s (d. 1593) emphatic lines: Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d in one self place; for where we are is Hell, and where Hell is, there must we ever be.101

Notes 1. See Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 31, 53–4. 2. Ignaz Goldziher, Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung (Leiden: Brill, 1920), 160. Josef van Ess, The Flowering of Muslim Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 42, calls this the “guiding principle of later Sunnī theology”. Cf. idem, TG, 4:677–8. 3. Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection ([1981], New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 81. 4. This notion is illustrated by traditions such as “whoever has faith (īmān) in his heart will not enter hell”. See Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892), Sunan (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, [1996]), 4:360. 5. A succinct statement of this position, considered by Ibn Ḥazm to be the “consensus of the community of believers” (ijmāʿ al-umma), can be found in Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Aḥmad Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064), al-Radd ʿalā Ibn Naghrīla, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Cairo: Maktabat Dār al-ʿUrūba, 1960), 149. 6. See Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1958), 155–6. 7. Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904–5). The ‘Protestant bias’ in the academic study of religion, especially in the United States, has come under increasing criticism over the last decade or so. See, among others, Darryl G. Hart, The University Gets Religion: Religious Studies in American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 8. For a fuller discussion, see my Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 101–14. 9. Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827), Muṣannaf, ed. Aʿẓamī (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1970–2), 10:460; Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya, 1321/1903), 5:26 (ad Qurʾān 4:31). 10. Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), K. al-Kabāʾir (Damascus: al-Maktaba al-Umawiyya, 1389/1970), 8. 11. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī (d. 974/1567), al-Zawājir ʿan iqtirāf al-kabāʾir (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1998–). Cf. EQ, s.v. Sin, Major and Minor, 5:20a (Muhammad Q. Zaman). 171

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12. Abū l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200), Zād al-masīr fī ʿilm al-tafsīr ([Damascus]: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1964–8), 2:66. 13. Dhahabī, Kabāʾir, 8. 14. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm b. Aḥmad al-Qāḍī, Daqāʾiq al-akhbār fī dhikr al-janna wa-lnār (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1404/1984). This well-known work was first edited and translated by M. Wolff as Mohammedanische Eschatologie (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1872). Wolff’s edition, based on two manuscripts located in German archives, differs slightly from the Beirut edition used here. See also Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, Supplement 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1937), 346. On the complicated genealogy of this work, whose date of composition is uncertain, see Roberto Tottoli, “Muslim Eschatological Literature and Western Studies,” Der Islam 83 (2008), 452–77. 15. Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), al-Durra al-fākhira fī kashf ʿulūm al-ākhira, ed. Gautier (Geneva: H. Georg, 1878). 16. Zayn al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī (d. 795/1393), al-Takhwīf min al-nār (Damascus: Dār al-Bayān, 1399/1979). 17. This is also noted by Brooke Olson Vuckovic, Heavenly Journeys, Earthly Concerns: The Legacy of the Miʿrāj in the Formation of Islam (New York: Routledge, 2005), 113, in the context of stories about the Prophet’s legendary night journey (isrāʾ). 18. For a recent example, cf. EQ, s.v. Sin, Major and Minor, 5:19a–28a (Muhammad Q. Zaman). 19. See Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl al-Ashʿarī (d. 423/935 or 36), Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn wa-ikhtilāf al-muṣallīn, ed. H. Ritter (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaasi, 1929–30), 475; Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Pazdawī (d. 493/110), Uṣūl al-dīn, ed. Hans-Peter Lins (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1963), 170; Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d.), 4:534: iʿlam anna l-lāha khalaqa l-nār bi-ahwālihā. Cf. Josef van Ess, “Das begrenzte Paradies,” in Mélanges d’Islamologie: Volume dédiée à la mémoire de Armand Abel, ed. Pierre Salmon (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 108–27; Binyamin Abrahamov, “The Creation and Duration of Paradise and Hell in Islamic Theology,” Der Islam 79 (2002), 87–102. 20. Shīrwayh b. Shahrdār al-Daylamī (d. 509/1115), Firdaws al-akhbār, ed. F. A. Zumirlī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1407/1987), 2:189. 21. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1272), al-Tadhkira fī aḥwāl al-mawtā wa-umūr al-ākhira (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥalabī, 1400/1980), 473. 22. Ibid. See also Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035), Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ ([Cairo:] Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, n.d.), 5. 23. Juan Pedro Monferrer Sala, “A propósito de Wādī Yahannam,” Al-Andalus Maghreb 5 (1997), 151; EI2, s.v. Barhūt, 1:1045a (G. Rentz). Cf. TG, 4:522 fn. 13, who states that Ibn Ḥazm, Fiṣal, 4:69, thought that the notion of Barhūt as the entrance to hell was of Shīʿī origin. For locations of the earthly Paradise, cf. TG, 4:395 (Jerusalem), 522. 24. 2 Kgs 23:10; Jerem. 19:6; Isa. 30:32. This is the place where allegedly 172

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25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39. 40.

children used to be burned alive in honor of the Phoenician god Moloch. See 2 Esdras 11:30; Josh. 15:8; with reference to the practice of human sacrifice, see 4 Kgs 13:10 and Jer. 7:31–2. Monferrer Sala, “A propósito de Wādī Yahannam,” 152. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd Ṭūsī (fl. late 6th/12th century), ʿAjāyib al-makhlūqāt, ed. Sutūdah (Tehran: Nashr-i Kitāb, 1966), 293–4. For a collection of such credal documents, see William Montgomery Watt (tr.), Islamic Creeds (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994). Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, tr. T.J. Winter, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1989), 220. Ghazālī, al-Durra al-fākhira, 79. Cf. Stefan Heidemann, Die Renaissance der Städte in Nordsyrien und Nordmesopotamien (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 445, 448. For interesting contributions in the history of Islamic law, see Robert Brunschvig, “Urbanisme médiéval et droit musulman,” in idem, Etudes d’Islamologie (Paris: Editions G.-P. Maisonneuve, 1976), 2:7–35; Eli Alshech, “’Do Not Enter Houses Other Than Your Own’: The Evolution of the Notion of a Private Domestic Sphere in Early Sunnī Islamic Thought,” ILS 11,3 (2004), 291–332. A recent insightful study of the issue of privacy with regard to the office of the market-inspector (muḥtasib) is Yaron Klein, “Between Public and Private: An Examination of Ḥisba Literature,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 7 (2006), 41–62. Cf. EQ, s.v. Reward and Punishment, 4:453b (W. Raven). Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 4:516. According to Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144), al-Kashshāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiq al-tanzīl (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 4:737, the sarāʾir are constituted by “that which is hidden in the hearts in terms of beliefs and intentions et cetera, and hidden actions and their results”. Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 4:517. Qurṭubī, Tadhkira, 354. Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī (d. 405/1014), alMustadrak ʿalā l-ṣaḥīḥayn, ed. ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1411/1990), 2:267 and passim; Jalāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), al-Laʾālī al-maṣnūʿa fī l-aḥādīth al-maṣnūʿa (Beirut: Dār alKutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1417/1996), 1:54. Cf. Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 4:513. Suyūṭī, Sharḥ al-ṣudūr bi-sharḥ ḥal al-mawtā wa-l-qubūr ([Cairo:] Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, n.d.), 121. In his chapter on “meetings between the spirits of the dead and the alive during sleep”, Suyūṭī relates other dreamvisions of the dead in hell, who are naked, or one eyed. See ibid., 117. Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī, K. al-Miʿrāj (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Ḥadītha, 1384/1964), 37; Qāḍī, Daqāʾiq al-akhbār, 69. Ibid., 66. Ibn al-Jawzī, Zād al-masīr, 9:84: fa-inna l-insāna mastūrun fī l-dunyā . . . fa-idhā kāna yawmu l-qiyāma abdā llāhu kulla sirr. 173

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41. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), Musnad, ed. al-Sāmmarāʾī (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1407/1986 or 97), 1:76; Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), Musnad (Cairo: Muʾassasat Quṭuba, n.d.), 3:88; Tirmidhī, Sunan, 4:708, 5:328; Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 8 vols (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr), 6:118. 42. On the notion of black faces, see my “‘On that Day when Faces will be White or Black’ (Qurʾān 3:106): Toward a Semiology of the Human Face in the Arabo-Islamic Tradition,” JAOS 127,4 (2008), 429–46. 43. The following historical examples of public punishment in Islam, all of which seem to involve, in one way or another, the eschatological imagination, are taken mostly from the historiography of the Saljūq period. Other periods in the history of Islam, some of which are discussed in the essays collected in this volume, may shed further light on the hypothesis that is pursued here. 44. ʿIzz al-Dīn Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Abī l-Karam Ibn al-Athīr (d. 630/1233), al-Kāmil fī l-tārīkh, ed. Tornberg (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1385–/1965–), 10:315, quoted in ʿAbbūd al-Shāljī, Mawsūʿat al-ʿadhāb (Beirut: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Mawsūʿāt, 1980), 6:194. 45. Ghazālī, al-Durra al-fākhira, 17. 46. Ibid., 7. 47. Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 4:520. 48. Qushayrī, Miʿrāj, 40. One wonders whether this idea is behind the perfidious torture that the vizier Ibn al-Muslima was made to suffer during his public execution in 450/1059 at Baghdad. After an ignominious parade through the city, two iron tongs (kullābān) were hooked up under his jaws and he was pulled up on the gibbet while he was still alive. See Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī taʾrīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umam (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1412/1992), 16:38. 49. Qushayrī, Miʿrāj, 46; Thaʿlabī, Tafsīr, ed. ʿĀshūr (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1422/2002), 5:61; Suyūṭī, al-Laʾālī al-maṣnūʿa, 1:64. 50. Ghazālī, al-Durra al-fākhira, 99. 51. Paul Arno Eichler, Die Dschinn, Teufel und Engel im Koran (Leipzig: Klein, 1928), 112. 52. For discussions of the term siyāsa in the sense of punishment, or even capital punishment, in the Saljūq and post-Saljūq eras, see Ahmet Mumcu, Osmanlı devletinde siyaseten katl (Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi, 1963), 26; Bernard Lewis, “Siyāsa,” in In Quest of an Islamic Humanism: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Memory of Mohamed al-Nowaihi, ed. A. H. Green (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1984), 3–14. 53. Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī (d. 430/1038), Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ wa-ṭabaqāt al-aṣfiyāʾ (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1405/1984–5), 4:2; Shīrwayh b. Shahrdār al-Daylamī (d. 509/1115), Firdaws al-akhbār, ed. Zaghlūl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1406/1986), 2:118; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Mawḍūʿāt, ed. Ḥamdān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1415/1995), 2:292; Qurṭubī, Tadhkira, 500; ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī b. ʿAbd al-Malik al-Muttaqī al-Hindī 174

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54.

55.

56. 57.

58.

59. 60.

61.

(d. 975/1567), Kanz al-ʿummāl (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1419/1998), 3:200. Cf. Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 4:355; Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad Ibn Abī Shayba (d. 297/909 or 10), Muṣannaf (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1409/[1988–89]), 7:553. Both Ibn Ḥanbal and Ibn Abī Shayba relate from the Prophet that “the Khārijites are the dogs of hell”. The ṣaḥābī Abū Umāma al-Bāhilī (d. 86/705) famously cursed the “dogs of hell” when seeing heads of the Khārijites exposed on the citadel in Damascus. See Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf, 10:152; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 5:250, 253, 256, 269; Tirmidhī, Sunan, 5:226. Zamakhsharī, al-Fāʾiq, ed. Bakhāwī (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d.), 2:72, states that “the jilwāz is a policeman (shurṭī) who is called thus if he is an Arab because of his severity and violence (tashdīduhu wa-ʿunfuhu)”. For the sense of ‘court sheriff’ see Wael Hallaq, The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 60; Emile Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire en pays d’Islam (1938, Leiden: Brill, 1960), 286. On maskh, see EI2, 6:736–8 (Ch. Pellat); R. Traini, “La métamorphose des êtres humains en brutes,” in Miscellanea arabica et islamica: dissertationes in academia Ultrajectina prolatae anno MCMXC, ed. F. de Jong (Leiden: Peters, 1993), 90–134, especially 119–20, 127. Muslim (d. 261/875), Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Fuʾād (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth, 1991), 3:1680; 4:2192; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 2:355, 440; Qurṭubī, Tadhkira, 442; Muttaqī, Kanz al-ʿummāl, 16:160. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad al-Shayzarī (d. 589/1193), Nihāyat al-rutba (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Lajnat al-Taʾlīf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr, 1365/1946), 108. Golius and Freytag, in their Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, identified the dirra as “a string of ox-hide (nervus taurinus)”. Quoted in Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1863–), 1:804a. See ʿAlī Akbar Dikhudā, Lughatnāma (Teheran: Muʾassasa-yi Dikhudā, 1363–/1985–), s.v. dirra. Thus the poet Sanāʾī could beg his patron to “put things in order like ʿUmar with his dirra (yā chun ʿUmar bi-dirra jahān-rā qarār dih)”. The poet Niẓāmī, in the late 6th/12th century, described muḥtasibs as dirra-wielding demons (dirra-yi Iblīs-vār). See Dikhudā, Lughatnāma, s.v. zīnhār. See Ibn al-Jawzī, Kashf al-mushkil (Riyadh: Dār al-Waṭan, 1418/1997), 3:567; Muḥyī al-Dīn Abū Zakkariyā Yaḥyā b. Sharaf al-Dīn al-Nawawī (d. 676/1277), Sharḥ ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1392/ [1972f.]), 17:190. Both Ibn al-Jawzī and Nawawī say they are the ghilmān wālī l-shurṭa. Bukhārī (d. 256/870), Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. al-Bughā (Beirut: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1407/ 1987), 3:1079, 1098; Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 2:307, 338, 453. Cf. EI1, s.v. Murtadd, 6:736b–738a ([W.] Heffening); J. van Ess, Das K. al-Nakṯ des Naẓẓām und seine Rezeption im Kitāb al-Futyā des Ǧāḥiẓ (Göttingen: 175

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62. 63.

64. 65.

66. 67.

68. 69.

70.

71.

Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1972), 50–1; Joel Kraemer, “Apostates, Rebels and Brigands,” IOS 10 (1980), 40. Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 125. In addition to the instances of burning discussed here, cf. the copious examples given by Shāljī, Mawsūʿat al-ʿadhāb, 6:187–204. In his contribution to this volume, Gerald Hawting discusses a number of burnings, mostly of heretics, in the Umayyad period. See also the cases cited by Kraemer, “Apostates, Rebels and Brigands,” 44–6. A Fāṭimid dāʿī was burned in Mecca in 420/1029. See Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Khalīl b. Aybak al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt, ed. A. Arnaʾūṭ and T. Muṣṭafā (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1420/2000), 27:114. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 17:310. See Irene Schneider, Das Bild des Richters in der “adab al-qāḍī”-Literature (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1990), 50–60. Schneider gives Kāsānī (d. 587/1189), Sarakhsī (d. ca 483/1090) and Marghinānī (d. 593/1197) as examples of Ḥanafī jurists who recommended that the judge’s court be located inside the mosque. See also the Ḥanafī ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Bukhārī’s (d. 536/1141) commentary on Khaṣṣāf’s (d. 261/875) influential K. Adab al-qāḍī, tr. by Munīr Aḥmad Mughal (Lahore: Kazi Publications, 1999), 1:156–60. For historical examples of judges passing judgment in mosques, cf. Adam Mez, The Renaissance of Islam (1922, London: Luzac, 1937), 224; Tyan, Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire, 276. Daphna Ephrat, A Learned Society in a Period of Transition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 129–30. Ghazālī, al-Durra al-fākhira, 100. Cf. the variants in Tirmidhī, Sunan, 4:714; Abū Nuʿaym, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, 4:285. Those Muslims who are taken out of the Fire by the intercession of the Prophet are called jahannamiyyūn according to an isolated tradition in Tirmidhī, Sunan, 4:715. Tirmidhī, Sunan, 4:713. Similar versions in Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf, 11:410; Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 5:2500; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1:170, 172. For an extended discussion of the historical, eschatological and legal dimensions of the tashhīr punishment, see my Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). For a summary, see my “Legal and Cultural Aspects of Ignominious Parading (Tashhīr) in Islam,” ILS 14,1 (2007), 81–108. See also Everett Rowson’s contribution to the present volume. The Bāb al-Nūbī was the principal entrance to the caliphal city. Adjacent lay suburbs which were, according to LeStrange, “inhabited by the lowest orders of the Baghdad populace”. See Guy LeStrange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (1900, repr. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), 274–5. The Bāb al-Nūbī thus demarcated a symbolic point of contact between the ruler and his subjects. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 16:37–8; Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī l-taʾrīkh (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1417/1997), 8:156; Ṣadr al-Dīn Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī 176

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72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

b. Nāṣir al-Ḥusaynī (fl. 575/1180–620/1225), Zubdat al-tawārīkh, ed. Nūr al-Dīn (Beirut: Dār Iqraʾ, 1985), 62; Ṣafī al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Ibn al-Ṭiqṭaqā (fl. 701/1302), al-Fakhrī fī l-ādāb al-sulṭāniyya wa-l-duwal al-islāmiyya (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Raḥmāniyya, 1345/1927), 217. On the topography of Baghdad under the Saljūqs, see LeStrange, Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate, especially 274, 296. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 18:196. Cf. Zayn al-Dīn b. Ibrāhīm Ibn Nujaym (d. 970/1563), al-Baḥr al-rāʾiq sharḥ Kanz al-daqāʾiq (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, n.d.), 7:127, who speaks of “the dust of black smut of the cooking pot” (ghurāb sawād al-qidr). In lexicography: Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim Ibn al-Anbārī (d. 328/939 or 40), al-Ẓāhir fī maʿānī kalimāt al-nās (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1412/1992), 2:75; Ibn Sīda, Muḥkam, 5:472; Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311 or 12), Lisān al-ʿarab (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, [1955]), 12:202; Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Fīrūzābādī (d. 817/1414 or 1415), al-Qāmūs al-muḥīṭ (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1994), 1:1430. For the expression ḥammama wajhahu, see Muḥammad Shams al-Ḥaqq al-ʿAẓīmābādī, ʿAwn al-maʿbūd (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1995), 12:87. Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 4:530; cf. idem, al-Durra al-fākhira, 56. For grilled faces see the traditions in Tirmidhī, Sunan, 4:705. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 17:234. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 17:172. For more examples see Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1417/1997), 8:337; Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 16:295; 17:264, 18:152. Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 4:520. Cf. idem, al-Durra al-fākhira, 99 (Mālik driving people into the Fire). Lisān al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Saʿīd Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1375), al-Iḥāṭa fī akhbār Gharnāṭa (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1973), 462–6. This recalls the trials of Thomas Turbeville, convicted in 1297 for betraying Edward I‘s plans to the French, who was led to the gallows by a group of tormentors dressed as devils, who insulted and beat him along the way. See J. G. Edwards, “The treason of Thomas Turbeville,” in Studies in Medieval History presented to F. M. Powicke, ed. R. W. Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 296–309 at 308–9. I owe this reference to Maribel Fierro. See Ronald P. Buckley, “The Muḥtasib,” Arabica 39 (1992), 110, citing al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafāʾ, ed. Shamāl al-Dīn Shayyāl (Cairo: n.p., 1967–73), 3:119. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 16:37–8, 17:172; Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān, 5:153, quoted in Shāljī, Mawsūʿat al-ʿadhāb, 3:246. Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 17:66. Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, al-Ḥawādith al-jāmiʿa, 306f., quoted in Shāljī, Mawsūʿat al-ʿadhāb, 3:251. Peters, Crime and Punishment, 98. 177

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84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99. 100. 101.

Ibid. Qāḍī, Daqāʾiq al-akhbār, 71. Ghazālī, al-Durra al-fākhira, 53. Muttaqī, Kanz al-ʿummāl, 5:222. Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 2:508, 3:1118, 6:2624; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 2:917, 3:1461. Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ, 4:514. Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel (London: Reaktion, 1999), 141. Some outstanding contributions are Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: la naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1975); Pieter Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel; Valentin Groebner, Ungestalten (Munich: Beck, 2002). Qurṭubī, Tadhkira, 356. Ibid. Abū Ṭālib Muḥammad al-Makkī (d. 386/998), Qūṭ al-qulūb fī muʿāmalat al-maḥbūb, tr. Richard Gramlich, Die Nahrung der Herzen (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1992–5), 3:604. Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn. The translation (with minor adjustments) is that of T. J. Winter, Al-Ghazālī on Disciplining the Soul (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1995), 121. The passage is taken from a chapter in the Iḥyāʾ in which Ghazālī discusses the merits of fasting and hunger. See Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel. The work of Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār, especially his Muṣībatnāma (“Book of Tribulations”), is particularly scornful of the brutality and the arbitrariness of state officials and rulers. See Hellmut Ritter, Das Meer der Seele (Leiden: Brill, 1955), 119; Navid Kermani, Der Schrecken Gottes: Attar, Hiob und die metaphysische Revolte (Munich: Beck, 2005), 79–81. Awḥad al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Anvarī (d. ca 560/1164), Dīwān, ed. Razavī (Teheran: Bungāh-i Tarjama u Nashr-i Kitāb, 1337–40/1959– 61), 203.1–2. Cf. Navid Kermani, Der Schrecken Gottes, 120–48. Christopher Marlowe (d. 1593), Doctor Faustus, ed. Bevington and Rasmussen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), A II, i, 124–6.

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8

Justice, crime and punishment in 10th/16th-century Morocco Fernando Rodríguez Mediano*

In the second volume of Archives Berbères, Louis Brunot describes a children’s game from Fez, called sheffār-qammār: one by one, children sitting in a circle throw their slippers into the air. According to the way they fall back to the ground (with both soles downwards, with the uppers to the ground, or with one sole and one upper to the ground) each child will play the role of a sulṭān, a vizier or a thief. The rules of the game say that the thief will only be punished if there already exists a sulṭān or a vizier, in which case he will receive a series of strokes from a belt on the soles of his feet from the sulṭān. However, in the case where there is neither sulṭān nor vizier, the thief will not be punished. Finally, when a new sulṭān is elected, his predecessor will be dismissed after a good beating from the successor.1 In its simplicity, this game from Fez shows the close link between the rise to power and the exercise of violence, as well as the dialectic links between order and disorder, between authority and anarchy.2 This dichotomy, whose nature is practically ideological, finally sanctions the legitimacy of power as representing a supreme order.3 * This paper was first published in French in Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 51.3 (1996), 611–27. I am greatly indebted to the Annales for having granted me the permission to translate it for this volume, and I thank Maribel Fierro and Christian Lange, whose generosity gives me the opportunity to republish this text, now in English. I am also greatly indebted to Jocelyne Dakhlia, Houari Touati and Lucette Valensi for their suggestions, and to Jeremy Rogers for his excellent work as translator. I have maintained the text in its original form, except in the cases where changes were required to suit the style norms demanded by the editors. In its original French redaction, quotations from Luis del Mármol’s Descripción General de África were actually made from its French translation by Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt, L’Afrique de Marmol (3 vols, Paris: T. Jolly, 1667). For this translation, I have decided to quote directly the Spanish original by Mármol, which sometimes is slightly different from Perrot d’Ablancourt’s translation.

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In the course of its exercise of violence, authority creates a discourse: it produces a text whose support is the body.4 This is a pedagogical discourse: it teaches and, by using indelible marks to do so, becomes part of memory. Its references, its composition, and its allusions become part of a common language, intelligible to all. The following notes aim to reveal certain characteristics of this language, particularly with respect to punishment and the administrative techniques of the use of violence.5 The chosen background is Saʿdian Morocco, a turning point in a political evolution of which the most obvious sign was the establishment of the Sharīf dynasties, and the use of prophetic baraka (sacred charisma) transmitted through the family as a central element of the discourse of legitimization.6

Emerging power It is well known that Islamic law considers bodily injury, wounding and murder (al-dimāʾ) as matters which are of concern only to the individual and not to God. Their status in law is thus different from that reserved for offences of concern only to God,7 and from the status of offences affecting both God and the individual at the same time.8 For the two latter categories of crime, there are pre-established punishments (ḥudūd). On the other hand, for crimes concerning only individuals, the intervention of the affected party is decisive. The latter, in order to remedy the blood offence committed, has two means of exacting justice at his disposal: either to apply the qiṣāṣ or principle of “an eye for an eye”, or to receive diya or blood money.9 The assessment of the intentional nature of the homicide, the presence of witnesses for the parties concerned and the analysis of the circumstances of the crime lead to the elaboration of a very complex set of cases of which a good example may be found in the collections of fatwās (legal opinions). Seen in this light, murder in Islam is a matter which belongs essentially to the collective domain. It reveals a complex network of solidarity,10 showing collective responsibility in the face of the offence.11 Leo Africanus12 frequently describes the ways in which these conflicts were generally resolved in Morocco at the beginning of the 10th/16th century: if someone kills another person and the victim’s relatives manage to kill him, the affair is settled. Otherwise, the culprit is sent into exile for seven years, at the end of which time he may return home; but in order to do so he must either pay a certain amount to the relatives of the victim,13 or else organise a banquet to which he invites the principal figures of the community.14 Exile, which introduces as punishment a sort of symbolic ‘civil death’ to replace physical death,15 and the conciliatory feast, both 180

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underline the collective characteristics of the murder and of its resolution.16 Leo Africanus in his Description gives us an overall review of the situation at the beginning of the 10th/16th century, recounting the wide variety of solutions proposed for the settlement of conflicts. This great variety seems to depend on the tension between the traditional forms and the Islamic model. Thus, among the Ait Dāwūd, there were numerous fuqahāʾ (jurists), but people did not obey their authority in the case of matters of great importance.17 Among the Banū Ifrān the sole judge concerned himself exclusively with matters of inheritance and debt. Murder was punished by exile.18 Elsewhere, in Semede, there was no one at all to administer justice, and sometimes passing strangers were called upon to play the role of judge. Leo Africanus himself, during a stay in Semede, had to carry out this function.19 Within this framework, the establishment of a firm political power provided the justification for the application of a penal system set up in accordance with Muslim principles. On this point, there are two documents from 1512 which consist of a collection of the orders imposed by Yaḥyā b. Taʿfūft, the famous ally of the Portuguese of Safi, on the Banū Ḥārith and another unidentified tribe.20 The first of the two texts, undoubtedly the more interesting and the more complete of the two, begins by stating that, in view of the errors committed by the ancestors of his tribe, Yaḥyā b. Taʿfūft has decided to apply the Islamic precept of qiṣāṣ to anyone who kills a brother Muslim: “A soul for a soul, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth.” Then he prescribes the diya established for different offences: ten ūqiyya (i.e., 100 dīnārs) for the thief, one ūqiyya for anyone who strikes another person with a stone or a stick, five ūqiyya for anyone trying to rape a woman, half an ūqiyya for any woman insulting a man, etc. The second document, less detailed than the first, reproduces more or less the same pattern.21 Here I would like to stress the reference to the “errors committed by the ancestors” and the attempt to establish a new political order based on the strict application of Islamic principles, which evokes the well-known North African historical figure of the reformer of traditions. This, then, was a discourse of power founded on a discourse of punishment, with the condemnation of traditional methods leading to a global political project. It is no coincidence that the two documents were sent to the Portuguese court by Nuno Fernandes de Ataide as proof that Yaḥyā b. Taʿfūft would refuse to pay taxes to the Portuguese in Safi in order to administer it himself.22 The fact that, in this case, the management of violence and that of finance were so closely linked is clearly of great significance. 181

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Power in action Luis de Mármol, in his Descripción general de África, has left us a detailed account of penal customs in Fez in the second half of the 10th/16th century. According to the author, “the same discipline (horden) is followed in almost all the towns of Barbary”.23 From the same text we learn that there were two prisons in Fez, one for debtors and other minor offenders, and the other for murderers. The latter were normally handed over to the relatives of the victim, either in order that they could kill him, or so that they could pardon him in exchange for a sum of money.24 This was the application, in fact, of both qiṣāṣ and diya. The sulṭān, meanwhile, would act in the absence of an accusing party. In the latter case, the accused would have to go half naked, dressed in only a few rags, through the streets of Fez, his hands shackled, shouting aloud the reasons for his punishment. Once he arrived at the place of execution (“which is always the busiest part of the city”, explains Mármol) the accused was fixed to a cross by his feet, his throat was cut, and his corpse was left publicly exposed for two or three days. If the accused was an important person, the order of the ceremony would be inverted: first his throat would be cut in prison, and then he would be displayed publicly at the same time as his crime was proclaimed.25 Other methods of execution were also employed: cutting of the throat “at the nape of the neck”, and the sword thrust right through the stomach for those guilty of treason, strangling in prison or public hanging. For thefts, debts and other offences not meriting the death penalty, the punishment consisted of the application of a pre-established number of lashes of the whip in front of the judge, followed by the exhibition in the streets of Fez of the naked accused, always forced to shout out the reason for his punishment. Apart from these physical punishments, the governor received considerable sums arising from fines corresponding to sundry offences.26 Mármol himself describes in another passage the techniques of punishment in Marrakesh. Thus, in the city’s sūq: there is a mound of earth higher than the shops and houses which surround it, where offenders are executed, and there are always several gallows there, where some are hung by their feet and have their throats cut, others similarly attached but their throats are not cut, in order that they should die in this way; some of them are hung by one arm, with their stomachs opened, and die in such a manner; but they are never attached to a gallows with their arms spread wide. This is the justice done by the king when there is no accusing party; but when there is one, he kills the offender in the way he chooses: he suffocates them, cuts their throats, kills them with lances or daggers [. . .], or sells them as slaves, or allows them to buy themselves free for money.27 182

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The examples of Fez and Marrakesh, in a certain sense, complete the sequence of the punishment: the initial application of qiṣāṣ and diya, official intervention in the absence of an accusing party, the public exhibition (or tashhīr) and finally execution in the busiest parts of the town. As we have seen before, the order of the ceremonies changes according to the rank of the accused: a high social rank leads to a reduction in the penalty, with the aim of saving the condemned from the infamy of public display.28 The course of the punishment thus displays social hierarchisation relative to the category of the person being punished29 and, as will be seen later, to that of the executioners. Other testimonies add further details to Mármol’s account. An English report from 1604, whose inspiration is attributed to Robert Cecil, emphasises the swiftness of the sentences of the ḥākim: as soon as the guilt of the accused is established, his head is cut off. Murderers, thieves and fornicators merit this punishment, as do people carrying arms without being entitled to them.30 Another English report, this one anonymous, dating from 1638, also stresses the speed with which the sentences of the ḥākim were carried out, consisting principally of decapitation.31 Elsewhere, Jean Mocquet described in 1606 how the judge and his lieutenants beheaded a prisoner at the very moment of his arrest.32 Thomas Le Gendre presents a slightly more refined scene in the Marrakesh of 1665: the condemned man was thrown onto enormous iron hooks and left there until the moment of his death. If, for his misfortune, the hooks did not reach any vital part of his body, his agony might last for several days. The arsenal of the ḥākim was completed by swords for decapitation and canes for punishing minor offences.33 Although Islamic law has never developed a fully elaborated doctrine on penalties, other than the application of the qiṣāṣ or the diya, it is obvious that the political powers did make use of their punitive function by acting in the absence of accusing parties. In fact, the judicial system appears to tend towards the establishment of a division between civil conflicts, the responsibility of the qāḍī, and penal conflicts, judged by a ḥākim (who would appear to have a rather more military character) acting in the name of the sulṭān34. The establishment of penal authority required, as well as the setting up of a special judicial body, the organisation of a professional police force. In the case of Fez, the police received a certain sum for each person detained, subscribed by the tradesmen and craftsmen of the town. A frequent practice of the police was, besides, to run a tabacchino, a place which was dedicated to the consumption of alcohol, prostitution, and a multitude of other illegal activities.35 This close link between legal and illegal activities, between order and disorder, was 183

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presented as necessary, in the sense that authority uses penal and punitive language to express itself as a function of the power it exerts, both as pacifier and as the imposer of order. This was an overwhelming language, with no right of appeal, no room for doubt, expressed at full volume, a proclamation. The text written upon the bodies of the condemned was to be publicly exhibited in the streets, and proclaimed in the busiest and most visible parts of the city, such as the mound in the centre of the market in Marrakesh, higher than the houses and the shops surrounding it. Crucified and exposed at the top of the mound, the mangled bodies themselves declared for all to see the existing order and the power which was being exercised.36

The mark Muslim law does not acknowledge the application of torture,37 a technique used in the Western world as a means of the progressive and simultaneous construction of guilt and punishment,38 and which considers the sufferer’s body to be a comprehensive object of torment. In the case of the law of the Mālikī school, the determination of guilt implies above all the intervention of witnesses, and execution, swiftly applied, shows the absence of that painful exploration of the body developed in Europe. This reluctance to use torture appears to be in line with the Islamic law’s repugnance against mutilation, with the practically sole exception of the amputation of the hand in case of theft. Thus, a fatwā quoted in al-Zayyānī’s al-Jawāhir al-mukhtāra, attributed to Muḥammad al-ʿArbī al-Fāsī, is an excellent example of this. Asked whether Muslims should apply the same torture to Christian captives who tried to escape as that which the Portuguese reserved for Muslims, in other words to cut off their ears and disfigure their faces, al-ʿArbī replied in the negative.39 A letter sent by Alvaro de Noronha to King Manuel I of Portugal in about 1519 makes a similar reference: As to the way in which your Highness orders them to be punished, it is not the habit of the Moors, for their only manner of punishment is through goods, and they pay according to the offence. And it would be far worse for the Moors to see the ears being cut off a relative, or to see him being whipped, than to take away his whole fortune.40

The Chronique anonyme de Fès, however, recounts that when Muḥammad al-Shaykh al-Mahdī besieged Fez for the first time in 1549, he cut off a part of the ear of the Fāsīs who were trying to escape from the city in order to reach their camp. If they tried again, a physical mark identified them, and they were executed.41 184

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This story recalls one of the legends about the mythical expedition of ʿUqba ibn Nāfiʿ to the north of Africa: according to al-Bakrī, the legendary conqueror gave the order to cut off an ear, a finger, or the nose of kings as they were conquered, even if they surrendered voluntarily, so they would never again wish to rebel against Islam.42 In spite of – or maybe because of – the horror of mutilation and physical marks, power was expressed through indelible marks which transformed the body into an indestructible memory.43 The author of the Chronique anonyme, clearly anti-Saʿdian, expresses in his tale of the mutilated Fāsīs the unbearable nature of the tyranny which was about to be established in the city. A little further along in his text, when narrating the murder of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Wansharīsī by a band of thieves in the pay of Muḥammad al-Shaykh, the anonymous author tells how, during the fight to the death, the assassins cut off a hand of the ʿālim.44 The scene of the mutilation carried out by the thieves (remember that the punishment for theft consisted of the amputation of one hand) shows, indeed, an authentic inversion of the normal order, which expresses the illicit and brutal nature of the new dynasty. One may also wonder to what extent the intervention of the sovereign in the mutilation of the bodies of the victims may reflect an attempt to substitute the Creator as the manipulator of matter, flesh, and dust.

Silence and the silos Between 1549 and 1554, the city of Fez was besieged twice by the Saʿdians. The first siege, which provoked the death, among others, of ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Wansharīsī, has already been mentioned here. The repression which followed the second siege was, however, more violent, and affected thousands of the important citizens of the city.45 One of the victims of this repression was Abū Ḥassūn, the last Waṭṭāsid sulṭān, who had recaptured the city four years before from the hands of Muḥammad al-Shaykh himself. The final destination of the remains of Abū Ḥassūn is well known: “[The body of] Bu-Hassun was thrown upon the rubbish heap of Bab es-Sbaʿ, the body separated from the head, and it stayed there eight days, after which it was thrown into the silo of Mers.”46 The choice of the resting-place for the mortal remains of the last Waṭṭāsid sulṭān was not fortuitous. Leo Africanus, for example, describing the city of Fez, already mentions the disused silos of al-Mars: “when the lord of Fez decides to carry out a secret execution, he has the body of his victim thrown into the silos”.47 Besides, al-Mars was a hotbed of prostitution and crime, a place full of taverns and a refuge for thieves and murderers. “Thus”, continued Leo Africanus “we may say that this area is the receptacle for all the filth of the city.”48 185

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The punitive discourse of authority often needs to be seen in broad daylight, in the public eye. However, at times, it dwells in the world of secrecy, the realm of silence, or rather of rumour, whispers, of messages loud enough to be sensed, guessed, so that they can be introduced insidiously into the consciousness of the community.49 The future of the offender might, occasionally, not be a public square but secrecy and a place without name: what we might call a “space of degradation”. Leo Africanus gives us a brief geographical description of the areas reserved for social outcasts and imprisonment in the city of Fez: from the tabacchinos, normally run by the policemen themselves, where criminals gave free rein to all sorts of aberrations behind the back of the honest folk of Fez,50 to the prisons and the māristān, the asylum where the mad were kept with chains around their necks.51 Later, the women’s prison and the madhouse were combined into the same building,52 as was the case for the women’s prison in Marrakesh.53 Lepers, for their part, were locked away in a suburb on the outskirts of Fez.54 For some time, people suffering from syphilis, an illness which was thought to have come from Spain by way of the Jews expelled in 1492, were locked up with the lepers, although later they were allowed to return to the community.55 In Islam, there exists an enormously wide field of concepts to identify the world of social exclusion, through the construction of literary and juridical types equating offences such as begging, theft,56 gambling,57 and hashish consumption.58 However, the difficulty of taking a fixed position with regard, for example, to the consumption of hashish and tobacco59 shows the flexibility of the borderline between legal and illegal, between what was normal and what was marginal. Thus, once it had been decided that the way to deal with madness was by locking its victims away, madness itself became linked to sanctity through the appearance of the majdhūb,60 who would from that moment on become one of the most typical figures of the social and religious scene of North Africa, and whose prototype is the legendary ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Majdhūb.61 As a consequence there was a place of secret deaths, of dumping grounds, of asylums for the mad and the sick, where the atmosphere suggests a world of abjection, a world which is a mirror image of the other, bright and ordered, of legality.62 Now, the border between these two worlds is not an impassable line, but rather a place of meetings and reciprocal actions. The notion of a strict order personified by the imām who was opposed to all chaos, to fitna,63 is diluted in a field of neutral relations which contradict the idea of simple dialectical opposition. The presence of policemen running tabacchinos, and the custom of students in Fez of working in the administration of the māristān in order to earn some extra 186

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money,64 are examples which show that contact between the two worlds was necessary. This contact was ruled by a hierarchical principle which assured the benefits of good management, benefits which were primarily economic but also political and symbolic.65

Degradation Public executions, successively or in alternation, developed “two supplementary movements of expiation: that of profanation – execration, and that of purification”.66 These two facets appear clearly in the accounts of executions which have come down to us. Not considered in itself a sufficient punishment, death appears surrounded by a ritual which, carried out on the living or already dead body, uses the edifying language of degradation and dehumanisation. So when Mūlāy Rashīd entered Fez in 1665, he gave the order to impale al-Duraydī, one of the last tyrants of the city before the arrival of the Alaouites, and authorised the Fāsī people to come and watch the spectacle of his execution. Hanging from the gibbet, with the pole plunged into his belly, al-Duraydī is said to have cried to the spectators: “Once I was above you, and today I still am (zmān fūq menkum u-l-yūm fūq menkum)!”67 The story recounts a ritual of degradation through public spectacle, by dramatically highlighting the contrast between the process of execration carried out on al-Duraydī and his final and pathetic expression of pride. The degradation of the body of the victim, whether living or dead, uses different techniques which all have the same intention: humiliation by means of dehumanisation, which sometimes takes the form of “animalisation”, as in the case of sulṭān Muḥammad al-Mutawakkil, defeated in the Battle of the Three Kings, who was skinned, stuffed and paraded in public in Morocco.68 Dehumanisation is also achieved by means of physical destruction, which leads to the disappearance of all recognisable human form: a Jew called Saʿīd ʿAwad, arrested and executed because of a dispute with a Muslim in 1595, was stoned and burned. Friends who came to collect his remains (after having paid a certain sum to the governor of Fez) saw that “there was nothing left of him but his spine, all shrivelled up”.69 The body of the French adventurer Saint-Mandrier, executed in 1626, decapitated, burned, and thrown to the dogs, was destroyed “so that hardly any bones ever appeared again”.70 In 1607, during the civil war between Mūlāy Zīdān and Mūlāy ʿAbd Allāh, some partisans of the latter took refuge in the home of the Flemish agent Pieter Maertensz Coy. Several of the wounded died there, and their comrades tried to bury them. Mūlāy Zīdān found out and sent 187

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his agents to the spot to arrest those who were hiding and to burn the bodies of the dead.71 Another technique of dehumanisation consisted in the use of places of degradation. We have already seen the case of Abū Ḥassūn, thrown into the disused silos of al-Mars in Fez. Leo Africanus tells how the Merinid Sulṭān Abū l-Ḥasan carried out the same practices on some of his political enemies.72 But this place of degradation is sometimes a social place, which puts victims in contact with socially inferior groups: Jews, black slaves, women and children. Jews were the clearest example of the degrading conditions inflicted on certain groups.73 They often appeared carrying out the debasing work of executioner, which seems practically everywhere to have been reserved for them.74 Black slaves and Christians sometimes shared this role with them. Thus, a punishment we hear about in a later period, in the times of Mūlāy Ismāʿīl, consisted in having the body of the condemned man thrown into the air by four black slaves in such a way that he would fall on his head and break his neck. With experience these executioners would acquire the skill needed to make the body fall in the required manner.75 Let us also remember, for example, the final scene of the execution of Abū l-Fahm at the hands of the Zīrid al-Manṣūr: his black slaves cut open his stomach, tore out his liver and ate it.76 Women and children, too, often appear in the scenes of violence.77 For example, the soldiers of the army of the sulṭān imprisoned by the inhabitants of Seggheme during a skirmish, were taken “bound hand and foot to their homes, where their wives mutilated them as a sign of great contempt, and this was done because the men did not deign to kill the prisoners, and handed them over to their wives”.78 Another text tells us that the head of the decapitated Ibn Abī Maḥallī was taken to Marrakesh, where it served as a plaything for children for several days.79 By manipulating physical places or human collectives, authority manifests itself by employing a rhetoric of social order in the service of degradation and dehumanisation: a rhetoric which, at the same time and from the opposite point of view, reaffirms the central, unmovable position of the authority which makes use of it.

