And the King said, "Bring him to me; I will appoint him exclusively for myself." And when he spoke to him, he said, "Indeed, you are today established [in position] and trusted." [Joseph] said, "Appoint me over the storehouses of the land. Indeed, I will be a knowing guardian." And thus We established Joseph in the land to settle therein wherever he willed. We touch with Our mercy whom We will, and We do not allow to be lost the reward of those who do good. {Sūrat Yūsuf v. 54-56} Verses 54-56 of Sūra 12 mark the turning point where the prophet Yūsuf, brought low and held captive in numerous ways by those lesser than him, begins the meteoric rise to power and prophethood presaged by his dream in which the heavenly bodies themselves prostrate to him. The actors in these critical three lines are limited to a matching number of entities--Allah, the Prophet, and the King—and the verses revolve on the axis of kingship, divinely appointed authority, and the divine itself. These three forces are portrayed as synergistic and complementary: the King exercises his power to appoint, but is given the imperative and instructions by the Prophet, forming an actual and symbolic nexus under God’s approval. It is clear that the sanguine portrayal of the king, al-malik, in Sūrat Yūsuf offers a sharp contrast to descriptions in interspersed verses of the Qurʾān of Pharoah, Fir’awn, the Egyptian monarch who exemplifies despotic corrupt power, appearing to enjoy unlimited strength but ultimately humbled and destroyed. This paper will reveal how medieval exegetes of the Qurʾān represented concepts of kingship in theological terms, focusing in particular on their comments on al-malik, Fir’awn, kingly authority in relation to moral and practical law and relationships between ruler and ruled. Exegetical comments on the three cited verses from Sūrat Yūsuf and select appropriate verses from Sūrat Yūnus will be discussed, and will demonstrate how theological writings on the issue of mulk and khilāfa complicate the generally clear cut dichotomy found in medieval political treatises.

This paper explores how the Prophetic ḥadīth “The caliphate (khilāfa) after me will be thirty years, followed by kingship (mulk)” (also known as the “thirty-year ḥadīth”) was discussed and understood in medieval Sunni theological discourses (kalām) on the caliphate/imamate, Qurʾānic exegeses (tafsīr), and ḥadīth commentaries. The thirty-year ḥadīth and its variants—all related on the authority of Safīna (a mawla of the Prophet)—form the crux of Muslim debates on the distinction between legitimate caliphate and worldly kingship. Several scholars today have taken the saying to mean that only the Rāshidūn caliphs had been caliphs in the full sense of the word; the Umayyads and Abbasids after them were mere kings or pseudo-caliphs at best. The founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, even quotes it in support of his argument that the caliphate was not an essential institution in Islam and should therefore be abolished. Aside from its Baṣran and Wāsiṭī isnāds, the thirty-year ḥadīth’s origins remain an open question, though Muhammad Qasim Zaman has recently argued that it began to be circulated in the second/eighth century under the Abbasids to legitimize the position of ʿAlī as one of the four Rāshidūn caliphs. The ḥadīth was eventually included in the ḥadīth compilations of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), Abū Dāwūd (d. 275/889), and al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892), and would be brought up for discussion in subsequent centuries by Sunni theologians writing about the caliphate. This paper is less concerned with the ḥadīth’s provenance, but more with how it was understood by medieval Sunni thinkers in different times and places. I argue that far from evoking the thirty-year ḥadīth as a proof text to delegitimize the Abbasids whom they were living under, Sunni theologians writing about this ḥadīth often engaged in nuanced discussions of the legitimacy of the post-Rāshidūn caliphs. Though cited to legitimize the Rāshidūn caliphs and to discuss the legitimacy of Muʿāwiya (d. 60/680) as “caliph,” discussions of the ḥadīth went beyond drawing a clear demarcating line between the Rāshidūn and post-Rāshidūn caliphs, as observed in al-Āmidī’s (d. 631/1233) discussion of the caliphate in his Abkār al-afkār and al-Taftāzānī’s (d. 793/1390) commentary on the creed of al-Nasafī (d. 537/1142). I also examine the change over time in the ways by which the thirty-year ḥadīth was discussed, and link these ideological shifts to wider political developments surrounding each thinker.

