Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

The social construction of orthodoxy 115
descendants, still armed with Wahhabı ideology, make a successful bid
for power on the peninsula, leading to the eventual establishment of
modern Saudi Arabia.
overall trends
I have argued above that the social construction of theological
orthodoxy took place at the intersection of three primary societal arenas,
comprising the scholars, the ordinary believers and the government. To
conclude, I will briefly summarise some broad historical trends that can
be observed in these arenas during the millennium between the ninth
and the nineteenth centuries.
The history of the ‘ulama’ is marked by the progressive professionalisation
of scholarly activity: while early scholars enjoyed no formal
distinction and made their living through trade or industry, most later
scholars were career academics who dedicated their time to research,
teaching and writing and vied for lucrative positions at well-endowed
madrasas. This development permitted the increased sophistication and
explosive growth of the Islamic sciences and their literatures, but it also
left the scholarly class dependent on society’s capacity to produce a
sufficient surplus to support its scholars. The consequent vulnerability of
scholarship was demonstrated by the decline in scholarly activity and
output that accompanied the economic crises experienced by Muslim
countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Thenatureoftheumma, the community of believers, underwent
constant change due to successive waves of conversion to Islam. In the
year 700, most ordinary Muslims were Arabs with strong tribal identities
and a shared language and culture, living as tiny, close-knit
minorities among non-Muslims. Two centuries later, the majority of
Muslims were non-Arabs, representing a variety of cultural and religious
backgrounds and thus bringing to the community a range of different
preconceptions regarding God and the nature of religion. The geographical
spread and cultural diversification of Islam supported the
proliferation of localised forms of popular religion, even as the unification
of the Islamic realm enabled the diffusion of official orthodoxy to all
corners of the Muslim world.
Finally, the role played by the state in the construction of orthodoxy
depended on the nature and strength of the government. From 750 until
roughly 950 the early Abbasids ruled over an empire that was in medieval
terms both powerful and highly centralised. The middle period
between 950 and 1450, on the other hand, was characterised by small,
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