Purification Public execution is consequently a spectacle of degradation, but it is in addition the counterpoint of purification, as in this story of a Jewish burglar of Fez at the end of the 10th/16th century,80 who even dared to steal from the home of the qāḍī ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Ḥumaydī.81 Whenever 188

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the police arrested him, he always managed to get off by giving the excuse that he was going to convert to Islam. This trick worked until the moment when a new qāʾid called Yaḥyā was installed in Fās al-Jadīd, and gave the order to arrest and execute the Jewish thief who, this time, failed to escape his punishment. He was hanged and his body was burned. “He was made to undergo the four sorts of capital punishments inflicted by the Courts”, adds the author, making a learned and no doubt exaggerated reference to the four ways of execution prescribed by Talmudic law: stoning, burning, decapitation and hanging.82 This affair was at the root of serious problems for the Jewish community of Fez. The final comment is highly significant: “It is said that this man died blessing God, and reciting the prayer for the unification of His Name.” The condemned man is a message in himself. First of all, because of the exemplary spectacle of his publicly exhibited and mangled body. Second, because he becomes a voice, an explicit discourse. One of the essential components of the punishments, as we find them described in the Descripción of Mármol, is the public proclamation by the accused of the offences that he had committed.83 Like it or not, the condemned man must admit his sins before the whole world. His message is that the ritual punishment is achieving its aim, that the order destroyed by the crime has been restored, and that, following public degradation, the purity of the accused and that of society are once again safe. Thus the Jewish thief of Fez, the recidivist apostate, the petty criminal whose thefts had caused such great problems to his community, after being punished to the ultimate extreme – stoned, burned, hanged and decapitated – dies blessing the Name of God. His last message, his last speech, completes the cycle of punishment. Through the process of degradation and purification order is thus reestablished. Ibn ʿAskar tells the exemplary story of this double process, included in the biography of ʿAbd Allāh al-Waryāglī, and which should be understood in the light of the similarity between the figure of the saint and that of the sulṭān (a similarity which, in fact, hides a structural opposition): one day, in the mosque of Alcazarquivir, the saint met a man who said he was Jesus. In front of the crowd which had gathered before him, the false Jesus performed amazing feats, such as making the minaret of the mosque speak, and making it recognise him as a prophet. Faced by the spectacle, al-Waryāglī took the initiative: he approached the liar, struck him, and ordered his disciples to drag him along the ground by his hair. Finally they threw him on a dung heap where they left him for dead. Some time later al-Waryāglī met the man again, and he confessed that he been possessed by a demon up until the day when at last the saint, by his energetic intervention, had managed to free him from the possession. The man became 189

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one of the most faithful disciples of al-Waryāglī.84 The story of the miracle reproduces a traditional punitive process, including a dung heap (the place of degradation) and death (this time, simulated). The complete process, building up through the sequence ‘transgression of order’ – ‘degradation’ – ‘purification’ – ‘restoration of order’, is resolved in both cases by the return of the condemned man to the dogmatic order.85 In this case, as in many others, the similarity between the punishments meted out by the sulṭān and those given by the saints (directly or through a curse) is obvious. Both saint and sulṭān frequently appear to share the same features. The figure of the saint is not that of a peaceful man; quite the contrary, he seems to compete with the sulṭān in his use of physical constraint.86 Rather than either of them being an imitation of the other, the resemblance seems to fulfil the requirements of a common language full of codes which are readily intelligible to the whole community, a language which is used in a similar way at different levels of social relationships.87 Punishment, the violent language of the order in power, crystallises into a universal and all-embracing model.88

The head89 Violence is a universal language, and it universally explores the body. When it is exercised, it is normally and almost obsessively at the level of the throat, with some classic variations, such as strangulation, hanging and the total separation of the head from the body, each of which is later deposited in a different place.90 A good example of this is the death of Muḥammad al-Shaykh. In the midst of the repression of Fez in 1554, to which reference already been made, one of the victims of the Saʿdian sulṭān was an ʿālim from Fez, ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Zaqqāq, who, during his final agonies, cursed Muḥammad al-Shaykh: “Your head too will be struck off, and will not be buried with the rest of your body.” The curse eventually came true. Shortly afterwards, the Saʿdian was decapitated by his Turkish guard and his head was carried off to Constantinople.91 To give a second example, in 1620, Fez was the scene of a veritable civil war which brought face to face the two most important factions of the city, the Andalusiyyīn and the Lamṭiyyīn. The most famous personality among the former, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿĀrif al-Fāsī, head of the powerful zāwiya of the Fāsīyyūn, pronounced a curse against his rival, Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Aqraʿ, the head of the Lamṭī party. That same day, during a skirmish with the sulṭān’s troops, al-Aqraʿ was beheaded: “He died like a pagan (māta mītatan jāhiliyyatan). May God preserve us [from such a death]”.92 190

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Mīta jāhiliyya is an expression which in the literature of the ḥadīth is always quoted in a very precise context: the one who dies far from his community, from legitimate authority, from obedience, suffers a jāhiliyya death, in other words a death more appropriate to pre-Islamic times or comparable to that of a pagan.93 So the text of the Nashr which I have just quoted defines, on the basis of the allusion to tradition, a transcendental political order (in this case represented by the zāwiya of the Fāsiyyūn) legitimised by the Islamic reference. The authority, the sulṭān, is here exercised by al-ʿĀrif al-Fāsī who, albeit by supernatural means, uses a similar technique on his political rival as that used by the government (makhzan) who seeks, by beheading, to represent the exclusion of the victim from this legitimate order. The separation of the head from the body, in the language of degradation, seems to assume a political and religious sense, as indicated by the expression mīta jāhiliyya and the contexts in which it is used. The horror of being buried under such circumstances explains, for instance, the persistent efforts of the Sharqiyya Arabs to recover the head of one of their chiefs killed during a battle against the Portuguese of Safi. The governor of the city, Nuno Fernandes de Ataide, managed to make the head of the dead chief into an object of negotiation, with which he finally achieved a truce with the Arab tribes.94 The separation of the head from the body, which was supposed to prevent the body’s entrance into Paradise, was even used in some cases as a terror tactic by certain French colonists in Algeria.95 The colonial power was consequently using the language of the dominated society, taking advantage of the same techniques in the name of the efficiency of exploitation. In addition, the existence in Islam of a set of concepts connecting death and the throat is well known, from the ritual sacrifice – where the total severing of the neck is forbidden – to the development of a set of eschatological traditions which hold the throat to be the place through which the soul leaves the body at the moment of death. Let us, in this connection, recall the Qurʾānic texts that mention the Angel of Death (malak al-mawt) recovering the soul of the dead to return it to God,96 a soul which, at the moment of death, is to be found in the throat.97 The head is possessed, paraded and displayed. In 686/1287, the Rif rebel al-ʿAbbās al-Ḥājj was defeated. His severed head was paraded throughout the kingdom, later to be “suspended in Marrakesh, while his body was hung up in the North, in the city of El-Mazimma”.98 The extent of the kingdom was thus defined by a head and body marking the territory through a state-sized version of the traditional degrading parade and public display.99 Here, we have the broken body as a 191

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frontier, marking the space of punishment, that is to say the space of power. In the distance between the trunk and the head a new political body acquires its meaning, indissoluble, inseparable this time from its head, the sulṭān.

Conclusion I have, then, spoken of political power in terms of the monopoly of legitimate violence through punishment, the administration of justice, the establishment of punitive rituals, etc. Ultimately it is the monopoly of a social language with which one tries to construct the fiction of absolute power. Fiction because, while propounding a simple, clear doctrine of order and disorder, it is in fact based on a frontier of social relations in constant flux, forever being redefined, on the uncertainty of changing conflicts and break-ups where the interstices between groups, between institutions, between individuals, become a space for negotiation. Teaching, example, memory: the body is captured and manipulated until it talks. Its dismemberment and its degradation before and after death seek to confirm the indissolubility of the political body.

Notes 1. Louis Brunot, “Jeux d’enfants à Fès,” Archives Berbères, 2.4 (1917), 324–5. 2. “In the historian’s discourse, everything happens as if the outcasts were there in order to legitimise the balance of the system. They are there to legitimise the model.” See Rahma Bourqia, “Vol, pillage et banditisme dans le Maroc du XXe siècle,” Hespéris Tamuda 29.2 (1991), 198. 3. On the integrating function of the sulṭān in a “supreme” order, see Raymond Jamous, Honneur et baraka: les structures sociales traditionnelles dans le Rif (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1981), 227. 4. See Pierre Clastres, La société contre l’État: recherches d’anthropologie politique (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1974), in particular the chapter “De la torture dans les sociétés primitives,” 152–60. 5. It is, of course, important to recall Weber’s definition of the state as an institutional political entity (politischer Anstaltsbetrieb) “if and only insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim on the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order.” See Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1922), ch. 1, sec. 17 (our translation). See also Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation: Wandlungen der Gesellschaft (1939, French tr. La dynamique de l’Occident, Paris: Presses Pocket, 1990), 25. 6. The implications of this phenomenon are considerable. See, for example, 192

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

Mercedes García-Arenal, “Sainteté et pouvoir dynastique au Maroc: la résistance de Fès aux Saʿdiens,” AESC 45,4 (1990), 1019–42. Such as sariqa (theft and banditry), zinā (illicit sexual relations), shurb alkhamr (drinking of alcohol) and irtidād (apostasy). For example, qadhf (calumny). On these two extremes, see J. N. D. Anderson, “Homicide in Islamic Law,” BSOAS 13 (1951), 811–28. This is clearly shown by the institution of collective sermons in Moroccan tribal society, studied by Ernest Gellner, Saints of the Atlas (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 104–25. Claude Gauvard, “De grace especial”: crime, état et société en France à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991), 1:71, also indicates the collective character of homicide in France in the course of the study of letters of remission at the end of the Middle Ages. Very significantly, Gauvard establishes a parallel with the Nuer people studied by EvansPritchard. In modern times, in Turkey, the government in 1937 tried to put an end to the secular problem of the vendetta by promulgating a law under which the close relatives of the culprit of a revenge killing could be deported and exiled from their village. This measure was unsuccessful, partly because vengeance could be taken in spite of physical distance, and was abolished in 1962 by the Constitutional Court because it transgressed the principle of individual responsibility for crime. See Artun Ünsal, Tuer pour survivre: la vendetta (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1990), 27. Translator’s note: In the text we refer to him as “Leo Africanus”, the name by which he is better known in English. However, bibliographical citations are retained in French as “Léon l’Africain” for ease and accuracy of reference. Léon l’Africain, Description de l’Afrique, tr. Épaulard (Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient A. Maisonneuve, 1982), 83. Ibid., 91. Bronislaw Geremek, Les marginaux parisiens aux XIVe et XVe siècles (1976, repr. Paris: Flammarion, 1990), 25. There is a more detailed analysis of the complicated mechanism of death and compensation in traditional Rif society in Jamous, Honneur et baraka, 82ff. Léon l’Africain, Description, 81. Ibid., 422. Ibid., 111. Sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc: 1. série: dynastie saʿdienne: archives et bibliothèques de Portugal [=SIHM Portugal], ed. Pierre de Cenival, David Lopes et al. (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1934–), 1:316–20, 326. These texts may be compared with that of the taysa granted to the zāwiya of Asul in 1660: “When the waves of trouble raged, and the winds of terror rose, and the storms of torment, there were among the humble folk those who took care [in religious matters] of the Berber rebels (maradat al-Barābir), the descendants of the divine pole, and of the eternal ghawth, the Idrisid 193

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22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

sharīf Mūlāy Abū Yaʿqūb b. ʿAbd Allāh Amgār.” See Larbi Mezzine, Le Tafilalt: contribution à l’histoire du Maroc aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Rabat: Université Mohamed V, 1987), 115. SIHM Portugal, 1:337–53 (letter from Nuno Fernandes de Ataide to King Manuel I of Portugal). Luis de Mármol, Descripción General de África (Granada: René Rabut, 1574), vol. II, f. 96. Ibid., vol. II, ff. 95–6. We may wonder whether a part of this money ended up in the hands of the sulṭān or the governor, as was the case elsewhere. See Marcel Emerit, “Les aventures de Thédenat, esclave et ministre d’un bey d’Afrique,” Revue Africaine 92 (1948), 177. de Mármol, Descripción, vol. II, f. 95. Léon l’Africain, Description, 206. de Mármol, Descripción, vol. II, f. 32. Let us recall this text of al-Māwardī: “The correction inflicted on respectable persons belonging to classes of a high level is less than that for coarse people of low life, for the Prophet has said: ‘Forgive the faults of people of rank,’ See idem, al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya (tr. E. Fagnan, Les statuts gouvernementaux ou règles de droit public et administratif, Alger: A. Jourdan, 1915, reprint Paris: Le Sycomore, 1982), 504. This text can be compared with that of Ibn ʿAbdūn: “The ṣāḥib al-madīna will not absolve anyone for an offence against religious law, unless they are people of high rank, who will be absolved under the ḥadīth: ‘Forgive the faults of people of rank’. For them, rebuke is more painful than physical punishment.” See Risālat Ibn ʿAbdūn fī l-quḍāt wa-l-ḥisba, ed. E. Lévi-Provençal in Trois traités hispaniques de hisba (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1955), 17. The expression “people of rank” is the translation of the Arabic dhawī l-hayʾāt. See Robert Brunschvig, “Justice réligieuse et justice laïque dans la Tunisie des deys et des beys, jusqu’au milieu du XIXe siècle,” SI 23 (1965), 51–2, which studies the grade of punishments according to the condition of the victim, divided into racial and sexual categories: Jews, for example, were burned, and women drowned. Sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc: 1. série: dynastie saʿdienne: archives et bibliothèques d’Angleterre [=SIHM Angleterre], ed. Henry de Castries [vol. 2] (Paris: E. Leroux, 1918–35), 2:400. SIHM Angleterre, ed. P. de Cenival and P. de Cossé Brissac [vol. 3], 3:488. Sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc: 1. série: dynastie saʿdienne: archives et bibliothèques de France, ed. Henry de Castries (Paris: E. Leroux, 1905–11; 1926), 2:401. Ibid., 3:730. See SIHM Angleterre, 3:488. The qāʾids of military campaigns were also responsible for the administration of justice: “There is a governor acting on behalf of the sharīf who is like a steward (mayordomo), and his duty is to send officials to collect royal taxes from the province, and to administer justice 194

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35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49.

in cases which fall under his jurisdiction.” See de Mármol, Descripción, vol. II, f. 10. Léon l’Africain, Description, 206. Let us recall here, for example, Ibn Khaldūn’s account of the revolt of Fez in 1250 and the subsequent repression. More than a century later, the memory of these events was still fresh in the minds of the people of Fez, and exercised a force of dissuasion against any questioning of the power of the Marinids. See Ibn Khaldūn, Histoire des Berbères, tr. Slane (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1925; repr. 1968–9), 4:41. Louis Milliot and François-Paul Blanc, Introduction à l’étude du droit musulman (1953, 2nd edn, Paris: Sirey, 1987), 597. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir (1975, Paris: Gallimar, 1993), 49–53, analyses “the function of the question as the torment of truth”. Mohamed Mezzine, Témoignage d’un faqih sur le temps des marabouts et des chorfa (PhD dissertation, Université Paris VIII, 1987), 3:692. SIHM Portugal, 2:238. Edmond Fagnan, Extraits inédits rélatifs au Maghreb (Algiers: J. Carbonnel, 1924), 366. Abū ʿUbayd ʿAbd Allāh al-Bakrī (d. 487/1094), K. al-Mughrib fī dhikr bilād Ifrīqiya wa-l-Maghrib, ed. and tr. de Slane, Description de l’Afrique septentrionale (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1859), 12–24. The connection may be drawn between this story and the theory of physical imperfections which prevent access to the sulṭānate. See for example the argument developed on this subject by al-Māwardī, Les statuts gouvernementaux, 34–8. See also Dominique Sourdel, “Le cas de déchéance du calife,” Mélanges E.-R. Labande: études de civilisation médiévale (Poitiers: CESCM, 1974), 638–9. Clastres, La société contre l’État, 152–60. Chronique anonyme de la dynastie saʿadienne, tr. E. Fagnan, in SIHM Portugal, 369–70. Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, “Los ulemas de Fez y la conquista de la ciudad por los Saʿdíes,” Hespéris Tamuda 30.1 (1992), 638–9. Georges Vajda, Un recueil des textes judéo-marocains (Paris: Larose, 1951), 12. Léon l’Africain, Description, 228. It would appear that such secret executions were nothing unusual. The qāʾid of the sulṭān’s personal guard was responsible for carrying them out: “If any qāʾid or any person of rank is to be arrested, it is he whom the king sends with the people of the guard, and he who secretly carries out the king’s orders.” See de Mármol, Descripción, vol. II, f. 99v. Léon l’Africain, Description, 228. The darkness, gloomy and uncontrollable, spread all sorts of messages throughout the community. Such was the case of the rumour according to which many women of Fez, both Arab and Jew, were secretly poisoning their husbands, and thus committing murders which remained unpunished. 195

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50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59. 60.

61. 62.

See Henry de Castries, Une description du Maroc sous le régime de Moulay Ahmed El-Mansour (1596) d’après un manuscrit portugais de la Bibliothèque nationale (Paris: E. Leroux, 1909), 52, 120. Roger Le Tourneau reported a similar rumour in Fez during the first half of the 20th century. See his Fès avant le Protectorat (Casablanca: Société Marocaine, 1949), 252. Léon l’Africain, Description, 191. Ibid., 188. Le Tourneau, Fès avant le Protectorat, 255. Apparently the female prison guards earned additional bonuses by forcing their prisoners into prostitution. EI2, s.v. Bīmāristān, 1:1224 (G.S. Colin). Léon l’Africain, Description, 229. Ibid., 188. See C. Edmond Bosworth, The Mediaeval Islamic Underworld: The Banū Sāsān in Arabic Society and Literature (Leiden: Brill, 1976), where there are examples of the type of thief and beggar such as we see in Arabic adab and maqāmāt literature. See EI2, s.v. Liṣṣ, 5:767b-769a (C. E. Bosworth). See also David Hart, Banditry in Islam: Case Studies from Morocco, Algeria and the Pakistan North West Frontier (Kent: Middle East and North African Studies Press, 1987). Hart looks at the cases of brigands in the Islamic world, and more particularly in the North African area, while discussing the model of the social bandit proposed by Eric Hobsbawm, The Bandits (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969). Franz Rosenthal, Gambling in Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1975), analyses the difference between “thief” and “gambler” (liṣṣ muqāmir and liṣṣ mulāʿib). Although the attitude of the ʿulamāʾ with respect to the consumption of hashish was less clear than that of wine, the general attitude tended towards condemnation. Thus becoming involved with drugs had an antisocial aspect, and consumers were relegated to certain places and quarters of the town. See Franz Rosenthal, The Herb: Hashish Versus Medieval Muslim Society (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 101–5, 137–40. Concerning the controversy in Morocco about the consumption of tobacco, see Muḥammad Hājjī, L’activité intellectuelle au Maroc à l’époque saʿdide (Rabat: Dār el-Maghrib, 1976–7), 292–317. Majdhūb may be translated as “saint attracted [by God]”. Their main attributes are sudden mystical transports, and frequently antisocial and extravagant behaviour. The similarity between a madman and a majdhūb is obvious. In fact, there are examples of majdhūbs who have been locked up in the māristān and who, nonetheless, are the object of popular devotion. See Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, “Santos arrebatados: algunos ejemplos de maŷdūb in the Salwat al-anfās de Muḥammad al-Kattānī,” Al-Qanṭara 13.1 (1992), 233–56. See, for example, Alfred-Louis de Premare, Sidi ʿAbd-er-Rahman el-Mejdub (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1985). The parallel between the world of the māristān, with its madmen, its guards, its cells and its shackles, and the external world and its relationships of 196

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63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68.

69. 70.

domination, is particularly significant. A text of the Nuzhat al-hādī shows the response of Aḥmad al-Manṣūr to the qāḍī of Fez when the latter upbraided him because he had seen a group of men and women led in chains by troops of the sulṭān: “It is at the price of what you have seen that your companions and yourself have been able to travel safely for ten days. The people of the Maghreb are no better than madmen, for whom the only remedies (māristān) are chains and shackles.” See Muḥammad al-Ifrānī, Nuzhat al-hādī bi-akhbār mulūk al-qarn al-ḥādī, ed. O. Houdas (Paris: E. Leroux, 1888), 158. Madness, in juridical terms the equivalent of childhood (see Milliot/Blanc, Introduction, 223), constructs a space where at the same time there exists a legitimate guardianship and a repressive system. In the text quoted, al-Manṣūr defines the “people” as a sort of collective body upon which a system of power is built. On the general concept of fitna and its development, particularly since the first civil war of the Muslim community, see EI2, s.v. Fitna, 2:930b–931b (L. Gardet). Léon l’Africain, Description, 188. Leo Africanus himself worked as a secretary in the māristān for two years, “following the custom of young students”. Apart from this model of management, all contact with the world of degradation is discouraged. This is the case of those who come out of charity and trustingly approach too close to the cells of the madmen, without being armed with the sticks normally used by the guards: “The madman grabs their clothes with one hand, and with the other rubs their face with excrement.” See ibid. Michel Bée, “Le spectacle de l’exécution dans la France d’Ancien Régime,” AESC 38.4 (1983), 847. Vajda, Un recueil, 19–20. Ibid.,17. This pattern is well known in the history of North Africa: let us recall the case of the marabout al-Niyāl, who took part in a rebellion against the Ottomans in Tripoli. See, for example, al-Tamghrūtī, al-Nafḥa l-miskiyya fī l-sifāra l-turkiyya, tr. H. Castries (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1926), 31–4, and that of Abū Yazīd, the man on the donkey. The treatment given to the body of the latter was particularly cruel: skinned and stuffed with cotton, he was sent to Kairouan. Once he arrived, “Abū Yazīd was taken from his coffin, decked out in a shirt and a white bonnet; then they set him astride a camel with a man behind him to hold him upright. To the right and left of the saddle there were fixed two sticks, to which were tied two monkeys previously trained to hit him and pull his beard.” See Roger Le Tourneau, “La révolte d’Abū Yazīd au Xe siècle,” Cahiers de Tunisie 1 (1953), 122. Vajda, Un recueil, 19–20. Robert Ricard, Mazagan et le Maroc sous le règne du sulṭān Moulay Zidan (1608–1627), d’après le “Discurso” de Gonçalo Coutinho, gouverneur de Mazagan (1629) (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1956), 80–1. In the two latter cases, the victims were not Muslims, which stresses the discriminatory sense of the punishment. 197

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71. Sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc: 1. série: dynastie saʿdienne: archives et bibliothèques des Pays Bas, ed. H. de Castries (Paris: E. Leroux, 1906–), 1:504. 72. “The King of Fez entered Tlemcen by force of arms, looted it, then had the king of Tlemcen taken prisoner to Fez, where they cut off his head and threw his body onto the rubbish heaps of the city.” See Léon l’Africain, Description, 326. 73. See Ibn ʿAskar, for example, who tells the story of an enemy of his family whose body was cut up and thrown into the well of a Jew as a consequence of a curse that Ibn ʿAskar’s own mother had cast on him. See Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Ibn ʿAskar, Dawḥat al-nāshir, ed. Muḥammad Hājjī (Rabat: Dār alMaghrib, 1977), 26. 74. In Hafsid Tunis, for example, “the occasional and degrading task of execution was often imposed on them, whether it was a capital execution or the amputation of a limb in accordance with Muslim penal law”. See Robert Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les Hafsides, des origines à la fin du XIe siècle (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1940; repr. 1982), 1:409 n4. 75. See Thomas Pellow, The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow (1740[?], tr. Magali Morsy, La relation de Thomas Pellow: une lecture du Maroc au 18e siècle, Paris: Ed. Rechercher sur les Civilisations, 1983), 78–96. On page 115 of the same book mention is made of an executioner from Exeter called Absalom. 76. See Ibn Khaldūn, Histoire des Berbères, 2:14 n1 (quoting al-Nuwayrī). There are other examples of cannibalism within the framework of Islam. Thus, it is said that after the conquest of Mazandarān, the Safawid Ismāʿīl Shāh gave the order to roast two enemy captains and to eat them as a kebab: “He who considers himself a true believer should eat a little of this kebab.” Supposedly, the Sufis followed the order with such zeal that they did not even leave the bones. See Roger M. Savory, “The Consolidation of Safavid Power in Persia,” Der Islam 41 (1965), 74. A frequently told legend recounts the story of a prophet who was sent to the Berbers and was eaten by them: see, for example, Mohamed Ibn el Haj Brahim ez Zeouni, Riḥla, tr. LéopoldVictor Justinard, La rihla du marabout du Tasaft (Rabat, 1949; Paris: P. Geuthner, 1940), 42–3. The conquest of al-Andalus also saw an episode of cannibalism, where the victims were Christian prisoners, eaten by the black soldiers of the army of Ṭāriq. See Anon., Dhikr bilād al-Andalus, ed. and Spanish tr. by Luis Molina, Una descripción anónima de al-Andalus (Madrid: CSIC, 1983), 98 (tr. 106). See also Giorgio Levi della Vida, “Il motivo del cannibalismo simulato,” in idem, Note di storia letteraria AraboIspanica, ed. Maria Nallino (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1971), 93–201. 77. We may compare this, for example, with what Georges Ville (in the posthumous redaction of Paul Veyne) says about the presence of women and children in acts of violence in Rome, especially in the case of Caligula: “It is also clear that children and women were treated as some sort of quasi-military 198

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78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83.

84. 85.

86. 87.

body, like the juvenes in the cities under the Empire.” See idem, “Religion et politique: comment ont pris fin les combats de gladiateurs,” AESC 34.4 (1979), 664–5. See also Arlette Farge, “Évidentes émeutières,” in Histoire des femmes en Occident 3: XVIe–XVIIIe siècles, ed. Arlette Farge and Natalie Zemon Davis (Paris: Plon, 1991), 481–98, and particularly the paragraph called “La femme et l’enfant”. Léon l’Africain, Description, 150. Chronique anonyme, 455. This example, among others, recalls that of the presence of children in the massacres of the Wars of Religion in France. See Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de Dieu: la violence aux temps des guerres de religion (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990), 75–91. Vajda, Un recueil, 19. Such, at least, is the identification made by Georges Vajda in his edition, correcting the “as-Samaʾidi” of the original. See ibid., n2. Ibid., n6. Compare this with the case of Tunis in the time of the beys: “Crowds would rush to public executions and respond with an “es-smāh” (=you are forgiven) to the condemned man‘s appeal for pardon [. . .]; the people often throw stones at the executioners and try to seize fragments of the clothing of the executed man as a good luck.” See Brunschvig, “Justice religieuse et justice laïque,” 64 (our translation). In spite of the lack of texts about the popular reaction to executions in Morocco, it may be supposed that it was similar to that described by Brunschvig, and it seems to be universal when the ritual has a purifying character. Cf. M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir, 75–8. Ibn ʿAskar, Dawhat, 32. To make the “restorative” sense of public execution more obvious, one may compare the examples cited above with the work of John Waterbury on the failed coup d’état in Morocco in 1971 and its outcome: facing the Atlantic ocean, the king watches the shooting of the condemned men through his binoculars. Then their bodies are thrown into a mass grave. “Shortly thereafter bulldozers unceremoniously pushed the bodies into an open grave. Lye was poured over them and the trench bulldozed over.” See John Waterbury, “The Coup Manqué,” in Arabs and Berbers, ed. Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1972), 413. See also ibid., 418: “The execution of the rebels, and the defilement of their bodies were later shown on Moroccan television.” See Jocelyne Dakhlia, L’oubli de la cité: la mémoire collective à l’épreuve du lignage dans le Jérid tunisien (Paris: Ed. la Découverte, 1990), 201–11. Think, for example, of the revolutionary events of Fez in 1465. The rebellion, far from constituting a blind unleashing of violence, is closer to the model offered by Muslim sacrifice. See Mercedes García-Arenal, “The Revolution of Fās in 869/1465 and the Death of Sulṭān ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq al-Marīnī,” BSOAS 41 (1978), 43–66. A sacrificial reference such as this not only gives “the conditions for a blameless massacre” (Natalie Zemon Davis, Les cultures du 199

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88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93.

94.

95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

peuple: rituels, savoirs et résistances au 16e siècle, Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1979, 284), but also reaffirms, by its sacred nature, the legitimacy of the new Sharīf regime which arose from the revolt. And this model is even valid for the world of the genie. Thus, the king of the jinn, at the request of the saint ʿAlī Ḥamāmush, orders the crucifixion of one of his subjects who had kidnapped a young girl. See Ibn ʿAskar, Dawḥat, 62. For this paragraph, parallels may be found in the book of Paul H. Stahl, Histoire de la décapitation (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1986), and particularly in the chapters headed “Tête et corps séparés,” 77–80, and “Exposition des têtes,” 91–100. Remember the previously quoted case of the last Waṭṭāsid sulṭān, Abū Ḥassūn. Rodríguez Mediano, “Los ulemas de Fez,” 26. Muḥammad b. al-Ṭayyib al-Qādirī, Nashr al-mathānī, ed. M. Hajji and A. Taoufiq (Rabat: Dār al-Maghrib, 1977), 1:232. There are several examples of ḥadīths along this line in volume 4 of Arent J. Wensinck, Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 295–302, worded variously: “He who wanders from obedience, strays from the community and dies, dies like a pagan”; “he who dies without an imām dies like a pagan,” etc. Damião de Góis (d. 1574), Les Portugais au Maroc de 1495 à 1521 (Extraits de la “Chronique du roi Manuel de Portugal”), tr. Robert Ricard (Rabat: F. Moncho, 1937), 90. The story is all the more significant if we consider that Muslims did not normally recover the bodies of their comrades slain in battles against the Portuguese. See SIHM Portugal, 2:340. Charles-Robert Ageron, Les Algériens musulmans et la France (1871–1919) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 1:238n1. See Qurʾān 32:11: “Say: Death’s angel, who has been charged with you, shall gather you, then to your Lord you shall be returned” (tr. A. Arberry). Qurʾān 56:83: “. . . when the soul leaps to the throat of the dying” (tr. A. Arberry). Mohammed Kably, Société, pouvoir et religion au Maroc à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose 1986), 277. We may perhaps see a connection between the parading of the corpse and the institution of the sulṭān’s ḥarka, insofar as they are both itinerant symbols of power. See Jocelyne Dakhlia, “Dans la mouvance du prince: la symbolique du pouvoir itinérant au Maghreb,” AESC 43.3 (1988), 735–60.

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9

Responses to crucifixion in the Islamic world (1st–7th/7th–13th centuries) Tilman Seidensticker*

The first longer treatment of crucifixion as a punishment in the Islamic world in a European language was a contribution by Otto Spies to the Festschrift für Gustav Mensching in 1967, bearing the title “Über die Kreuzigung im Islam” (“On crucifixion in Islam”). Spies’s article treats the background of the punishment in the Qurʾān, prophetic tradition (ḥadīth) and the books of Muslim jurists and then presents a long list of reports about crucifixions in the Arabic historical, biographical and narrative literature.1 Nine years later, Hellmut Ritter’s short article “Kreuzigung eines Knaben” (“Crucifixion of a young boy”) was published posthumously by Rudolf Sellheim.2 The article mainly consists of a translation of a report in Abū Shāma’s (d. 665/1268) al-Dhayl ʿalā al-rawḍatayn about a young Turkish slave who was nailed to the cross alive in Damascus in 646/1248. The slave allegedly had killed his master. From a remark of Abū Shāma and a line of poetry quoted by him one gets the impression that the slave had had to defend himself from sexual harassment on his master’s part. Abū Shāma describes the young man’s death, stretching over two days, in detail and with subtle sympathy for the offender. The impact of Abū Shāma’s prose is so strong that even a modern reader will find it difficult to read the Arabic original (or, for that matter, the German translation by Ritter) through to the end. My contribution deals with some comparable texts containing information on how crucifixion as a punishment or method of deterrence was perceived by contemporaries. These texts are Arabic poems, composed * This contribution was originally presented at the International Seminar “The public display of violence in Islamic societies” at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciónes Científicas in Madrid (15–16 June 2006). This enlarged version was written during my sojourn as Senior Research Fellow at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald in the summer of 2008. I wish to express my gratitude to the Stiftung Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg for its generous support.

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between the early Islamic period and the 7th/13th century. They were collected by Manfred Ullmann in a monograph published in 1995; Ullmann successfully identified no fewer than eighty-three of these poems.3 Before presenting the poems and relevant verses, I will give some introductory information on (1) the juridical status of crucifixion, (2) the frequency of its application, and (3) the practice as far it becomes visible in the poems.

Juridical aspects4 Crucifixion is mentioned in Qurʾān 5:33 as one of the punishments for banditry (muḥāraba), the other ones being execution of the perpetrator, cutting off his hands and feet on alternate sides, and expelling him from the land. Most schools explain crucifixion as exposure of the bandit’s body after his execution. The majority of the Mālikites, however, hold that the bandit must be crucified first, and then brought to death by stabbing him in the chest. For the Shīʿites, finally, the punishment consists of crucifying the bandit for a period of three days. If after this period the culprit is still alive, his life will be spared.5 As for the question which of the punishments mentioned in Qurʾān 5:33 has to be chosen, the Shīʿites hold that the judge or head of state can impose, at his discretion, any of these punishments if someone has committed an armed hold-up, regardless of potentially aggravating circumstances. Mālikite law prescribes the death penalty or crucifixion if someone has been killed. According to the other Sunnite schools, the punishment is death and crucifixion if the robber has both plundered and killed. The Ḥanafites, however, hold that in this last case the head of state may choose between amputation, capital punishment and capital punishment with crucifixion.6 In Qurʾān 5:33, the wrongdoers are designated in quite general terms as “those who wage war upon God and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land (alladhīna yuḥāribūna llāha wa-rasūlahu wa-yasʿawna fī l-arḍi fasādan)”. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the punishments mentioned in this verse, including crucifixion, were meted out for crimes other than banditry as “discretionary punishment” (taʿzīr) or acts of siyāsa sharʿiyya, that is, punishment based on the raison d’état.7

Frequency Crucifixions were performed with some frequency. Spies remarks that in Arabic literature “countless” reports can be found, and he presents about two dozen of these.8 Mass crucifixions seem to have been a common practice. In the year 90/708–9, Qutayba Ibn Muslim had crucified so 204

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many inhabitants of Ṭāliqān in Khurāsān that the masts formed two uninterrupted rows of a length of four farsakhs.9 Eighty members of the Umayyad family were crucified in Palestine by an uncle of the later caliphs al-Saffāḥ and al-Manṣūr in the course of the ʿAbbāsid revolution; ninety Zuṭṭ met the same fate after the crushing of a revolt in southern Mesopotamia in the years 219–20/834–5.10 The banks of the Guadalquivir in al-Andalus witnessed several mass crucifixions ordered by al-Ḥakam I and ʿAbdalraḥmān III; the figures given for those executed in these events in the years 189/805, 202/817–18 and 327/938 are seventy-two in the first case and three hundred in the two other cases.11 In the same place, thirty robbers were also displayed on crosses.12 In al-Musabbiḥī’s (d. 420/1030) Akhbār Miṣr wa-faḍāʾiluhā (of which just the last of the forty original volumes has been preserved),13 there are four crucifixions mentioned for the year 415/1024–5 alone.14 The first report is about a money-changer who was injured by a robber from al-Ḥawf in the Delta region with a big knife when about to perform his evening prayer in the ʿAmr mosque (al-jāmiʿ al-ʿatīq) on a Friday. The attacker tried to flee but was caught by the people and brought to the headquarters of the police in Fusṭāṭ. The chief (mutawallī) of police received permission from the Imam to have the culprit beheaded at the Bāb al-Barādiʿ and crucified (ṣuliba) at the Kūm Dīnār. The second report is about a man who had strangled a woman and robbed all he could find in her home. He was caught, beheaded and crucified on a dump at the cemetery. There is a short remark that the woman was either his mistress or lady (dhukira annahā rabbatuhu) or that she had raised or educated him (if we read annahā rabbathu), but it is not explained whether this relation contributed to the severity of his punishment. The third report tells us that a man was caught who had robbed a grave in the desolate area of the Muqaṭṭam hills. He was beheaded at the cemetery and crucified at that place. The fourth and last report of a crucifixion concerns a case of apostasy. A young Christian man was beheaded who had embraced Islam, made the pilgrimage to Mecca and had let grown two locks which he made hang down (rabbā dhuʾābatayni wa-jaʿalahā musbalatayni), and claimed to be of noble descent (wa-ddaʿā l-sharafa). He returned to his former belief; his execution prior to the crucifixion is not mentioned by al-Musabbiḥī but I think we can surmise it.

The practice of crucifixion as reported in the poems15 A poem that uses the well-known comparison of a chameleon sunbathing on a branch with a crucified man establishes a special relation between crucifixion and heresy or apostasy, a conceptual link already found in 205

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al-Musabbiḥī’s fourth report. This cruficied man is said “to have left religion(s)” (kharūjun mina l-adyāni, no. 83 l. 32). The juridical foundation of the crucifixion punishment for apostates is probably a tradition going back to ʿĀʾisha, according to which apostates must be either killed or banned or crucified.16 Another verse establishes a connection between crucifixion and heresy (zandaqa, no. 25 l. 6, quoted in extenso below). The practice of mutilating the corpse before crucifixion by cutting off a hand and a foot crosswise is mentioned in the Qurʾān as Pharao’s habit.17 Allusions to mutilations are included in some poems, although none contains a hint at crosswise amputation. Rather, where there are details given, they indicate that either hands (no. 64 l. 2) or legs or feet (no. 107 l. 2, no. 93 l. 1) were cut off. The use of nails is attested to by three poems (no. 63 l. 4, no. 64 l. 2; cf. also no. 82); one of the delinquents – the young Turkish slave mentioned above – was crucified alive with nails (no. 28 l. 4–5). In other cases, ropes were used to fix the corpse to the tree trunk (no. 11 l. 55). If someone was crucified alive in this way, he thus had a chance of surviving, as did the poet ʿAlī Ibn al-Jahm (no. 30). Sometimes the head seems to have been fixed by a rope drawn through the mouth so that the molar teeth (the aḍrās) became visible (no. 49 l. 1); this habit is perhaps alluded to also in some other poems, where the grinning of the crucified is mentioned (no. 22 l. 6, no. 48 l. 5, no. 53 l. 1, no. 66 l. 2; cf. no. 21 l. 2). A particular skandalon was the habit of crucifying the delinquents or their corpses naked, as this is mentioned nine times: mujarradan (no. 17 l. 8), maslūb al-qamīṣ (no. 18 l. 4), ʿurriya min burdayhi (no. 19 l. 7), istanābū ʿani l-akfāni thawba l-sāfiyāt (“they gave him a garment of wind instead of shrouds”, no. 23 l. 6), ʿāriyan min thiyābihi (no. 27 l. 3), ʿuryān (no. 28 l. 8), buzza thawbayhi (no. 76). In one case, at least a loin-cloth was left to the dead man (mujarradīna siwā mā kāna min uzurin, no. 46 l. 2). Only ʿAlī Ibn al-Jahm, who mastered his one-day crucifixion in a poem displaying an extreme degree of self-confidence, seems to see no problem in his nakedness on the cross (no. 30 l. 6–7): The fact that he [i.e. the crucified poet himself] was stripped of his clothes has not brought dishonour upon him; does not the sword have the most terrifying appearance when it is drawn? And if he was exposed to the people’s gaze – is the moon degraded when it is, in the night of his completion, openly displayed? (mā ʿābahu an buzza ʿanhu libāsuhu fa-l-sayfu ahwalu mā yurā maslūlā * in yubtadhal fa-l-badru lā yuzrī bihi an kāna laylata timmihi mabdhūlā).

The period of time for which the crucified were exposed were remarkably long. Ibn Baqiyya is said to have hung five years (cf. no. 24 and the 206

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report from Ibn Khallikān that Ullmann provides), and in a poem by Ibn Kunāsa a tree trunk is addressed as having stood since a crucifixion thirty years before (no. 31 l. 1). In many cases, the names of the crucified are not mentioned in the poems or the accompanying akhbār, but sometimes their identities or roles are known.18 One group consists of rebels/conspirators/political enemies: the Zuṭṭ (no. 3), Ṭarkhān Ibn Yūsuf (no. 13), ʿUmāra al-Yamanī19 (no. 14), Ibn Baqiyya (nos 23 and 24), the Barmakids (no. 26 l. 2) and the Umayyads (no. 16). An additional religious element is involved in the cases of Zayd Ibn ʿAlī (nos 1 and 17, mentioned also in no. 23 l. 9), the “Azraqī” Ḥuṣayn (no. 2), Bābak al-Khurramī (nos 4–9 and 79) and al-Afshīn (no. 10).20 Khubayb al-Anṣārī, killed in the year 3/625 by the Meccans, can be classed with this group (no. 29). Apostasy is given as the reason in no. 83 l. 3. The majority of reasons for crucifixion thus appear to lie in the sphere of political and sectarian conflict. There is only a small number of other crimes or offences that led to crucifixion: robbery (no. 69), theft (no. 67) and merely drunkenness in the case of a certain Ibn al-Kāzarūnī (no. 15).

Assessments of crucifixions in Arabic poetry In many of the poems collected by Ullmann, the punishment either is mentioned neutrally or is even presented as well deserved; several poems in the first chapter of Ullmann’s collection (“Historical Cases”) outspokenly deride the crucified. Somewhat undecided is an otherwise unknown poet called al-ʿUqaylī, who first addresses a crucified man called Abū ʿAmr by saying: fa-mā tashtafī ʿaynāya min dāʾimi l-bukā ʿalayka wa-law annī bakaytu ilā l-ḥashrī My eyes don’t get relief by my continuous crying about you, even if I weep until Resurrection (no. 25 l. 4).

However, two lines later al-ʿUqaylī concludes his poem by stating: fa-in kunta zindīqan fa-qad dhuqta ghibba mā janayta fa-lā yabʿad siwāka Abā ʿAmrī If you [really] were a heretic, you tasted the consequences of your crime [rightly]! In that case, Abū ʿAmr may not rest in peace!

In three other poems, the poets explain that the punishment has to do with the rejection of benefits and pardon from the side of the rulers: “he always rejected the favours harshly” (mā zāla yaʿnufu bi-l-nuʿmā, no. 2 l. 62, no. 4 l. 1; cf. also no. 10 l. 33–34). Whether the poets feel sympathy for the crucified or not, they underline that the exposure on the tree trunk means shame, and they sometimes 207

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point to the contrast between this shame and the elevated position of the corpse: sāmin ka-anna l-ʿizza yajdhibu ḍabʿahu wa-sumuwwuhu min dhillatin wasafālī He is elevated as if glory had pulled his arm, but his elevation is due to lowness and degradation (Abū Tammām, no. 5 l. 80; cf. nos. 40–2).

Another poet states that “as he is exposed to the glances of those who look at him, he is like the meat on the meat-block” (ka-annahu fī tajallīhi li-mubṣirihi laḥmun ʿalā waḍamin, no. 63 l. 3); laḥm ʿalā waḍam is a figurative expression for “being exposed to shame”. One poet named al-Yakkī states: sāʾanī an yarā l-ʿaduwwu l-ḥabībā fawqa jidhʿin mina l-judhūʿi ṣalībā * ashʿathan bāsiṭan dhirāʿayhi kurhan mithla man shaqqa li-l-surūri juyūbā * ʿāriyan min thiyābihi yatalaqqā shiddata l-ḥarri wa-l-ṣabā wa-l-janūbā It hurts me that the enemy can see the beloved crucified on a tree trunk, with matted hair and unwillingly stretching his arms like someone who tears the bosom of his shirt in joy; deprived of his clothes and exposed to intense heat and to east and south winds (no. 27 l. 1–3).

And even in a case where the poet denies that crucifixion means shame (wa-laysa bi-ʿārin mā ʿarāka, no. 19 l. 12), this cannot obscure the fact that humiliation, even be it after death, was one of the most unsettling elements of this punishment. In three cases, the punishment is criticized: a poem by al-Sayyid al-Ḥimyarī (d. between 173/787 and 179/795) is devoted to cursing those who killed and crucified Zayd Ibn ʿAlī. He declares that “they fought against God and hurt Muḥammad” (innahum ḥārabū l-ilāha wa-ādhaw Muḥammadan, no. 17 l. 6). This is clearly an allusion to Qurʾān 5:33, where, among other punishments, crucifixion is prescribed for “those who fight God and His messenger” (alladhīna yuḥāribūna llāha wa-rasūlahu). In saying so, the poet implies that the murderers of Zayd themselves deserve crucifixion. In the poem addressed to the young Turkish slave mentioned above, the sentence is openly blamed as being too hard: “O you who have been crucified with unjust severity” (wa-yā laka maṣlūban bi-ẓulmin wa-qaswatin, no. 28 l. 13, cf. l. 15). Ibn Ḥamdīs al-Ṣiqillī (d. 527/1132–3) mentions a crucified man who, “after his rank had diminished, was treated in an evil way by a transgressor although he himself had acted righteously” (asāʾa ilayhi ẓālimun wa-hwa muḥsinū, no. 72 l. 1). In those cases where the poets felt sympathy with the crucified, the latter’s ill luck is always explained by reference to “fate”.21 One of the favourite strategies of those poets who show affection for the crucified person is the invention of a positive interpretation of this fate. 208

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Being crucified at least saves from the narrowness of the grave, we read in a poem by al-ʿUqaylī (wa-ʿūfīta ʿinda l-mawti min ḍaghṭati l-qabrī, no. 25 l. 2), and this thought is used in other words by three more poets (no. 19 l. 11, no. 23 l. 5, no. 53 l. 3). Crucifixion combines the two advantages of being removed from the anguish and grief of the earth and of being present in the world at the same time, as one poet puts it, then going on to ask: “Don’t you think that you ought to be grateful?” (fa-hal laka min shukrin, no. 25 l. 3). Another attempt to alleviate the ignominy of crucifixion are the references to prominent figures who were crucified, such as the Barmakids (no. 26 l. 2) or Zayd Ibn ʿAlī: rakibta maṭiyyatan min qablu Zaydun ʿalāhā fī l-sinīna l-māḍiyātī * wa-tilka faḍīlatun fīhā taʾassin tubāʿidu ʿanka taʿyīra l-ʿudātī You ride a beast that in former days has been mounted by Zayd, and this is a comforting advantage that keeps the enemies’ reproach from you (no. 23 l. 9–10).

A widespread literary realization of a positive reinterpretation is an allegorization of the posture and situation of the crucified. In one case, this means is employed in a hostile sense when a poet remarks on ʿUmāra al-Yamanī: wa-amsā sharīka l-shirki fī bughḍi Aḥmadin fa-aṣbaḥa fī ḥubbi l-ṣalībi ṣalīban First, he was an ally of polytheism in his hatred of Muḥammad, but this morning, he found himself crucified due to his love for the crucified one [i.e. Jesus Christ] (no. 14 l. 3).

The positive allegorization takes various form. The otherwise unknown Muḥammad Ibn ʿUmar al-Anbārī (fl. 4th/10th century), in his poem on Ibn Baqiyya, underlines that the latter, after his death, is surrounded by the people, as he was in his lifetime’s when people listened to his sermons or waited for gifts from his outstretched hands (no. 23 l. 2–4), and that now fires are burning around him at night as they did in former days (l. 8). A high death is the outcome of a high position in life, al-Yakkī remarks (no. 26 l. 1). Because the pretty young Turkish slave had a better claim to beauty even than the sun, sun has declared war on him (nādat bi-ḥarbihi, no. 28 l. 11) and now destroys his face. In the outspread arms of the man who was crucified unjustly, in the eyes of Ibn Ḥamdīs al-Ṣiqillī, the poet recognizes the gesture of someone who is about to embrace the virgins of paradise (no. 72 l. 3). Another poet, finally, interprets the crucified’s outspread hands as the gesture of cursing the person who ordered his execution (no. 73 l. 2). Compassion for the crucified is expressed several times. Al-Yakkī says: 209

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yā laytahum ṣalabūka bayna jawāniḥī fa-aḍumma ishfāqan ʿalayka ḍulūʿā I wish they had crucified you in my breast so that I could close my ribs around you in pity for you (no. 26 l. 3).

The author of the poem on the Turkish slave states: fa-yā laka mamnūʿan mina l-māʾi ḍillatan tafattatati l-akbādu min ʿuẓmi karbihī * wa-yā laka maṣlūban bi-ẓulmin wa-qaswatin taqaṭṭaʿati l-aḥshāʾu min sūʾi ṣalbihī Oh you, to whom water has been denied out of blindness – our hearts are torn to pieces for our grief for you. Oh you, who have been crucified with unjust severity – our entrails are cut to pieces because of your wretched death on the cross (no. 28 l. 12–13).

A third instance that expresses pity is no. 27 l. 1, which has been quoted above (“it hurts me that the enemy can see the beloved one crucified on a trunk”).

Concluding remarks In the Islamic world, the normal case was crucifixion after death. For this reason, “crucifixion” in the majority of the cases is perhaps a less suitable translation of ṣalb than “display”; this latter term does not arouse the same associations and emotions in Western minds as does the former. Moreover, sometimes the corpses were not really crucified on a (T-shaped)22 cross, with outspread arms, but simply tied to a pole – “crucifixion” is an even more misleading translation in these cases. The phenomenon of mass crucifixions is something unheard of in medieval Europe. There were massacres, especially when revolts were considered illegitimate, but the public display of corpses on the cross was unusual. If the corpse of a single delinquent was displayed after his execution, this could happen by leaving hanged persons on the rope until they fell off or by displaying them on the wheel. The gallows were in many cases placed outside the city walls but also near a castle or the court of justice. As reflected in the crucifixion poems, the normal case seems to have been crucifixion extra muros, as is shown by verses that speak of the wild animals leaving empty handed while the birds get their share (no. 2 l. 63–4, no. 8 l. 21–2, no. 9 l. 2, no. 11 l. 58). In but a single instance in the poems can we assume that the punishment was executed intra muros: “he [i.e. Bābak’s brother] was raised [on the cross] at the bridge, in full view of everyone” (fa-dhāka bi-l-jisri naṣbun li-l-ʿuyūni, no. 8 l. 12). Prose reports show that crucifixion could also happen intra muros.23 210

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In the West, iron cages were sometimes used for the display of the dead, as for example in the case of the leaders of the Anabaptist Münster Rebellion of the years 1534–6. Jan Bockelson and some of his followers, after being tortured, were executed in the marketplace; their dead bodies were exhibited in cages which hung from the steeple of St Lambert’s church. Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, a Jewish banker, was hanged in Stuttgart on 4 February, 1738. His body was displayed in a bird cage that hung in a public square of the town for six years. The poems so masterly unearthed and made accessible by Manfred Ullmann give us valuable insight into various attitudes to crucifixion or display. Compassion is not a conspicuous feature of them. Ullmann writes: “Even when the poet’s sympathies lie with the crucified, his laments and his compassion do not show the same emotional depth as Christian Passion songs.”24 But that this should be the case cannot be expected; at best, the crucified is the poet’s friend, as in nos 26 and 27. In Christian civilization, the Crucified is the central figure of religion. A more fruitful object of comparison could be Arabic prose. If we compare Abū Shāma’s prose report translated by Ritter with the anonymous poem on the same incident (no. 28), the modern reader will probably decide that the prose report tells more about its author’s emotions than does the poem. But on this question the reader would do better to form his own opinion. In the following appendix, both texts are given in translation.

Appendix: Poetry and prose on the death of a young Turkish slave at Damascus in 646/124825 AN ANONYMOUS POET26 1. I will describe someone who was left on his own on the beams of his death and who exhaled a soul that he had preserved [pure] in fear of his Lord. 2. I cry for a [young man] of obvious beauty who spreads his hands like someone wishing to embrace his beloved 3. and who has put his feet side by side like someone who stands to perform his prayer humbly and in obedience to his Lord. 4. His members were fixed with nails so that he was unable to prostrate [for prayer], and therefore he indicated prostration with his heart. 5. His pains have overwhelmed him, pierced by nails and deeply distressed, and death appears to him to be the smaller evil. 6. He can be seen lonely, although [many] people surround his beam, and thirsty, although the waters [of the Baradā river] flow below him. 211

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7. What a pity for him that he had to drink a drop [of rain]! That drink filled him with raging excitement. 8. And [one could see him] naked except for the tender garment of his beauty, bare-headed, [his hair] falling free and easy. 9. The winds revolve around him, and the whirlwinds wrap him up in all the dust that is near him. 10. The summer sun shines straight into his face. Now its beauty has gone since the sun has risen over him, 11. as it (the sun) has disfigured the beautiful features of his face because he had a more legitimate claim for beauty than the sun, and so it declared war on him. 12. Oh you, to whom water has been denied out of blindness – our hearts are torn to pieces for our grief for you. 13. Oh you, who have been crucified with unjust severity – our entrails are cut to pieces because of your wretched death on the cross. 14. In dark night, he is cold. Then he complains about a [bright] day; but this does not console him who has confessed his crime. 15. I am amazed by him who ordered the crucifixion! Oh yes, be amazed and bear witness to his hard-heartedness. 16. [The crucified is but] a small child, extremely beautiful, pious, and courageous, and in battle he had rushed forward. 17. Full of patience, he has borne all these pains, till death came to him and set an end to his life. ABŪ SHĀMA AL-MAQDISĪ AL-DIMASHQĪ (D. 665/1268)27 On Friday, 16 Rabīʿ II 646 [= 8 August 1248], a Turkish slave of one of the Ṣāliḥī Najmī amīrs called al-Saqsaqīnī, a sexually mature boy (ṣabiyyun bālighun), was crucified. He was said to have killed his master because of some reason, and so he was crucified on the banks of the Baradā river under the castle, at the end of the cattle (dawābb, lit. ‘mount’) market. His face was turned towards the east, and his hands, upper arms, and feet were fixed with nails, and he stayed alive from the noon of Friday till the noon of Sunday, then he died. He was said to have been courageous, brave, and pious and had taken part in a campaign at Ascalon and killed a number of Franks and also killed a lion notwithstanding his youth. There were some memorable things in connection with his crucifixion. He abandoned himself to crucifixion without resistance and fear but rather stretched his hands so that they could be nailed [to the beams]. Then his feet were nailed, and he looked on this without groaning or grimacing with pain or moving any of his limbs. This I was told by several people who 212

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were witness to this. He remained patient and quiet without groaning but just looked at his feet and his sides, to the right and to the left again, and sometimes he looked at the people. It was said that he asked for water but was not given any. People’s hearts flowed over with pity and compassion for [this] creature of God, so young a boy who had to suffer such a trial. The waters flowed by his sides, he looked at them and regretted much that even a single drop of it was out of reach to him, but he remained patient. Praise to Him who has the command and judgment. I was told that he had visions (manāmāt ṣāliḥa) and that a light covered him before his death, and that he complained about thirst only during the first day; then he kept silent. God gave him strength, steadiness, and patience. A person who had heard him told me that he said on the second day: “I was given a drink that made my thirst cease.” And afterwards he did not ask for water until his death. He spat like a man who is not thirsty, and spat his spit far away. After his death, he hung the whole Sunday and was taken down only on Monday morning. By chance, I saw him as he was just taken down when I was on my way to the Ḥusāmiyya madrasa. I saw that his members had become black and his beauty had been altered. Many beseeched God for mercy for him and prayed for him, and perhaps he was a martyr – may God have mercy for him. I was told that he had defended himself from something he did not like to happen to him – may God forgive us altogether. Among the memorable things was also that death reached him quickly as a relief from God’s side; he [just] stayed alive for two days and nights. I heard that many men went through this crucifixion with nailing and that it took many more days until their fate reached them, as an additional punishment. On the second day, he became confused, and he did not feel the pains and the thirst any more. He was unable to speak properly but uttered words showing his mental confusion; by this, God made things easier for him. Sometimes he fell asleep and then woke up, horrified by the violent pain, and then the hearts of the people watching him were rent. Sometimes he mentioned God’s name. I was told that in the morning of Sunday or Saturday one of the persons to whom he had been entrusted [for the execution of the punishment] asked him how he was, and his answer was: “Fine with God”. And I heard that when he was nailed, not a single word was heard from him except when the person who knocked the nail in his upper arm hit the bone. He then said: “Oh man, avoid the bone!” And I heard that the man who nailed him died on the same day or one day later, and this also belongs to the memorable things of what happened. The [crucified] boy was told this in order to let him know that God had punished him for 213

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what he had done. And the boy, in his terrible situation, said: “He did not do wrong and should not be blamed; the blame is on him who ordered him to do that.” And he – may God have mercy upon him – was one of the most beautiful boys with a lovely face and long hair. His price had been thousands of dirhams. When he was executed, he was bare-headed. His locks hung down behind him, and the winds played with them and turned them towards his chest, and he took them with his mouth, occupying himself with them and spending his time playing with them. I was told that he said: “It is two days now that I haven’t prayed”, as if he were sorry about the missed prayers. And somebody said that he was just fasting when he was hung to the cross. And someone whom I trust said that he asked the spectators to move away from him in order to relieve himself, and they did so, and he urinated. He had a proud soul and immense strength. Some people told me that he moved his feet, fixed with nails as they were, and did not cease to keep himself busy with moving them until the holes of the two nails on them widened, and he turned them [his feet?] on the nails, and if the nails were not stuck so firmly in the wood he surely would have pulled them out.

Notes 1. Otto Spies, “Über die Kreuzigung im Islam,” in Religion und Religionen: Festschrift für Gustav Mensching zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, ed. Rudolf Thomas (Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag, 1967), 143–56. 2. Hellmut Ritter, “Kreuzigung eines Knaben,” Oriens 25 (1976), 38–40. 3. Manfred Ullmann, Das Motiv der Kreuzigung in der arabischen Poesie des Mittelalters (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995). Another twenty-five poems mention the phenomenon of speared skulls. Maribel Fierro draws my attention to three poems about crucified men transmitted in Ibn Ḥayyān’s Muqtabis. The first one is about Sulaymān Ibn ʿUmar Ibn Ḥafṣūn. See Maribel Fierro, “Violencia, política y religión en al-Andalus durante el s. IV/X: el reinado de ʿAbd al-Rahman III,” in Estudios onomástico-biográficos de al-Andalus. XIV. De muerte violenta. Política, religión y violencia en al-Andalus, ed. Maribel Fierro (Madrid: CSIC, 2004), 37–102, 47. The other two are about the latter’s father, ʿUmar Ibn Ḥafṣūn, and his other son Ḥakam, whose corpses were crucified ten years after their deaths, together with that of Sulaymān. See ibid., 58–9. 4. The following abstract is drawn from the chapter “The classical doctrine” in Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6–68, esp. 37–8, 57–9. 5. Ibid., 37–8. 214

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6. Ibid., 58. 7. Ibid., 65–9. 8. Spies, “Über die Kreuzigung,” 150. A similar number of historical cases of crucifixions is listed in ʿAbbūd Shāljī, Mawsūʿat al-ʿadhāb, 7 vols (Beirut: al-Dār al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Mawsūʿāt, 1985), 7:165–72; cf. also 3:278–92 (chapter on al-tasmīr). (My thanks to Christian Lange for drawing my attention to this work and to Patrick Franke for his help in making it available to me.) Five cases from Islamic Spain are enumerated in Maribel Fierro, “Religious Dissension in al-Andalus: Ways of Exclusion and Inclusion,” Al-Qanṭara 22 (2001), 463–87. Seven more cases from al-Andalus during the reign of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (300–50/912–61) are dealt with in detail in Maribel Fierro, “Violencia,” 47, 55–62. In three cases, the convicted seem to have been crucified alive. 9. Spies, “Über die Kreuzigung,” 150. 10. Ullmann, Kreuzigung, nos. 16 and 3. 11. Spies, “Über die Kreuzigung,” 151. 12. Ullmann, Kreuzigung, no. 69. 13. For the author and his work, cf. EI2, s.v. al-Musabbiḥī, 7:650–2 (Th. Bianquis); Stephan Conermann and Tilman Seidensticker, “Some Remarks on Ibn Ṭawq’s (d. 915/1509) Journal Al-Taʿlīq, vol. 1,” Mamluk Studies Review 11.2 (2007), 121–4; Yaacov Lev, “The Suppression of Crime, the Supervision of Markets, and Urban Society in the Egyptian Capital during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” Mediterranean Historical Review 3 (1988), 71–95. 14. Musabbiḥī, Akhbār Miṣr, ed. Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid and Thierry Bianquis as Tome quarantième de la chronique d’Egypte de Musabbihi (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1978), 52–3, 97–9. 15. In the following, poems are cited by the numbers attributed to them in Ullmann, Kreuzigung. 16. Spies, “Über die Kreuzigung,” 145. 17. See Ullmann, Kreuzigung, 20. 18. Detailed historical information is always provided by Ullmann. 19. Religious matters beyond the Fāṭimī-Sunnī antagonism might also have played a role, as the allusions to his Christian inclinations in no. 14 l. 1 and 3 show. 20. Al-Afshīn is called a fire-worshipper in no. 10 l. 24. 21. See, for example, al-khuṭūb (no. 18 l. 3), rayb al-zamān (no. 18 l. 6), iḥdā l-ghawāʾil (no. 19 l. 1), al-manāyā (no. 19 l. 2), al-qadar al-maḥtūm (no. 19 l. 10), al-ayyām (no. 22 l. 1), al-nawāʾib/al-nāʾibāt (no. 23 l. 12), ṣarf al-layālī (no. 23 l. 13) and al-ḥimām (no. 26 l. 1). 22. Cf. Ullmann, Kreuzigung, 21. 23. The young Turkish slave was crucified on the banks of the river Baradā in Damascus, under the castle at the end of the cattle market. See Ritter, “Kreuzigung eines Knaben,” 38; Ullmann, Kreuzigung, no. 28 l. 6. The 215

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24. 25. 26.

27.

reports collected by Spies, “Über die Kreuzigung,” 150–3, are not unambiguous about this question. Ullmann, Kreuzigung, 22–3. The following translations are based on the original Arabic wording, but Ullmann’s and Ritter’s German translations have been gratefully consulted. Quoted in Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ismāʿīl, al-maʿrūf bi-Abī Shāma al-Maqdisī al-Dimashqī, Tarājim rijāl al-qarnayn al-sādis wa-l-sābiʿ al-maʿrūf bi-l-Dhayl ʿalā al-rawḍatayn, ed. Muḥammad Zāhid ibn al-Ḥasan al-Kawtharī and ʿIzzat al-ʿAṭṭār al-Ḥusaynī (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Mālikiyya, 1947 [repr. Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1974]), 181:25–182:9. For further references, see Ullmann, Kreuzigung, no. 28. Abū Shāma, Dhayl, 180:21–181:24.

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10

Violence and the prince: the case of the Aghlabid Amīr Ibrāhīm II (261–89/875–902) Annliese Nef

The issue of public violence and its use is fundamental when defining the rules which govern the business of politics and which characterize any political regime; for it is closely linked to the nature of tyranny and the definition of the common good. In contrast to essentialist concepts which would lead one to see the Muslim world as being inherently violent, particularly when dealing with politics and the exercise of power,1 there is a need to try to write a history of public violence, its uses and its perceptions in the Muslim world, for which we currently lack any precise analysis.2 This study seeks to make a timely contribution to that vital effort of collective reflection.3 The case of Ibrāhīm II, one of the last Aghlabid amīrs (261–89/875–902) before the accession of the Fāṭimids in Ifrīqiya, has always been considered extreme in this regard.4 His example enables us to outline the concepts developed by chroniclers concerning the violence of the prince, which is one of the facets of public violence. Paradoxically, because Ibrāhīm II is a borderline case (or at least is presented as such by medieval sources), his figure serves better than any other to comprehend public violence in late 3rd/9th-century Ifrīqiya as well as to understand the limits which could not be overstepped in this respect. It clearly shows that the unlimited use of public violence is not an essential and atemporal feature of Islam, and that it is readily criticized, among others by Arabo-Islamic chroniclers.5 Above all, the biography of this amīr allows us to sketch out the development of the concepts which arise around violence as exercised by political power, disregarding all atemporality. Indeed, we should begin by emphasizing the fact that our research will be based on accounts written after the events, covering a wide time span (4th/10th to 8th/14th centuries)6 and showing a wide range of contrasting views of Ibrāhīm II. These a posteriori interpretations of the use of public violence in late 217

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3rd/9th-century Ifrīqiya are just as much the subject of this article as are the manifestations of this violence, if not more so. From this point of view, contemporary historiography on this subject is also not without interest, and we shall see that beneath the later, superimposed layers of narrative there probably lies an explanation of this amīr’s use of public violence which has not yet been envisaged. First of all we must take a retrospective look at the biography of Ibrāhīm II, which indeed shows several noteworthy features, particularly in regard to his relationship with violence. Then we shall examine the different historiographical trends (4th/10th-10th/14th centuries) which have sought to analyse the case, before proposing a new interpretation of the elements that they put forward.

Revisiting the biography of Ibrāhīm II The biography of Ibrāhīm II may be divided conveniently into three separate parts, as medieval chroniclers have already pointed out. These three parts coincide almost exactly with three different uses of public violence by the amīr. The first striking point in this biography is the accession, totally free of violence, of Ibrāhīm II, a true example of the “reluctant amīr”. While there is no shortage of violent seizures of power in the history of the Muslim world7 – so much so that some have sought to present this political instability as one of the characteristics of the organization of public life in Islam –,8 the story of the accession of Ibrāhīm II is quite the antithesis of all these blood-soaked descriptions. One could almost say that it is so far removed from them that it becomes rather suspect, and can probably only be interpreted within the context of a narrative which may be described as hagiographic.9 In fact, Ibrāhīm II was not the amīr chosen to succeed Abū-l-Gharānīq, his younger brother, who had taken power in his place. The latter expected his own son to succeed him, although he was too young at the time of the amīr’s death.10 Some versions suggest that Ibrāhīm was appointed as provisional regent.11 However, the texts mentioning the succession report that things did not go as planned. Not that Ibrāhīm took advantage of his nephew’s weakness; but he was apparently called to power, against his own wishes. Three groups appear to have come out in his favour: the fuqahāʾ, who found a loophole by which he would not have to live in a palace that he had promised not to occupy, by declaring that the bayʿa of his subjects in Kairouan was an act of allegiance to his person, and would therefore not require 218

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him to move into the amīr’s palace in order to be valid;12 the élites and the people of Kairouan (ahl Qayrawān)13; and the members of the dynasty of the Banū Aghlab.14 In short, there seems to have emerged a general consensus15 about the virtue of Ibrāhīm,16 bolstered by his reluctance to take power, which further obliged everybody involved to insist on his assuming the function of amīr. His accession to government is thus characterized by a sort of perfection; for the taint of dynastic inheritance, always a complex affair in the political perception of Islam, is (as far as possible) eliminated. The fuqahāʾ approved his succession, even though, within the Islamic political context, they were the group most likely to criticize the exercise of power, especially when it was suspected of not agreeing with the laws of God. More generally, the new amīr’s lack of interest in power is an absolute proof of his virtue; a virtue of a new kind, influenced by the blossoming of the ascetic texts and practices which were being developed from the second half of the 3rd/9th century onwards,17 even if the expression of distaste for, or indifference to, the exercise of power are virtues which appear early in Islam.18 The amīr’s attitude must have seemed the best guarantee against an excessive and violent exercise of political power. The first part of Ibrāhīm II’s reign did little to tarnish the image of this ideal succession, even though the amīr immediately made a very particular use of public force, and thus of legitimate state violence. The “first seven years” of his reign are those of a just and remarkably strict prince. In the opinion of all the chroniclers the first, positive period of Ibrāhīm II’s reign did indeed last seven years.19 The amīr’s tools to carry out legitimate violence exercised by the state are basically twofold: justice, applied with the maximum rigour, and its mise-en-scène, the public use of violence against the enemy or against rebels. In all these cases, its use is implicitly justified by the fact that it prevents even greater violence from disrupting public order. It is legitimate because it respects the rules regarded by all as fair. This phase of Ibrāhīm’s amīrate is praised as a model, both by his admirers20 and by his critics.21 The severity he showed is remarked on as one of the characteristic features of his politics.22 It is inseparable from his unimpeachable fairness,23 which is made manifest, or ‘staged’, in public, and which makes sense of what might otherwise appear to be unjustifiable violence. Thus Ibrāhīm is described as incorruptible, which is at odds with the practices of his predecessor Abū al-Gharānīq, who allowed himself to be seduced by the pleasures of power.24 His exercise of one of the fundamental rights of government, justice, is praised by chroniclers, even though this is one of the major points of friction between political power and men of the law. He is given credit for two things in this area: it is 219

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generally agreed that he never appointed any bad qāḍīs,25 and he saw to it that justice was applied equally to all, especially to the élites.26 The second feature of his exemplary behaviour is military. Here the argument revolves around three points: Ifrīqiya is protected against the reach of the violence of her enemies, and jihād is waged both outside and inside the territory governed by the amīr. The fortification of the North African coast is thus attributed to Ibrāhīm II,27 which agrees with the fact that he increased the number of structures such as the ribāṭ. The amīr is then shown as taking personal control of operations within the country, notably against the Khārijites.28 The violence of these expeditions is always described as extreme. Throughout this first stage, external conflicts with the Christians mostly concerned Sicily and southern Italy, and they were conducted principally, although not exclusively, by the son of the amīr who had inherited the government of the island.29 The two elements are clearly connected in the mind of Ibn al-Athīr: the combination of justice, firmness and security ensures good government for the subjects of Ifrīqiya. This period is all the more characteristic from the point of view of the use of public violence by Ibrāhīm II, since Ibn ʿIdhārī, no supporter of the amīr, is alone in reporting the outcome of a riot provoked by a monetary reform.30 The most significant point is the way in which Ibrāhīm II put an end to this protest movement. When the rioters left Kairouan, the capital, for the amīr’s palace of Raqqāda, to the south of the latter city, the amīr had them arrested and locked in the mosque. Then he went to Kairouan, where, in the muṣallā (open-air oratory), he received the representative of the demonstrators, the faqīh and ascetic Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Mughīth. At the end of a long conversation with Ibrāhīm II, the latter went with the ḥājib Ṣamṣama to reassure the protesters in the city, while the amīr had the prisoners in Raqqāda set free. We do not know the terms on which this conflict was settled. The fact remains that the path of conciliation won out over that of repression, and the episode is reported in order to underline the closeness of the amīr to his subjects, his accessibility,31 but also his good relations with the much-respected ascetics of Kairouan. This description contrasts all the more starkly with the second phase of the career of Ibrāhīm II, which is much criticized, in particular because of the unjustifiable use of public violence which Ibrāhīm II had apparently cultivated by then. Since the Middle Ages the second part of Ibrāhīm’s life32 has given rise to a diagnosis of insanity,33 a judgement repeated in contemporary times by a certain number of historians.34 The chroniclers list a series of abuses which all have to do with violence but never with the vices or moral perversions for which other rulers had been taken to task. 220

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Ibrāhīm’s transgressions basically took four forms. Three of the chroniclers’ criticisms refer to an improper use of state power. The fourth, on the other hand, relates to the private sphere (if such a thing existed for a prince): it concerns the extreme cruelty Ibrāhīm II inflicted on those close to him. The first improper use of state power was of military nature. The Aghlabid amīr was accused by his detractors of using military power against his subjects, unwisely and excessively. For example, he swiftly repressed a series of rebellions by ambushes, seen as a means unworthy of a good ruler. In 280/893–94 a revolt driven by the Arab aristocracy led to the execution of the finest warriors of the citadel of Balazma, treacherously lured to the court.35 A general revolt followed, after which Tunis was subdued.36 In 283/896 it was the Nafūsa Khārijite Berbers who were crushed.37 During each of these episodes, Ibrāhīm II took great care to mount a spectacular and abnormal display of his undisputable victory: after the surrender of Tunis, he organized in Kairouan a parade of wagons carrying the bodies of the dead, and had the city crossed on foot by a procession of representatives of the Tunisian élites.38 He then locked up some of the survivors in the underground passageways at Sousse39 and sent young women, from the top ranks of society, as slave servants (jawārī) to the court in Baghdad.40 When the Nafūsa were wiped out, the amīr himself tore out their hearts.41 In 284/897, prisoners were taken on the occasion of another expedition, and their hearts went to decorate the Tunis gate in Kairouan.42 Finally, Ibrāhīm is accused by Ibn ʿIdhārī of engaging in cannibalism by feasting on the heads of his enemies at the end of his victorious campaign of the previous year.43 The chroniclers, especially Ibn ʿIdhārī and al-Nuwayrī – Ibn al-Athīr gives no information whatsoever on the subject – feast on the scenes of cruelty attributed to Ibrāhīm and take delight in many a blood-curdling tale: murders of servants,44 household members,45 his children,46 and particularly his daughters.47 Ibn ʿIdhārī explicitly attributes these acts to the pleasure that the amīr apparently took in them.48 It is no less striking that both these authors, over and above the distaste that they express, try to rationalize Ibrāhīm’s use of violence. Certainly, they condemn his abuses; but they rather surprisingly justify his severity.49 We shall come back to this point: the amīr seems to take upon himself the violence which is unacceptable but necessary for the functioning of society. All these facts lead to a diagnosis of insanity, contrasting strangely with the last part of the biography of Ibrāhīm II, which is marked by a final volteface: the amīr, repentant, sets off to carry out jihād. And so another extreme change of behaviour, violent in itself, is attributed to Ibrāhīm II, a change that takes place right at the end of the 4th/10th century. This is described by 221

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the chroniclers as the consequence of a movement toward tawba or repentance.50 This description is the result of a later reinterpretation, in the light of Ṣūfī practices, which became more common from the 4th/10th century onwards.51 From this perspective, the amīr’s ‘return to self’ goes hand in hand with a redefinition of his relationship with public violence. At first, the amīr’s intention was to undertake the ḥajj, a pilgrimage which, like all pilgrimages, totally excludes violence.52 However, and this is quite a significant point, Ibrāhīm abandoned this first plan in order to avoid having to make war with Egypt, which he would have to cross, and spilling the blood of his subjects. However, the amīr’s conversion did not end there, for, having converted from public violence to peace, he finally converted to jihād, which he went off to wage in Sicily and southern Italy.53 Passing from religious peace to the sanctification of war and public violence, he also turned an individual duty into a collective obligation, using his princely power and paying a wage to the participants in the expedition.54 He made use of his charisma, since he himself preached jihād and took the troops with him. In doing so he took himself to face death and the judgement which would follow.55 And indeed, he was to die during an expedition, albeit from illness, in 289/902.56 Of course, the success of this military expedition against the Byzantines, which led to the taking of Taormina and other places, as well as an intervention in Southern Italy, is of some consequence to the judgement made of this latter part of Ibrāhīm II’s life.57 Here, then, we see a transformation of the figure of the amīr: from law-giving sovereign, submitting to God and not to the laws of men, he abandons power, and leaves it all in God’s hands. This biography, full of contrasts, easily explains the diversity of interpretations given by the chroniclers. If we wish to get beyond this factual exposition, we shall have to untangle the stories and to carry out a sort of textual archaeology, by identifying the layers laid down by each of the successive chroniclers. The objective of such a step is to separate out the meaningful elements and topoi about cruelty,58 but also to put into context the different interpretations which have been proposed.

Contradictory historiographical tendencies? One will have noted, as Mohamed Talbi has already done, that Ibrāhīm II made quite an impression on the chroniclers who dealt with the issue of his government. We shall not try and find a middle way in order to reconcile the opposite points of view of the chroniclers, following the positivist line of historical reconstruction. It would be necessary to put each writer’s 222

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verdict on the amīr back into the context of the work in which it appears, in order to give it its full meaning. This focused study of the chronicles and the political conceptions that they elaborate is, however, not very well developed in the case of the authors who interest us here. It is true that the sheer size of the works in question makes an exhaustive study of the analytical grid that they apply to past events rather difficult, but the clear-cut and conflicting opinions that they express about Ibrāhīm II, which basically concern his use of violence, cannot be ignored. While awaiting more studies of the chronicles in question, we shall summarize the main features of the pages dedicated by this group of authors to the amīr: we shall try, on the one hand, to bring to light the diverse opinions on the subject and, on the other, to piece together, albeit partially, the stratification which has taken place around the biography of Ibrāhīm II. This interpretive process, familiar to historians of the early centuries of Islam, involves dealing with sources which are generally produced much later than the events they portray and which assume positions in relation to the context of their redaction.59 John Wansbrough already drew attention, some years ago, to the difficulty presented in writing a history of the beginnings of Islam in the Maghreb,60 but the Muslim West, if we exclude al-Andalus,61 has so far not greatly benefited from the kind of source criticism which other regions of the Islamic world have enjoyed. For his part, Mohamed Talbi distinguished two main lines of interpretation on the subject of Ibrāhīm II: one line, hostile to the amīr, which he classified as pro-Shīʿite because it took its inspiration from Ibn al-Raqīq,62 and which finds one of its best representatives in Ibn ʿIdharī; and a laudatory line, well represented by Ibn al-Athīr, who appears to have been inspired by later authors, such as Ibn Shaddād,63 whose Zīrid origin would, after the dynasty’s break with Cairo, have inclined him towards rehabilitating Ibrāhīm II. In addition to the fact that this reading disregards the ambiguous position of the first, which distinguishes seven good years before Ibrāhīm II was seized by melancholy – which does not really constitute a condemnation of the character, insofar as the most terrible aspects of the amīr are due to his illness, in other words ultimately to Divine will – when we re-read them things appear more complex.64 A brief presentation of the chroniclers’ positions, in chronological order, will allow us at the same time to confirm a general evolution, and to take some sort of measure of the variety of opinions on the subject. It underlines the fact that the diversity of positions is not a simple matter of opposition between ‘Shīʿites’ and ‘Sunnīs’. Here, we shall keep to a first approximation; the sources quoted make no claim to be exhaustive, but are those which are most frequently mentioned on the subject .65 223

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(1) Qādī Nuʿmān (born at the end of the 3rd/9th century): this proFāṭimid author, writing fifty years after the facts, presents a positive vision of Ibrāhīm II. In his Risālat, he evokes the tawba of Ibrāhīm II, comparing it to the abdication of a Yemeni king who gave way to the Fāṭimids.66 He suggests that Ibrāhīm II had Shīʿite sympathies, which explained his behaviour.67 (2) Ibn al-Raqīq (d. ca. 418/1027–8), whose Kitab tāʾrīkh Ifrīqiya wa-lMaghrib has only reached us indirectly, since it has been massively used by later authors, is partly hostile to Ibrāhīm II. He is the first one we know about to mention his possible mental illness. (3) The Cambridge Chronicle (5th/11th century?):68 these bilingual Greek and Arabic annals, written in a Sicilian context, only mention Ibrāhīm II through the feats of arms of the last period of his life, although the chronology is unclear. (4) The corpus of the first Sunnī biographical dictionaries (ṭabaqāt) dealing with the learned élite of Ifrīqiya dates basically from the 4th/10th–6th/12th centuries.69 It reflects a relatively divided attitude, which is not unfavourable to Ibrāhīm II, whose virtues are recognized. It also shows the importance of certain ascetics in the eyes of the amīr. (5) Abū Zakariyyāʾ al-Wārjilānī (d. ca 471/1078), a Khārijite author,70 reports the battle of Mānū that Ibrāhīm II fought against the Nafūsa in striking terms71 but continues his comments on the amīr by extolling his fortification of the coast and the jihād he led against the Christians!72 After this first series of sources, a certain number of chronicles, written later and considered as classics, mention the Aghlabid amīr; and to these may be added some supplementary sources. Apart from Ibn al-Athīr, all these texts refer to a structure of Ibrāhīm II’s biography which was established by Ibn al-Raqīq, although by later additions they may modify this core text. (1) Ibn al-Abbār (595–658/1199–1260), who is hostile to Ibrāhīm II, had Shīʿite tendencies and was hostile to the Umayyads of al-Andalus. (2) Ibn al-Athīr (555–630/1160–1233) is exclusively positive on the subject of the amīr, which quite clearly reflects a personal choice. This position is probably linked to the importance given to the themes of good government, Arab-Muslim unity and the anti-Christian jihād in the work of the author. (3) Ibn ʿIdhārī (end 7th/13th to beginning 8th/14th century) proposes a contrasting view, in line with Ibn al-Raqīq. 224

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(4) Al-Nuwayrī (677–733/1279–1332) does not accept the sincerity of the repentance of Ibrāhīm II and gives a very political reading of events.73 In addition to the structure set out by Ibn al-Raqīq, he ends his exposition about the amīr with a resumé of his “good points” (maḥāsin), which include his absolutism, and of his “bad points” (masāwīʾ).74 (5) Ibn al-Khaṭīb (713–76/1313–75) is extremely hostile to Ibrāhīm II, and reports none of his military successes.75 (6) Ibn Khaldūn (732–808/1332–1406) has very mixed opinions, owing to the diversity of previous judgements on Ibrāhīm II.76 (7) Al-Shammākhī (d. 928/1522), a Khārijite author, appears to be typical of the position of late Khārijite chroniclers on the subject of Ibrāhīm II, presenting him as the bloodthirsty enemy of the Khārijites.77 We may note that within the earliest sources there are two opposing Shīʿite interpretations, and that the differences between Sunnī authors cannot be put down simply to questions of sources; even the Khārijites do not make a monolithic judgement on Ibrāhīm II, except in the question of his use of violence against their people. The difference lies elsewhere: between the authors who accept Ibrāhīm II’s violence, which they define as anomalous but not contrary to the laws of God, and the others. These two currents of thought are, then, motivated in each case in a different, nuanced way which evolves over time. We can nevertheless highlight the fact that, with the exception of Ibn Khaldūn, discussion of the biography of Ibrāhīm II tends to become harsher over time: even though some criticisms are expressed at an early stage, they later become totally dominant. Yet contemporary historians who have tried to make sense of the figure of this amīr and the stories referring to him have paid little attention to these differences of position and evolution of thought, whether they have approached the problem from the point of view of Ifrīqiya under the Aghlabids78 or the Fāṭimids.79 They have, moreover, come down on the side of a combination of madness and absolutism which, in their view, characterized Ibrāhīm II. However, it seems difficult to use the sources we have just listed as the basis for such a definitive analysis, and the excessive violence of Ibrāhīm II does not totally convince contemporary historians themselves of the validity of such an interpretation.80 On the other hand, there are some details which until now have systematically been left unexplored, and which may allow us to propose a complementary interpretation of the facts. As well as the recurring points indicated by Mohamed Talbi and Michael Brett, there are others scattered throughout the works of the later chroniclers, who are also the most eloquent on the subject (which is why, in the 225

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following, they are given precedence), like so many traces of an interpretation worn away over time, but which can be found in the earliest sources.

Narrative structure, historiographical layers and recurring elements: towards a new analysis of the figure of Ibrāhīm II At the end of this brief biographical overview, we can clearly distinguish three periods in the life of Ibrāhīm II: his unexpected arrival in power, resembling the fulfilment of a predestination; his fall; his redemption. This structure is that of a hagiographic account, a structure which has also been attributed to the life of the Prophet Muḥammad,81 but which is characteristic of all accounts of this type, even though in Islam the model of the life of the Prophet is certainly paramount. Before analysing the recurring elements of these biographical narratives, and in addition to the highly significant narrative structure, it is necessary to pause for a moment and look at the historical context of the life of Ibrāhīm II, which gives a large part of its meaning to his amīrate and to this narrative structure. First of all, a certain number of the sources examined make an explicit link between the most violent period of the amīrate of Ibrāhīm II and the background of Fāṭimid preaching in the Maghreb.82 In addition, the use of public violence increased dramatically from 280/893 onwards, the date of the arrival of Abū ʿAbd Allāh, the Fāṭimid dāʿī, in the Maghreb; it is difficult to see this as mere coincidence. It is therefore necessary to insert the figure of Ibrāhīm II back into a context which is not only marked by socio-political tensions, but which is ripe with politico-religious programmes. At this moment in history, the Khārijites were going through what their scholars called the period of ẓuhūr,83 the Shīʿite Fāṭimids were turning the Maghreb into a land of missionary preaching, individuals calling for rigorous asceticism abounded, and the local representatives of power, faced with these circumstances, had no choice but to consider the terms of their legitimization and their relationships with the religious and juridical élites (it is difficult to judge the degree of theorization of this reflexion from the sources at our disposal). They had to make a public display of the foundations of their shaken legitimacy. The life of Ibrāhīm II must be re-read in the light of these profound upheavals. From this point of view, we should remember two main points which are sustained by the mention of recurring motifs: the figure of Ibrāhīm II as reformer, and the eschatological context within which he must be relocated. This first point is reflected by the combination of elements which have recently been thoroughly researched for successive periods, and which are all the more significant because they are not presented by later chroniclers 226

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as a coherent whole. It is therefore not a matter of an a posteriori historiographical reconstruction; rather, it is as if a first interpretation, which had lost its meaning over time, had left behind the traces of a past discourse. And so the following elements build up around the figure of Ibrāhīm II: the will to promote ḥisba (the commanding of good and forbidding of evil), and hence his position vis-à-vis the holders of religious and juridical knowledge; asceticism (in a proto-Ṣūfī form?)84; and jihād, inside and outside Ifrīqiya: a series of characteristics which become essential from the 6th/12th century onwards, in the Maghreb, within all the Mahdist movements.85 Against this background, the exercise of an “enlightened violence”86 is also a constant feature of the implementation of reforming political policies. The hagiographical structure of the biography of Ibrāhīm II thus gains its full significance: it is not the outcome of chance, but of a construction, whose earliest stages and protagonists are lost to us because of the gaps in our sources. This also explains the violence in the attitudes taken towards him: questioning his tawba, as al-Nuwayrī does, once again proposes an exclusively political reading of his life, as we have seen. There are early signs of the division between a determinedly favourable interpretation, that of Qāḍī Nuʿmān, who sees in this process the amīr’s acknowledgement of the coming of a new era, that of the Fāṭimids; and an interpretation presenting this reign as the paradigmatic outcome of a disgraced dynasty. Nevertheless, the most critical versions cannot completely expunge the ascetic traits which were accepted and understood by the contemporary ascetics of the time of Ibrāhīm II. Living at the dawn of a new world, the figure of Ibrāhīm II was prone to being interpreted in one way or the other. The later chroniclers write within a totally different context, and each of them retains from the early narratives what seems useful for his thesis. At the same time, a certain number of elements escape their scrutiny and are carried away by the texts which inspire them, or which they compile themselves: rigorism, asceticism, commitment to jihād. But they ignore this religious and moral dimension in favour of a reflection on good government. Ultimately, there is a clearly eschatological tone in the accounts of the life of Ibrāhīm II, even though once again later chroniclers communicate it, as it were, in spite of themselves. The amīr’s departure for the jihād, which he launches himself, takes him to face death and the subsequent judgement. In order to arouse his troops, then, he makes use of his manifest charismatic powers, another essential feature underlining his unmediated relationship with God,87 especially since his charisma had been seriously damaged by his diabolical reputation. His undertaking is also legitimized by the series of decisive victories that he wins, and which confirms the 227

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correctness of his decision. However, the texts go further: they attribute to Ibrāhīm II, and normally only by implication, the ambition of attacking the King of Constantinople and Constantinople itself.88 Now, the theme of the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire is an Islamic eschatological theme if ever there was one.89 This reference is all the more important in that it is not found concerning any other Muslim individual in any other text referring to Sicily.90 Another element confirms this interpretation: Ibrāhīm II, true to his bloodthirsty reputation, refuses to grant amān to a certain number of towns which ask for it.91 This refusal can only be explained in the context of a struggle against the Christians which he saw as final. It should probably be seen together with the imposition on dhimmīs by the same Ibrāhīm II of the pictures of pigs or monkeys that they would have to wear on their shoulders, and fix to the doors of their houses.92 Finally, as a last element, Qāḍī Nuʿmān reports that when Ibrāhīm b. Abī al-Aghlab, Ibrāhīm II’s grandson, was trying to fight against the Fāṭimids after the flight of the amīr Ziyādat Allāh III, predictions circulated announcing that an Ibrāhīm would be the last amīr of the dynasty, since its founder carried the same ism.93 We may wonder whether these predictions might not have emerged for the first time during the reign of his grandfather. To sum up, by not taking into account this context of eschatological anticipation, probably forgotten by the time they were writing, the later chroniclers lose the meaning of a certain number of Ibrāhīm II’s actions, which thus appear to have no sense. Indeed, against this eschatological background, Ibrāhīm II’s relationship to the law and his apparent antinomianism also make complete sense.94 We know that tendencies such as his have been explained by madness in other famous cases where historians have provided explanations.95 The amīr is above the Law because he is the one who says what the Law is. Ibrāhīm II’s life, however, is clearly distinguished from Mahdism as it has been defined for later periods, the mahdist construction also having been a product of historical evolution. Ibrāhīm’s career differs from a mahdist conception in several points, the main two being that Ibrāhīm II neither was at the head of a movement aspiring to conquer power, nor did he base his initial legitimation on the criticism of an authority already in place, but besides acted as an amīr. His efforts to redefine relationships between the different bodies and institutions making up the political world of Ifrīqiya at the end of the 3rd/9th century are not made from outside this world but from within it. It must be said that the challenge to his legitimacy was strong, and that his response was equal to the threat.

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Conclusions There is nothing new about the fact that the interpretation of events related to early Islam in the Maghreb is a complicated undertaking. It is quite clear that the theme of public violence and its use lends itself to particularly clear-cut positions, and it should not come as a surprise that madness is an easy explanation for what appears, at first sight, to be incomprehensible. However, we should be cautious in projecting later interpretations onto older events, for by doing so we may completely distort the reading of the events. Another pitfall is to be avoided, in our opinion: the life of the amīr as reinterpreted here would appear to follow the line of certain theories about the relationship between religion and politics (and thus the use of public violence) in the history of Islam, in particular of its early days.96 The great significance of the Prophetic model, the importance of jihād and of the eschatological context all seem to point in that direction. To favour an essentialist interpretation such as this often goes hand in hand with a structuralist analysis of sources. On the pretext that recurrent themes or narrative structures can be found, this kind of interpretation proposes to define an Islam which is destined to repeat itself throughout history. Such a position, however, is tantamount to dismissing the historical situatedness of the sources: identical motifs or structures do not necessarily have the same meaning in different contexts. Even though each political culture picks and chooses recurring elements to reflect and sustain its interpretation of the world, this latter evolves with time. Thus, Ibrāhīm II used and mobilized elements common to eschatological and messianic movements in order to reassess his shaken legitimacy, without actually wanting to head such a movement, but rather in order to resist attempts of this kind. The difficulty in the case we have dealt with arises from the challenges and limits one encounters when trying to contextualize the events and reconstruct the original discourse which gave them meaning. The contextualization of the sources used is not always much easier, and there is much room for improvement. It seems clear, however, that the concepts of the use of public violence in the analysis of the ‘case of Ibrāhīm II’ evolve between the 4th/10th and 8th/14th centuries: the context of this example is no longer known after the 5th/11th century. This explains the repeated expression among the later authors of their incomprehension (the argument of madness, controversial as it probably was in the work of Ibn al-Raqīq, becomes a way to explain the inexplicable) and allows each author to pass judgement on the exercise of violence, and to present its motivations, its justifications and its limits in a different and, ultimately, very political way. 229

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Notes 1. Jocelyne Dakhlia, L’empire des passions: L’arbitraire politique en islam (Paris: Aubier, 2005), Introduction. The author stresses that the perennial idea of “oriental despotism” prevents any consideration of the political history of Islam. 2. The history of public violence (and in particular, for contemporary periods, of wartime) has seen notable recent developments. However, while comparison is essential, it is first necessary to analyse precise examples referring to the countries of medieval Islam in order for that comparison to be possible. 3. Because of the comparative scope of the work, some thought-provoking analyses on this subject are to be found in Politique et religion en Méditerranée – Moyen Âge et époque contemporaine, ed. Henri Bresc, Georges Dagher and Christiane Veauvy (Paris: Bouchene, 2008), in particular the introduction, 9–83. 4. On the end of the Aghlabid dynasty and the accession of the Fāṭimids in the Maghreb, see Mohamed Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide: Histoire politique (Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1966); Michael Brett, The Rise of the Fatimids: The World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the Fourth Century of the Hijra, Tenth Century CE (Leiden–Cologne–Boston: Brill, 2001); Heinz Halm, Das Reich des Mahdi: Der Aufstieg der Fatimiden (Munich: Beck, 1991), tr. Michael Bonner, The Empire of the Mahdi: The Rise of the Fatimids (Leiden–New York–Cologne: Brill, 1996). 5. The analysis that chroniclers give of a specific historical episode is not the same as the direct expression of points of view in a theoretical and argumentative manner, but it does allow us to highlight the specific features arousing criticism in the use of violence at a given moment. 6. We use the following abbreviations for the most frequently quoted works: Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil = Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī l-taʾrīkh, ed. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Najjār (Cairo: Idārat al-Ṭibāʿa al-Munīriya, 1930), vol. 6; Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān = Ibn ʿIdhārī, K. al-Bayān al-mughrib, ed. Georges Séraphin Colin and Evariste Lévi-Provençal (Leiden: Brill, 1948), vol. 1; Nuwayrī, Nihāyat = al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-ʿarab fī funūn al-adab (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1983), vol. 24. 7. Although of course they existed in all geographical areas in the Middle Ages. 8. Cf. Dakhlia, L’empire des passions, Introduction. 9. I intend to develop this point in a later article; see below. 10. On this point, see Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 270–3. 11. Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 5: “When death came [Muḥammad b. Aḥmad] nominated his son Abū ʿIqāl as his successor and made his brother Ibrāhīm swear that he would not oppose his son, taking as witnesses all the representatives of the Aghlabid dynasty and the mashāyikh of Kairouan; then he ordered him to take charge of the government until his son came of age.” 12. This juridical trick is motivated by Ibrāhīm’s commitment to his brother 230

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13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

(see preceding note). This argument was put forward by the inhabitants of Kairouan (Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 116) but it could only have been drawn up by consenting jurists, as Talbi argues. See Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 273. Ibn al-Abbār goes further, for he confirms that the fuqahāʾ and the quḍāt of Kairouan brought Ibrāhīm to power. See Ibn al-Abbār, K. al-Ḥullat al-siyarāʾ, ed. Ḥusayn Muʿnis (Cairo: al-Sharika al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Ṭibāʿa wa-l-Nashr, 1963), 1:171. Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 5; Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 116; Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 128. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 116. There are negligible differences between the texts describing the event from the 6th/12th century onwards. Li-ḥusn sīratihi wa-ʿadlihi (“by reason of the perfection of his life and his justice”). See Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 128. On the importance of Ṣūfism in the Maghreb, especially at a later period, see Mercedes García-Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform: Mahdīs of the Muslim West (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2006), chapter 5. Systematic research needs to be done concerning the beginnings of the movement in Ifrīqiya. Such, however, is not the aim of this article. A provisional reading of the sources suggests a similar situation to that described in 4th/10th-century alAndalus. See Manuela Marín, “Zuhhād de al-Andalus (300/912–420/1029),” Al-Qantara 12,2 (1991), 439–70. For Ifrīqiya in particular, although for a later period, see Roger H. Idris, “Contribution à l’histoire de la vie religieuse en Ifrīqiya zirīde (Xe–XIe),” in Mélanges Louis Massignon (Institut Français de Damas: Damascus, 1957), 2:327–59. We may note the parallel with the distaste of certain jurists for the position of qāḍī, which they try to refuse. With the exception of Ibn al-Athīr, who sings the praises of the whole of his reign. This idea goes back at least as far as Ibn al-Raqīq. Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 5: wa-bāshara al-umūr wa-qāma bihā qiyāman marṣiyān wa-kāna ʿādilan ḥāziman fī umūrihi, ammana al-bilād wa-qatala ahl al-baghy wa-l-fasād: “He assumed the government and managed affairs very satisfactorily, conducting himself with justice and strictness; he ensured the security of the country and had the rebellious and immoral people put to death.” Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 132: wa-aqāma fī awwal walāyatihi sabʿa aʿwām ʿalā mā kāna ālayhi aslāfuhu min ḥusn al-sīra wa-ḥamīd al-ifʿāl [. . .] Wa-kānat lahu fī bidāʾi amrihi sīra ḥasana wa-ifʿāl maḥmūda: “He began his amīrate by following for seven years what his predecessors had done in terms of a good life and praiseworthy actions [. . .] At the beginning of his government, he led an exemplary life and his actions were praiseworthy.” The only exception is Ibn al-Abbār, who presents the government of Ibrāhīm as a punishment sent by God to the inhabitants of Kairouan for not respecting the commitment made to Abū al-Gharānīq: fa-ibtalāhum Allāh bi-ẓulmihi wa-imtaḥanahum bi-isrāfihi: “God afflicted them through his tyranny and inflicted his excesses upon them.” See Ibn al-Abbār, Ḥullat, 171. 231

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23. Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 5: wa-kāna yajlis li-l-ʿadal fī jāmiʿ al-Qayrawān yawm al-khamīs wa-l-ithnayn yasmaʿ shakwā al-khuṣūm wa-yasbiʿ ʿalayhim wayunassif baynahum: “He dispensed justice in the great Mosque of Kairouan on Thursdays and Mondays; he listened patiently to the arguments of those in dispute, and decided between them.” According to Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 139, this took place on Fridays after prayer. 24. Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 265–9. According to the chroniclers, the amīr’s nickname came from his great love of hunting cranes. 25. Cf. ibid., 274. This virtue was attributed to him right until the end of his reign. 26. Cf. Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 139: kāna anṣaf al-mulūk li-l-raʿiyya, lā yuraddu ʿanhu mutakallimīn bi-ḥaqq: “He was the fairest of kings towards his subjects. He never turned away anyone seeking justice.” 27. For a description of the fortification of the coasts by Ibrāhīm II, see Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 5. 28. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 119. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 120–1. The exact date of this revolt is not known, but it is estimated by Mohamed Talbi to have occured in 275–6/888–9 (L’émirat aghlabide, 278), the date of the monetary reform undertaken by Ibrāhīm II. However, it is mentioned separately by Ibn ʿIdhārī, the only person to deal with it, probably because he considers the amīr’s behaviour to be praiseworthy on this occasion. 31. Another basic concept to define good government within Islamic political theory and the related topoi, among others in the literature of the mirrors of princes. See, for example, Ann K.S. Lambton, “Islamic Mirrors for Princes,” in Atti del Convegno internazionale sul tema: La Persia nel Medioevo (Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1971), 419–42, at 431, republ. in Theory and Practice in Medieval Persian Government (London: Variorum Reprints, 1980), Text VI. 32. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 132: thumma taʿayyarat aḥwāluhu wa-akhadha fī jamʿ al-amwāl. Thumma ṣāra fī kull sanna yazdād taʿayyuran wa-sūʾa ḥālin. Thumma ashtadda nikāduhu: “Then his behaviour became vile, and he seized all the wealth. Then it reached the point that each year this ignomy and the negative circumstances increased. Afterwards his problems became worse.” 33. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 132: wa-kānat lahu fī bidāʾi amrihi sīra ḥasana wa-ifʿāl maḥmūda. Thumma ghalaba ʿalayhi khilṭ sawdāwī: “At the beginning of his rule, he led an excellent life and his actions were praiseworthy. Then black bile gained the upper hand in him.” For the chronicler, only an imbalance of the humours could explain the transformation affecting Ibrāhīm. According to medieval medical beliefs, black bile causes melancholy in anyone where it is dominant. See Manfred Ullmann, Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1978), 72–7. It is to be noted that 232

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34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48. 49.

50.

Iṣḥāq b. ʿImrān, a 4th/10th-century physician from Kairouan, dedicated a treatise to melancholy, which has come down to us thanks to Constantine the African under the title Maqāla fī l-mālīkhūliya (Constantini Africani libri duo de melancholia), ed. Karl Garbers (Hamburg: H. Buskle, 1977). See ibid., 94–5, for the influence of black bile on melancholy. It is probable that this work influenced the judgement of Ibn al-Raqīq. Cf. below. Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 292. Ibid., 293–5. Ibid., 297–300. Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 133. Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 295–6: al-Mālikī and the qāḍī ʿIyāḍ report it in their works of ṭabaqāt. Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 135, reports the letter sent to the caliph by the inhabitants of Tunis about this matter. Ibid., 134. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 130. Ibid., 129: fifteen heads were said to have been so prepared, causing some of the troops to leave the army. Ibid., 132: fa-akhadha fī qatl aṣḥābihi wa-ḥujjābihi: “He began to have his household members and chamberlains murdered.” Thus he had three hundred servants executed because of a stolen handkerchief, see ibid. Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 132, reports that Ibrāhīm had his chamberlain Ibn Ṣamṣāma, his brothers and his household members put to death. For other examples, see ibid. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 132: ḥattā annahu qatala ibnahu al-mukannā bi-Abī alAghlab wa-qatala banātahu: “Until he had his son, who bore the kunya of Abū Aġlab, killed and had his daughters killed.” See also Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 141–2, among others. However, note that, according to both authors, the son in question was apparently still alive at the end of this period! See Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 308. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 132. Ibid., 122. Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 139, justifies the amīr’s use of violence 1) by putting forward the principle by which the amīr justifies his own action (“No-one has the right to commit an injustice except the king [al-malik, which could also be read as al-mulk]”) as well as 2) by the need to restrain the great and not to allow his subjects to be oppressed by the aristocracy. Note that this passage is included in the series of “good points” that the author holds in Ibrāhīm’s favour. Al-Nuwayrī is the only one to question the sincerity of the amīr’s repentance by connecting it to an episode which is not described by either Ibn al-Athīr or Ibn ʿIdhārī: the sending of an ambassador from the ʿAbbāsid caliph in Ifrīqiya to ask him to abdicate and go to the court in Baghdad. See Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 135. 233

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51. Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat iftitāḥ al-daʿwa, ed. Wadād al-Qāḍī (Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfa, 1970), 92, actually describes the amīr wearing a ṣūf robe. 52. On the ḥajj, see Francis E. Peters, The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 53. Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 131–2; Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 5–6 (who simply uses the terms zuhd and nusk, referring to asceticism and detachment, for in his eyes the amīr has no need to repent); Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 135. 54. Ibid. and Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat, 92, among others. 55. Although only Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat, 92, argues that the amīr left declaring that he would never return to Sicily: wa-kāna yaqūl: lā arjiʿ ilā Ifrīqiya. Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 5, even seems to suggest the opposite: fa-jaʿala ṭarīqahu ʿalā jazīra Ṣiqiliyya li-yajmaʿ bayn al-ḥājj wa-l-jihād wa-yaftaḥ mā bāqī min ḥuṣūnihā: “And he set off for Sicily so as to combine pilgrimage and jihād, and took the strongholds which were still unconquered.” By this phrase, the chronicler suggests that Ibrāhīm had decided to take the Sicilian route, by sea, to avoid passing through Egypt, but without necessarily renouncing the ḥajj. 56. Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 321–2. The chroniclers disagree on the place of his burial, whether Palermo or Kairouan. 57. Nuwayrī, Nihāyat, 135–8; Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 6; Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat, 92. 58. This is already highlighted by Talbi in L’émirat aghlabide, 307–8: “The story we tell would certainly do no dishonour to the Thousand and One Nights.” Talbi, however, does not draw all the consequences. 59. These discussions on the history of the origins of Islam are already very familiar, and we shall spend no time on them. 60. John Wansbrough, “On recomposing the Islamic history of North Africa,” JRAS 32 (1969), 161–70. 61. See, for a treatment of these developments, Eduardo Manzano Moreno, Conquistadores, emires y califas: Los Omeyas y la formación de al-Andalus (Barcelona: Crítica, 2006). 62. We shall not return to the controversy which has arisen on this point. Since the work of this author, who worked for the Zīrid chancellery, has not come down to us, it would be worth carrying out a systematic study of quotations from his chronicle. See Talbi, “À propos d’Ibn al-Raqīq,” Arabica 19,1 (1972), 86–96. 63. Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 308–10. Already Ibn Khaldūn clearly differentiated between these two versions, adding, however, that both agree about the end of the life of Ibrāhīm II. He attributes the negative version and the theory of an effect of mālankhūniyā on Ibrāhīm to Ibn al-Raqīq. See Ibn Khaldūn, K. al-ʿIbar, in Biblioteca arabo-sicula, ed. Michele Amari (Leipzig: Brockhuas, 1857), re-ed. and rev. Umberto Rizzitano (Palermo: Accademia Nazionale di Scienze Lettere e Arti di Palermo, 1988), 2:527. 64. Which is what Mohamed Talbi’s assessment suggests in its way: “Neither saint nor monster”. See Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 312. 234

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65. The existing bibliography on each of these authors will not be quoted, for we are short of exhaustive studies which would really allow us to contextualize Ibrāhīm II’s biography in the works which refer to it. 66. Qaḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat, 91–2: “When the activities of Abū ʿAbd Allāh grew and became manifest, Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad acted like Muḥammad b. Yuʿfir, the king of Yemen of whom we spoke before. He abdicated his power, showed his repentance, and relinquished most of his goods. He distributed his possessions to the people, put on wool [clothing] and made show of asceticism. He went off to war against the King of Constantinople.” The case of Yuʿfir is mentioned ibid. 42–3. 67. See Qaḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat, the chapter entitled Dhikr jawāb Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad li-Mūsā b. ʿIyāsh maʿa rasūl min qablihi ilayhi wa-irsāluhu ilā Abī ʿAbd Allāh, whose outcome is the amīr’s departure for Sicily. 68. There exist versions in Greek and Arabic of this text which are not strictly equivalent. Here we refer to the Arabic. Cf. Biblioteca arabo-sicula, 1:190–203. 69. The writers concerned are the following: Abū l-ʿArab (d. 333/945), al-Mālikī (d. ca 453/1061), and the Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ (d. 544/1149). 70. Systematic research should be carried out on this subject in Khārijite sources. 71. Abū Zakariyyāʾ al-Wārjilānī, K. al-Sīra wa-akhbār al-aʾimma, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ayyūb (Tunis: al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya, 1985), 150–6, where Ibrāhīm II is given the epithet al-fāsiq (“the sinner, the depraved”). 72. Ibid., 156–7. 73. Nuwayrī, Risālat, 139–40: “ [Ibrāhīm II] targeted the rich and powerful, and submitted them to his power. And he used to say: No one has the right to commit injustice except the King. For, he said, if these people actually realised the power that their wealth could confer on them, the King would never be safe from their violence and their arrogance. So if the King left them in peace, and they felt safe, this would incite them to dispute the power with him and to conspire against him. As to the mass of his subjects (al-raʿiyya), they are the material (mādda) of the King. If he allows others to oppress them, he ceases to profit from them. And from then on he will only receive harm, while others gather the fruit” (revised translation of M. Talbi). 74. Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 311–12. 75. The passage of the Kitāb aʿmāl al-aʿlām containing the biography of Ibrāhīm has been published by Hasan Husni Abdul Wahab, in Scritti per il centenario della nascità di Michele Amari ([1910], Palermo: Società siciliana per la Storia Patria, 1990), 2: 439–43. 76. Ibn Khaldūn, al-ʿIbar, in Biblioteca arabo-sicula, 2:527–9. 77. Al-Shammākhī, K. al-Siyar (Constantine, 1883), 267–72 in particular. 78. Talbi, L’émirat aghlabide, 281, recognizes at the same time the theory of madness and that of the absolutism of Ibrāhīm II, based on his reading of al-Nuwayrī: “He [Ibrāhīm II] was also a perfect despot. Rather, he was even in a sense a fully conscious theoretician of despotism.” This point of view 235

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79.

80. 81. 82.

83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

drops an interpretation from the 8th/14th century into the end of the 4th/10th century, by attributing the thoughts of al-Nuwayrī to the amīr! Brett, in The Rise of the Fatimids, begins by qualifying the amīrate of Ibrāhīm II as a “long career resembling that of Ivan the Terrible in Russia” (93), before taking a stance on the nature of the violence exercised by the amīr: “Against this background [the political and social tensions perturbing Ifrīqiya], the savagery of Ibrāhīm II seems not so much insane as intentional. This reign was a determined battle for absolutism at the expense of the nobility, the army, the cities and to a lesser extent the tribes” (94). Against this background, the operations in Sicily sought to divert these internal tensions to a theatre of operations outside Ifrīqiya. Talbi (see above) frequently stresses the exaggeration of the stories, and it is clear that Brett does not decide in favour of madness (see the previous note). See, among others, John Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). Ibn ʿIdhārī, Bayān, 131: aẓhara ṣāḥib Ifrīqiya Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad al-tawba lammā istiqāma amr Abī ʿAbd Allāh al-dāʿī bi-Kutāma: “Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad, the master of Ifrīqiya showed repentance when the dāʿī Abī ʿAbd Allāh imposed his commandment among the Kutāma.” See also Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat, 91: wa-lammā quwiyat umūr Abī ʿAbd Allāh wa-ẓaharat, ṣanaʿa Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad ṣanīʿ Muḥammad b. Yuʿfir malik Yaman al-ladhī qadda minnā khabaruhu, fa-nsilākhā min al-imāra wa-aẓhara tawba: “When the activities of Abū ʿAbd Allāh grew and became manifest, Ibrāhīm b. Aḥmad acted like Muḥammad b. Yuʿfir, the king of Yemen of whom we spoke before. He abdicated his power and showed repentance.” This was the time of active struggle as opposed to the time of dissimulation. Note the recurrence of the root ẓ-h-r, which reflects an atmosphere of waiting and of a belief in forthcoming radical changes and revelation (as in Ibrāhīm II aẓhara tawba). In this perspective, Ibrāhīm II’s ferocity against the jawārī and other minions surrounding him, and who are the main victims of his cruelty, is highly indicative of a concern for purification. García Arenal, Messianism and Puritanical Reform, 22. Ibid. Ibid., 24–5. Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 6; Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat, 92. See, among others, Marius Canard, “Les expéditions des Arabes contre Constantinople dans l’histoire et dans la légende,” Journal Asiatique 208 (1926), 61–121. While attacks against the Rūm are to be found throughout the chronicles, the attack on the Byzantine capital or its Emperor never appears as the next step after the Sicilian operations. It is significant that Ibn Khaldūn, who does not repeat this version, insists on the fact that the fall of Taormina “fright236

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91. 92. 93.

94. 95.

96.

ened the King of Constantinople” (wa-wajala malik al-rūm bi-Qusṭanṭīniya li-fatḥihā). See Ibn Khaldūn, al-ʿIbar, in Biblioteca arabo-sicula, 2:527. See, for example, Ibn al-Athīr, Kāmil, 6, about the town of Cosenza. Cf. Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Mālikī, Riyāḍ al-nufūṣ, ed. Ḥusayn Muʿnis (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriya, 1951), 1:476ff. Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Risālat, 211: wa-kāna yūthiru fī akhbār mā yakūn anna awwal umarāʾ Banī al-Aghlab Ibrāhīm wa-ākhiruhum Ibrāhīm, fa-lamma wuliya Ibrāhīm dhālik al-yawm bi-l-Qayrawān qāla al-nās: “Hadha al-ladhī kāna yuqāl ākhiruhum Ibrāhīm”, wa-kāna yūthiru fī Banī Marwān anna awwalahum Marwān wa-ākhirahum Marwān fa-kāna dhālik ka-mā qīla wa-ka-dhālik yūthiru anna awwalahum bi-l-Andalus ʿAbd al-Raḥmān wa-ākhirahum ʿAbd al-Raḥmān: “The rumour spread that the first of the Aghlabid amīrs had been called Ibrāhīm, and the last would be called Ibrāhīm, and when that day Ibrāhīm was appointed amīr in Kairouan, the people said: ‘This is the one who was announced as the last Ibrāhīm’, just as it had been announced in the case of the Banū Marwān that the first had been called Marwān and the last would be called Marwān, and it turned out just as it had been foretold; likewise, the rumour spread that the first [of the Banū Marwān] in al-Andalus had been called ʿAbd al-Raḥmān and the last would be called ʿAbd al-Raḥmān.” The cannibalism attributed to Ibrāhīm is particularly significant from this point of view. The case of al-Ḥākim, the Fāṭimid caliph of the year 1000, has thus been entirely reinterpreted. See D. De Smet, “Les interdictions alimentaires du calife fatimide al-Ḥākim: marques de folie ou annonce d’un temps messianique,” in Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras, ed. U. Vermeulen and D. De Smet (Peeters: Louvain, 1995), 53–69 and Heinz Halm, Die Kalifen von Kairo: die Fatimiden 973–1074 (Munich: Beck, 2003), 167–304, esp. 186–94. For a criticism of such a position, cf. Fred M. Donner, “La question du messianisme dans l’islam primitif,” in Mahdisme et millénarisme en islam, ed. M. García Arenal, in Revue des Mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 91–4 (2000), 17–28.

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Concepts of justice and the catalogue of punishments under the Sultans of Delhi (7th–8th/13th–14th centuries) Blain Auer*

Kings should know that the meaning of siyāsa is making right the affairs of the world. – Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī

Historians of the Delhi Sultanate, during the 7th/13th and 8th/14th centuries, interwove themes of justice (ʿadl) and punishment (siyāsa) to legitimate Muslim political authority. Justice was portrayed as a key component of kingship and the foundation on which conceptions of Muslim rule were built.1 Punishment was equally central to representations of Muslim authority established in the Indian subcontinent under the imperial rubric of the sultans of Delhi. In the historiography of the period, justice and punishment were depicted as flowing from two distinct and ideally complementary structures of political power. One structure drew its legitimacy from ideas of pre-Islamic Persian kingship formalized in a set of rules, known as ḍavābiṭ. These rules afforded the sultan a wide range of discretion in executing the prerogatives of his high office. A second structure was built upon Islamic constructions of authority defined by sharīʿa, and codified in a restricted body of legal principles monitored by the ʿulamāʾ, who were viewed as its ultimate arbitrators.2 These dichotomous sources of political legitimacy that perpetuated distinct legal categories blurred the dividing line between perfect justice and excessive punishment. To address this issue, historians of the Delhi Sultanate devoted particular attention to questions of political legitimacy on the occasions of punishment, particularly in the fashion of the most absolute form of punishment, the death penalty. Sultanate historians described in detail punishments * Portions of this article were modified and drawn from my PhD dissertation (Harvard, 2009), titled “Symbols of Authority: Religion, Islamic Legitimacy and Historiography of the Sultans of Delhi”.

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meted out to officials, nobles, soldiers, the ʿulamāʾ, transgressors against religion, and sultans themselves within the Delhi royal courts. Historians narrated and commented on the cases for the death penalty for individuals, not only in the limited cases made clear according to sharīʿa. They were preoccupied with the dilemma presented by an array of punishments not covered by sharīʿa, those that found their legitimacy in the independent body of ḍavābiṭ. Since the sultans of Delhi constructed their authority with reference to Islamic conceptions of law and justice defined by sharīʿa, the punishments referred to in the sources as siyāsa and actively employed by those same sultans represented one of their greatest challenges to their claims to political legitimacy.

Concepts of punishment (siyāsa) Siyāsa first came to be used to describe a split between kingship and religious law as early as the 4th/10th century. Bernard Lewis traced this development to a purported conversation between the Caliph al-Hādī (r. 169–70/785–6) and his mother, Lady Khayzurān, detailed by al-Masʿūdī (d. 345/956) in the Murūj al-dhahab. Here Caliph al-Hādī is reported as defending his caliphal authority by claiming to have ruled “in accordance with the requirements of the statecraft of kingship (siyāsat al-mulk) and not the prescriptions of the holy law”.3 According to Lewis, this “historic” conversation represented an idea that “the Caliph was at liberty to exercise his own discretion as well as to establish and to codify his own rules and regulations.”4 By the 5th/11th century this view found full expression in al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya by al-Māwardī (d. 450/1058).5 The word siyāsa was used in a variety of senses in historical writings produced during the early Delhi Sultanate. The range of meanings employed in the use of the term span from statecraft to punishment and, in the most specific sense, capital punishment.6 The first detailed accounts of punishments carried out during the Delhi Sultanate come in the writings of Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī (684–758/1285–1357), an author who significantly contributed to the historiography of the Delhi Sultanate with his Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī.7 Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī was court counselor (nadīm) for seventeen years during the reign of Muḥammad b. Tughluq (r. 724–52/1324–51). He was a representative of the first generation of Muslim historians born in North India and the Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī was the first prose dynastic history of its kind produced in the Delhi Sultanate, such that it served as a model for nearly all subsequent Indo-Persian historiography. Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī refers to siyāsa in its broadest sense before he deals with the functions and specific cases of punishment. This is found in 239

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the Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī (Edicts of World Rule), his major contribution to the genre of advice literature, completed around the year 750/1350.8 In the Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī, Baranī defines siyāsa saying, “Kings should know that the meaning of siyāsa is making right the affairs of the world” (rāst kardan-i umūr-i jahān).9 On an abstract level the concept of siyāsa refered to the role of sultans in society as preservers of order, a view highlighted in a conversation between Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq and Baranī, detailed later in this article. For Baranī, siyāsa has two dimensions. The first dimension of siyāsa is the establishment of justice (ʿadl va-inṣāf). This justice is said to be comprised of various elements that include gentility (luṭf), compassion (shafaqat), courtesy (navāzish), generosity (iʿṭāʾ), respect (ikrām), benefaction (inʿām), and doing good (iḥsān). The second dimension of siyāsa is punishment and Baranī lists these punishments in concrete form. The first kind (qism) of punishment is scoffing (tawhīn), humiliation (taḍlīl), removal from office (ʿazl), disregarding (ʿadam-i iltifāt) and the confiscation of property (salb-i māl). A second kind of punishment is to be put in chains (band va-zanjīr) and imprisonment (ḥabs va-bāzdāsht). A third kind is exile (jalāʾ), of which there are various types. According to Baranī they are all forms of state punishments (siyāsāt-i mulkī).10 Baranī does not address the question of capital punishment directly in this section. Rather, he prefers to constrain the unnecessary “shedding of the blood of a believer” (rīkhtan-i khūn-i muʾmin), which he argues was “not permitted in sharīʿa” (rukhṣat-i sharʿī nabūd). Baranī was systematic in his legal thinking and particularly clear with regard to sharīʿa and the question of punishment. Baranī notes that the categories of punishment covered under sharīʿa are, in this sequence, taʿzīr, ḥadd and qiṣāṣ.11 Baranī’s categories fit what Rudolph Peters has identified as the “classical doctrine of criminal law”. Peters discusses how fiqh textbooks subdivide criminal law in three sections: 1) offenses against persons punished by qiṣāṣ; 2) offenses against “God’s rights” (ḥuqūq Allāh), which carry the ḥadd punishments; 3) offenses against the state listed under taʿzīr and siyāsa.12 According to Baranī, these rules are such that it is the duty of the sultan to appoint those “upright in religion” (mutadayyinān) to carry out the dictates of sharīʿa. Ideally, they would handle all the cases covered by sharīʿa and bring those they cannot dispatch to the king. In this regard, Baranī faced the more difficult challenge of defining the categories under which the sultan has authority to execute punishment. According to him no clear legal precept (rivāyatī) had come down from the four law schools (madhhab-i arbaʿah) concerning the rules governing siyāsa and taʿzīr punishments (siyāsāt va-taʿzīrāt), only that state punishment (siyāsāt-i mulkī) is reserved (makhṣūṣ) for the king (bādshāh). 240

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Here Baranī displays his awareness of a certain dilemma, namely that, in the words of Bernard Lewis, “siyāsa is a punishment not prescribed by the Sharīʿa for an offense not defined by the Sharīʿa”.13 Thus kings, in Baranī’s view, are put in the difficult position of potentially “turning their backs” (pusht dihand) on the command (ḥukm) of God and the Prophet. Baranī substantiates his view on the need for kings to restrain their punishments, particularly in regard to the death penalty, by a subtle appeal to the Qurʾān. He says that the “great men (of former times) of the religion and state founded by Muṣṭafā (i.e. the Prophet)” (buzurgān-i dīn va-dawlat-i Muṣṭafā) all distinguished themselves by their deep and thorough understanding of Q40:3: “The Forgiver of sin and Accepter of repentance is severe in punishment.”14 If taken literally, this quote seems to legitimate a kind of absolute power to administer punishment. However, Baranī uses this Qurʾānic verse to substantiate his claim that the just sultan understands the “proper place for forgiveness and punishment” (maḥall-i ʿafv va-mawḍiʿ-i siyāsa). Baranī reiterates this point on the importance of the forgiveness of the sultan, further quoting from the Qurʾān: “If God were to punish men according to what they deserve, He would not leave on the surface of the [earth] a single living creature” (Q35:45).15 By framing his commentary on the justice of the sultan in Qurʾānic terms, Baranī’s discourse on punishment is really an attempt to check sultanic authority. In his view one needs to fully understand what happens at the intersection of justice and punishment to properly define the boundaries of executive authority.

Rebellion and execution: the conversation between Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq and Baranī on the cases for the death penalty Baranī situates one of the most important conversations on questions of the death penalty on the occasion of the outbreak of resistance to the rule of Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq (r. 724–52/1324–51). The executions of high officials and sultans were often narrated as following from rebellion (fitna), variously referred to by Baranī as baghy, and shaṭaṭ (deviation, excess).16 Fitna was a symbolic expression and historic reality that represented the ultimate threat to the order of society in the splintering of the Muslim community. Albrecht Noth remarked how narratives of “inter-Muslim confrontations” were a primary theme of Arabic historiography as early as the 2nd/8th century.17 Whether by serendipity or sheer narrative inventiveness, Baranī takes up his own narrative of fitna in the following manner. 241

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During the month of Ramaḍān in 745/1345 Muqbil Ghulām Aḥmad Ayāz, the deputy minister (nāʾib-vazīr) of Gujarat, set off to meet with Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq bearing a number of horses from the royal stables and valuables procured from government coffers and merchants. When he reached the borders of Dabhōī and Baroda his caravan was attacked by the “emirs of one-hundred” (amīrān-i ṣadah), a group of influential nobles who had broken out in rebellion in reaction to the cruel punishments meted out by ʿAzīz Khammār “the wine-seller”, an appointee of Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq. They looted the horses and wealth of Muqbil as well as the valuable goods and commodities of the merchants of Gujarat that had been entrusted to him. News of the event of this rebellion spread and quickly reached the Sultan.18 Qutlugh Khān, who was the preceptor of Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq and former governor of the Deccan, sent for Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī and employed him to act as envoy and deliver a letter to the Sultan. Having received news of the humiliation suffered by an official of the state, Qutlugh Khān was seeking permission to bring restitution to the Sultan and re-establish order in Dabhōī and Baroda. In this capacity Baranī was dispatched to Sulṭānpūr to meet with Muḥammad b. Tughluq bearing the message from Qutlugh Khān. After his arrival in Sulṭānpūr the Sultan summoned Baranī late one night during the end of the month of Ramaḍān.19 In his narrative Baranī makes a dramatic literary choice to report the following conversation with the Sultan as if verbatim.20 He writes using the first person for the voice of Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq saying, “You have seen how far rebellion (fitna) has spread and this does not please me. But people are wont to say that all of this rebellion is because of excessive capital punishment (siyāsa).” Baranī adds to the dramatic flair of this encounter by describing the physical movements of the Sultan. Baranī evokes a tense atmosphere saying that the “Sultan stood up and said, ‘I will not turn away from capital punishment (siyāsa) because of what people say or because of rebellion!’” Then the Sultan poses a question to the historian: “You have read many histories (tavārīkh). Have you seen a place that describes for how many crimes (chand jurm) the kings of history have issued the death penalty (siyāsa)?” Baranī replied, “I have read in the Tārīkh-i Kisravī21 that it is not possible to rule without the death penalty (siyāsa) because if the king (bādshāh) is not an executioner (sāʾis) then only God knows what rebellion would spread from the rebellious and how immorality (fisq) and debauchery (fujūr) would be born amongst those who obey (muṭīʿān).”22 Much can be said about this theatrical beginning to the weighty conversation between the Sultan and the historian. First, it is interesting to 242

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note the appeal to historiography as a source for understanding the proper exercise of political authority during the Delhi Sultanate, particularly in regard to the death penalty. If anything, it is consistent with Baranī’s view that history is a window to the past that teaches rulers how to behave in the present. Second, Baranī reproduces a conventional opinion in medieval political thought: a government’s principal duty is to maintain order and that without strong rule societies devolve into chaos.23 On one level Baranī’s conversation with Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq shows how the understanding of political authority of the Delhi Sultanate was dependent upon a legitimacy reconstructed from pre-Islamic Persian notions of kingship. This is demonstrated by Baranī listing the Tārīkh-i Kisravī as his authoritative source on the question of the death penalty.24 Baranī shifts the narrative framework of his discussion using the oratio recta of Jamshīd, the mythic Persian king of ancient legend.25 Jamshīd in Indo-Persian historiography represented the paradigm of the just ruler, recognized to a degree that kingship itself is referred to as jamshīdī in Sultanate historiography. Baranī continues his conversation with Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq in the form of an anecdote supposedly taken from the Tārīkh-i Kisravī. A courtier once asked Jamshīd, “How many crimes fall under the king’s punishment (siyāsat-i bādshāh)?” Jamshīd replied, “The king’s punishment is applicable in response to seven [types of] crimes, and [is applicable] to whatever meets and exceeds these conditions in causing discord and confusion (takhallul va-tashattut uftad), in instigating revolts, and in harming the state (fitna-hā zāyid va-ziyān-i mulkī ravī namāyad).”26

Continuing in the voice of Jamshīd, Baranī goes on to list the seven specific cases where the death penalty is appropriate, according to pre-Islamic Persian notions of justice and rule: 1) apostasy (az dīn-i ḥaqq bigardad) and persisting in it, 2) first-degree murder (yakī-rā ʿamdan az muṭīʿān bikushad), 3) anyone who is married and commits adultery with another married woman (har kirā zanī bāshad va-ū bā zan-i dīgarī sifāḥ kunad),27 4) anyone who conspires and whose conspiracy is proven (har kih ghadr andīshīda va-ghadr-i ū taḥqīq shavad), 5) anyone who heads a rebellion and causes someone to become a rebel (har kih sarghana-yi baghy va-baghī-rā mubāsharat namāyad), 6) any subject of the king who becomes a friend of the enemies of the king and provides them with information and weapons, or otherwise provides assistance and aid and whose aid is proven (har kih az raʿāyat-i bādshāh yār-i dushman va-mukhālif va-hamsar-i bādshāh shavad va-ū-rā birasānīdan-i khabar va-asliḥa va-juz ān madad va-maʿūnat kunad va-maʿūnat-i ū muḥaqqaq gardad), 7) disobeying the commands of the king 243

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that results in injury to the king’s domain (bī-farmānī-yi bādshāh kunad, bī-farmānī kih thamarāt-i bī-farmānī ziyān-i mulk-i bādshāh bāshad).28 Looking at these cases for the death penalty, one is confronted with the question: Under what conditions is the appeal for a sultan’s authority legitimated according to pre-Islamic Persian notions of kingship or Islamic notions of Muslim rule? Baranī does not end his discourse on the cases for commanding the death penalty with Persian notions of punishment. Rather, according to the narrative, he is then asked to describe the cases for which the death penalty is permissible within Islam. Taking up the classic dilemma of Islamic rule under a sultan, Baranī continues his conversation with another question from Muḥammad b. Tughluq: “Of those seven cases for capital punishment, how many have come down in the ḥadīth of Muṣṭafā and how many are relevant to kings (barā-yi bādshāhān taʿalluq dārad)?”29 Baranī points out to Muḥammad b. Tughluq that there are three cases that merit capital punishment according to the ḥadīth of Muḥammad: 1) apostasy (irtidād), 2) killing a Muslim (qatl-i muslim), 3) fornication (zinā-yi muḥṣan).30 It is rather inconceivable that Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq was ignorant of the cases covered under sharīʿa for carrying out the death penalty. It is more likely that Baranī shaped this historical event to produce a critique of the reign of Muḥammad b. Tughluq.31 Nevertheless, the narrative of the discussion on the death penalty highlights a noticeable tension in the structures of authority that supported the sultans of Delhi. Though the Sultan goes on to reject both standards by which the death penalty can be issued, a dissonance remains between the rules of pre-Islamic Persian kingship (which Baranī refers to as ḍavābiṭ) and the sharīʿa. This dissonance will become more apparent with further examples.

Narrative development in the historiography of punishment In terms of historical tales of punishment there is a discernable pattern and progression in the detail allotted to the treatment of punishment by historians that reveals significant changes in the understanding of justice and punishment from the early to late Sultanate periods. The earliest examples of punishment in Sultanate historiography are given by Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī (b. 589/1193) in the Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī. Jūzjānī’s Ṭabaqāt is a universal history that begins with the life of Adam and the pre-Islamic prophets and culminates in the reign of Nāṣir al-Dīn Maḥmūd Shāh (r. 644–64/1246–66), Jūzjānī’s patron and thus the source for the eponymous title.32 Overall, Jūzjānī’s narratives of punishment are very brief. Most accounts of punishment are depicted ambiguously as the “executions” 244

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of political figures, soldiers and rebels, deaths which occur more often in the context of a battle. For example, Jūzjānī will frequently say they “killed, slew” (bikushtand) him when referring to the death of an individual, without giving specific details as to the manner of the death, be it summary execution or death on the battlefield. Thus, due to the brevity of his accounts, it is difficult to discern the exact circumstances of the death. A case in point is ʿAlī-yi Mardān, who was entrusted with the “crownlands of Lakhnawtī” (mamālik-i Lakhnawtī) in the service of Quṭb al-Dīn Aybeg (r. 602–7/1207–10).33 ʿAlī-yi Mardān appears to have had a thirst for great power, declaring himself Sultan soon after the death of Quṭb al-Dīn Aybeg. To signify this he had the Friday prayer (khuṭba) read in his name. Jūzjānī, who documented ʿAlī-yi Mardān’s ascent to power, was clearly not in favor of this turn of events and reports that he was a killer (qattāl) and oppressor (ẓālim) such that a group of Khaljī leaders (umarāʾ) “killed” (bikushtand) ʿAlī-yi Mardān (ca 609/1212).34 The lack of detail in Jūzjānī’s narrative creates speculation about this event. Based on narrative clues it is unlikely that ʿAlī-yi Mardān was afforded judicial review. Could this be an example of an extra-judicial killing or was there a battle between the parties involved? The narrative elements do not make it fully clear. In other cases it is quite clear from the context that the historical narrative refers to an execution, even though it is not explicitly stated. The majority of these cases concern high officials who rebelled against the central authority of their day, or sultans themselves who were overthrown and, in their removal from office, paid a political price with their lives. For example, Jūzjānī attributes the execution of Mubārak Shāh, a “palace attendant” (farrāsh) to Sultan Muʿizz al-Dīn Bahrām Shāh (r. 637–49/1240–42), to the poor advice he gave to the Sultan, advice that fanned the flames of a budding and eventually successful revolt (fitna). His execution, following the deposition of the Sultan, is euphemistically referred to as martyrdom (shahīd gardānīdand).35 The same is the case with the execution of Sultan Muʿizz al-Dīn Bahrām Shāh, who had been imprisoned (muqayyad kardand) following the rebellion against his rule and then was “martyred” (shahīd shud) on the evening of 13 Dhu l-Qāʿda 639/Thursday, 15 May 1242.36 Other cases of execution following rebellion are succinctly documented by Jūzjānī as well. For instance, Jūzjānī refers to the removal of disloyal officials like Malik Badr al-Dīn Sunqar, the military chamberlain (amīr ḥājib), and Tāj al-Dīn Mūsavī, the accountant general (mushrif-i mamālik), as they were “arrested” (maḥbūs farmūd) and “martyred” (shahīd kard).37 In the case of the execution of Raḍiyya Sulṭāna (r. 634–7/1236–40) Jūzjānī 245

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employs a similar literary formula, “the martyrdom of the Sultan Raḍiyya” (shahādat-i sulṭān Raḍiyya), with the specific dates given, as was the case with Muʿizz al-Dīn Bahrām Shāh.38 Unlike the slightly ambiguous case of Mubārak Shāh described above, Raḍiyya Sulṭāna was imprisoned after a coup d’état, so the reference to her “martyrdom” can only describe her execution. Thus, while Jūzjānī gives a number of specific instances of executions carried out during the early Delhi Sultanate, he does not go into any detail of the events of the execution of high officials. In the cases of sultans where specific dates are given it is likely that these executions were official matters carried out with a great deal of publicity. However, Jūzjānī does not report on the manner of executions. One might ascribe this lacuna of description to Jūzjānī’s overall style and narrative structure, which is concise in recording events of the ruling dynasties. However, the lack of detail on legal matters that accompany the cases for the death penalty is curious in the work of Jūzjānī, given that he served as chief justice (qāḍī al-quḍāt) under Muʿizz al-Dīn Bahrām Shāh. Jūzjānī notes his own involvement in these affairs, so he was certainly eyewitness to some of these events. It could indicate his discomfort over the legitimacy of these actions, but that is speculation. In contrast, the punishments depicted in later Sultanate historiography become more elaborate and complex narrative affairs. This could be attributed to narrative developments in historiography of the Delhi Sultanate, which moved more in the direction of story-telling, and to the fact that the great prose histories of the sultans of Delhi were more restricted in the span of time they covered. This is particularly true in the prose historiography of the Tughluq period, as exemplified in the writings of Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī and Shams al-Dīn Sirāj ʿAfīf (b. 757/1356). While acknowledging Jūzjānī’s contributions to historiography, Baranī and ʿAfīf diverged from his universal approach to history, adopting a more temporally restricted dynastic approach. In the case of Baranī, his Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī covers the reigns of eight sultans of Delhi from Ghiyāth al-Dīn Balban (r. 664–85/1266–87) to the 6th regnal year of Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq (r. 752–90/1351–88). ʿAfīf’s Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, on the other hand, is even more restricted in terms of time span and focuses solely on the reign of Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq, the last great Sultan of Delhi to rule before the invasion of Tīmūr in 800/1398. The restricted time frame allowed these later historians to provide more detail and to add social commentary to events that would only have received much briefer treatment in Jūzjānī. When looked at from another perspective, the narrative developments in Sultanate historiography concerning the cases for punishment, and 246

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in particular the death penalty, signify an increased legalism, and thus preoccupation with juridical processes. The detail accorded to narratives of punishment was an expression of the concern for law exhibited during the later Delhi Sultanate. It has been noted that Tughluq sultans greatly increased the patronage and development of legal writings.39 Zafarul Islam has commented that “it may be said with certainty that the reign of the Tughluq sultans (14th century A.D.) is a formative period of the fiqh literature in India.”40 The increased concern and awareness in legal matters can also be seen in the monumental architecture constructed during the reigns of the Tughluq sultans. Of prominent note was the Ḥawḍ Khāṣṣ Madrasa patronized by Fīrūz Shāh and constructed in 753/1352.41 The concern for the patronage of institutions where legal matters were studied was emphasized in the historiography of the period particularly depicting Fīrūz Shāh’s efforts to build new and restore existing madrasas.42 The patronage of institutions where law was studied and practiced is particularly relevant when one considers the respective roles of the authority of the king in relation to the parameters of sharīʿa. Baranī’s ideal sultan was capable of integrating both the religious and the political into a single system of governance. This can be seen particularly in his view of the early caliphate of ʿAlī. Baranī reports that he heard that during ʿAlī’s caliphate the brothers of ʿUthmān, who had become the governors of the “provinces of Islam” (mamālikat-i islām), gave birth to “innovations” (bidʿathā). According to Baranī, ʿAlī wanted to change those innovations back into the “custom (sunnat) of the Prophet”. To this effect he “put truth in the central place” and he “adorned” it with the “customs of the Prophet” (sunan-i Muḥammadī) and the “rule of ʿUmar” (ḍabṭ-i ʿUmarī).43 This ability to combine the “customs of the Prophet” with the “rule of ʿUmar” was central in the projection of authority during the reign of Sultan Fīrūz Shāh.44 When discussing the transition from the reign of Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq to that of Sultan Fīrūz Shāh, Baranī lists three rules (ḍavābiṭ) that were established by Fīrūz Shāh that were meant to achieve that effect. Significantly, the first noted by Baranī is that he abandoned capital punishment (tark-i siyāsat), which had multiplied in previous days (likely referring to Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq).45 The second rule (ḍābiṭa) was that he arranged the economic affairs of the state by developing lands for cultivation to draw revenue from them.46 The third rule was that he established justice and beneficence (ʿadl va-iḥsān) throughout the kingdom.47 In the case of Fīrūz Shāh, the claim to have abolished siyāsa during his reign aided in developing an image of his rule as being firmly based on sharīʿa. As has been seen in the case of Muḥammad b. Tughluq, certain 247

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sultans were depicted as ignoring the precepts of sharīʿa. In contrast, Fīrūz Shāh was the most successful in producing an image of himself as a sultan who ruled according to sharīʿa. The theme of Fīrūz Shāh’s adherence to sharīʿa is found most prominently throughout ʿAfīf’s Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī. In chapter sixteen of the first book, ʿAfīf dedicates a discussion to the rule of Fīrūz Shāh in relation to sharīʿa. He says that in the age of past sultans the “laws were not measured” (qānūnāt ghayr-i qiyās būd). In contrast, ʿAfīf states that Sultan Fīrūz Shāh in the time of his reign made the sharīʿa of Muḥammad the messenger of God (sharīʿat-i Muḥammad rasūl Allāh) foremost. He planted trees of compassion (ashjār-i marāḥim) in the rose garden (ṣaḥn-i gulzār) of the enslaved and the free (banda va-aḥrār). He removed all that was unlawful (nā-mashrūʿāt) and he tightened all that was lawful (mashrūʿ). 48

Extolling the virtues of Fīrūz Shāh, he refers to him as “the beacon of sharīʿa” (rawshan kunanda-yi sharīʿat).49 Perhaps Fīrūz Shāh’s sentiments toward punishment were an expression of his personal temperament, or perhaps they were a demonstration of his political acumen that recognized the need to make a radical departure from the divisive politics of his predecessor, Muḥammad b. Tughluq. To signify his outlook he displayed his distaste for various punishments in a stone inscription that adorned the dome of the congregational mosque in the city of Fīrūzābād, constructed under his patronage.50 Following invocatory praises for God and the Prophet, Sultan Fīrūz Shāh discusses past ages when there was a prevalence of cruel punishments that contradicted just rule. Specifically, he says that people had turned away from the ways of the Sunnī (sunan-i sunniya) and that he saw it as a duty (wājib) to completely eradicate the false customs that were against sharīʿa (khilāf-i sharʿ). First on his list of innovations (bidʿathā) to be extinguished was the unjust shedding of Muslim blood. He writes, “In the past much Muslim blood (khūn-i musalmānān) used to be spilt and many kinds of torture (taʿdhīb) were carried out.”51 To great effect he provides a lengthy and gruesome list: Hands, feet, ears and noses were cut off; eyes were gouged out; molten lead was poured down people’s throats; the bones of the hands, feet and chest were smashed with mallets; skin was burnt with fire; nails were driven into the hands, feet and chest; flesh was torn away; beatings with a scourge spiked with iron nails; chopping off of feet and men were sawn in half.52

Sultan Fīrūz Shāh claims to have rejected these forms of punishment and changed severities (tashaddudāt) and threats (takhwīfāt) into benevolence (rifq), kindness (karam) and doing good (iḥsān) with divine grace 248

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(faḍl-i ilāhī). For Fīrūz Shāh this meant that those who deviate from the path of the sharīʿa (rāh-i sharʿ) will receive their due according to rule of the Qurʾān (ḥukm-i kitāb) and the judgment of the qāḍī (qaḍā-yi qāḍī). This was a significant claim for a sultan, which represented an attempt to delegate matters of sharīʿa to the court of judges. On a governmental level it was an abdication of his personal authority in an area that had proven troublesome for both sultans and scholars.

Conclusion It has been seen in the preceding discussion that boundaries between religious and political legitimacy were in flux throughout the 7th and 8th/13th and 14th centuries in Northern India. In an age that saw the Delhi Sultanate expand its rule to nearly the entire Indian subcontinent, the sources for legitimacy were deeply contested in historical writings and were particularly acute in narratives highlighting the justice and punishment of kings. Historical narratives of the sultan’s punishments reveal a structural dilemma in the legitimacy of the Delhi Sultanate. The question of who has the authority to issue the ultimate form of punishment, the death penalty, and in what cases and for which crimes, lays bare the inherent tension and ambiguity in the structures of power. Narratives of punishment from the period show that the boundaries of sultanic authority were determined to an extent by institutional and theoretical structures, but also by the sheer power of the office of the sultan. While sharīʿa was integral to judicial systems necessary for the proper functioning of the Sultanate, it stood in relation to the executive authority of the sultan, who, within loose limits, was capable of enacting laws outside of sharīʿa but legitimated on the models of pre-Islamic Persian kings.

Notes 1. Ann Lambton’s article on justice and kingship in medieval Muslim political theory is still a good survey of the topic. Lambton gives examples for works of political theory that fall into four general categories: legal works, administrative handbooks, mirrors-for-princes, and philosophical works. See A. K. S. Lambton, “Justice in the Medieval Theory of Persian Kingship,” SI 17 (1962), 91–119. 2. Mi‘raj Muhammad Sharif, “The Sultan and the ʿUlamaʾ in the Turkish Sultanate of Delhi (1206–1413),” Iqbal 13.3 (1965), 31–58. 3. Bernard Lewis, “Siyāsa,” in In Quest of an Islamic Humanism: Arabic and Islamic Studies in Memory of Mohamed al-Nowaihi, ed. Arnold H. Green (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1984), 6. The quote is taken 249

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4. 5. 6.

7.

8.

from Murūj al-dhahab, ed. and tr. C. Barbier de Meynard (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861–77), 6:221. Similarly and earlier, Baber Johansen generally traced this ambiguity in the structures of power to the 4th/10th century. He says that it derives from the “private and individualistic character of Ḥanafite law”, further explaining that “Ḥanafite law is based on the rights of the individual and gets into difficulties whenever it tries to reconcile these rights with the public interest.” See Baber Johansen, “Sacred and Religious Elements in Ḥanafite Law: Functions and Limits of the Absolute Character of Government Authority,” in Islam et Politique au Maghreb, ed. Ernest Gellner and Jean-Claude Vatin (Paris: Éditions de Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1981), 302. Lewis, “Siyāsa,” 6. Hamilton A. R. Gibb, “Al-Mawardi‘s Theory of the Caliphate,” in Studies on the Civilization of Islam, ed. Stanford Shaw and William Polk (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), 151–65. Bernard Lewis has provided a detailed etymological study of the word siyāsa and the evolutions of its usage from its earliest meaning “to manage, tend or train animals, more particularly horses” to “statecraft” and “punishment”. See Lewis, “Siyāsa,” 3–14. See also EI2, s.v. Siyāsa, 9:693–6 (C. E. Bosworth, I. R. Netton, F. E. Vogel). Of all the historians of the Delhi Sultanate Baranī has been the most studied but perhaps remains the least understood, as he stands out for his richly theoretical approach to historiography. The importance of the theoretical contributions in Baranī’s History has been recognized within the field of South Asian studies but the work has not received the recognition it deserves in the broader field of Islamic studies and history. Peter Hardy, British historian of Muslim India, wrote of Baranī’s History saying that the “Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, completed in 758/1357, is the vigorous and trenchant expression of a conscious philosophy of history which lifts Baranī right out of the ranks of mere compilers of chronicles and annals.” See Peter Hardy, Historians of Medieval India: Studies in Indo-Muslim Historical Writing (London: Luzac, 1960), 20. I list just some studies of note on Baranī and his writing. Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, “Ziya-ud-din Barani,” in Historians of Medieval India, ed. Mohibbul Hasan (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1968), 37–52; Irfan Habib, “Baranī’s Theory of the History of the Delhi Sultanate,” Indian Historical Review 7 (1981), 99–115; idem, “Ziya Barani’s Vision of the State,” Medieval History Journal 2.1 (1999), 19–36. For a general survey of advice literature in Islamicate languages, see EI3 s.v. Advice and advice literature (L. Marlow). See also A. K. S. Lambton, “Islamic Mirrors for Princes,” in Convegno internazionale sul tema la Persia nel Medioevo (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1970), 419–42. Lambton discusses some of the major contributions to the genre of advice literature: the K. al-Ṣaḥāba of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d.757/139), which she considers a “manual of statecraft”; the same author’s Adab al-kabīr and Adab 250

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9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

al-saghīr, which she designates as “mirrors”; Niẓām al-Mulk’s (d. 485/1092) famous Siyāsat-nāma, which she regards as a “administrative handbook”, Kay Kāʾūs’s (d. ca 480/1087–8) Qābūs-nāma, al-Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) Naṣīḥat al-mulūk; the Sirāj al-mulūk of al-Ṭurṭūshī (d. probably 520/1126); the Baḥr al-fawāʾid written between 551/1157 and 555/1161 by an anonymous author dedicated to Alp Qutlugh Jābughā Ulugh; the Ādāb al-ḥarb wa-l-shujāʿah of Fakhr-i Mudabbir, written sometime after 625/1228 and dedicated to Iltutmish; and the much later Akhlāq-i muḥsinī of Ḥusayn Vāʿiẓ Kāshifī composed in 900/1494–5 and dedicated to Ḥusayn Bāyqarā. Neither Marlow nor Lambton discusses Baranī’s important contribution to the genre of advice literature demonstrated by the Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī. Z̤iyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī, Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī, ed. A. Salīm Khān (Lahore: Idāra-i Taḥqīqāt-i Pākistān, 1972), 194. Ibid., 194. Here Baranī lays out the details on punishment. It is not a complete list as there is a lacuna in the manuscript at this point. For a comprehensive treatment of the types of punishment carried out in the 5th/11th and 6th/12th centuries in the Islamic world, see Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 61–91. Baranī, Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī, 200. See Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 7. Lewis, “Siyāsa,” 9. Baranī, Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī, 196. All Qurʾān translations are mine. Ibid., 199. Much of this section reflects the juristic discourses on rebellion (aḥkām al-bughāt). Khaled Abou El Fadl has demonstrated the importance of juristic discourses on rebellion to our understanding of issues of power and authority. In addition to giving the origins and providing an overview of the aḥkām al-bughāt he discusses their reception in Ḥanafī legal discourse. The aḥkām al-bughāt are relevant to Baranī’s thinking on this issue. See Khalid Abou El Fadl, Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 189–203. For references to some of the earliest narratives of fitna in Islamic historiography see Albrecht Noth and Lawrence I. Conrad, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study, tr. Michael Bonner (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1994), 33–5. For Qurʾānic and exegetical readings of the term fitna see Abdelkader Tayob, “An Analytical Survey of al-Ṭabarī’s Exegesis of the Cultural Symbolic Construct of fitna,” in Approaches to the Qur’ān, ed. G. R. Hawting and Abdul-Kader A. Shareef (London: Routledge, 1993), 157–72. Peter Jackson details the events leading up to the raid on Muqbil’s caravan and the “insurrection” mounted by the amīrān-i ṣadah. See Peter Jackson, The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History (Cambridge: 251

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19. 20.

21.

22. 23.

Cambridge University Press, 1999), 272–7. Our understanding of these events is largely dependent upon the narrative of Baranī. It is important to note that Baranī links the causes of rebellion under Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq to his liberally appointing low-born (bad aṣl) individuals to high office, such as was the case with ʿAzīz Khammār “the wine-seller”. His invective against lower classes of society takes up a significant portion of the discussion of the spread of rebellion during the year 745/1345. See Baranī, Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 504–6. Sunil Kumar has discussed the historiographical significance of heredity and social hierarchy by Sultanate historians. See Sunil Kumar, The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate 1192–1286 (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007), 305–24. The following conversation is reported in Baranī, Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 509–11. While Baranī makes his own report that he had been in the service of Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq for seventeen years there are only two conversations between Sultan Muḥammad b. Tughluq and Z̤iyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī recorded in the Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī. See ibid., 509–11 and 521–2. Both conversations deal with questions of punishment. These two conversations are noted in Peter Hardy, “The ‘oratio recta’ of Barani’s ‘Ta’rikh-i-Firuz Shahi’ – Fact or Fiction?,” BSOAS 20,1 (1957), 321. The Tārīkh-i Kisravī referred to by Baranī is most likely the same as the Khwadāy-nāmag, the “Book of Kings” from Sāsānid Persia that was translated from Pahlavi into Arabic most notably by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (ca 102–39/720–56) and found various later Persian recensions. See Edward Granville Browne, A Literary History of Persia: From the Earliest Times until Firdawsi (to 1000 A.D.) (Bethesda: Iranbooks, 1997), 1:123. See also Clifford Edmund Bosworth, “The Persian Contribution to Islamic Historiography in the Pre-Mongol Period,” in The Persian Presence in the Islamic World, ed. Richard G. Havhanisian and Georges Sabagh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 221. Baranī, Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 509–10. This thought was expressed prominently in the classic work Siyāsat-nāma of Niẓām al-Mulk. Ann Lambton treats this subject in her study of the same work. See A. K. S. Lambton, “The Dilemma of Government in Islamic Persia: The Siyāsat-Nāma of Niẓām al-Mulk,” Iran 22 (1984), 57. Baranī also addresses this topic in the Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī in a chapter on the forgiveness and punishment of the king (ʿafv va-siyāsat-i bādshāh) using the oratio recta of Maḥmūd of Ghazna (r. 338–421/998–1030). In Baranī’s writings Maḥmūd is the representative and paradigmatic Muslim king and thus an appropriate choice for delivering his own views on political theory: “If the king”, Maḥmūd is reported as saying, “does not subject the wicked, the rebellious, thieves, the haughty, usurpers, the impudent, the shameless, the heedless and designers of wickedness to capital punishment (siyāsat), ḥadd punishments (ḥudūd), discretionary punishments (taʿzīrāt) and imprisonment 252

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24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32.

33.

(band zanjīr), men will eat each other alive and no one’s property, women or children will be safe.” See Baranī, Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī, 193. For a translation of this passage, see Mohammad Habib, The Political Theory of the Delhi Sultanate (including a translation of Ziauddin Barani’s Fatawa-i Jahandari, circa 1358–9 A.D.) (Allahabad: Kitab Mahal [1961]), 55–6. For a discussion of the continuity of systems of governance between the Sāsānid and early Islamic period see Clifford Edmund Bosworth, “The Heritage of Rulership in Early Islamic Iran and the Search for Dynastic Connections with the Past,” Iran 9 (1973), 51–62. Baranī frequently inserts his own political and historical ideas into the mouths of historical and mythical personae. Peter Hardy dubs this literary device oratio recta (‘direct speech’). See Hardy, “The ‘oratio recta’,” 315–21. Baranī, Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 510. Peter Hardy translates this as “adultery where both parties are married”. A more literal translation would restrict the punishment to the male perpetrator of adultery. Ibid., 321. Baranī, Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 510. Ibid., 511. Ibid., 510–11. Muḥṣan has the strict legal connotation of an individual who is Muslim, married (or formerly married), adult and free. Peter Hardy briefly mentions the three cases for the death penalty as described by Baranī in the Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī and the Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī. See Hardy, “The ‘oratio recta’,” 321. In contrast to Baranī’s depiction of Muḥammad b. Tughluq’s ignorance of sharīʿa, Zafarul Islam notes that Muḥammad b. Tughluq exhibited a greater concern for Islamic law than acknowledged by Baranī as well as later historians. Islam argues that Muḥammad b. Tughluq was well versed in sharīʿa and reports that, according to Shihāb al-Dīn al-ʿUmarī (697–749/1297–1348), the noted Mamlūk author of the same period, he had memorized the Hidāya of ʿAlī b. Abī Bakr al-Marghīnānī (d. 593/1197), as well as encouraged the discussion of sharīʿa and procured fiqh texts for his court. Zafarul Islam, “Development of Fiqh Literature in the Sultanate Period,” in Islamic Heritage in South Asian Subcontinent, ed. Nazir Ahmad and I. H. Siddiqui (Jaipur: Publication Scheme, 2000), 87. For an introduction to Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī and his Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī see Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, On History and Historians of Medieval India (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1983), 71–93. For the place of the Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī in the context of Indo-Persian historiography see Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui, “Intellectual Dimension of the Tabaqat Form of Persian Historiography, Produced in Pre-Mughal India,” in Islamic Heritage in South Asian Subcontinent, ed. Ahmad Nazir and Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui (Jaipur: Publication Scheme, 1998), 125–50. Minhāj Sirāj Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥayy Ḥabībī, 2 vols (2nd edn, Kabul: Anjuman-i Tārīkh-i Afghānistān, 1342–43), 1:434. Cf. the 253

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34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

translation by H. G. Raverty, T̤abaḳāt-i Nāṣirī: A General History of the Muhammadan Dynasties of Asia, including Hindustan; from A.H. 194 (810 A.D.) to A.H. 658 (1260 A.D.) and the Irruption of the Infidel Mughals into Islam, 2 vols (New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1970), 1:578. Ibid., 1:435 (tr. 1:580). Ibid., 1:468 (tr. 1:660). In general, both Sunnī and Shīʿī scholars regard as martyrs those who have been killed during rebellion. See EI2, s.v. Shahīd, 9:203–8 (E. Kohlberg). Ibid. Jūzjānī, Ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, 1:465 (tr. 1:654). Jūzjānī gives the date as Saturday 25 Rabīʿ al-Awwal 638/13 October 1240. Ibid., 1:462 (tr. 1:648). See Zafarul Islam, “The Contribution of the Tughluq Sultans to Islamic Jurisprudence,” Majallat al-Taʾrīkh al-Islāmī 2,3–4 (1997), 516–28. Islam, “Development of Fiqh Literature,” 87. The two most significant legal texts produced under the patronage of Fīrūz Shāh were the Fiqh-i Fīrūz Shāhī and the Fatāvā al-Tātārkhānīyah. The Fatāvā al-Tātārkhānīyah is available in a recent edition. See ʿĀlim ibn ʿAlāʾ, al-Fatāwā al-Tātārkhānīyah fī l-fiqh al-Ḥanafī, ed. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah, 2005). The Fiqh-i Fīrūz Shāhī is still only available in manuscript. Ṣadr al-Dīn Yaʿqūb Muẓaffar Kuhrāmī, “Fiqh-i Fīrūz Shāhī,” ms. 2564, India Office Collection, British Library, London. See Anthony Welch, “A Medieval Center of Learning in India: The Hauz Khas Madrasa in Delhi,” Muqarnas 13 (1996), 165–90. See Shams Sirāj ʿAfīf, Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, ed. Vilāyat Ḥusain (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1888), 511–12. Baranī, Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 8. The idea that the Prophet and ʿUmar had given distinct or even contradictory examples of behavior (sunan) is evident in early Islamic discourse. See Avraham Hakim, “Conflicting Images of Lawgivers: the Caliph and the Prophet: Sunnat ʿUmar and Sunnat Muḥammad,” in Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins, ed. Herbert Berg (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), 159–77. The ‘fact’ of Fīrūz Shāh’s clemency in punishment first appears in Baranī and then is picked up fully in ʿAfīf. See Baranī, Taʾrīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 571–4. Ibid., 574–5. Ibid., 575. ʿAfīf, Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 98–9. Ibid., 19. See Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, “The Futuhat-i-Firuz Shahi as a Medieval Inscription,” in Seminar on Medieval Inscriptions (Aligarh: Aligarh Muslim University, 1970), 28–35. The first printed edition of the Futūḥāt-i Fīrūz Shāhī was Fīrūz Shāh Tughluq, Futūḥāt-i Firūz Shāhī, ed. Mir Hasan (Delhi: 254

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Rizvi Press, 1885). The next printing (including a translation) was “Futūḥāt-i Fīrūzshāhī,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal 7,1 (1941), 61–89. For another translation, see N. B. Roy, “The Victories of Sulṭān Fīrūz Shāh of Tughluq Dynasty: English Translation of Futūḥāt-i Fīrūz Shāhī by N. B. Roy,” Islamic Culture 15,1 (1941), 449–64. I have relied on the Aligarh edition of the Futūḥāt by Abdur Rashid (Aligarh: Department of History Aligarh Muslim University, 1954). For an introduction to the Futūḥāt-i Fīrūz Shāhī, followed by a Persian edition and translation, see Azra Alavi, The Futuhat-i Firuz Shahi (Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delli, 1996). 51. Futūḥāt-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 2. 52. Ibid.

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12

Public violence, state legitimacy: the Iqāmat al-ḥudūd and the sacred state Robert Gleave

Iqāmat al-ḥudūd – the implementation of the punishments specified in revelation – is subject to numerous caveats within Islamic legal theory. Caveats include the (at times) unrealistic demands of testimonial evidence for the ḥudūd, the suspension of punishment when the presence of the slightest doubt (shubha) is detected and the highly restrictive definitions of the crime.1 All these indicate the Muslim jurists’ general attitude of extreme caution towards the implementation of ḥudūd punishments (iqāmat al-ḥudūd). Also among the caveats is the presence of a legitimate political authority to carry out the punishments, and this constitutes one general point of difference between the Sunnī and Imāmī Shīʿī traditions of fiqh. There may not be a unanimous Sunnī view on the legitimacy of particular governments in the post-Muḥammadan era, but the focus of much classical Sunnī juristic discussion on iqāmat al-ḥudūd is on the validity of judicial procedure, rather than the more fundamental issue of the legal powers of the judge, or more broadly, the state (if the use of such a term is not anachronistic). To be sure, classical Imāmī legal textbooks also have extended discussions of the procedure of iqāmat al-ḥudūd, and in this they are not radically dissimilar to their Sunnī counterparts. However, Imāmī jurists also incorporated explorations of state legitimacy through their discussions of iqāmat al-ḥudūd. This gave the topic the flavour of political theory. Since community rule by anyone other than the Imam was inherently problematic for Imāmī jurists, the right of any political structure to implement the ḥudūd was at least questionable. This does not mean that justice could not be (legitimately) done through other mechanisms, but rather that the ḥudūd were, to an extent, the prerogative of the Imam. When the Imam is in hiding (as he is in Imāmī theology), questions naturally emerge as to whether the ḥudūd can be implemented. 256

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The debated character of iqāmat al-ḥudūd within Imāmī fiqh re-enforces the exceptional character of these elements of what might be termed “public law”. That the ḥudūd can be usefully viewed as ritual (in both public and private spheres) rather than the simple administration of justice has been noted.2 The justification for categorising the ḥudūd as ritual can be found in their stubborn refusal to be subjected to the usual processes of legal reasoning, whether this is in the Sunnī or Imāmī Shīʿī traditions. The reformatory, preventative, restorative (i.e. compensatory) or retributive effects of the ḥudūd are irrelevant to their justification, unlike other forms of punishment where one or more of these are indispensable. They do not have, as an essential aim, the establishment of internal community harmony. Any or all of these may occur as useful spin-offs in a particular application of the ḥudūd, but they are not taken into account in the juristic discussions. There is no question of a ḥudūd punishment being unjust (even amongst Muʿtazilīinclined jurists). Injustice only appears within their application when there is a failure of procedure. The commonplace notion of appropriate punishment (“the punishment fitting the crime”) does not usually apply (notwithstanding the attempts by some classical jurists to provide such a justification). The ḥudūd are, in this sense, non-negotiable, and this inflexibility has led to their being fenced in practical terms through the caveats mentioned above. The general sacral tenor of ḥudūd discussions in the fiqh literature is, then, enhanced within Imāmī fiqh by the location of their implementation within the duties (and hence prerogatives) of the sinless Imam. Within this chapter, I first sketch out the link between iqāmat al-ḥudūd, the Imam’s authority and political theory within Imāmī theory, using Sunnī theory (or rather, theories) as a point for comparison. I then detail the stipulations regarding the implementation (or performance) of ḥudūd punishment in Imāmī fiqh, exploring whether these rules constitute a conception of legitimate public violence which can be distinguished from those present within the Sunnī juristic tradition.

Iqāmat al-ḥudūd and state legitimacy The link between state legitimacy and the implementation of the ḥudūd punishments within the fiqh tradition can be illustrated by reference to the question of whether or not these punishments can be implemented within a Muslim army while it is on campaign outside of Muslim territory. The various early Muslim opinions are laid out in Shāfiʿī’s Kitāb al-Umm: [1.] Abū Ḥanīfa says, “When an army, over which there is an amīr, raids the land of war, then he may not implement the ḥudūd within his army unless he 257

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also be the imām, or what resembles an imām, of Egypt, or Syria, or Iraq. Only then may he implement ḥudūd within his army.” [2.] Al-Awzāʿī says, “Whoever is commander over an army, even if he not be the leader of one of the regions [of the Empire], may implement the ḥudūd within his army apart from amputation until he has closed the Gates.3 When he has closed them, then he can amputate.” [3.] Abū Yūsuf says, “Why can he implement the ḥudūd, apart from amputation? And why only amputation from amongst the ḥudūd? When he leaves the Gates, his authority over them ends because he is not amīr of either a province or a city. He is only amīr of the army during the raid. When they leave [the land of infidels and enter] the land of Islam, their immunity [from punishment] ends.” One of our shaykhs informs us from Thawr b. Yazīd from Ḥākim b. ʿUmayr that ʿUmar wrote to ʿUmayr b. Saʿd al-Anṣārī, and to his workers, “Do not implement a single ḥadd 4 to any Muslim in the land of war until you reach the land of benefit.” How can the amīr of a troop implement a ḥadd – he is neither a qāḍī nor an amīr who is permitted to issue [such] rulings. I have seen neither commanders on horseback, nor amīrs in the army implementing the ḥudūd in the land of Islam – and this is the same if they enter the land of war.” [4.] Shāfiʿī says, “The amīr of an army may implement the ḥudūd when he is in the area over which he has authority. If he has no authority [there], then the witnesses who testify to the ḥadd must bring the accused to the imām, whether they are in the land of war or of Islam. There is no difference between the land of war and the land of Islam when it comes to the ḥudūd which God has made obligatory for his creatures. For God has said: ‘The thief, male or female, cut off their hands.’ ‘The fornicator, male or female, whip each of them with one hundred lashes.’ The Prophet of God has decreed stoning for the adulterous. God has made the punishment for the slanderer, eighty lashes. He did not add the proviso to these rulings that they be in the land of Islam and not in the land of unbelief. He has not lifted a single one of his duties from his believers. He has not made anything which is forbidden to them permitted in the land of unbelief. What we say is nothing more than in agreement with the revelation and the sunna, and what the Muslims have thought and agreed upon. Things which are permitted in the land of Islam are permitted in the land of unbelief. Things which are forbidden in the land of Islam are forbidden in the land of unbelief. If someone performs a forbidden act, God has already declared whatever punishment he wishes against him. That it happened in the land of unbelief does not mean a thing [. . .] if someone performs a ḥadd crime in Egypt, and there is no governor of Egypt at the time he performed this ḥadd crime, then the governor, when he is put in place after the crime, must implement the ḥadd. The same is the case with one who works in the army. If there is someone in authority to carry out the ḥadd, then he should do so. If 258

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there is no such person, then the first person to assume this authority should carry it out.”5

Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) entertains some other elements in the argument here6 but his main point against the opinions of the others is encapsulated in this quotation. The brief statement in al-Khiraqī’s (d. 334/945) Mukhtaṣar sums up the Ḥanbalī opinion (“The ḥadd is not implemented on the Muslim in the land of the enemy”).7 Muwaffaq al-Dīn Ibn Qudāma (d. 620/1223) expands on this in al-Mughnī: [5.] To summarise: whoever commits a ḥadd crime during a raid, or whoever is deserving of the lex talionis in the land of the war, suffers no punishment until he returns. Then his ḥadd is implemented upon him [. . .] for us, the ḥadd is an order of God the Most High and his Prophet, as is its delay [viz. until the perpetrator returns to the land of Islam].8

This is followed by a series of companion ḥadīth, indicating that the needs of the Muslim army trump the implementation of ḥudūd, and immediate implementation while on campaign runs the risk of weakening the military effort. Finally, at the other end of the spectrum are the Mālikīs, whose position is derived from the reported statement of Mālik (d. 179/795), embedded in the Mudawwana: [6.] What is your opinion on the amīr of the army who enters the land of war, and one of [the army] steals from another in the land of war9, or they drink wine, or they commit illicit sexual intercourse? Does their amīr implement the ḥudūd on them, in Mālik’s opinion? Mālik said to me [i.e. Ibn al-Qāsim], “The amīr of the army implements the ḥudūd on them in the land of war. He has the strongest claim [to do this] in the manner that the ḥudūd are implemented in the land of Islam.”10

An examination of the ikhtilāf here could elaborate further on the nuance of the various differences within the madhāhib, but this is not essential to my point. Opinions here between (and to a lesser extent, within) the madhāhib all share the structural feature that the imām is the ultimate source of authority within any legitimate implementation of the ḥudūd. However, the differences are also significant, as they betray the underlying principles on which the individual rulings are based. For the Ḥanafīs, Shāfiʿī cites the rather unclear statement from Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767, [1.] above) saying that the commander of the army only has the authority to implement ḥudūd within his troops if he is also a legitimate imām. Abū Ḥanīfa is reported as adding the phrase, “or something similar to an imām”: a locution which leaves the greatest flexibility for the identity of the leader, since even political and military leaders who 259

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fail to fulfil the criteria of imāms, are now included in the category of those who have the right to implement ḥudūd. The central Ḥanafī presumption here is that assuming the position of amīr does not give one the right to implement the ḥudūd. This right is reserved for the imām of the state. If the imām of the state happens also to be the amīr of the troops, then he can implement the ḥudūd (but he does this as imām, not as amīr). What is not entirely clear is whether the amīr who is also imām can do this outside the land of Islam, or whether he must delay the implementation until the troop has returned to the land of Islam. Awzāʿī’s view (d.157/773, [2.] above) is that the amīr can implement ḥudūd while on campaign outside the land of Islam, though this permission is subject to the (inexplicable) exception of amputation. Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798), developing the Ḥanafī view further here [3. above], demonstrates the irrationality of Awzāʿī’s position (what is so special about amputation?). In the course of his exposition, he reveals his own view, which can be reconciled with one reading of Abū Ḥanīfa’s statement in [1.]. For Abū Yūsuf, the ḥudūd are effectively suspended while in the land of war. The amīr has no right to implement ḥudūd within the land of Islam, so he has no right outside it. A ḥadd crime committed by a soldier in the land of war, even if the amīr is the imām back home, cannot give rise to a ḥadd punishment. The point here seems to be that ḥadd crimes can only be committed in the context of a legitimate state, and hence can only be punished in such a context also. For Ḥanafīs, it seems, the definition of a ḥadd crime includes the performance of certain forbidden acts within the context of a legitimate state. The presence of the state, and ultimately the person of the imām himself, enables the ḥadd punishment to become valid. If the ḥudūd are to be seen as rituals (cf. my introduction above), then the state/imām perform a pseudo-priestly function for the Ḥanafīs. In short, the state/imām is sacred, but only within the land of Islam. The justice of God is intimately bound with the land of Islam, such that it loses some of its relevance elsewhere. This is not to say that justice is suspended outside the land of Islam for the Ḥanafīs. Many alternative means of enforcing and distributing justice among his troops are available to the amīr/imām. It is merely that the specific ‘ritual’ performance of processing, judging and implementing ḥudūd cases is reserved for crimes committed within the land of Islam, implemented by the imām. The Shāfiʿī response (or to be more precise, Shāfiʿī’s own response in the Kitāb al-Umm, [4.] above) to this position is that ḥadd crimes can be committed anywhere, but only prosecuted and punished by the imām within the land of Islam. That is, geographical location is not the factor which makes a particular action a ḥadd crime (that an action be liable for a ḥadd is a judgment from God, and hence not bound by such limits). However, 260

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the ritual performance (the judicial process, the judgment and, ultimately, the punishment) are still dependent on the imām’s authority and presence. The Ḥanbalī position [5. above] is similar, though the reason for the delay until the perpetrator has returned to the land of Islam is not because of any pseudo-sacerdotal role for the state or imām. It is a purely practical consideration: the Muslim forces will be weakened by the removal of individuals which the implementation of ḥudūd will inevitably cause. That this is military pragmatism, and not something particular for the ḥudūd, is confirmed by Ibn Qudāma bracketing the lex talionis (a strictly compensatory tort, which has been stripped of its ritual elements) within the rules which are not to be implemented until after the campaign. The Mālikī position [6.] would, at first blush, seem to portray ḥudūd as less ritualistic, and more judicial. Neither the crime nor the punishment is defined by geography – they can occur anywhere and be punished anywhere. However, they must be conducted by a legitimate authority. The amīr, presumably since he is an appointee of the state, has the authority of the state within his army, and this includes the implementation of the ḥudūd when they are outside the land of Islam (it is not clear whether the amīr has these rights within the land of Islam, or whether the imām of the land has greater claim, and therefore a more securely grounded right). He can implement the ḥudūd in the land of war (i.e. there is no need to wait for the return). It is almost as if his army, when they are outside the land of Islam, forms a non-geographical Muslim state, with the amīr acting as imām. What is clear from the above-described ikhtilāf is that, for all the madhāhib, the implementation of the ḥudūd punishments requires a legitimate authority and a specific procedure. They cannot be inflicted on an individual in vigilante fashion. When a state implements the ḥudūd, it is carrying out an order from God. For the Shāfiʿīs the state is merely reenacting, and then implementing a judgment which has already been made by God. Only the state can perform this re-enactment, and this makes the state an actor in the ritual drama. Even for the Mālikīs, the amīr only really has the right to implement the ḥudūd outside of the land of Islam because he has been delegated that authority by a greater authority (the imām in the land of Islam, who has, in some sense, been placed in that position by God). The amīr can implement ḥudūd because of this designation. He is able to carry out ritual functions, not under his own steam, but only through his delegation. This is not to say that the imāms, amīrs and sulṭāns viewed iqāmat al-ḥudūd as a central element in their own claims to religious legitimacy. Rather, the link between ḥudūd and state legitimacy was primarily an element confined to juristic discourse, with little evidence of any widespread implementation of ḥudūd punishments in the medieval period. 261

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Now all of this Sunnī juristic discussion acts as a useful background to the Imāmī discussion of iqāmat al-ḥudūd in classical works of fiqh. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067), in his al-Nihāya fī mujarrad al-fiqh wa-l-fatāwā, includes the following passage in his section of “commanding the good and prohibiting the evil” (al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wal-nahy ʿan al-munkar): As for implementing the ḥudūd, the only person who can implement them is the Sultan of the Time [i.e. the Imam] who has been appointed by God, or by someone whom he has appointed to implement them. It is not permitted for anyone other than these two to implement [the ḥudūd] in any circumstance. A dispensation has been provided for those periods when the power of the Imams of Truth is weak, and the oppressive ones are powerful, that a free man may implement the ḥudūd on his offspring, his descendants and his slaves, providing that he does not fear that by doing so he may bring harm [to the community] at the hand of the oppressors, and that he is safe from their calamities. When he is not safe from them, then it is not permitted for him to carry this out in any circumstance. The person who is appointed by the oppressive sultan to implement the ḥudūd, he may implement them in their entirety, providing that in doing so he believes that he is appointed by the Legitimate Sultan [sulṭān al-ḥaqq, i.e. the Imam] and not the Sultan of Oppression. The people must aid and enable him in doing this, providing he does not go beyond what is correct and laid down in the sharīʿa of Islam. If he is to go beyond that which is correct, he is not permitted to implement them, and no one may aid him in this. However, if he fears for his life, then he is permitted to carry them out when dissimulating up to, but not including, the taking of life. The taking of life is not permitted even in a state of dissimulation.11

This succinctly demonstrates the mainstream position of Imāmī jurists on the issue of implementing the ḥudūd, and demonstrates well how these fit into Imāmī political theory concerning the nature of the state. As with Sunnī political theory, the state is to be led by a legitimate imām. Without such a legitimate leader, the ḥudūd become at least problematic, and perhaps illegal. Unlike Sunnī theory, however, the default position in Imāmī fiqh is that all states other than that led by the Imam designated by God (i.e. the descendant of the Prophet, through his daughter’s marriage to ʿAlī and designated by the preceding Imam) are, de jure, illegitimate. I say “default position” because it has been argued that some Imāmī jurists did afford legitimacy to states other than those led by the Imam during the occultation. Surveying the evidence produced by commentators on this important point, I remain unconvinced, though to demonstrate this would require a more extended survey of the fiqh literature than that presented 262

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here. For Ṭūsī, at least, the leader who has the “right” to rule (the sulṭān al-ḥaqq in the above citation) is, clearly, the current Imam designated by God (though in Ṭūsī’s view, denied his rightful rule by the community). If that Imam is in occultation, the state is, legally speaking, irredeemably illegitimate. The terms here are ẓālim and jāʾir, which are used, in my view, to convey ideas of illegitimacy, usurpation and oppression. Without a legitimate state, there can be no legitimate implementation of the ḥudūd. This would seem to indicate that the ḥudūd are in abeyance until the Imam returns and regains his rightful position of power. However, there are exceptions. First of all, the head of the household can implement the ḥudūd on his own kin and slaves (provided that, by doing so, he does not fear that by implementing the ḥudūd in house, he will attract the attention of the rulers and thereby expose himself, his family or the community to harm). As an aside, it should be noted that the individual Imāmī does not need to be certain that harm will result from his in-house implementation of the ḥudūd. He only needs to “fear” that it might. A fear of sparking a chain of events which might lead to harm is sufficient to establish a bar on implementation. More important than this dispensation is the permission for the judge to work for the illegitimate ruler. For Ṭūsī, as for most jurists after him, an Imāmī jurist can act as a judge for the illegitimate ruler and implement the ḥudūd within the existing state system. However, when doing this he should not consider himself appointed by the de facto ruler, but by the hidden Imam. That is, participation in the state judicial never entails loyalty or commitment to the legitimacy of that system. It is a purely pragmatic decision on the part of the judge. If he feels that justice can be carried out within the existing system, then that system can be used in a purely instrumental manner to implement the ḥudūd. This instrumental use of the system by the Imāmī judge should be distinguished from circumstances in which the individual has to dissimulate. Dissimulation (taqiyya) is a dispensation given to the Imāmī community by the Imams as a mechanism for self-protection. If an illegitimate sultan forces an individual to assume a judgeship and to implement the ḥudūd (presumably through the threat of violence upon that individual, his family or the Shīʿī community more generally), then the individual can do this without transgressing the sharīʿa. This situation is quite different, legally speaking, from circumstances in which the judge makes a decision that the system can be used for the effective implementation of justice. In the case of dissimulation, the acts of the individual are, strictly speaking, transgressions of God’s law. In this example, the judge’s verdicts when issued under dissimulation are not legally valid (they are perhaps even sinful), 263

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but they are practically necessary in order to preserve the well-being of the community more widely. Though the individual engages with the existent power structures in both circumstances, in the instrumental case, legally valid rulings emerge. In the dissimulation case they do not. Furthermore, in the dissimulation case, there are limits as to the scope of the judge’s verdicts. Verdicts which lead to the killing of individuals (qatl al-nufūs) or, as it is phrased elsewhere in the literature “the spilling of blood” (safk al-dimāʾ) are not permitted under taqiyya.12 Transgressions of the sharīʿa permitted under dissimulations have limits. There are no such limits when the state is being exploited purely as a means to implement justice. Now this complex of rules was subject to extensive modification and elaboration by subsequent jurists, but the basic parameters of the fiqh expressed here were established, probably some time before Ṭūsī iterated them so directly in his Nihāya. However, the acceptance of such a position was not unanimous among subsequent Imāmī jurists. Perhaps the most famous dissident was Muḥammad Ibn Idrīs al-Ḥillī (d. 598/1202), writing a century or so after al-Ṭūsī. In his fiqh work al-Sarāʾir al-Hāwī li-taḥrīr al-fatāwā he criticises al-Ṭūsī regularly for his use of isolated reports (khabar al-wāḥid) which, in Ibn Idrīs’s view, are unacceptable sources of legal deduction. He cites the above passage from the Nihāya, and then adds: Muḥammad b. Idrīs, the author here, states: The strongest [position] in my view is that it is not permitted for [the head of the household] to implement the ḥudūd on anyone other than his slave [and therefore not on his own descendants]. [Concerning the permission to work for the oppressive sultan], it is preferable not to, or rather, one must not base one’s action on this report. Muḥammad b. Idrīs, the author here, states: Our Shaykh Abū Jaʿfar [al-Ṭūsī] in his Nihāya proposes this view [. . .] on the basis of a report, not through his belief that this should be the basis of legal rulings and legal contemplation. There has been a consensus (ijmāʿ) of our scholars, indeed of the Muslims more generally, that no one may implement the ḥudūd other than the Imams and those rulers who have been established with their permission. Anyone else is not permitted to carry them out in any circumstances. This consensus is not overturned by isolated reports. It can only be done so by a consensus like it, or by the Book of God, or by a widely attested report [. . .] If a man fears for his own safety if he were to abandon carrying out the ḥudūd, then he is permitted to carry them out but under the conditions of taqiyya, up to but not including the killing of individuals. [The rules of] taqiyya do not allow this. And on this there is no dissenting opinion amongst our fellow scholars.13

Ibn Idrīs presents his objection to al-Ṭūsī as based on a theoretical objection – namely that isolated reports do not hold more authority than consensus. 264

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Whether it is his commitment to this theoretical stance or some other factor which prompts his objection is not important here. First of all he wishes to reduce the power of an individual to implement the ḥudūd on his family members (it can only be done on one’s slave). Second, for Ibn Idrīs, any state other than the Imam’s is beyond the pale. Such a state can never be used, even purely instrumentally, for the administration of justice. Any verdict which emerges from the illegitimate state is itself inescapably illegitimate. Even if the verdict itself is in accordance with the sharīʿa, the procedural failure entails its invalidity. Of course, the judge may be forced to implement the ḥudūd by the oppressive sultan, but taqiyya is a quite distinct case. Both al-Ṭūsī and Ibn Idrīs share a belief in the illegitimacy of the usurping state. For both (as for most subsequent Imāmī jurists), no state can act as the legitimising element in the implementation of ḥudūd (i.e. take on the sacerdotal role described in Sunnī fiqh) other than that led by the Imam. Where they differ is in their assessment of whether this profane state can be used for sacred purposes. Al-Ṭūsī is pragmatic (the profane state can be used for legitimate purposes), while Ibn Idrīs is more principled (the profane state is almost impure and will infect any judgment which it facilitates). Al-Ṭūsī’s pragmatism here, which became the dominant Imāmī position, is a little reminiscent of the Ḥanbalī pragmatism over the nonimplementation of ḥudūd while on campaign. One sees a similar flexibility in the Ḥanbalī position on the specific question of whether or not the Imam can inflict ḥudūd upon perpetrators in the “land of the enemy”. The Muqniʿa of al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022) records that: It is not permitted to carry out iqāmat al-ḥudūd in the land and territory of the enemy because of the fear that that will lead them [i.e. the criminals] to attach themselves to the unbelievers.14

Of course, this position remains firmly theoretical for the Imāmīs, since the duty to wage jihād (at least of the offensive kind) was the most recalcitrant of the Imam’s responsibilities, and was not reactivated (and even then only in defensive mode) until the nineteenth century. However, the similarity between the Ḥanbalī and Imāmī positions to the issue of when, where and how the ḥudūd punishments can be implemented is interesting (and, when compared with other areas of fiqh, quite surprising).

The ritual enactment of the ḥudūd The involvement of the state in the enactment of violent punishment is carefully laid out in Sunnī works of fiqh. I have mentioned elsewhere that 265

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the precision of detail found in those expositions at least gives the enactment a ritual flavour. This, combined with certain structural features of the ḥudūd penalties, confirms the tentative classification of these punishments as ritual. These features include the lack of flexibility in terms of specifying the punishment, the negligible element of judicial discretion in the delimitation of punishment, the notion that God is the victim of the crime rather than any individual, the lack of alternative justifications for the punishment (such as personal retribution, deterrence, public good or criminal reform). All this indicates that the ḥudūd penalties fit uneasily within the standard conceptions of criminal punishment. Here I wish to concentrate on whether the specifics of Imāmī political theory, and their effect on the permissibility or otherwise of the enactment of the ḥudūd, drills down within Imāmī fiqh literature to details of enactment. The role(s) played by the imām in the stoning punishment for adultery provides an apposite example. There is a commonplace distinction in the fiqh literature between adulterers convicted on the evidence of confession and those convicted by testimony. For some schools, in the former case, the imām initiates the stoning; in the latter, the witnesses initiate.15 The most cited piece of evidence in this regard is a ḥadīth from ʿAlī, which talks of there being two types of stoning: the open and the hidden (or public/secret, ʿalāniyya/sirr). The earliest record of this distinction appears to be al-Ṣanʿānī’s Muṣannaf: [ʿAlī] said, “Stoning comes in two sorts: sirr and ʿalāniyya. ʿAlāniyya stoning is [enacted] first by the witnesses and then by the imām. Sirr stoning, which is by confession, is enacted first by the imām and then by the people.16

Here the statement seems to suggest that the open, public evidence for stoning is the testimony of witnesses, while the secret/private/hidden evidence is the confession (that is, it is not the stoning which is public or secret, but the evidence which leads to the guilty verdict and the implementation of the punishment). The ritual performance of the stoning changes for each case. The witnesses, when they testify to stoning, must assume responsibility for their testimony, and initiate stoning, thereby becoming implicit in the criminal’s death. A number of interesting elements emerge from this element of ḥudūd law. First, the witnesses are clearly not regarded as independent opinions on the facts of the case (as they might be theoretically conceived of within an English court setting). They are, instead, akin to the prosecutors, and as such must expose themselves to the possibility of being directly involved in the administration of justice. Second, the lack of independence of the witnesses and the responsibility for the verdict are further cemented by the very real possibility of their 266

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being prosecuted for qadhf should their prosecution case fail. Third, the responsibility which the witnesses bear for their part in the determination of the verdict is, in part, heightened because of the very limited discretion the judge has once the evidence is heard. That is, once four just witnesses have testified to the adultery, and there is no other defence (except, of course, the denials of the accused), the judge (theoretically at least) is obliged to find the accused guilty and order the stoning penalty. The lack of judicial discretion means a reduction in the judge’s responsibility and a concomitant heightening of the witnesses’ participation in the verdict. Hence, the witnesses must cast the first stone. By making their testimony, they are accusing the defendant of having committed a crime against God, and hence they are assuming responsibility for the person’s fate. Whether the participation of the witnesses is an obligation or merely a recommendation is a matter of dispute in the later fiqh tradition. Shams al-Dīn Sarakhsī (d. 483/1090) lays out the Shāfiʿī-Ḥanafī debate here: If the ḥadd is by stoning, then it cannot be carried out if the witnesses disappear or die. This is because the sunna in stoning is that the witnesses initiate the stoning, then the imām and then the people. Hence it is not enacted if they are absent or die. This is our view. Shāfiʿī says that the witnesses need not initiate stoning, but the imām should initiate it. This is because, for him, the witnesses are distinguished from the rest of the people by giving evidence. However, carrying out the stoning is not an element in the giving evidence. In this respect [the witnesses] are like the rest of the population. Do you not see that when the ḥadd is lashes, the witnesses are not ordered to carry them out? It is the same with stoning. However, we rely for our evidence on the saying of ʿAlī [. . .] who said, “Stoning if of two sorts: the secret and the public. The public is when there is evidence of what is in the woman’s belly, and she confesses this. In such cases, the imām initiates and then the people. The secret is when four testify against a man that he has committed illicit sexual intercourse. In such cases, the witnesses initiate, then the imām and then the people.” Also, in the order that the witnesses initiate, there is a legal device whereby the ḥadd might be prevented [from being enacted by mistake]. Perhaps a man has the audacity to give testimony and lie. When it comes to participating in the killing itself, he refuses to do this [from a pang of conscience]. We have already said that the ḥudūd here should be prevented from enactment by legal devices, and this makes it different from the case of lashes. Not every person is acceptable to carry out lashes. If we were to order the witnesses to carry out the lashes, then they might kill them [the convicted] out of their own stupidity, when killing them is not justified. This is not the case with stoning. Every person is acceptable as one who might cast [the stones], for the death that ensues is justified.17 267

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It should be noted that Sarakhsī’s version of ʿAlī’s saying here is the reverse of that found in Ṣanʿānī. For Ṣanʿānī, “open” (ʿalāniyya) stoning takes place when the verdict is proven by testimony, but the version cited by Sarakhsī here has it that “public” refers to the evidence of pregnancy and confession. Furthermore, the Ṣanʿānī text gives only the witnesses and the imām (implying that they must finish the job themselves). The Sarakhsī version gives the witnesses, the imām and the people (making it a more communal event).18 Regarding the imām’s role, it seems clear that the state involvement is introduced within the punishment in order to underline the state as the legitimising element of the enactment of the ḥudūd. The different assessments of this element have already been outlined above with respect to the implementation of the ḥudūd outside the land of Islam. Needless to say, there is some difference of opinion as to the necessity and role of the imām in the enactment of the stoning punishment. The Shāfiʿīs generally do not require his presence (and hence he need not initiate the stoning), but consider it only a recommendation, as al-Nawawī (d. 676/1277) states: The iqāmat al-ḥudūd is for the imām or someone designated by him. If he orders that it be carried out, he can delegate someone else to perform it. It is not obligatory that the imām be present, whether the verdict was proven by witnesses or by testimony. Neither is it obligatory for witnesses to be present, if it is proven by testimony. However, it is recommended that they be present and that they initiate the stoning, and it is recommended that it be carried out in the presence of not less than four [other] people.19

It is clear that the Shāfiʿīs, if they recognise the ḥadīth of ʿAlī at all, recognise it as establishing a recommendation only, rather than an order. The enactment of the punishment is not invalidated by the absence of the witnesses or the imām. The enactment, however, must be ordered and delegated by the imām if he is not going to be present. The Ḥanafīs, as already outlined in the citation from Sarakhsī, require the presence of both the imām and the witnesses. The Mālikīs also seem unconcerned with the imām’s presence at the stoning (though they insist it is on his order).20 The Ḥanbalīs seem to hold that it is recommended that the imām be present, but not essential.21 Within the Imāmī tradition, one might expect this particular line of thought (the essential presence of the Imam) to be problematic, given the occultation. There is, however, very little explicit discussion of the problem in Imāmī fiqh works. For example, the Fiqh al-Riḍā, a text supposedly containing the legal opinions of the eighth Imam, ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā (d. 203/818), states: 268

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If the man confesses to the crime, then the first to stone him is the Imam, and then the people. If the accusation is upheld through testimony, then the first to stone him are the witnesses, then the Imam, and then the people.22

The wording here closely follows that found in ḥadīth reports related from Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765),23 and accords with the reported opinion of ʿAlī (the first Shīʿī Imam, obviously) recorded in Ibn Abī Shayba’s Muṣannaf. The impression given is that this Imam’s presence at the stoning, and his casting of the first stone are essential for a proper enactment of the stoning penalty. There is no obvious recognition here that an occluded Imam might be problematic, and there is no obvious indication that this function can be delegated when the Imam is absent. This is perhaps intentional throughout the Fiqh al-Riḍā and the ḥadīth literature, since it could be a giveaway that the text was not composed by the Imam. Works of Imāmī fiqh also seem, in the main, strangely unconcerned with the fact that the Imam who is supposed to initiate the stoning is absent. Take for example the passage from the well-commentated work Sharāʾiʿ al-Islām by al-Muḥaqqiq al-Ḥillī (d. 676/1277): The one to be stoned is buried up to his hips – the woman is buried up to her chest. If they flee, then they are brought back providing they were found guilty on the basis of testimony. If they were found guilty on the basis of confession, they are not brought back. It has been said that if they flee before a stone has hit them [even if they had been found guilty on the basis of confession], then they are brought back. It is obligatory for the witnesses to begin stoning, though if it was established by confession, the Imam should begin. The people must know so that they can gather to be present. It is recommended that a party (ṭāʾifa) be present. Others have said it is obligatory [that a group be present] on the basis of a Quranic verse.24 The least [number] in this group is one, though it is also said to be ten. Some moderns say three. The first [opinion] is the best. The stones must be small in order to speed up the suffering. It is said that no one who has been guilty of a ḥadd crime may take part in the stoning. This is discouraged. The person is buried once the stoning is over and this must not be neglected.25

Now the performance of the stoning described here is not so different from that found in Sunnī works of fiqh, and there is nothing obviously “Imāmī” in its formulation. The ritual resonance is clear, from the need for a congregation, to the idea that the body has been purified by the ḥadd penalty and is therefore deserving of the full burial ritual. This, interesting as it is, is not the focus of my attention here. My point is that the Imam’s absence (the ghayba) does not appear to have affected the juristic formulation of the regulations on the enactment of the ḥadd penalty of stoning. I return to this 269

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point below. It is also noteworthy that if people have been convicted on the basis of their own confession, then fleeing from the stoning is counted as a recanting of the confession, and hence an annulment of the conviction. There is a preliminary question concerning whether the intended referent of the term imām here is the Imam (hidden or not) from the descendants of the Prophet, or whether some other (temporal) ruler is implied. My own impression is that, not withstanding the lack of a succeeding prayer in most works of Imāmī fiqh, the intended referent here is the sinless Imam.26 The major piece of evidence is the reference in one version of this ruling to one who is convicted not by confession or by testimony, but by the “knowledge of the Imam” (bi-ʿilm al-Imām). This additional evidentiary route (of knowledge of the actions of individuals) is a quality which the sinless Imam may have, but is not available more generally. As al-Shaykh Muḥammad Ḥasan al-Najafī (d. 1266/1850) writes in his commentary on the above passage from Muḥaqqiq, and in reference to the two early fiqh works, al-Kāfī of Abū al-Salāḥ al-Ḥalabī (d. 474/1055–6)27 and Ghunyat al-Nuzūʿ of Ibn Zuhra al-Ḥalabī (d. 585/1189–90): If they are proven to have committed zinā [illicit sexual intercourse] by testimony or by the knowledge of the Imam (upon whom be peace), then they are buried. This is not the case if they are convicted on the basis of confession, because in such cases they must have the opportunity to flee if they wish.28

The insertion of the prayer after the mention of the Imam clearly indicates a sinless Imam is intended in these discussions. It is obvious here that conviction on the basis of the “Imam’s knowledge” holds the same level of judicial security as conviction through testimony. It is only confession which allows an escape (though there is debate over whether or not the person convicted on confession must receive the first blow before being permitted to flee and have his conviction annulled). Presuming that the referent here is the sinless Imam, one might expect a discussion of whether or not the implementation of the ḥudūd is possible when the Imam is absent. The issue is not, to my knowledge, explicitly answered at this point (though a presumed referral on the part of the jurists to the general discussion of iqāmat al-ḥudūd outlined above is possible). There were, however, two means of demonstrating that stoning was not entirely lapsed because of the absence of the Imam. The first is to claim that there is no requirement of the Imam’s presence at the enactment of the stoning penalty. This position was argued for most vehemently by Ṭūsī in his Khilāf 29 and in his Mabsūṭ.30 Ṭūsī argued that the ḥadīths employed by the Imāmī jurists to establish the obligatory nature of the Imam’s presence, and his initiation of the stoning, were weak, and therefore could 270

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only demonstrate recommendation (istiḥbāb). He also claimed that the statements of jurists previous to him (including Mufīd and Ibn Bābūya, d. 380/991) could be interpreted as indicating that the Imam should initiate stoning, rather than that he must. This tactic of downgrading the imperative to a recommendation was clearly not entirely convincing, though it did solve the problem caused by the occultation of the Imam. He did argue, however, that if the Imam were present, then he must be the one to initiate stoning. Ṭūsī also argued that the witnesses need not be present, on the basis of an analogy with the ḥudūd punishments from lashes (which need not be carried out by the witnesses). Another solution, favoured only by Ibn Junayd al-Iskāfī (d. 381/991, a controversial jurist who was vilified for supporting qiyās), was that the wāli of the criminal must be the first to cast a stone. The involvement of such a close relative of the criminal was, in a sense, an attempt to demonstrate the utterly despicable nature of the crime committed, and to inflict maximum shame upon the transgressor and his/ her family. The notion did not catch on, however, and Ibn Junayd is the only Imāmī credited with such an opinion.31 Many Imāmī jurists repeated the requirement of the Imam’s presence, but did not offer any solution to the issue of the enactment of the ḥudūd during his absence.32 The most popular solution to the problem emerged after Ṭūsī’s argument for a reduction in the requirement of the Imam’s presence to a recommendation. It involved the elevation of the judge (qāḍī or ḥākim) to the position whereby he, since he is standing in for the hidden Imam, can initiate the stoning. By doing this, of course, the Imāmī jurists were conceiving of a judicial process which is not divorced from, or independent of, the punishment, but one in which the judge takes a personal responsibility for carrying out his judgment. The commonplace (‘Western’) divisions between court and state functions (i.e. the independency of the judiciary) are blurred, just as the commonplace distinction between witnesses and prosecutors has been in the stipulation that the witnesses be the first to stone. In any case, the apparent requirement for the Imam to cast the first stone is circumvented by peppering the passages in the ḥudūd books with phrases such as al-Imām aw nāʾibuhu (“the Imam or his representative”),33 and al-Imām wa-man qāma maqāmahu (“the Imam and the one who stands in his place”) or al-Imām wa-man nasabahu (“the Imam and the person he has appointed”).34 Such phrases are meant to establish the ʿulamāʾ as the representatives of the hidden Imam, and therefore able to carry out his duties (amongst which was casting the first stone in adultery cases). Najafī, for example, glosses the phrase found in Muḥaqqiq’s Sharāʾiʿ and cited above as “The people must know so that they can gather to be present”: 271

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There is no ambiguity and no dispute that if the Imam or the one who stands in his place wishes to implement the ḥudūd, they must inform “the people” so that “they can gather to be present.”35

In this he is following the trend set by al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī (d. 276/1325) some centuries earlier when he writes: Issue: It is not permitted for anyone to implement the ḥudūd other than the Imam and the one who standing in his place. It is not permitted for anyone other than these two individuals to implement the ḥudūd in any circumstance [. . .] Once one has demonstrated this, then it is clearly permitted for the fuqahāʾ to enact the ḥudūd punishments.36

The majority Imāmī fiqh position is, then, that the judge must believe that when he judges, he is appointed by the hidden Imam and not the current ruling imām, however virtuous such a person may be. Furthermore, that since the Imam would be the judge if he were present, the judge is delegated by the Imam to take his place during the occultation. The result is that the implementation of the ḥudūd falls to him, and this will mean casting the first stone, should he convict.

Conclusions The close link between the enactment of violent punishments and state legitimacy is manifest, then, in both Sunnī and Imāmī legal traditions. The intersection between these juristic discourses and practical, day-to-day, judging (in the past or the present) seems to me tangential. The juristic theory aims, among other things, to use the doctrine of the ḥudūd punishments as an intellectual puzzle, through which issues of state legitimacy might be explored, and (on occasions) existing conceptions challenged. My argument here has been that the legal conceptions of state involvement in violence are highly ritualistic, and that this ritualism serves both religious and more overtly political purposes. This is indicated not only by the detailed stipulations of the punishment’s enactment (the size of stone, the composition of the whip etc.), but more fundamentally by the idea that the victim in the ḥudūd crimes is God rather than individuals, and the performance of the ḥudūd is a form of expiation (of the individual and of the community). In order to achieve this, the state (through the imām/ Imam or his local representative) acts in a sacerdotal role, with exclusive rights to perform the ḥudūd in a manner which will right the wrong which has been committed. Agreeably, a more comprehensive examination of the ḥudūd section of fiqh works might enable us to bring forth a more nuanced picture – but the basic contours of the debates appear well estab272

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lished. For the Imāmīs, these debates were particularly keenly pursued. Iqāmat al-ḥudūd was one element in the overall theoretical framework through which the law might operate and justice might be distributed. In these senses, the term ‘criminal law’ does not do justice to the penitentiary function of the ḥudūd punishments. Since the disruption of a crime such as adultery is considered at a community level, the enactment of violent restitution must naturally be public, political and with extensive state sanction and involvement.

Notes 1. See Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 53–65, and the references therein. 2. Robert Gleave, “Crimes against God and Violent Punishment in al-Fatawa al-Alamgiriyya,” in Religion and Violence in South Asia, ed. J. Hinnells and R. King (London: Routledge, 2007), 83–106. 3. Arab. al-Darb – a reference to Darb al-Ḥadath, the pass leading to Byzantine lands at Adata. 4. Reading ḥadd for aḥad 5. Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī, K. al-Umm (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1403/1983), 7:374. 6. Another reason for waiting until the individual returns to the land of Islam includes the practical idea that implementing the ḥudūd may boost support for the enemy. This sentiment is found in the ḥadīth “One of our shaykhs informs us from Makḥūl from Zayd b. Thābit, who said, ‘Do not implement the ḥudūd in the land of war, for fear that its people might ally themselves with the enemy, and in this all the ḥudūd are the same.’ Cited in al-Shāfiʿī, al-Umm, 7:375. 7. Cited in Muwaffaq al-Dīn Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1972), 10:536. 8. Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, 10:537. 9. Reading ḥarb for ḥubb. 10. Saḥnūn b. Saʿd al-Tanukhī, al-Mudawwana (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 6:291. Emphasis added. 11. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, al-Nihāya (Qumm: Intishārāt-i Quds-i Muḥammadī, n.d.), 300. 12. It may be that the Ṭūsī’s phrase qatl al-nufūs represents a tightening up of the fiqh from the rather less specific used by al-Shaykh al-Mufīd, al-Muqniʿa (Qumm: Muʾassasat al-Nashr al-Islāmiyya, 1410/[1989 or 1990]), 810–11 (lā taqiyya fī l-dimāʾ). 13. Ibn Idrīs al-Ḥillī, al-Sarāʾir (Qumm: Muʾassasat al-Nashr al-Islāmiyya, 1410/[1989 or 1990]), 2:24–5. 14. Mufīd, al-Muqniʿa, 781. 273

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15. There is some disagreement as to whether, in the latter case, the Imam immediately follows the witnesses. See below. 16. ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, al-Muṣannaf, ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Azharī (Beirut: Manshūrāt Muḥammad ʿAtī Bayḍūn, 2000), 7:327. 17. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Sarakhsī, al-Mabsūṭ (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1409/1989), 9:51. 18. A survey of variants of the saying indicates similar confusion. ʿAlī’s statement is also found in the early Musnad Ibn al-Jaʿd, ed. ʿĀmir Aḥmad Ḥaydar (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿIlmiyya, 1417/1996), 46. However, the statement here lacks the sirr/ʿalāniyya distinction, and gives the order that stoning for cases proven by testimony is enacted by the witnesses, the imām and the people, while stoning for cases proven by pregnancy or confession is by the imām and the people. Ibn Abī Shayba also records a similar ḥadīth from ʿAlī with the mention of the sirr/ʿalāniyya distinction. See idem, al-Muṣannaf (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1409/1989), 6:560. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr cites the ḥadīth close to that in Ṣanʿānī. See Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Tamhīd, ed. Muṣṭafā b. Aḥmad al-ʿAlawī and Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Kabīr al-Bakrī (Rabat: Wizārat ʿUmūm al-Awqāf wa-l-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, 1387/1968), 9:80. The Zaydī Aḥmad al-Murtaḍā (d. 840/1436–7) cites ʿAlī as saying that sirr stoning is for cases proven by witnesses (with the order witnesses, imām, people), whileʿalāniyya stoning is by confession (with the order imām, people). See idem, Sharḥ al-Azhar, ed. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Jandārī (Sanʿā: Maṭbaʿat Ghamḍān, n.d.), 4:345. Ibn Qudāma has no reference to the sirr/ʿalāniyya distinction, though he does outline the order for confession (imām, people) and testimony (witnesses, people). See idem, al-Mughnī, 10:124 (referring to Abū Ḥanīfa’s opinion). Ibn Rushd mentions the ḥadīth and outlines the following parameters: sirr stoning is by confession (imām, people) and ʿalāniyya stoning by testimony (witnesses, imām, people). See Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat alMujtahid, ed. Khālid al-ʿAṭṭār (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1415/1995), 2:359. 19. Abu Zakariyyā Yaḥyā al-Nawawī, Rawḍat al-Ṭālibīn, ed. ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd and ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿarrad (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992), 7:316. 20. Saḥnūn, al-Mudawwana, 6:234. 21. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Qudāma, al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 10:138. 22. Fiqh al-Riḍā (Mashhad: al-Muʾtamar al-ʿĀlamī li-l-Imām Riḍā, 1406/[1985 or 1986]), 309. 23. Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, ed. ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī (Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya, 1363sh/[1983–4]), 7:174 (#3); Ibn Bābūya, Man lā yaḥḍuruhu al-Faqīh, ed. ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī (Qumm: Muʾassat al-Nashr al-Islāmiyya, n.d.), 4:28 (#5009); al-Ṭūsī, Tahdhīb al-Aḥkām, ed. Ḥasan al-Mūsawī (Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya, 1364sh/ [1985–86]), 10:34 (#114). 24. See Q24:2: “Let a party of believers witness their punishment.” 274

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25. Al-Muḥaqqiq al-Ḥillī, Sharāʾiʿ al-Islām, ed. Ṣādiq al-Shīrāzī (Tehran: Intishārāt-i Istiqlāl, 1409/[1988 or 1989]), 4:939. 26. On this question generally, see Wilferd Madelung, “A Treatise of the Sharīf al-Murtaḍā on the Legality of Working for the Government (Masʾala fī l-ʿamal maʿa l-sulṭān),” BSOAS 43.1 (1980), 18–31; Norman Calder, “Legitimacy and Accommodation in Safavid Iran,” Iran 25 (1987), 91–105; Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 252–306; Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 110–24. 27. Abū al-Salāḥ al-Ḥalabī, al-Kāfī fīʾl-fiqh, ed. Riḍā Ustādī (Isfahan: Maktabat al-Imām Amīr al-Muʾminīn, n.d.), 406–7. 28. Muḥammad Ḥasan b. Bāqir al-Najafī, Jawāhir al-Kalām, ed. ʿAbbās al-Qūchānī (Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya, 1365sh/[1986 or 1987]), 41:348. 29. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, al-Khilāf (Qumm: Muʾassasat al-Nashr al-Islāmiyya, 1407/[1987 or 1988]), 5:374–7. 30. Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, al-Mabsūṭ fī l-fiqh al-Imāmī, ed. Muḥammad Taqī al-Kashfī (Tehran: al-Maktaba al-Murtaḍawiyya, 1387/[1967]), 7:9. 31. Al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī, Mukhtalaf al-Shīʿa (Qumm: Muʾassasat al-Nashr al-Islāmiyya, 1412–20/[1991–9]), 9:168. 32. Al-ʿAllāma says this is the case with Mufīd, ʿAlī b. Bābīya, Ibn Barrāj amd Ibn Idrīs. See ibid., 9:167. 33. See, e.g., Muḥammad b. Makkī al-Shahīd al-Awwal, al-Durūs al-sharʿiyya fī l-fiqh al-Imāmiyya (Qumm: Muʾassasat al-Nashr al-Islāmiyya, 1412–/ [1991–]), 2:53. 34. Al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī, Muntahā al-Maṭlab (Mashhad: Muʾassasat al-Ṭabʿ wa-l-Nashr fī l-Āstāna al-Raḍawiyya al-Muqaddasa, 1412/[1991 or 1992]), 2:993. 35. Najafī, Jawāhir, 41:353. 36. Al-ʿAllāma al-Ḥillī, Muntahā, 2:993.

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13

Violence in Islamic societies through the eyes of non-Muslim travellers: Morocco in the 19th and early 20th centuries Manuela Marín

The travellers The purpose of this chapter is to examine the work of Spanish travellers to Morocco during the 19th and early 20th centuries and to analyse their views on the “public display of violence”. Thus it will deal with materials generated outside Muslim societies, and with a period of history marked by the European threat towards Morocco, which finally lost its independence at the beginning of the 20th century and became a “protectorate” of France and Spain in 1912. Travel accounts are never objective, although many travellers pretend eagerly to be exact in their descriptions and fair in their opinions. The Spanish travellers examined here are no exception to this rule, and their views on Morocco and the Moroccan ways of life are heavily influenced by the circumstances of their time and by their personal attitudes. As will be shown later, their descriptions of public violence derive, consciously or unconsciously, from a frame of mind they all share: violence is at the core of Moroccan society, inasmuch as it is a Muslim society. Public display of violence is practised in Morocco in a ruthless and chaotic way, in open contrast to the organized control of violence found in Western societies. This and other similar arguments were frequently used during the 19th century to justify Spanish intervention in Moroccan politics and by those who called for colonial action, military or not, against this country.1 Before going into the details of the travel narratives selected in this occasion, it is perhaps necessary to present the travellers themselves. There exists a fairly large literature on Morocco written in Spanish during the period under consideration, and a sizable part of it was the work of travellers.2 Not many of them, however, are known outside the circles of 276

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specialists, and very few of their works have been reprinted since their first publication. In fact, some of these authors are quite unknown, and all the information we have on them is limited to their names and the titles of their works. This is the case of Tomás de Comín and Francisco de Urrestarazu. In 1822, the former spent six months in Tangiers, and he wrote his impressions on Morocco in the form of letters addressed to Manuel José Quintana (1772–1857), the well-known poet and liberal politician. At the time of his stay in Tangiers, Comín was living in the house of the Spanish consul, and he probably drew his data from oral accounts circulating among the foreigners living in the city. He claims, however, that his information on the Tafilalet was given to him by a native of the Rif who had worked in this southern region of Morocco, and he may have had access to other local informants.3 For his part, Urrestarazu presents himself on the front cover of his book as a “teacher of languages”, who was known in Morocco as “Taleb Sidi Abd-el-Kader-Ben-Edchilali”.4 In the short introduction to his Viajes por Marruecos, Urrestarazu says that he has spent a part of his life in Morocco, has attended religious ceremonies and processions, weddings, funerals, etc., and has visited mosques and public baths. “Here I shall limit myself to tell in a clear and simple way what I have seen, learnt and even practised for some years now”, he asserts, but without explaining in what capacity he was living in Morocco during the reign of Hasan I (1873–94).5 In contrast to these two nearly anonymous authors, the best-known of the eleven travellers I have chosen to present here is, undoubtedly, Domingo Badía y Leblich (1767–1818), who also happens to be the earliest of all of them. It is not possible to go here into the details of his very complex life story, which has attracted the attention of many scholars.6 For the present purposes, it will suffice to note that Badía spent two years (1803–5) in Morocco under the pretence of being an Oriental Arab called ʿAlī Bey al-ʿAbbāsī. Badía was in fact a political agent of the then Spanish Prime Minister, Manuel Godoy, and his mission was to conspire against the sulṭān (Mawlāy Sulaymān, r. 1794–1822) and make alliances with rebel tribes.7 After leaving Morocco, expelled from the country by the sulṭān, Badía went to Egypt, Arabia, and Syria. Back in Europe, he published his travel account in French, in 1814; a Spanish version appeared in 1836, after Badía’s death in Damascus in obscure circumstances.8 Badía’s mission as a political agent was also to obtain as much information as possible on the countries he visited, Morocco in the first place. Other travellers followed him in this path, followed by many European visitors to the Muslim world during the same period. Joaquín Gatell 277

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(1826–79), who had studied Arabic in London, arrived in Morocco in 1861, and entered into the service of Mawlāy Muḥammad (r. 1859–73), who was trying to modernize his army and was looking for foreign army officers for this purpose.9 Gatell, pretending to be a Muslim and an artillery expert, spent some time in the Moroccan army. Afterwards he gave up his commission and travelled to the southern parts of the country, disguised as a medical doctor. Although the account of his travels is full of interesting remarks, many of them of an ethnological nature, its primary aim was to discredit the Moroccan administration and army and to point out the best strategies for the conquest of the country.10 This was also the concern of Julio Cervera Baviera (1854–1927),11 an engineer and army officer who was in north-western Morocco from September to December 1884, and of José Álvarez Cabrera, another army officer, who was a member of the Spanish military mission in Morocco and wrote a book on his experiences there, La guerra en África (apuntes militares sobre el imperio de Marruecos), published in 1893.12 Álvarez Cabrera was convinced that the Spanish army would have to fight on Moroccan soil and his book is, in fact, a guide to the military resources of Morocco and to the necessary means to conquer it.13 Finally, Teodoro Fernández de Cuevas, a member of the garrison in Melilla, where he stayed from 1902 to 1906, did some travelling in the neighbouring Moroccan regions and published his memories of these years in 1907.14 Like Cervera and many other Spanish officers of this period, Fernández de Cuevas had previous experience of colonial war in Cuba and the Philippines, the last remains of the Spanish imperial past, lost in 1898.15 Frustrated by the defeat in the Pacific and the Caribbean, the Spanish army hoped to find in Morocco a necessary outlet for the dissatisfaction and discontent prevalent among its officers. Journalists frequently went to Morocco in the wake of the army and of diplomatic embassies. Some of them, like José Boada and Rodrigo Soriano, afterwards wrote complete accounts of their travels. Both Boada and Soriano were present in the so-called “war of Margallo” in 1893, a short but intensely fought encounter between the Melilla garrison and Moroccans from the surrounding areas, in which the Spanish general, García Margallo, was killed. After an agreement was reached to suspend the hostilities, Boada and Soriano followed General Martínez Campos to Marrakech, where he was sent as an ambassador to the sulṭān.16 The narrative of these journalists thus combines the description of army encounters with that of their journey to the Moroccan capital of this time. But it has to be noted that Boada had made an earlier trip to Morocco, in 1889, also recorded in his book.17 In this first journey, Boada was part of a commercial enterprise headed by some of the most active Catalan capitalists 278

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of his time. It is easy to identify, in all these motivations for travelling to Morocco, the Spanish colonial network at work.18 The last two travellers in this selection are of a very different character, and they can not be classified into the previous categories. Juan Bautista López Meléndez was an army officer who, in 1831, took part in the liberal revolt of Vejer (Cádiz) against the absolutist régime of King Ferdinand VII. The rebels were defeated and López and some of his comrades took refuge in Morocco. To avoid being sent back to Spain, where their fate would have been to be condemned to death, López and others converted to Islam and stayed in Morocco as renegades in the service of the sulṭān. Eventually, however, they made their escape to France.19 López’s account of his months as a renegade was apparently dictated to the novelist Henriette Arnaud, who published it in French, and shortly after, a Spanish version appeared in Paris.20 It is not easy to discern, in this highly colourful narrative, which are the real events as told by López, and which is the contribution of Arnaud (quite evident in several fantastic stories added to the main argument), but the text is still valid as a testimony of how Moroccan society was being presented to the French and Spanish public opinion. On the other hand, several events recorded in López’s account are similarly described in the book published by another Spanish renegade living in Morocco, due to analogous reasons.21 Finally, José María de Murga, a Basque of noble descent, left the Spanish army in 1854 and travelled through Europe and, from 1863 onwards, through Morocco. As others before and after him, he adopted an Arabic name (“el Hach Mohamed El Bagdadi”, as is written in his book) and probably converted to Islam in order to make easier his travelling around the country. In his book Recuerdos marroquíes he asserts having been a renegade, but the sincerity of his conversion is to be doubted.22 Murga, in contrast with the majority of the travellers of this period, was not an army officer, spy, political agent, or anything related to the colonial enterprise, nor was he a collector of data on the country he visited. He was simply fascinated by some of its characteristics – and also repelled by others. He did not write a real ‘travel account’, but a collection of memories, impressions, legends, historical digressions, etc., put together in a rather chaotic way, but always marked by his forceful personality. 23

The narratives of violence in Spanish travellers’ accounts Travellers’ remarks on the public display of violence mostly refer to the administration of justice and the cruel penalties applied to offenders.24 Badía explains that penal justice corresponds to the kaid (qāʾid). He presents a 279

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picture of the proceedings in the qāʾid’s court as something unruly and chaotic: “sometimes the qāʾid and the litigants begin to speak or rather to shout all together [. . .] until the soldiers who are always on guard behind the parties start to beat them in order to impose silence; then the qāʾid gives his ruling and in this very moment the litigants are thrown out of the court by the soldiers, who go on beating them”.25 In this ambience of violence and disorder, justice is presented as the barbarous consequence of the qāʾid’s caprice. The decisions taken by him are not based on any code, but on his personal opinion, and they are implemented through the power of arms. Badía claims to have been deeply disturbed by an episode of the qāʾid’s justice that he happened to witness. A young man had accused another of scratching his face. The defendant was immediately brought before the qāʾid and he was condemned to a penalty of thirty-one lashes. “He was put on the earth by four soldiers, who brought a stick with a slip-knot to tie his feet. Then a soldier beat 31 times the condemned’s soles, with great strength and using a double rope covered with pitch. Once the operation was finished, the soldiers expelled the claimant in a similar way, beating him all the time.”26 The reader would conclude, from Badía’s description, that going to the qāʾid’s court was equally dangerous for the two parties in conflict, and that the violence inherent in the qāʾid’s justice permeated all the steps in the proceedings: there are no witnesses to the claimant’s accusation, no documents to be produced, and no archives. The qāʾid only rules, Badía asserts, according to his good sense and his knowledge of some Qurʾānic precepts. Is there any difference from the qāḍī’s justice? Not much, says Badía. The qāḍī’s court is not as tumultuous as the qāʾid’s, but it is equally lacking in guarantees for people who resort to it. The scene in which a man is subjected to an atrocious lashing, preferably on his soles, is a classic in many travel accounts. Badía claims to have been a witness to the public display of this penalty, something that not all the travellers do. In fact, one has the impression, reading other accounts, that many originated from previous narrations, in hearsay, or in outright invention. The renegade López, or perhaps the French novelist who put his experiences into written form, offers a gruesome tale of how a man was given four hundred lashes: There came the executioner, who was a Jew with bleary eyes and the most atrocious aspect. He was carrying a whip made from leather strips twisted together and greased. Presently he began to beat the man, first his back, then his legs and finally his feet. It was something terrible to see, and while I was feeling how my hair stood on end, I thought I could smell the blood running over the sand. The wretched prisoner writhed in pain and shouted in the most frightful way, while the impavid qāʾid counted the number of lashes. At last, the victim stopped 280