From the early days of the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyads (661-750) the Iranians participated actively to find a way to achieve political independence. Having an ideal picture of the Iranian pre-Islamic Empires in mind, the Iranians were required to establish their particular political structures in their own territories. Local dynasties of Iran from the Tahirids (821-873) to the Buyids (932-1055) tried different ways to distinguish their political structures from the Abbasid Caliphate. To broaden their territories, these local dynasties were in persistent conflicts with each other; however, their proceedings approached Iran to independence from the Abbasid Caliphate. The presence of Turks in the political structure of the Abbasid Caliphate and the local dynasties in Iran particularly the Samanids (874-1004) provided the conditions for the establishment of the Ghazvanid dynasty (975-1187), the first Sultanate in Iran. The historians know Sultan Mahmud, the founder of the Ghaznavid dynasty, as the first Iranian King of an Islamic dynasty. Drawing on precedent local dynasties to link himself to the ancient Iranian Empires, Mahmud named himself Sultan to identify an independent identity for himself. Supporting the Abbasid Caliphate against the Shiite Buyids and the Ismailis called Bad-din, Sultan Mahmud developed his territories in Iran and India as Ghazi-e Islam. He established a splendid court with developed bureaucracy to rule over vast territories from India to Rayy. Based on primary Persian and Arabic sources, this article addresses the theological and political proceedings of Sultan Mahmud to establish the first Sultanate in Iran. Considering the political structures of the Abbasid Caliphate and other local dynasties like the Samanids, Byuids, and the Saffarids (861-1002), this article addresses what challenges Sultan Mahmud faced to introduce the Qhaznavid dynasty as a distinguished political structure in the medieval time. Keywords: Sultan Mahmud, Abbasid Caliphate, Ghaznavid Dynasty, Independent Political Structure.

A highly nuanced reading of the caliphate and its implications in Mamlūk society emerges from the ground-breaking discourse of the political theoretician and social historian ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406). This paper limits its exploration of Ibn Khaldun’s views to three works: his presentation of norms on the caliphate and secular authority (mulk) expressed in his Muqaddima, the relevant sections of his history Kitāb al-‘ibār, as well as autobiographical recollections in al-Ta‘rīf bi-Ibn Khaldūn wa-riḥlatihi gharban wa-sharqan. While praising the Mamlūks directly in his Kitāb al-‘ibar and indirectly in the Muqaddima, Ibn Khaldūn legitimized their government while subliminally pointing to its flaws in comparison with the classical caliphate. Modern scholarship has characterized Ibn Khaldūn as an outsider and a subdued observer of the practices he witnessed in Mamlūk Egypt. This seems to be the case in regard to his lukewarm approach to the figurehead Abbasid caliphate of his own time. Ibn Khaldūn’s thought expands upon two important themes; the gradual extinction of Abbasid ‘aṣabiyya and the symbolic need for a true caliphate. There is some contradiction in this presentation. As a historian, he flatters the Mamlūks by casting them as rescuers of a corrupt Abbasid dynasty in decline. He likewise projects acceptance of the notion that the Abbasid caliph formally delegates the sultan with all of the caliphal prerogatives. It is thus somewhat unclear if Ibn Khaldūn believed the Mamlūks were sent by God to restore the caliphate, or that they absorbed and remade it in their own image with the Mamlūk sultan as acting imām-caliph. The normative and idealistic tone of the Muqaddima granted Ibn Khaldūn the ambiguity to discuss usurpation of authority without ever naming the Mamlūk sultans as further evidence of a trend. There is certainly a parallel with the other examples that Ibn Khaldūn gives of the sultanate or amirate eroding the authority of the caliphate, but one that he dared not associate with his patrons. This paper also considers the predicament of Ibn Khaldūn as a theoretician reluctant to bite the hand that fed him, in view of points argued by Leo Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing.