Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

116 Ahmed El Shamsy
often ephemeral states or statelets, frequently ruled by foreigners with
slave backgrounds. Consequently, while an Abbasid caliph such as
Ma’mun could hope to refashion the definition of orthodoxy by fiat, the
later rulers could realistically cherish no such ambitions. The latter were
constrained by an acute need to gain and maintain legitimacy in the eyes
of the population and thus were compelled to present themselves as
guardians of the theological status quo, leaving the definition of orthodoxy
in the hands of the ‘ulama’. Following the appearance in the fifteenth
century of the mighty gunpowder empires ruled by firmly
established ruling dynasties, executive power began to gain the upper
hand in relation to the scholars. The dynasties claimed the role of
defenders of Islam and thus succeeded in intertwining religious orthodoxy
with their own legitimacy. With the coming of the modern era and
the rise of nationalism as the primary legitimising discourse of the
nation-state, the question of religious orthodoxy was eventually pushed
out of the centre of the political arena.
Further reading
Berkey, Jonathan Porter, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A
Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton, 1992).
Chamberlain, Michael, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus,
1190–1350 (Cambridge and New York, 1994).
Ess, Josef van, The Flowering of Muslim Theology, tr. Jane Marie Todd
(Cambridge, MA, 2006).
Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: eine
Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam, 6 vols. (Berlin and
New York, 1991–5).
Güzel, Hasan Celal, Cem, Oguz C., and Karatay, Osman, (eds), The Turks, 6
vols. (Ankara, 2002).
Lapidus, Ira M., Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge and
New York, 1984).
Makdisi, George, Ibn Aqîl et la resurgence de l’Islam traditionaliste au xie
siècle (Damascus, 1963).
The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West
(Edinburgh, 1981).
Mottahedeh, Roy P., The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran
(New York, 1985).
Nagel, Tilman, Die Festung des Glaubens: Triumph und Scheitern des
islamischen Rationalismus im 11. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1988).
Repp, Richard C., The Müfti of Istanbul: A Study in the Development of the
Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1986).
Shoshan, Boaz, Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo (New York, 1993).
Taylor, Christopher Schurman, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziyara and the
Veneration of Muslim Saints in Late Medieval Egypt (Boston, 1999).
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