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shouting, having deeply fainted, and the punishment came to a halt. The executioner interrupted his work and two big tubs with water were brought, to be poured over the victim’s members, bloody and torn. I thought that the whole thing was finished, but when the patient recovered his senses, the executioner went back to his task, as did the qāʾid, until the 400 lashes were administered. Pale and stiff as a corpse, the man was carried to the place were the rest of the prisoners were, without having received any assistance.27

The imaginative author of this text is trying to capture his reader’s attention by conjuring a set of morbid elements: pain, blood, cruelty and brutality, combined with the indifference of the torturers and their disdain for human life – a strong mixture of low literary quality, but bearing an effective message about the society it is supposedly describing. More subdued is the approach to this subject by José María de Murga. He also describes with great detail the kind of whip used for the punishment of delinquents, and even explains how, if the culprit is a woman, her body is introduced in a large basket, carried by soldiers, in such a way that only her feet are visible and ready to receive the established penalty. Renegades, adds Murga, are liable to be condemned to lashing when they break the Ramaḍān fast in public. They are then immediately brought to the qāḍī, who usually condemns them to a penalty of two hundred or three hundred lashes. In his characteristic way, Murga refrains from stressing the most revolting aspects of this kind of punishment. On the contrary, he introduces an element of relativism and a pinch of irony into his final commentary: Lashing is a very common fact of life in Morocco, and everybody is subjected to this treatment, if the case requires it, from the greatest potentates to the poorest devils. All receive this punishment with total stoicism, and nobody feels humiliated by it, no matter how many lashes are administered. The now Minister of War, before being appointed to this high position, was the paymaster of the regular army. He apparently did such a bad job in this capacity that complaints reached the sulṭān, who ordered that in his own presence, the very victims of the man’s operations should act as executioners of his decree of lashing. Three months later, this same man was appointed to the elevated position he now enjoys.28

Western observers had always been both fascinated and repelled by a specific trait of Islamic penal law, namely, amputation of hands or feet. Spanish travellers share this attitude with others and, as a result, we have several detailed descriptions in which, through the horror and aversion depicted, one can detect the mixed feelings of the narrator, who is unable to restrain his pen from minutely reporting the most sinister aspects of the whole affair. This is the very realistic picture given by Tomás de Comín: 281

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Once the culprit is strongly tied, one of the assistants secures him by his thumb, while others pull strongly in the opposite direction and the executioner does his job with a big knife. This is done slowly, because both the instrument and the executioner are rough, but when the bone is finally divided, the painful action is finished by way of chopping down the patient’s wrist or ankle, in the same way that a branch is chopped down from a tree. What remains of the member is introduced into a pot of boiling pitch and kept there until it is cauterized and nearly charred.29

The added touch of cruelty in Comín’s description, that is, the slowness caused by the executioner’s unskillfulness and the bluntness of his weapon, is designed to impress in his readers’ minds the evil inherent in this way of applying severe penalties; not only does the punishment itself defy the Western understanding of justice, but its implementation is abhorrent. Describing the same situation, López reaches the same conclusions by different means. Here the scene is described as a flash striking the observer’s mind. While in Fez, in the service of the sulṭān’s army, López witnessed the punishment of a thief in the monarch’s palace. Right after the sentence was given, I could not imagine that its implementation was immediate. But in less than five minutes, all was done in our presence and that of the judges. A pot of boiling pitch and a block were brought. The executioner got hold of the culprit’s hand, put it on the block and cut it swiftly, instantly introducing the bloody wrist into the pot. Everything happened in less time that is needed to tell the story. Somehow I was an involuntary witness to this dreadful scene, because I was unable to withdraw from the place.30

Dismemberment is one of the worst nightmares for human beings, and more so when it is done to a living person. That Islamic law envisaged hand and foot amputations for certain offences was perceived in the 19th century as a crime against human dignity, and therefore as clear evidence of the backwardness of Islamic societies (obviously, the same happens today when similar images, from countries where these laws are implemented, are distributed through the media). The thrilling effect of these descriptions for the audience for whom they were meant does not need to be emphasized. When Urrestarazu explains31 that the severed members were publicly displayed so that they could serve as a warning example to wouldbe delinquents, a whole theatre of horrors is offered to the Western reader. Moroccan cities become, in this representation, the locale of public torture and dismemberment, its streets and open spaces populated by lumps of human meat.32 As has been observed, lacerated and tortured human bodies so exposed conveyed an explicit message of absolute power.33 Nothing, however, could be compared to the public display of heads. Beheading has a long history, in which Islamic societies are only a part of a 282

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long tradition covering many different cultures over the world.34 Needless to say, in Spain as in other Western countries of the period, the death penalty was in force in the 19th century, with a variety of means to achieve it – beheading was a favourite in France, as is well known. Joaquín Gatell observed the difference between a European and a Moroccan execution: In Europe, a capital execution always causes some commotion and sensation [. . .] streets, roofs and crossroads are full of people wishing to give a compassionate look to the wretched convict [. . .]. What happens in Morocco is completely different. Today, only five persons accompanied Sidi Abd El-Kader Bel Hassan to his execution place, two of them being soldiers. The convict was an old man with a white beard, bareheaded and bald, who was marching towards eternity with more ease than his executioners [. . .] People showed the utmost indifference to his predicament [. . .] Here people cannot care less for a person’s death, although all love life. Do not think that here people are beheaded when they are alive [. . .] this is only done after killing the condemned by a shot in the neck. It was necessary, in the case of Sidi Abd El-Kader, to shoot him twice and even then he was still alive, but there were not any more guns, and he was beheaded although he was still breathing [. . .] After the head, his hands were also cut off, and everything was sent to Marrakech.35

The man whose execution was witnessed by Gatell was a rebel against the sulṭān. Thus the most significant remains of his body, head and hands, were sent to the capital city of Morocco, to be publicly displayed. As a political weapon this practice was certainly very efficient, as the physical elimination of the enemy was followed by a public display of his most recognizable member, the severed head.36 Living in Fez, López and his fellow renegades were witnesses to the arrival of the victorious sulṭān’s army, which had defeated a revolt against him. We followed the crowd to the palace. When we arrived in the Main Square, I saw about thirty cavalrymen, carrying guns [. . .]. On each bayonet there was a livid and bloody human head, and the crowd rushed to look at these horrible trophies, shouting with joy and making furious gestures. Nothing more atrocious could be seen than this line of heads from which blood was still dripping [. . .] Then the soldiers took out their swords and used them to disentangle the heads from the bayonets. As the heads were falling to earth, a Moor took them by the hair and showed them to the crowd for one last time, before introducing them into a sack.37

The presence of the crowd is crucial in this account: it shows how the cruel behaviour of the ruler corresponds to the needs of his subjects, always ready to participate in these bloody performances. It can be argued, however, that López’s narrative is mediated by his spokeswoman, the 283

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French novelist Henriette Arnaud, and that the scene described above could have sprung from her imagination. But the image of heads on bayonets appears also in the diaries of Joaquín Gatell, who, as has been noted, was an officer in the sulṭān’s army and stayed in Morocco much longer than did López. Describing the defeat suffered by the Rahamena (Rḥāmna) tribes near Marrakech, Gatell observes that the sulṭān’s soldiers were carrying rebels’ heads, still bleeding, on their bayonets while parading before the sulṭān.38 These soldiers had been promised ten mithqāls for each head they got, explains Gatell, and they were naturally eager to obtain as much cash as possible from their military exploits. That the fighting spirit of the soldiers needed to be stimulated by a promise of money is a recurrent topic in several travel narratives. Álvarez Cabrera, at the end of the 19th century, insists on it: “Before an armed encounter, it is announced in the camp that ten ducats (a duro) will be paid for every human head presented to the chief, and five for every living prisoner.”39 Here the emphasis is put on the different quantities of money paid, so that a head is valued twice as much as a living person. As a consequence, prisoners of war would rarely if ever survive their capture, their heads being much more valuable than their lives. On the other hand, paying extra money for this kind of trophy meant that Moroccan soldiers did not fight unselfishly for their country or king, contrary to what was supposedly the attitude of Western armies.40 As in the case of amputated members, public display of rebels’ heads was the final act in a whole process of armed and political violence. According to Álvarez Cabrera, in the aftermath of a battle, these spoils [the heads] are presented to the agá or chief of the battalion, who recounts them impassively and orders a heap to be made with them. On the top of it is placed the head of the most important person from the defeated kabila [qabīla]. The chief then pays the price of the heads to those who brought them, not without applying some discount to his own advantage. Frequently the prisoners are obliged to go repeatedly around this macabre monument. Heads are preserved with salt and put in sacks to be sent to different cities, where they would be hung over the main gates for some days.41

For those who could doubt the credibility of these reports, Álvarez Cabrera adds his own experience: “A few months ago, while we were in Rabat in charge of the military mission to the sulṭān, we saw the arrival of a convoy with 50 human heads, severed from the Aits Shujman kabila, to be hung on cities’ gates.”42 The ultimate destiny of rebels’ heads was to preside over the ceremonial entrance to the city, the public gate that gave entry to the sulṭān’s territory, protected the inhabitants of the city and carried the architectonic and epigraphic marks of the sulṭān’s power. Equally symbolic was, in Marrakech, 284

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the open space still known as the Jāmaʿ al-Fnā (jāmiʿ al-fanāʾ), where executions took place. Gatell describes how the heads of the executed or slain rebels were hung on the ruins of the mosque to which the square owes its name, adding that “the head of Gileli Rugui, the hero of the Gharb revolt, has been there for nine months. All these human remains have tragically soiled the walls of the mosque.”43 When Fernández de Cuevas, in the first years of the 20th century, visited the fortress of Saida, in Algerian territory, he found there the prisoners taken during the last episode of the revolt of Cheikh Bouamama (Bū ʿAmāma). Having asked what their keepers planned to do with them, his guide told Cuevas, “as if it were the most natural thing in the world: we’ll gouge their eyes out with a hot iron.”44 Cuevas, naturally horrified, ran away from the place. His is the only testimony, among the Spanish travellers here quoted, of this kind of treatment towards prisoners of war, intended to show, in a most violent way, the power of the sulṭān over his subjects’ bodies. Observing violence in public Moroccan life, Spanish travellers concentrated their attention, as we just have seen, on the political, military and judicial arenas. Individual violence is recorded much less frequently, and one of the authors even remarks that “when Moroccans quarrel among themselves, it is very rare that they resort to using knives, although they commonly carry these and other treacherous weapons”.45 There are, however, two categories of the Moroccan population that travellers present as permanently subjected to violence by the rest of society: Jews and slaves. Jews, Comín informs us, who dare to abandon their own quarters, will be insulted and obliged to walk barefoot in any weather.46 The discrimination suffered by Jews is exemplified by several travellers through a scene in which a Muslim boy physically attacks an old Jew who has done nothing to deserve this treatment, and who reacts to it in the mildest possible way. The same story is told, with different details, by Badía, Boada and Soriano.47 The public character of these attacks and the inequality between the parties contribute to impressing on the reader the idea of the general lack of justice in Moroccan society. On the other hand, these authors, as others who deal with the presence of Jews in Morocco, are not particularly sympathetic towards Jews, who are usually depicted in a very unfavourable light.48 But their mistreatment is emphasized to show the dysfunctions prevalent in Morocco, where an old man could be attacked by a young boy with the general approval of the population. As for slaves, the very fact of their being the property of another person was considered enough to make them a permanent and public example of 285

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violence. Some travellers witnessed public sales of slaves, and they were especially shocked by the sale of women; the most notable descriptions of these sales are given by Cervera and Boada.49 There is not place enough here for a careful examination of these texts, which are mainly a reflection of the personal approach to gender relationships of their authors, themselves the product of a social class in which sexuality was never publicly displayed. Thus they found it deeply offensive that women could be examined in a market to check their physical qualities, but they appreciated it as one of the great moments of their travels to be able to glance at these same women in their owners’ homes.

Conclusions As has already been pointed out, the dominant and recurring theme in the accounts of our travellers is that violence in Morocco was exercised and displayed publicly by the same administration that was responsible for taking care of its subjects’ well-being. At the core of the Moroccan state, travellers see the despot, the sulṭān, as a ruler with absolute power and authority, usually exercised in the most arbitrary way. For Badía, Morocco is a country of slaves, where only birds are really free.50 Despotism pervades the administration, the army, the legal system, and even personal relationships, which are dominated by the absolute power of one of the parts over the other: master and slave, Muslim and Jew, man and woman. The open display of violence as described by these Spanish travellers bears witness to the absence of a social order based upon justice and freedom. There are no legal codes, they say, and so criminals and innocents are punished cruelly. The sulṭān has no real legitimacy for his rule, and is therefore obliged to inspire terror in his enemies and fear in his friends. This is, they conclude, a sick society and a wretched country, where chaos and injustice prevail, where men are capable of the most extreme acts of cruelty and remain indifferent and impassive. All this is hardly original, and pertains to the general trends of European colonial literature. But Spain was deeply involved in Moroccan affairs during the 19th century and several ‘Moroccan wars’ were fought by the Spanish army before and after the establishment of the Protectorate in 1912. This explains, perhaps, the prevalence of the perception of violence as an essential character of Morocco.51 A text by Badía exemplifies this attitude, and because it is situated at the beginning of his narrative it naturally leaves a profound impact on the reader’s mind. Newly arrived in Tangiers, Badía finds himself in the middle of the mawlid celebrations, a time, he says, were circumcisions are usually 286

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performed. The ceremony is described with great detail and accuracy. Here are some excerpts from a very long text: “While music was played noisily, the boys got up at the same time, shouting terribly, and attracting the victim’s attention to the roof of the chapel [. . .] The uproar of the boys and the music hindered me from hearing the victims’ screams, although I was beside them, but their gestures were a clear manifestation of pain [. . .] There were there, also, many soldiers and beduins, who surprised me by the way in which they were using their very long guns, as they were shooting at each other’s at the legs, as a show of friendship.”52 As the opening scene of a Moroccan travel account, this text conveys to the reader the impression of institutionalized violence against the younger members of Moroccan society, carried on among crowds, noise, barbarous music, and soldiers’ gunshots. Followed by a minute description of the physical mutilation suffered by the boys, the message of Badía is unmistakable. Circumcision, the rite of passage marking the entry of young boys into the community of Muslims, is an aggressive ceremony, imposed only on men. In Badía’s description, to become a Muslim (and he insinuates that he himself has been circumcised) it is necessary to suffer physical violence, and to do so publicly. No wonder, then, that Moroccans, as the Muslims they are, will continue to practise violence against others throughout their lives.

Notes 1. See V. Morales Lezcano, El colonialismo hispano-francés en Marruecos, 1898–1927 (Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores, 1976); A. Pedraz Marcos, Quimeras de África. La Sociedad Española de Africanistas y Colonistas. El colonialismo español de finales del siglo XIX (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 2000); C.R. Pennell, Morocco Since 1830: a History (London: Hurst and Co., 2000); J. Ramiro de la Mata, Origen y dinámica del colonialismo español en Marruecos (Ceuta: Archivo Central, 2001). 2. A preliminary account of Spanish travel literature on Morocco can be found in M. Marín, “Un encuentro colonial: viajeros españoles en Marruecos (1860–1912),” Hispania 56 (1996), 93–114. 3. Tomás de Comín, Ligera ojeada o breve idea del imperio de Marruecos en 1822. Cartas a D. Manuel José Quintana (Barcelona: J. F. Piferrer, 1825, repr. Madrid: Ediciones Hiperión, 1995). 4. Francisco de Urrestarazu, Viajes por Marruecos. Descripción geográfica e histórica, usos, costumbres, vida pública y privada, religión, ceremonias, etc., de las diferentes razas o familias que pueblan el imperio por el profesor de idiomas . . . conocido en aquel país por Taleb Sidi Abd-el-Kader-benEdchilali (Madrid: n.d.). 287

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5. Urrestarazu was the author of two other books relating to Morocco and the Arabs: Los árabes: descripción geográfica e histórica de la Arabia (Madrid: [R. Labajos, 1880]), and Historia general del Imperio de Marruecos, desde los tiempos más remotos hasta nuestros días (Madrid: n.d., 1881). According to R. Ricard, the “travels” of Urrestarazu were published in 1877. See his “Contribution à l’étude du mouvement africaniste en Espagne de 1860 à 1912,” Bulletin Hispanique 48 (1946), 247–61. The copy I have used does not have any date. 6. See, for instance, J. Chelhod, “Un nouvel éclairage sur la mission et la mort d’Ali Bey,” SI 80 (1994), 165–8; Ali Bei: un pelegrí català per terres de l’Islam (exhibition catalogue, Barcelona 1996); Ali Bey en Marruecos: tragedia, ed. C. C. García Valdés and M. McGaha (Pamplona: EUNSA, 1999); J. Uxó Palasí, “Ali Bey el Abbasi, un informador español en el mundo árabe,” Revista de Historia Militar 2005 (numéro extraordinario 3), 35–57; Patricia Almarcegui, Alí Bey y los viajeros europeos a Oriente (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2007). 7. On this period, see M. Mansour, Morocco in the Reign of Mawlay Sulayman (Wisbech: Middle East and North African Studies Press, 1988). 8. An interesting report on the last days of Badía is to be found in W. S. Rzewuski, Impressions d’Orient et d’Arabie. Un cavalier polonais chez les bédouins, 1817–1819, ed. B. Lizet, F. Aubaile-Sallenave, P. Daszkiewicz and A.-E. Wolf (Paris: Corti, 2002). Here I have used Viajes por Marruecos, ed. S. Barberá (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1985). An English translation of Badía’s travels was published in 1816, and has been reprinted in 1970 and 1993. 9. More about Gatell in M. Marín, “The Image of Morocco in Three 19th Century Spanish Travellers,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 10 (1992), 144–5. 10. I have used the texts by Gatell collected and reproduced by J. Gavira, El viajero español por Marruecos d. Joaquín Gatell (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Instituto de Estudios Africanos, 1949). 11. Cervera was the author of Geografía militar de Marruecos (Barcelona, 1884), of Expedición geográfico-militar al interior y costas de Marruecos (Barcelona, 1885), and of Expedición al interior de Marruecos. Libro escrito en 1884 (Valencia, 1909). 12. Álvarez Cabrera lived for three years in Larache and made several trips to the surrounding country. His experiences in north-western Morocco are, according to his own statement, the source of his knowledge on Moroccan matters. See his La guerra en Africa (Madrid: Administración de la Biblioteca económica ciencias militares, 1893), 19. On the Spanish military mission to Morocco and its cartographical output, see L. Urteaga, Vigilia colonial: cartógrafos militares españoles en Marruecos (1882–1912) (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2006). 13. Other works on this subject by the same author are: Acción militar de España en el imperio de Marruecos (bosquejo de un plan de campaña) (Madrid: 288

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14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

Imp. y litografía del depósito de la guerra, 1898); Apuntes militares sobre el imperio de Marruecos (Toledo: Publicaciones de los Estudios Militares, 1892); Columnas de operaciones en Marruecos: estudio político-militar (Ceuta-Melilla) (Tanger: A.J. Lúgaro, 1909). T. Fernández de Cuevas, Melilla. Recuerdos de mi estancia (1902–1906) (Melilla: n.d., 1907, new ed. Melilla: Ayuntamiento, Archivo Municipal, 1992). See S. Balfour, The End of the Spanish Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). On this Embassy, see M. Marín, “Orientalism and Colonialism: Julián Ribera (1858–1934) and the Spanish Embassy to Morocco in 1894,” Scritti in onore di Biancamaria Scarcia-Amoretti (Rome: Università di Roma, 2008), 2: 785–95. José Boada y Romeu, Allende el estrecho. Viajes por Marruecos (Barcelona: Seix, 1895, reprinted in Melilla: Consejería de Cultura, 1999). The book by Rodrigo Soriano was published under the title Moros y cristianos. Notas de viaje (1893–1894). Melilla-Argelia. La embajada del General Martínez Campos á Marruecos (2nd edn, Madrid: Librería de Fernando Fé, 1895). See E. Martín Corrales, “Intereses catalanes en la expansión colonial española en el Norte de África,” in Ciencia y memoria de África. Actas de las III Jornadas sobre “Expediciones científicas y africanismo español. 1898–1998”, ed. A. R. Díez Torre (Madrid: Ateneo, 2002), 91–107. On the historical context of these events, see I. Castells Oliván, La insurrección liberal de 1831 en Cádiz y su provincia (Cádiz: Ayuntamiento de Cádiz, 1988). Juan López Meléndez, Aventuras de un renegado español. Relación verdadera, dictada por él mismo, escrita en francés por M.H. Arnaud y traducida al castellano por D. Francisco Javier Maeztu (Paris: Rosa, 1836). León López y Espila, Los cristianos de Calomarde y el renegado por fuerza (Madrid: Imp. E. Fernández Angulo, 1835). In contrast to previous periods, and specially the 16th and 17th centuries, there are not many studies on renegades during the 19th and early 20th centuries. See, however, R. Gil Grimau, “Un tema curioso hispano-marroquí: los renegados,” Al-Andalus-Magreb 4 (1996), 189–200, which is based mainly upon literary sources. José María de Murga, Recuerdos marroquíes. Reimpreso con los apuntes de su segundo viaje y otros fragmentos publicados en 1877 por el Excmo. Sr. D. Cesáreo Fernández Duro (Madrid: Revista de Derecho Internacional y Política Exterior, 1906). Murga’s book has been repeatedly reprinted, but his work still waits to be properly analysed. A recent step in this direction is J. Bergere-Dezaphi, “La categorización social de los marroquíes a través de la literatura de viajes: el ejemplo del Moro Vizcaíno, José María de Murga,” in A. Ramírez y B. López García, ed., Antropología y antropólogos en Marruecos: Homenaje a David M. Hart (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2002), 237–77. 289

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24. The kind of information supplied by these travellers does not differ in many aspects from the data collected by F. Rodríguez Mediano, “Justice, crime et châtiment au Maroc au 16e siècle,” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 51 (1996), 611–27, whose main sources are Luis del Mármol and Léon l’Africain. 25. Badía, Viajes por Marruecos, 134. 26. Ibid., 135. It is interesting to note that a contemporary of Badía, the Polish traveller Jan Potocki, on describing a similar scene, stated that in Morocco this kind of punishment was applied to the condemned’s back, as beating soles was a characteristic trait of nomads like the Tartars. See J. Potocki, Viaje al Imperio de Marruecos realizado en el año 1791 (Barcelona: Laertes, 1983), 10. 27. López Meléndez, Aventuras de un renegado español, 2:29–31. 28. Murga, Recuerdos, 71. For his part, J. Boada stresses the resignation usually shown by people subjected to this punishment: “some of them boast of their courage and count themselves the number of lashes they receive. Most frequently, however, they show a great resignation to their fate and go on pronouncing loudly Allah’s name.” See idem, Allende el Estrecho, 264. 29. Comín, Ligera ojeada, 24–5. 30. López Meléndez, Aventuras de un renegado español, 2:94–5. 31. Urrestarazu, Viajes por Marruecos, 76. 32. The description of the butchers’ market in Marrakech by R. Soriano, Moros y cristianos, 238, is a brilliant literary piece, rendering colours and smell in a way both alluring and terrifying. 33. Rodríguez Mediano, “Justice, crime et châtiment,” 616. 34. Several recent studies have analysed this practice in medieval Iberia, both Cristian and Muslim. See M. Fierro, “Violencia, política y religión en alAndalus durante el s. IV/X: el reinado de ʿAbd al-Rahman III,” in Estudios onomástico-biográficos de al-Andalus. XIV. De muerte violenta. Política, religión y violencia en al-Andalus, ed. M. Fierro (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2004), 37–102; I. Monteira, “Destierro físico, destierro espiritual. Los símbolos de triunfo sobre el ‘infiel’ en los espacios secundarios del templo románico,” paper presented at the seminar Relegados al margen. Marginalidad y espacios marginales en la cultura medieval, 7–9 March 2007, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (forthcoming); C. de la Puente, “Cabezas cortadas, símbolos de poder y de terror. Al-Andalus ss. II/VIII–IV/X,” in El cuerpo derrotado: cómo trataban musulmanes y cristianos al enemigo vencido (Península Ibérica, ss. VIII–XIII), ed. M. Fierro and F. García Fitz (Madrid: CSIC, 2008), 319–47; J. M. Rodríguez García, “Cabezas cortadas en Castilla-León, 1100–1350,” in El cuerpo derrotado, 349–95; and M. Fierro, “Decapitation of Christians and Muslims in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula: Narratives, Images, Contemporary Perceptions,” Comparative Literature Studies, 45,2 (2008), 137–64. 35. Gatell, quoted in Gavira, El viajero español, 41. 290

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36. Rodríguez Mediano, “Justice, crime et châtiment,” 626, has pointed out the religious aspects of beheading in an Islamic context, as beheaded persons were considered to have died as pagans and therefore could not expect to go to Paradise. 37. López Meléndez, Aventuras de un renegado español, 2:141–3. 38. Gatell, quoted in Gavira, El viajero español, 100. 39. Álvarez Cabrera, La guerra en África, 176. 40. In this sense, it is interesting to compare how J. Boada describes the battle between Spanish and Moroccan soldiers around the fort of Cabrerizas Altas, near Melilla. On the same page, a Spanish officer is said to have “a courage and abnegation nearly legendary”, while the Moroccans show “a really savage courage and disdain for life”. See Boada, Allende el Estrecho, 354. 41. Álvarez Cabrera, La guerra en África, 177–8. 42. Ibid., 71 n1. 43. Gatell, quoted in Gavira, El viajero español, 113. This information is found in Gatell’s diary from 1863 and refers to a rebel from the Ruwāga tribe, al-Rūgī, who revolted against the sulṭān in 1862. Years later, al-Jilālī b. Idrīs al-Zarhūnī took the same name when rebelling in the Taza region; this second al-Rūgī was recognized as sulṭān in north-eastern Morocco from 1902 to 1909 but, as his predecessor, he was finally defeated and in 1909 he was exposed in a cage in Fez, before being shot. See EI2, s.v. Bū Ḥmāra, 1:1281 (R. Le Tourneau). 44. Fernández de Cuevas, Melilla. Recuerdos de mi estancia, 98. 45. Comín, Ligera ojeada, 34. Murga illustrates the same opinion with a scene he himself witnessed. See idem, Recuerdos, 206. 46. Comín, Ligera ojeada, 42. See Mohammed Kenbib, Juifs et musulmans au Maroc, 1859–1948 (Rabat: Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines– Rabat, 1994). 47. Badía,Viajes por Marruecos, 157; Boada, Allende el Estrecho, 114, and Soriano, Moros y cristianos, 304. 48. This attitude reflects the general appreciation of Jews in Spain – and other European countries – during this period. See G. Álvarez Chillida, El antisemitismo en España. La imagen del judío (1812–2002) (Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2002). 49. Cervera, Expedición al interior de Marruecos, 90; Boada, Allende el Estrecho, 191 (Fez) and 523 (Marrakech). 50. Badía, Viajes por Marruecos, 329. 51. See in this respect E. Martín Corrales, La imagen del magrebí en España: una perspectiva histórica, siglos XVI–XX (Barcelona: Bellaterra, 2002). 52. Badía, Viajes por Marruecos, 126.

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Index

ʿAbbād b. Ziyād, 121 ʿAbbādids, 16 al-ʿAbbās b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh, 110n al-ʿAbbās al-ḥājj, 191 al-ʿAbbāsī, ʿAli Bey see Badía y Leblich, Domingo ʿAbbāsids, 2, 4, 35, 67, 94, 126, 147, 205 and Carmathians, 77 and Fāṭimids, 68–9, 72, 77–8, 136 legitimation by maẓālim jurisdiction, 42–60 titles of, 12–13 ʿAbd Allāh, son of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (r. 300–50/912–61), 11, 33, 131 conspiracy of, 133 execution, 131–4, 146, 147, 148; on Day of Sacrifice as substitute sacrifice, 132, 148; and Umayyad–Fāṭimid rivalry, 136–43 ʿAbd Allāh b. Marwān, 53–4 ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Abī Thawbān, 45 ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. al-Khaṣīb, 45, 51 ʿAbd Allāh b. ṭāhir, 44, 48–9 ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī (r. 275–300/888–912), 68, 136 ʿAbd al-Malik b. Qaṭan al-Fihrī, 21n ʿAbd al-Muʾmin (r. 524–58/1130–63), 90 ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, 144, 146 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muʿāwiya see ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ṭhābit b. Thawbān, 63n ʿAbd al-Raḥmān I (r. 138–72/756–88), 136–7, 155n ʿAbd al-Raḥman II (r. 206–38/822–52), 94 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III (r. 300–50/912–61), 33 as Abraham, 146–7 builds Madīnat al-Zahrāʾ, 137 crucifixion by, 205 crucifixion of traitors at battle of Simancas, 133, 154–5n execution of son ʿAbd Allāh, 131–4 killing of slave concubines, 134 ‘psychiatric’ interpretations, 148 as al-Qāʾim, 146 and Umayyad–Fāṭimid rivalry, 137 violence, 133–4, 148, 205 ʿAbd al-ṣamad b. al-Muʿadhdhal, 91–2 ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Zaqqāq, 190 ʿAbd/ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Fatḥ, 44, 50 ʿAbdallāh b. Maʿn b. Zāʾda, and sodomy, 92 ʿAbdallāh b. Muʿāwiya, 113n

Abraham ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III as, 146–7 as friend of God (Q4:125), 31, 32, 39n, 143 as ḥanīf, 143 and institution of circumcision, 145, 154n Muḥammad’s similarities with, 143, 144–5 purification, 154n sacrifice of Isaac, 11, 143–5; in Christian medieval Iberia, 130–1; in Qurʾān 37:101–7, 143–4; tradition of actual performance, 147, 155n sacrifice of Ismāʿīl, 144, 145 al-Absī, Abū l-Qāsim ʿAlī, 112n absolutism, in Islamic governments, 12–13 Abū ʿAbd Allāh, 68, 226 death, 11, 69 dispensation of justice among Kutāma, 80 as hypocrite (munāfiq), 72 preaching, 71–2 and war for supremacy in Ifrīqiya, 71 Abū ʿAmr, 207 Abū ḥafṣ b. Burd the Elder, 114n Abū ḥafṣ b. Burd the Younger, 114n Abū ḥanīfa, 257–8, 259, 260 Abū ḥassūn, 185, 188 Abū ʿIqāl, 230–1n Abū Isḥāq al-Muʿtaṣim, 49, 55 Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Mughīth, 220 Abū l-ʿAtāhiya, 92, 93 Abū l-Fahm, 188 Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb al-aghānī, 119, 120 Abū l-Gharānīq, 218, 219 Abū l-ḥasan, Merinid sulṭan, 188 Abū l-Walīd b. Aḥmad b. Abī Duʾād, 52 Abū l-Yanbaghī, 93 Abū Miḥjan, 122 Abū Muslim, 71 Abū Nuwās, 88–9, 93, 106–7n, 115n Abū Rakwa, 76, 77 Abū Shāma, al-Dhayl ʿalā l-rawḍatayn, 15, 211, 212–14 Abū ṭāhir al-Dhuhlī, 51 Abū ṭālib al-Makkī, 158, 169 Abū Tammām, 14 Abū Umāma, 175n Abū ʿUmar, 53, 58 Abū Yazīd (r. 332–6/943–7), 197n death, 138–9, 142, 146 display in Kairouan, 139

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INDEX portrayed as al-Dajjāl (Anti-Christ), 138 rebellion, 10 Abū Yūsuf, 258, 260 Abū Zakariyyāʾ al-Wājilānī, 224 Abū Zurʿa, 50 abusive poetry see hijāʾ ʿadl see justice adultery see fornication advice literature, 240, 250–1n Afīf, Shams al-Dīn Sirāj, Tārikh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 246, 248 ʿĀfiya b. Yazīd, 53, 54 Aghlabids, 80, 219, 225 Aḥmad b. Abī Duʾād, 48, 52, 58 Aḥmad b. ḥanbal, 28 Aḥmad b. Hārūn, 90 Aḥmad b. Riyāḥ, 44, 54 Aḥmad b. Siyāh, 110n Aḥmad al-Manṣūr, 197n al-Aḥwaṣ, 93 public humiliation, 119–20 Ait Dāwūd, 181 Akhbār al-dawla, 68 ʿAkkār, Northern Lebanon: village violence, 87, 96, 104 al-ʿAlawwak, 115n Aleppo, siege of (385/995), 78 Alfonso VII (r.1126–57), 131 ʿAlī b. ʿĪsā, 58, 66n ʿAlī b. al-Jahm, crucifixion, 99, 206 ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā, Imam, 268–9 ʿAlī b. Wahsūdhān, 110n ʿAlī, Caliph, 36, 269 ʿAlī-yi Mardān, 245 al-ʿAllāma al-ḥillī, 272 allusion (taʿrīḍ), 97 Almohads, 2, 13 Álvarez Cabrera, José, 278, 284, 288n ʿAmīd al-Mulk, 99 al-Amīn, Caliph (r. 193–8/809–13), 93, 106n al-Āmir, Fāṭimid Caliph (r. 495–524/1101–30), 77 amputation, 258, 260 of ears, 184–5, 248 of feet, 124, 206, 248, 281–2 of hands, 59, 124, 184, 185, 206, 248, 258, 281–3 amṣār, Iraqi, 46, 47 amulets, punitive, 167–8 al-Anbarī, ʿAbd Allāh/ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-ḥasan, 43, 44, 47 al-Anbārī, Abū l-Muẓaffar Mufliḥ, 94 al-Anbārī, Muḥammad Ibn ʿUmar, 209 ancestors, errors committed by, 181 al-Andalus conquest, and cannibalism, 198n ʿulamāʾ, 138 Angel of Death, 191 anger, suppression of, 97 animals, contagious association with, 8, 75, 139, 228 al-Anṣārī, Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh, 52

al-Ansī, ʿAmr b. Sharāḥīl, 41 anthropomorphism, rejection of, 31, 32 Anvarī, 170 apostates (murtadds), 27, 36, 37n, 81, 189, 205–6, 207, 243–4 al-Aqraʿ, Muḥammad b. Sulaymān, 190 Arkoun, Mohamed, 17 Arnaud, Henriette, 279, 284 al-Ashʿarī, Abū Mūsā, 57 al-Ashʿarī, ʿAmr b. Sahla, 54 Ashʿarī-Māturīdī Sunnī orthodoxy, 157 ʿAskar al-Mahdī, 53 Asul zāwiya, 193n ʿAthāmina, Khalīl, 121–2 ʿAtīq b. al-ḥasan (Bakrān), 45, 51 ʿAṭṭāf b. Ghazwān, 44, 49 ʿAṭṭār, Farīd al-Dīn, Muṣībatnāma, 170, 178n Auer, Blain, 11, 15–16 al-Awzāʿī, 48, 258, 260 Ayāz, Ghulām Aḥmad, 242 al-ʿAzīz, Caliph (r. 365–86/975–6), 73, 81, 141 Badía y Leblich, Domingo (pseud. ʿAli Bey al-ʿAbbāsī), 277, 280–1, 285, 286–7 Bādīs, ruler of Granada, 167 Badr, hand amputated, 155 Baghdad Bāb al-Nūbī, 166, 176n burning in courtyard of Friday mosque, 164–5 display of bodies, 6 palace of ṭāhirid governors of ʿIrāq and Khurāsān, 4 sanctuary (ḥarīm) in, 4–5 al-Sharqiyya district court, 53, 56 tashhīr processions, 166 Bahrām, Sassanian king, 139 Bahrām Shāh, Muʿizz al-Dīn, Sultan (r. 637– 9/1240–2), 245, 246 Bakkār b. Qutayba, 50, 56, 57 al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, 28–30 balance-of-evil-tests, 3 banditry, punishments for, 204 banishment (nafy), 120, 121, 123, 124–6 as alternative to imprisonment, 125 for drinking wine, 122 for fornication (zinā), 124–5 and Q5:33, 124 Banū Ghashmān, 70 Banū ḥārith, 181 Banū Ifrān, 181 Banū Qurra, 76 Banū Saktān, 70 baraka (sacred charisma), 14, 180 Baranī, ḍiyā al-Dīn, 246, 250n conversations with Muḥammad b. Tughluq on death penalty, 241–4 Fatāvā-yi Jahāndārī, 240, 252n Tārīkh-i Fīrūz Shāhī, 239, 246, 252n Barhūt, Yemen, as entrance to hell, 159, 172n Barmakids, crucifixion, 207, 209 Barqa, 77 Bashshār b. Burd, 94, 102

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PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES Basil II, Emperor, 78 Baṣra fuqahāʾ commission, 47, 61n judges before maẓālim courts, 56 judges in maẓālim courts, 44, 47, 49, 52 al-Mirbad market, 105n al-Bāṭāʾiḥī, Murajjaʾ, 95, 101 al-Battī, Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad, 103 Bayān b. Samʿān, 30, 36, 41n Bayhaqī, 15 beard shaving, 6 Bedouin tribalism and sectarian religious beliefs, 77 Berbers, cannibalism of prophet sent to, 198n Bilizma, 70 biographical dictionaries (ṭabaqāt), 224 blood feuds see honour killings blood money (diya), 180 Boada, José, 278, 285, 286, 290n Bockelson, Jan, 211 body bodily discipline, 10 bodily injury, 180 disposal by state, 7, 282 inviolability and dignity, 4, 6–7, 161; see also shame shame zones (ʿawrāt), 6 body-marking, 167, 184, 185 Brunschvig, Robert, 13, 14 al-Bukhārī, 28 burning, 176n, 187, 188, 189 after death, 41n alive, 36, 41nn, 162, 164–5 and Day of Judgment, 164, 167 calumny (qadhf), 96–7, 266 Cambridge Chronicle, 224 Campos, General Martínez, 278 cannibalism, 167, 198n capital punishment see death penalty, execution Carmathians, 58, 147 wars against ʿAbbāsids and Fāṭimids, 77 Cecil, Robert, 183 Cervera Baviera, Julio, 278, 286, 288n charity (ṣadaqa), distribution of, 81–3 Cheikh Bouamama (Bū ʿAmāma) revolt, 285 child sacrifice, 136 Christ, crucifixion of, 12, 155n, 169 Christians, degradation of, 188 clemency (ḥilm), 98–9, 101, 113–14nn Comín, Tomás de, 277, 281–2, 285 Córdoba, muṣallā (open-air oratory), 132, 134 counter publics, 8–9 Court of Complaint see maẓālim court sheriffs, 163, 175n Coy, Pieter Maertensz, 187 crucifixion, 14–15, 30–1, 32, 40–1n, 203–14 after death (for public display), 206–7, 210, 211 alive, 6; forbidden by Ibn Tūmart, 20n

in Arabic poetry, 204, 205–10 of Christ, 12, 155n, 169 compassion for victims, 15, 209–10, 211 frequency, 204–5 location, 210 mass, 204–5, 210 mutilation before, 206 and nakedness, 206 positive interpretation, 14–15, 208–9 and Qurʾān 5:33, 35, 204, 208 reasons for: apostasy, 205–6, 207; banditry (muḥāraba), 204; heresy, 205, 206; political, 207; treachery, 133, 154–5n and shame, 14, 206, 207–8 and jinn, 200n cruelty, 113n custom and rule, 11, 247 al-ḍabbī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Isḥāq, 58, 132, 133 Dabhōi and Baroda, rebellion in, 242 Dahlak penal colony, 41n, 123, 126 al-Dalāl, 121 Damascus conquest by Saljūqs, 79 judges in maẓālim courts, 44, 48, 50 revolt, 50 Day of Judgment and burning, 164, 167 publicness and shame on, 160–2 punishments on, 168–9 and Qurʾān, 161 Day of Resurrection, 167, 169 Day of Sacrifices, 11, 27 and Abraham’s aborted sacrifice, 34–5 and execution of Jaʿd b. Dirham, 27–37 origin and character, 34–5 other executions on, 32–3 see also Festival of Sacrifice de Ataide, Nuno Fernandes, 181, 191 de Mármol, Luis, Descripción general de África, 182, 189 de Monte Croce, Riccoldo, 157 death penalty and ḍavābiṭ, 239, 244 and forgiveness, 241 and political expediency, 15 and political legitimacy, 238–9 and pre-Islamic Persian justice and rule, 243–4 and Qurʾān, 241, 244 and sharīʿa, 15, 239 Tughluq and Barāni discussions, 241–4 see also execution deaths, secret, 186 degradation, 7, 190 and execution, 187–8, 189, 191 groups involved, 14, 188 locations, 188 practices, 188–9 Delhi Sultanate (C7–8/C13–14), concepts of justice and punishment, 238–49

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INDEX descent, denial of legitimate, 96 deterrence (zajr), theories of, 22n, 257 al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn, Kitāb al-kabāʾir, 28, 30–1, 158 Dhikr bilād al-Andalus, 132, 133 al-Dhuhlī, Abū ṭāhir, 51 Diʿbil al-Khuzāʿī, 90, 94, 106n dirra see whip discretionary punishments see taʿzīr divine attributes (al-ṣifāt), 30, 31, 32 divine right of kings, 2 diya (blood money, fines), 180, 181, 182 dogs of hell, 163, 175n throwing to, 187 drugs, 186, 196n al-Duraydī, 187 effeminates (muʿannathūn/mukhannathūn), public humiliation, 127 Egypt and Fāṭimids, 68–9, 76–7: administration of justice, 80–1; Cairo riot against Italian traders (386/996), 79; conquest (358/969), 76, 79; revolt against (394–5/1004–5), 76–7 and Iraq, 116n political satire: modern newspaper ban on, 106n see also Fusṭāṭ eschatology Saljūq period, 174n and state violence, 156, 156–71, 169–70 Europe and displayed corpses, 210, 211 and massacres, 210 and public punishment, 13 view of hell, 170–1 execution, 83, 139 crowds’ attitude to, 22–3n on Day of Sacrifice, 27–37 and degradation, 187–8, 189, 191 Marrakesh, 182, 183, 184, 188 Morocco, 13–14, 14, 188, 198n, 199n permitted methods, 148, 189; see also burning, decapitation, hanging, stoning for adultery and purification, 148, 188–90 as sacrifice, 134–6 secret, 195n slaves and Jews used as executioners, 14, 188 Tunis, 13–14 expiation see kaffārāt eye for an eye see qiṣās face, 6, 145, 163, 184, 209, 212–13, 280 blackening of (taswīd al-wajh), 6, 7, 12, 124, 166–7 blackening of in hell, 162, 174n water of, 7 al-Faḍl b. al-Rabīʿ, 115n

faith, 157, 171n false witness, bearing, 123–4 al-Farazdaq, 105n Fārs, judges in maẓālim courts, 44 al-Fāsī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿĀrif, 190, 191 al-Fāsī, Muḥammad al-ʿArbī, 184 Fāṭimids, 76, 227 and ʿAbbāsids, 68–9, 72, 77–8, 136 and Byzantium, 78–9 and charity, 83 and Christian world, 79–80 divine sanction claimed, 13, 74 and Egypt, 68–9, 76–7, 79–81 establishment of state preceded establishment of law, 81 execution of Ismāʿīlī plotters (517/1123), 83 Fāṭimid–Umayyad rivalry, 136–8, 148–9 and Festival of Sacrifice, 140, 141–2, 143, 146 and First Crusade, 79 and Frankish expansion, 79 and Ifrīqiya, 217, 230n and Italians, 78, 79 and jihād, 79 and justice, 80–1 and Kutāma, 84n legitimation, 146, 148–9 navy defeat off Rosetta (307/920), 77 position of imām, 73 reaction to hunger riots (415/1025), 74–5 and rebellion of Abū Yazīd, 75–6 revolutionary violence, 2, 71, 148–9 and Tunisia, 68, 80 wars, 77–9 fatwās, 57, 58, 115–16n, 180 Fayyūm, battle near, 77 Fazāra b. ʿImrān, 44, 48 al-Fāzāzī, Muḥammad, 107n Fernandez de Cuevas, Teodora, 278, 285 Festival of Breaking of the Fast, 134, 139, 141, 142 Festival of Sacrifice, 134, 135 and ʿAlawīs, 140–1, 147 executions on, 146, 154–5n and Fāṭimids, 140, 141–2, 143, 146 and religious legitimization of political power, 140–1 and Umayyads, 131–2, 135, 139–40 see also Day of Sacrifices Fez asylum (māristān), 186, 196–7nn Bab es-Sbaʿ rubbish heap, 185 Chronique anonyme, 184, 185 history: Andalusiyyīn–Lamṭiyyīn conflict (1620), 190; entry by Mūlāy Rashīd (1665), 187; revolt (1250), 195n; revolt (1465), 199–200n; siege (1549), 184, 185; siege (1554), 185, 190 police: receive fees for prisoners, 183; run tabacchino, 183, 186 prisons, 182, 186

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PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES Fez (cont.) public violence: amputation, 184; bodies disposed of in al-Mars silos, 185, 188; execution, 182, 184, 188–9; lashing, 182; mutilation, 184; public humiliation (tashhīr), 182 sheffār-qammār children’s game, 179 treatment of Jews, 188–9 treatment of lepers, 186 treatment of people with syphilis, 186 women secretly poisoning husbands, 195n Fierro, Maribel, 7, 10, 11, 20n fines see diya fiqh, 3, 60, 247 Imami Shīʿī traditions, 256–7, 268–75 Sunnī traditions, 256 Fiqh al-Riḍā, 268–9 Firūz Shāh Tughluq, Sultan (r. 752–90/ 1351–88), 246–9 abandons capital punishment, 247 abolishes siyāsa, 248–9 abolishes torture, 248 improves lands, 247 rules according to sharīʿa, 248, 249 Firūzābād mosque, inscription, 248 fitna (rebellion), 18n, 197n, 241–2, 251n forgiveness (ʿafw), 13, 100, 112n, 113n and death penalty, 241 and honour code, 97, 98 and legal ‘code’, 98 of people of rank, 194n women’s offences unforgivable, 106n see also clemency, mercy fornication (zinā), 96, 124–5, 126, 243–4; see also stoning for fornication Foucault, Michel, 10 Frankish captives, execution (577/1182), 33 free will, human (qadar), 32, 36 Friday prayer, 141 fuqahāʾ (jurists), 96, 181 Fusṭāṭ, 127 judges before maẓālim courts, 55–6 judges in maẓālim courts, 44–5, 48–9, 50, 51 Gatell, Joaquín, 277–8, 283, 284, 285, 288n gaze, protocol of, 6 Gehinnom, as entrance to hell, 159 Ghaylān al-Dimashqī, 32, 36 doctrine, 29, 30, 32 al-Ghazālī, 4, 7, 94, 107n, 158, 160, 166, 168, 169 al-Durra al-fākhira, 159 Iḥyaʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 111n, 161 Gilsenan, Michael, 87, 96, 100, 104, 108n Girard, René, 9 Gleave, Robert, 9, 16 God Abraham as friend of, 143 punishment of prophets, 11, 148 wrath of, and ritual violence, 10 Godoy, Manuel, Spanish Prime Minister, 277

God’s caliph, mahdī as, 12 God’s command, Fāṭimid and Almohad rule as, 13 ḥabāba, 120 ḥabīb b. Abī ḥabīb, 28, 29 ḥaḍawḍā, 122 al-Hādī, Caliph (r. 169–70/785–6), 239 Hagar, as symbol of Arabs and Muslims, 131 al-ḥajjāj, 32–3 al-ḥakam b. ʿUkkāsha, crucifixion, 21n al-ḥakam I (r. 180–206/796–822), 133, 205 crucifixions by, 205 al-ḥakam II, 133, 134, 150n al-Hākim, Caliph, 73, 76, 237n hākim, and penal conflicts, 183 al-ḥalabī, Abū al-ṣalāḥ, al-Kāfī, 270 al-ḥallāj, 42, 58 ḥāmid b. ʿAbbās, 58 ḥammād ʿAjrad, 94 ḥanafite legal traditions, 97, 98, 250n, 259–60, 267, 268 Hanbalite legal traditions, 98, 259, 261, 265, 268 ḥaqq (right obligation), 116 ḥarīm as domestic harem, 4, 19n as inviolate urban areas or sacred grounds, 4–5 ḥarrān, 135 ḥarrānians, 135–6 Hārūn al-Rashīd, 55 al-ḥasan b. ʿUmāra, 43, 52 al-ḥasan b. Zayd, 53 ḥasan b. Hārūn, Banū Ghashmān chief, 70 ḥasanak, 15, 23n Hawḍ Khāṣṣ Madrasa, 247 Hawting, Gerald, 7, 11, 151n al-ḥazmī, ʿAbd al-Malik b. Muḥammad, 55 head decapitation: and jāhiliyya (pagan) death, 190–1; and public display, 75, 191–2, 282–5 inviolability, 6 hell, 169, 170 and believers, 158–60 dogs of, 163, 175n earthly location of, 159, 172n European view of, 170–1 face-blackening (taswīd al-wajh) in, 162, 174n fire in, 165, 169 and grave sin (kabīra), 158 public spectacle in, 160–2 and public/private distinction, 161 punishments of, and public violence, 162 and Qurʾān, 161, 162–3 and unbelievers (kuffār), 157, 159 heresy (zandaqa), 37n, 102, 103, 115n, 205, 206 heretics, punishment of, 35–7, 176n hijāʾ (abuse poetry, lampoons), 7, 121, 126 and accusations of impiety, 102, 103

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INDEX as allusion (taʿrīḍ), 97 as calumny/slander (qadhf), 96–7 and honour and legal ‘codes’, 88, 95–9 and indifference to reputation, 90–2, 107n justifying counter-violence, 92 and love poetry addressed to womenfolk of a great man, 90 reactions to, 88, 92, 99–105; counterinvective, 92, 95, 108n; imprisonment, 93–4, 103; lashing, 93; murder/intended murder, 109–10n vernacular style, 89–90 as violence, 87–92 ḥilm (longanimity, forbearance, moderation), 97 ḥimāriyya, 32 ḥisba (market inspection, censorship) see muḥtasib Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik, Umayyad Caliph (r. 105–25/24–43), 27, 29, 36, 135 historiography, 13, 15–16, 164, 218 Delhi Sultanate, 238, 239, 243, 246, 247, 250n of punishment, 244 Hīt, transvestite, banishment, 121–2, 125 homosexuality, 108n honour code, 88, 90, 95, 100, 102, 104 and forgiveness, 97, 98 honour killings, 96, 97, 100, 104, 108n, 115n, 180, 193n honour (sharaf), 91, 103, 110n; see also shame Hudhayl al-Ashjaʿī, 93 ḥudūd punishments, 3, 9, 16, 96, 97–8, 123, 156, 180, 256–73 and amputation, 258, 260 and dissimulation (taqiyya), 263–4, 265 effects, 257 and hidden Imam, 256, 262–3, 268–72 jurists’ interpretation: ḥanbalī, 259, 261, 265, 268; ḥanafī, 259–60, 267, 268; Imāmī, 260–5; Mālikī, 259, 261, 268; Shāfiʿī, 260, 261, 267, 268 justice of, 257 in Muslim army on campaign, 257–61, 273n and penitence, 273 as ritual, 257, 265–72 and role of judge, 263–4 and state legitimacy, 256, 257–65 see also stoning for adultery al-ḥumaydī, Jadhwa, 132, 133 al-ḥumaydī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, 188 al-ḥusayn b. Abī Zurʿa, 51 Ibn al-Abbār, 224 Ibn ʿAbbās, 36, 158 Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, Abū ʿAbd al-Malik Aḥmad, 132 Ibn ʿAbdūn, 194 Ibn Abī ḥajar, Abū al-ḥasan, 69 Ibn Abī l-Jawād, 5 Ibn Abī Laylā, 47 Ibn Abī Maḥallī, 188 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 269

Ibn ʿAmmār, 21n, 115n Ibn ʿAsākir, 28 Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 40n Ibn ʿAskar, 189, 198n Ibn al-Athīr, ʿIzz al-Dīn, 75, 223, 224, 231n Ibn Bābūya, 271 Ibn Baḥr, 99 Ibn Baqiyya, crucifixion, 206, 209 Ibn al-Dawraqī, Muḥammad, 101–2 Ibn al-Farrāʾ, 42 Ibn al-Furāt, Abū ḥasan, 58 Ibn Gharla, 90 Ibn al-ḥaddād, 45, 51 Ibn ḥafṣūn, ḥakam b. ʿUmar, 214n Ibn ḥafṣūn, Sulaymān b. ʿUmar, 214n Ibn ḥafṣūn, ʿUmar, 214n Ibn ḥajar, 52 Ibn ḥajar al-Haythamī, 158 Ibn ḥamdīs al-ṣiqillī, 208, 209 Ibn ḥamdūn, 8 Ibn ḥammād, 95 Ibn Hayyān, Muqtabis, 132, 134, 214n Ibn ḥazm, 119, 120, 121, 132, 133, 148 Muḥallā, 97, 111n Ibn Hubayra, 94 Ibn ʿIdhārī, 76, 132, 133, 220, 221, 223, 224 Ibn Idrīs al-Hillī, Muḥammad, 265 al-Sarāʾir al-Hāwi li-taḥrīr al-fatāwā, 264 Ibn al-ʿImād, 28 Ibn al-Jawzī, 158, 162, 164–5, 166, 167 Ibn Junayd al-Iskāfī, 271 Ibn Kathīr, 28 Ibn Khaldūn, 195n, 225 Ibn Khallikān, 207 Ibn al-Khaṭīb, 132, 225 Ibn Kunāsa, 207 Ibn al-Muʾayyad, 102–3 Ibn Mufarrigh, 121 Ibn Muhallab, 37 Ibn al-Munkadir, 49, 60 Ibn Muqla, 59 Ibn al-Muslima, 174n Ibn al-Muʿtazz, ṭabaqāt, 113n Ibn Naghrela, 135 Ibn al-Qāriḥ, 160 Ibn Qudāma, Muwaffaq al-Dīn, Mughnī, 124, 259, 261 Ibn Qutayba, ʿUyūn al-akhbār, 49, 112n, 113n Ibn Rāʾiq, 59 Ibn Rajab, al-Takhwīf min al-nār, 159 Ibn al-Raqīq see al-Raqīq al-Qayrawānī Ibn al-Rūmī, 95 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), 7 Ibn Saʿīd, 132, 133 Ibn Shaddād, 223 Ibn Shubruma, Abd ʿAllāh, 44, 47 Ibn Shuhayd, 113n Ibn al-ṣīrafī, 81 Ibn Suhra al-ḥalabī, Ghunyat al-nuzūʿ, 270 Ibn Taymiyya, 28 Ibn ṭūlūn, 49, 50, 56, 57

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PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES Ibn Tūmart, forbade crucifixion of people alive, 20n Ibn ʿUlātha, 53 Ibn ʿUnayn al-Anṣārī, banishment, 109n Ibn Wāfid, 21, 23n Ibn ẓāfir, 127 Ibrāhīm b. Abī al-Aghlab, 238 Ibrāhīm b. al-Jarrāḥ, 48–9 Ibrāhīm b. Yūsuf al-Muhtār, 89 Ibrāhīm II (r. 261–89/875–902), 15, 217–29 accession as ‘reluctant emir’, 218–19, 226 ambition to attack Constantinople, 228 antinomianism, 228 asceticism, 227 cannibalism, 221 cruelty, 221 enlightened violence, 227, 228 exercises justice, 219–20, 227 insanity/melancholy, 220–1, 225, 228, 232n intends to undertake ḥajj, 222 interpretation, 223–8: eschatological, 226, 227–8; negative and positive, 223; as reformer, 226–7 repentance (tawba), 222, 224, 225, 227, 233n represses rebellions, 221 undertakes jihād, 220, 221–2, 224, 227 Ifrīqiya, 225, 228 and accession of Fāṭimids, 217, 230n governance, 220 public violence, 218 al-Ikhshīd, 45, 51 Ikhshīdids, 50–1, 59 ikhtilāf, 259, 261 Ikjān, 70 ʿIkrima b. ʿĀmir b. Hishām, 97 al-Ilbīrī, Abū Isḥāq, 135 ʿImād al-Dīn, Idrīs, 73, 75, 80, 82 imām role, 73, 186: in stoning for adultery, 266, 268, 270, 271 imprisonment see prisons and imprisonment infernal punishers in Islamic history, 162–4 Iraq and amṣār, 46, 47 and Egypt, 116n and maẓālim, 46 Zanj revolt (255/869–), 49 ʿIsā b. Abān, 56 ʿ Īsā b. Munkadir, 55 ʿĪsā b. Mūsā, 44, 47 Isḥāq b. ʿImrān, 233n Isḥāq b. Ismāʿīl, 44 Ishmael, as symbol of Arabs and Muslims, 131 Ismāʿīl Shāh, and cannibalism, 198n Ismāʿīlīs/Ismāʿīlism, 73–4, 78, 80, 83, 84n, 133, 136–8, 141, 143, 145–6, 162–3 Jabal, judges in maẓālim courts, 44 Jaʿd b. Dirham, 11, 29, 36, 135 execution by Khālid b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qasrī,

27–37: by crucifixion, 30–1, 32; by throat cutting (dhabḥ), 27, 36, 37 heresy (bidʿa), 29, 30–1, 32, 37n; interpreted as dahrī, 29; kāfir, 29, 37n; qadarī, 29; zindīq, 29, 37n Jaʿfar b. al-Qāsim, 52, 54, 64n Jaʿfar al-ṣādiq, Imam, 269 jāhiliyya (pagan) death, 190–1 al-Jāḥiẓ, Bukhalāʾ, 91–2 Jahm b. ṣafwān, 39–40n, 30, 135 Jahmiyya, 28, 39–40n Jalāl al-Dīn, 102–3 al-Jammāz, 91–2 Jamshīd, mythic Persian king, 243 Jarīr, 105n, 121 Jawdhar, 82 Jaysh b. Khumārawayh, 50 Jews, 143 Granada pogrom (459/1066), 135 treatment in Fez, 188–9 treatment in Morocco, 285 used as executioners in Morocco, 14, 188, 198n jihād, legal dimensions, 18n al-Jilālī b. Idrīs al-Zahrhūnī see al-Rūgī (d. 1909) jilwāz (court sheriff/policeman), 163, 175n al-Jumaḥī, ʿUbayd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ṣafwān, 53 al-Jurjānī, 105n al-Jurjānī, Abū l-Futūḥ, 167 justice, 194n, 238, 280 and Delhi Sultanate, 238–49 dispensation, 21–2n, 80–1 and ḥudūd punishments, 257 messianic, 80 in Morocco, 179–92 siyāsa as, 16, 240 and state violence, 75, 80–1 Jūzjānī, Minhāj Sirāj, ṭabaqāt-i Nāṣirī, 244–6 kaffārāt (expiatory acts), 12, 13, 156, 157 Kāfūr (r. 355–7/966–8), 45, 51, 109n Kairouan, 76, 80, 138, 218, 219, 231n execution at, 139 Great Mosque, 5 Raqqāda palace, 220 riot, 220, 232n kalām see theology al-Kāsānī, Abū Bakr b. Masʿūd, 8, 21n, 126 al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī, 97 Kawthar, al-Amīn’s favourite mignon, 107n al-Khalanjī, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. Abī Yazīd, 43, 56 Khālid al-Qasrī, 11, 29, 33, 40n, 135 executes Bayān b. Samʿān, 30, 36, 41n executes al-Mughīra b. Saʿīd, 36, 41n executes Wazīr al-Sakhtiyānī, 36 prison, 38n al-Khalīlī, Ghars al-Dīn, 108n al-Khallāl, Abū Bakr, 28 Khān, Qutlugh, 242

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INDEX kharāj tax collectors, 62n Khārijites, 2, 175n, 225, 226 Khayzurān, Lady, 239 al-Khiraqī, Mukhtaṣar, 259 Khumārawayh, 45, 50 al-Khuzāʿī, traditionalist, 58 al-Khuzāʿī, Yaḥyā, 101–2 al-Kindī, 52, 127 al-Kishshī, 51 Kiyāna fortress, 139 knowledge, uncreated, 32 Kūfa, judges in maẓālim courts, 44, 47 kufr see unbelief Kutāma, 67, 69–70 and Abū Yāzid rebellion, 75 as awliyāʾ (friends of God), 72 Berbers of, 67, 69–70 control by Abū ʿAbd Allāh, 71, 80 effect of Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s preaching on, 71–2 massacre of (307/920), 78 situation before 280/893, 72 situation after 298/902, 72 tax system, 70 Labīd b. al-Aʿṣam, 30 al-Lādhiqiyya, 102 al-Lāḥiqī, Abān, 88–9, 105n lampoons see hijā Lange, Christian, 12, 126 lashing, 93, 182, 280–1 law see sharīʿa Le Gendre, Thomas, 183 Leo Africanus, Description de l’Afrique, 180–1, 185, 186, 188 León, Church of San Isidoro, lamb tympanum, 130–1 letters of safety, 71 Lev, Yaacov, 8, 10, 12 López Meléndez, Juan Bautista, 279, 280–1, 282, 283 love poetry, 90 al-Maʿarrī, Risālat al-ghufrān, 160 madhhabs, 55, 60, 259, 261 Maḍīnat al-Zahrāʾ, 146, 154n madness, 197n and appearance of majdhūb (saint attracted by God), 186, 196n madrasa system, 23n Maghreb, 226–7, 231n Mahdī, appearance, 11–12, 137, 138, 146 al-Mahdī, ʿAbbāsid caliph (r. 158–69/775–85), 46, 47, 53–4, 57, 102, 148 al-Mahdī, Fāṭimid caliph (r. 297–322/909–14), 12, 69, 72, 148 dispensation of justice, 80 execution of al-Yasaʿ b. Midrār, 73 messianic reign, 74 punishes propagandists, 74 titles assumed by, 73–4: Commander of the Believers, 73, 74; Friend of God (walī

Allāh), 73, 74; son of God’s messenger, 73 violence as imām justified, 73–4 Mahdism, 228 al-Mahdiyya, 75, 138, 142 Maḥmūd, brother of ḥasan ibn Hārūn, Banū Ghashmān chief, 70 Maḥmūd of Ghazna, 252–3n Maḥmūd Shāh, Nāṣir al-Dīn (r. 644–64/ 1246–66), 244 al-Majdhūb, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, 186 al-Majlisī, Biḥār al-anwār, 32 Makḥūl, 48 al-Makhzūmī, 106n al-Makhzūmī, Abū Saʿd, 90, 93, 106n Mālik, chief guardian angel of hell, 162–3 Mālik b. Anas, Mudawwana, 259 Mālikism, 138 Mālikite legal traditions, 97, 98, 184, 259, 261, 268 al-Maʿmarī, al-Qāsīm b. Muḥammad b. ḥumayd, 28, 31 Mamlūks, 253n al-Maʾmūn, Caliph, 57, 115n ‘Man of the Donkey’ see Abū Yazīd Mani the Zindīq, 139 al-Manṣūr, Abbāsid Caliph, 47, 53, 106n al-Manṣūr, Fāṭimid caliph (r.335–41/946–53), 82charity, 138–9 al-Manṣūr, Zīrid amīr, 188, 197n Manuel I, of Portugal, 184 maqātil (head, face and genitals), inviolability of, 6 al-Maqqarī, 132 al-Maqrīzī, 167 Margallo, García, 278 Marín, Manuela, 14, 16 al-Marīsī, Bishr, 30 market inspectors see muḥtasib markets, 5–6 Marrakesh, 186, 283 Jamaʾ al-Fna, 285 punishments: executions, 182, 183, 184, 188; public humiliation, 184; selling into slavery, 182 Marw, judges in maẓālim courts, 44 Marwān II, Caliph, 29, 54, 135 al-Masdūd, 98 al-Masʿūdī, Murūj al-dhahab, 239 al-Māwardī, 42, 194n al-Aḥkām al-sulṭānīya, 124, 125, 239 Maymūn b. Mihrān, 29, 30, 38n maẓālim (Court of Complaint) jurisdiction, 8, 42, 59, 60n, 80, 81 as instrument of central authority, 47–9 and iqāma li-l-nās procedure, 55, 56, 57, 60, 65n and legitimation of ʿAbbāsid dynasty, 59 and political trials, 54, 58–9 and provincial autonomy, 49–52 and qāḍīs, 43, 44–6 Table, 52–4, 55–6, 57, 59–60 qāḍīs muftī function, 58, 60

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PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES maẓālim (Court of Complaint) jurisdiction (cont.) and role of viziers, 60 and ṣāḥib al-maẓālim, 43, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56 secular v. religious distinction unfounded, 59 temporary mandate in Iraqi amṣār, 46 maẓālim, aṣḥāb al-, 47 Mazandarān conquest, and cannibalism, 198n Mazāta clan, Zenata Berbers, 71 Mecca Black Stone, removal and restoration, 147 pilgrimages to, 134, 143 sanctuary in, 5 slaughtering of Christian prisoners, 151n Medina, 5, 6 mercy see clemency Merinids, 188 miḥna (inquisition), 48, 49, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60 Mīla, 70 Mills, Battle of the (271/885), 50, 62n Mocquet, Jean, 183 modesty see privacy Moloch, Phoenician god, 173n Morocco, 6, 7 ʿAlawī dynasty, 140–1, 147 Cabrerizas Altas fort, battle, 291n Festival of Sacrifice, 140 justice, crime and punishment (C11/C17), 179–92 Margallo, war of (1893), 278 and Muhammad, Mawlay (r. 1859–73), 278 public violence: amputation of hands or feet, 281–2; display of heads, 282–5; execution, 13–14, 14, 188, 198n, 199n; lashing, 280–1; mawlid celebrations and circumcisions, 286–7; Spanish travellers’ reactions to, 276–87; towards Jews, 14, 188, 198n, 285; towards slaves, 14, 188, 285–6 qādī’s justice, 280 qāʾid’s court, 280 Rahamena (Rhamna) tribe, defeat of, 284 Sefrou, 103 and Sulayman, Mawlay (r. 1794–1822), 277 see also Fez, Marrakesh Moses, spoken to by God (Q 4:164), denial, 31, 32, 39n Muʿāwiya, Caliph, 144 Mubārak Shāh, 245 Mubāraka, 101 Mughals, 17n al-Mughīra b. Saʿīd, 36, 41n al-Muhallabī, 114–15n Muḥammad b. ʿAbbād b. Muknif, 45, 49 Muḥammad b. ʿAbda b. ḥarb, 45, 50 Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, Imam, 146 Muḥammad b. Sulaymān, 45, 50 Muḥammad b. Tughluq, Sultan (r. 724– 52/1324–51), 16, 239

conversations with ḍiyā al-Dīn Baranī on death penalty, 241–4, 252n ignorance of sharīʿa, 253n rebellion under, 252n Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā b. ḥamza, 48 Muḥammad al-Mutawakkil, animalization of, 187 Muḥammad, Prophet, 11 honour of, 110–11n intercession (shafāʿa), and faith, 157, 171n Night Journey, 163–4 punishments by, 148 similarities with, 143, 144–5 Muḥammad al-Shaykh, 190 al-Muḥaqqiq al-ḥillī, Sharāʾiʿ al-Islām, 269, 271 muḥṣan, 253 muḥtasib, 4, 81, 164, 170 Muʿizz al-Dawla (r. 334–56/945–67), 114–15n al-Muʿizz (r. 341–65/953–75), 11, 12, 77, 140, 145, 148 circumcision festival (351/962), 145 as successor to Abraham and Muḥammad, 146 and unification of Islam, 146 Mūlāy Rashīd, 187 Mūlāy Zidan-Mūlāy ʿAbd Allāh civil war, 187 al-Muqtadir, maẓālim under, 58, 61n murder and conciliatory feast, 180 and exile, 180, 181 in France, 193n as reaction to hijāʾ, 109–10n see also honour killings Murga, José María de, 279, 281, 289n al-Musabbiḥī, 127 Akhbār Miṣr wa-faḍāʾiluhā, 205 muṣallā (open-air oratory), 6, 20n Cairo, 141 Córdoba, 132, 134 al-Mahdiyya, 142, 146 Muslim, 163 al-Mustanṣir, Caliph (r. 427–87/1036–94), 81 al-Mustarshid, Caliph, sermon of, 167 al-Mustaẓhir, Caliph, 4 al-Muʿtaḍid, Caliph (r. 279–89/892–902), 107n al-Muʿtamid, amīr of Seville (r. 461–84/ 1069–91), 115n al-Muʿtamid, Caliph (r. 256–79/870–92), 49 al-Mutanabbī, 99, 109n Muṭarrif, son of ʿAbd Allāh, 135 al-Muʿtaṣim, Caliph (r. 218–27/833–42), 48, 56, 94 al-Mutawakkil, Caliph, 48 Muʿtazila and Muʿtazilites, 30, 32, 157 Muṭīʿ b. Iyās, 107n mutilation (muthla), 6, 162, 184, 185, 187, 206; see also amputation, body-marking al-Muwaffaq, 49, 50, 56, 57 al-Muẓaffar b. Abī ʿĀmir, 114n

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INDEX public humiliation (tashhīr), 6, 8, 120, 121, 126–7, 183, 184, 189, 200n for bearing false witness, 123–4 for effeminates (mukhannathūn), 127 through processions, 12, 21n, 57, 166–7, 182, 221 through signs attached to victims, 167–8 through standing on bags of figs, 6, 120, 121 public violence and punishments of hell, 162 see also under Fez, Morocco symbolism of, 168 public welfare (maṣlaḥa), 125–6 punishment by God on prophets, 11, 148 criticisms of, 208 and public welfare, 125–6 and sharīʿa, 16, 18n, 240 types, 240, 251n; see also ḥadd punishments, ḥudūd punishments, qiṣās, siyāsa, taʿzīr punishments purification, 188–90, 190

Nafūsa Kharijite Berbers, revolt (283/896), 221, 224 nafy see banishment al-Najafī, al-Shaykh M[u]hammad ḥasan, 270, 271 al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh see ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III Naṣr b. Aḥmad (r. 301–31/914–43), 98 Naṣr b. al-ḥajjāj, banishment, 122 Naṣr b. Muḥammad b. al-Ashʿath, 53–4 al-Naṭʿī, Abū Muslim, 44, 48 al-Nawawī, 268 Nef, Annliese, 15 Nishāpūr, Friday mosque, 5 al-Niyāl, 197n Niẓām al-Mulk, Siyāsat-nāma, 252n Niẓārī Ismāʿīlīs, 162 Noronha, Alvaro de, 184 al-Nuwayrī, 221, 225, 227, 233nn offences towards God, 180 towards individuals, 180 Oppenheimer, Joseph Süss, 211 oratory, open-air see muṣallā Ottoman Criminal Code, 167 Ottomans, 17n, 62n, 167 parading see tashhīr perjury see false witness, bearing Persian chronicles (medieval), understanding of, 23n poetic contests, 108n poets, 3, 14, 88–9, 92–3, 97, 121, 123, 126, 207–10 police (shurṭa, shiḥna), 5, 170, 175n, 183–4, 186, 189, 205 status of, 81, 163–4 political expediency (siyāsa), 3 political theory, 249n Potocki, Jan, 290n prisons and imprisonment, 8, 29–30, 33, 38n, 49, 50, 73, 123–6, 132, 240, 245, 246 death in, 74, 103, 182 Fes, 182, 183, 186 release from, 82, 220 Muṭbaq, 54, 64n of poets, 93–4, 103 of women, 186 privacy, 162 and dignity (karāma) of human body, 4, 6–7 and honour and reputation, 4, 7–8 private and public sphere distinction, 3–4, 17n and cemetery, 5, 19–20n domestic sphere, 17–18n and hell, 161 and inviolability of human body, 4, 6–7, 161 and inviolability of places, 161 and inviolability of social status, 161 and market, 5–6 and mosque, 5 semi-public sphere, 5–6

Qadariyya, 32, 36 al-Qāḍi, ʿAbd al-Raḥīm, Daqāʾiq al-akhbār, 159, 162, 172n al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān, 68–72, 141–2 and Abū ʿAbd Allāh’s violence, 71, 73, 74 Iftitāḥ al-daʿwa wa-ibtidāʾ al-dawla, 67–8, 83n Risālat, 224, 227 qāḍīs, 81 appearing before maẓālim courts, 55–6, 59–60 appearing in maẓālim courts, 43, 44–6 Table, 52–4 asked for advice (fatwās), 57, 58 independence resisted, 51–2, 55, 57, 59 indictment by iqāma li-l-nās, 55 as instrument of political legitimization, 51, 52 as instruments of state violence, 53–4, 183 and miḥna, 57 seat in mosques, 5, 165, 176n word of, 57–9 qāʾids of military campaigns responsible for justice, 194n al-Qāʾim, Fāṭimid caliph, 138 Qarmatians see Carmathians al-Qāsim b. Hārūn al-Rashīd, 93 Qays-Yaman vendettas, 115n qiṣās (eye for an eye), 180, 181, 182, 183, 240 Qurṭubī, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, 125–6, 168–9 al-Tadhkira, 159, 161 quietism, political, 1–2 Quintana, Manuel José de, 277 Qumm, 106 Qurʾān 5:33 (brigandage verse), 16, 33, 35, 204, 208 created, 30, 31, 32, 48, 57 and crucifixion, 35, 204, 208 and Day of Judgment, 161

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PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES Qurʾān (cont.) and death penalty, 241, 244 and forgiveness, 112n on fornication, 125 and hell, 161, 162–3 al-Qushayrī, 161 Qutayba Ibn Muslim, crucifixions by, 204–5 Quṭb al-Dīn Aybeg (r. 602–7/1207–10), 245 Rabīʿa b. Umayya, banishment, 122, 125 Raḍiyya Sulṭāna (r. 634–7/1236–40), 245–6 Ramiro, son of Sancho Ramírez, king of Aragón, 131 al-Raqīq al-Qayrawānī, 148, 223 Kitāb taʾrīkh Ifrīqiya wa-l-Maghrib, 133, 224 al-Rashīd, Hārūn, Caliph, 52, 110n, 116n rebellion see fitna rebels with a cause (bughāt), 2 reputation, 4, 7–8 of early caliphs, 111n indifference to, 90–2, 107n see also honour respectability, ‘tearing up the veil’ of, 57, 65n revenge, 101 revenge killings see honour killings ritual and ḥudūd punishments, 257, 265–72 and violence, 9–13 Rodríguez Mediano, Fernando, 6, 7, 14 Rosen, Lawrence, 103 Rowson, Everett, 6, 7, 8 al-Rūgī (Gileli Rugui) (rebel from Ruwāga tribe, 1862), 291n al-Rūgī (al-Jilālī b. Idrīs al-Zahrhūnī, d. 1909), 291n rulers’ titles, 12–13, 74 al-ṣābīʾ, Abū Isḥāq, 113n sacrifice child, 136 and death of ʿAbd Allāh, 132, 148 enemies compared to sacrificial rams, 135 execution as, 134–6 human, 152n, 173n as political act, 136–43 see also Abraham: sacrifice, Day of Sacrifices, Festival of Sacrifice Saʿd al-Aʿsar (al-Aysar), 50 Saddam Hussein, 34 Saʿdians, 185 al-ṣafadī, 132 Safavids, 2, 17n Safi, 181, 191 ṣāḥib al-barīd, 55, 56 ṣāḥib al-maẓālim, 43, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56 Saḥnūn, 5 Saʿīd ʿAwad, 187 ṣāʿid b. Makhlad, 49 Saint-Mandrier, 187 Saladin (r. 564–89/1169–93), 109n

Saljūqs cities, 160 conquest of Damascus and Palestine territories, 79 eschatology, 174n ‘shadow of God’ title, 13 Sallām, 53 salvation, 157, 171n uncertainty about: in Christianity, 158; in Sunnī Islam, 157–60 Sāmarrāʾ, 49 al-ṣanʿānī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, 123, 158, 266, 268 Sancho, half-brother of Urraca, 131 Sancho Ramírez, king of Aragón, 131 al-Saqsaqīnī Turkish slave executed at Damascus (646/1248), 203 poetic acount (anonymous), 210, 212–13 prose account (Abū Shāma al-Maqdisī al-Dimashqī), 212–14 al-Sarakhsī, 107n al-Sarakhsī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Aḥmad, 4, 267, 268 Sātif, 70, 71 satire see hijā Sayf al-Dawla [ṣadaqa], 101 al-Sayyid al-ḥimyarī, 208 Seidensticker, Tilman, 14 Semede, 181 al-Shaʿbī, 108n al-Shaʿbī, ʿĀmir, 93, 108n al-Shāfiʾī, Muḥammad b. Idrīs, 258–9 Kitāb al-Umm, 124–5, 257, 260 Shāfiʿite legal traditions, 97, 98, 138, 260, 261, 267, 268 shame, 6, 8 and crucifixion, 14, 206, 207–8 and Day of Judgment and hell, 160–2 and face-blackening, 162 and facial mutilation, 162 and ḥadd, 126, 271 and lampoons, 90, 91 and nakedness, 161–2 see also honour, reputation al-Shammākhī, 225 sharīʿa, 88, 95–9, 102, 104 and death penalty, 15, 239 and Firūz Shāh Tughluq, 248, 249 and Muḥammad b. Tughluq, 253n and punishment, 16, 18n, 240 legitimated on models of pre-Islamic Persian kings, 249 Shaykh al-Mufīd, 271 al-Shayzarī, 164 Shuʿayb, 119 Shurayḥ, semi-legendary judge, 123–4 Sidi Abd El-Kader Bel Hassan, 283 Sijilmāsa, 73 sitr, 4, 20n, 57, 65n, 162 siyāsa abolition by Firūz Shāh Tughluq, 248–9

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INDEX as establishment of justice, 16, 240 as political expediency, 3 as punishment, 238, 239, 240–1 as punishment/capital punishment, 15, 163, 174n as split between kingship and religious law, 239 of God, 163 slander, 111n, see also calumny, hijā slaves used as executioners, 14, 188 social exclusion, 186 Soriano, Rodrigo, 278, 285 state, definition, 192n state rules (ḍavābiṭ), 238, 239 state violence, 1, 17n, 72–80 and dealing with rebellions, 75–7 and eschatology, 11, 12–13, 156, 156–71, 169–70 and fiction of absolute power, 192 and fighting with external enemies, 75, 77–80 and imposition of justice, law and order, 75, 80–1 and monopoly of social language, 192 western views, 16–17, 276–87 stoning for fornication, 189 and conviction by evidence, 266 and conviction by ‘knowledge of the Imam’, 270 jurists’ interpretation, 267–8 open/public (ʿalāniyya) vs hidden/secret (sirr), 266, 268, 274n and presence of Imam, 268–72 and role of imām or his representative, 266, 268, 270, 271 and role of judge, 271–2 and role of witnesses, 266–8 al-Subkī, 132 Sudayf, 107 Sufis and Sufism, 5, 49, 60, 62n, 198n, 222, 227 Sukayna, daughter of al-ḥusayn, 120 Sulaymān b. al-Manṣūr, 115n sulṭān, status and role, 190–1, 192n, 195n Sunqar, Malik Badr al-Dīn, 245 Sūsa, 82 Szombathy, Zoltán, 7 al-ṭabarānī, Yaḥyā b. al-ḥasan, 44, 48 ṭāhir b. Muḥammad al-ṭāhirī, 98 Tāj al-Dīn Mūsavī, 245 al-Tanūkhī, Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Isḥāq b. al-Buhlūl, 58 taʿrīḍ see allusion Tārīkh-i Kisravi, 242, 243, 252n tashhīr see public humiliation al-Tawḥīdī, Abū ḥayyān, 112n taysa, 193n taʿzīr punishments, 3, 6, 7–8, 96, 111n, 123, 124, 156, 168, 176n, 204 flogging, 123 for fornication, 126

imprisonment, 123 and levels of honourability, 8 see also banishment, public humiliation Tāzrūt, 70 Teophanes, 135 al-Thaʿālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr, 97 Thaml, 58 theology (kalām) and theologians, 2–3, 32, 56, 156–60, 256 throat, symbolism of, 191 throat cutting (dhabḥ), 27, 36, 37, 191 Tillier, Mathieu, 8 tobacco consumption, 186 torture, 10, 184, 211, 248, 282 transvestites, 121–2, 126 ṭulūnids, 50, 59 Tunis executions (C19), 13–14 revolt (280/893–4), 221 Tunisia, 68, 80 Turberville, Thomas, 177n Turkic rule, Būyid/post-Būyid, 170 ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, 21–2n al-ṭūsī, Muḥammad b. al-ḥasan, 262–3, 265, 271 al-Khilāf, 270 al-Mabsūṭ, 270 al-Nihāya, 262, 264 ʿUbayd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿĀʾisha, 56 ʿUbayd Allāh b. Muḥammad b. ṣafwān al-Jumaḥī, 53 ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Sarī, 49 ʿulamāʾ, role, 15, 16, 23n, 138 ʿUmar b. Abī ʿUmar, 59 ʿUmar b. ḥafṣūn, 136 ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Caliph (r. 13–23/634–44), 57, 97, 164 banishment, 122 public humiliation under, 123–4 rule (ḍabṭ) of, 11, 247 ʿUmar b. Lajaʾ, 121 ʿUmar b. Muṭraf, 53 ʿUmar (II) b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/ 717–720), 111n, 137 ʿUmāra al-Yamanī, 209 Umayyads and Abraham, 146–7 caliphs as God’s vice regents on earth, 13 and Festival of Sacrifice, 131–2, 135, 139–40 Umayyad–Fāṭimid rivalry, 136–8, 148–9 unbelief (kufr) and unbelievers, 2, 29, 37n, 96, 157, 258, 265 al-ʿUqaylī, 207, 209 ʿUqba ibn Nāfiʿ, 185 Urraca (r. c. 1080–1126), 131 Urrestarazu, Francisco de, 277, 282, 288n al-ʿUtbī, 127 ʿUthmān, banishments under, 122–3 ʿUthmān b. Saʿīd al-Dārimī, 28

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PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN ISLAMIC SOCIETIES slander of, 90 unforgivable source of offence, 106n violence against, 75, 121, 125, 165, 181, 205, 243, 269, 281 women and children, present at scenes of violence, 188, 198–9n wounding, 180

van Gelder, G. J. H., 88 violence, 17 against outsiders, 17n, 157 against the state, 3, 17n arbitrary, 10 and bodily discipline, 10 chaotic, 10 criminal, 17n criticisms of excessive, 14 domestic, 17n and domination, 9–13 in legal tradition, 2–3 in literature, 3 public and private, 3–9; see also public violence, state violence representations of, 13–17 revolutionary, 2, 69–72 and ritual, 9–13 and subjected bodies, 10 topoi, 148–9 typology, 17n verbal and physical: fluid boundaries between, 108n

Yaḥyā, 52, 189 Yaḥyā b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-ḥasan, 116n Yaḥyā b. Aktham, 52, 57 Yaḥyā b. Taʿfūft, 181 Yaḥyā b. Yaʿmur, 32–3 al-Yakkī, 208, 209–10 Yamanīs–Qaysīs rivalry, 48 Yaʿqūb b. Dāwud, 102 Yāqūt, 122 al-Yasaʿ b. Midrār, 73 Yazīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik, Caliph, 37 Yazīd b. al-Muhallab, 36–7, 121, 123 Yazīd II (r. 125–6/743–4), 120 Yūsuf b. Yaʿqūb, 52

Waddān, 94 Wahb b. Munabbih, 30, 31 Wahb b. Zamʿa b. al-Aswad, 97 Wahbān, 91–2 al-Wājilānī, Abū Zakariyyāʾ, 224 Wakīʿ, 46, 47 al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 86–96/705–15), 119, 121 al-Wansharīsī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid, 185 al-Waryāglī, ʿAbd Allāh, 189–90 Wāsiṭ, 11, 32, 33 al-Wāthiq, Caliph (r. 227–32/842–7), 54, 58, 93, 98 whip (dirra), use of, 164 women, 4, 5, 56, 83, 90, 104, 121, 122, 127, 164, 186, 188, 221, 267, 286 chastity and inviolability, 6, 122, 126 in hell, 162

zabāniyya (punisher angels), 162–3, 164, 167, 168 and market inspectors, 170 al-ẓāhir (r. 411–27/1021–36) titles adopted, 74 violence, 74–5 ẓāhirī legal school, 137 zakāt (alms tax), 82 zandaqa (heresy), 102, 103, 115n Zayd Ibn ʿAlī, crucifixion, 207, 208, 209 al-Zayyānī, al-Jawāhir al-mukhtāra, 184 zindīq, 29, 37n Ziyād Allāh III (r. 290–6/903–9), 228 fled Tunisia, 71 letter to people of Tunisia, 68–9 Zubayda, wife of al-Qāsim, 108–9n Zuhāk, 14 al-Zuhrī, Hārūn b. ʿAbd Allāh, 49 Zuwayla, massacre of (307/920), 78

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