Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

The Medina Democracy 181
This assassination was followed by many others, notably that of
'Ali Ibn Abi Talib, also in the mosque. It was that assassination,
provoking the first split in Islam, which was to harden the caliph's
distrust of the crowd of the faithful assembled in a mosque that
might be sheltering a murderer. In his unequalled Al-Muqaddima,
Ibn Khaldun laments:
Look at the caliphs who have been assassinated in the mosque at the
time of the call to prayer and how their assassins lay in wait for them
at precisely that time. This proves that they personally presided over
the prayer service and had no others substitute for them in that duty. 2
With the series of assassinations of caliphs, the wnma, the ideal
community of the faithful, gave way to an 'amma full of hatred for
the caliph and the desire to kill him.
The hijab, the veil that blocks off the exterior and filters it in
order to protect the caliph, henceforth cut the caliph off from his
subjects, who had become the 'amma. From then on, the fiction of
the just caliph was the prisoner of earthly space and its violent
reality, a violence that fractured the political scene in two: the space
of caliphal decision-making, and the space of the 'amma, excluded
from that decision-making and forever exiled outside the walls of
the palace. According to Ibn Khaldun, the institution of the caliphal
hijab appeared simultaneously with the transformation of the caliphal
ideal into earthly despotism:
When the caliphate was transformed into theocratic royalty and when
there appeared the institutions of the sultanate with their titles [that
is, when the caliph began to delegate the powers of the imam -
prayer, justice, and financial management], the first thing done was
to close the door to the public, because of the princes' fear of attacks
by the Kharijites and other dissidents .... Leaving that door open
had another disadvantage: it permitted the crowd to besiege the
princes and prevent them from attending to their important business.
The dignitary chosen for that office was called the hajib. 3
The word hajib has the same root as the word hijab - hajaba, to
hide, to veil, to put up a barrier, to divide space in two by a sitr,
a veil. The only difference between hajib and hijab is that the first
is a man, the second an object, a veil or barrier of some sort. But
the two have the same function: to divide space in two, the inside
and the outside, with the aim of protecting the inside from the
outside. The hajib 'interposes himself between the sultan and the