I must start by saying that Hayrettin Yücesoy’s Disenchanting the Caliphate: the Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought is a challenging work, in more ways than one. First, it tackles a period of early Islamicate history that has a difficult historiography, as it deals with the Umayyad caliphate and its immediate aftermath. Given subsequent generations’ rejection of much of the Umayyad legacy per the historical writing that followed, the actual context of the period is often difficult to recover without careful analysis. Second, Yücesoy intervenes in a near-universal framing of Islamicate history that suggests that the evolution of its political history is framed by the unique aspects of its religious heritage. To name institutions, politics, or governance as “Islamic,” or even “Islamicate,” as Marshall Hodgson attempted to define it, automatically places it in an oppositional, or at least alternative framing to that of “the West.” Finally, the book’s argument requires that we dive deeply into how the intellectuals of this period framed their ideas, and how they used the Arabic language of the early medieval period to describe them. This proves an essential exercise because the Arabic terms these transitional thinkers employed often produced a different connotation in their framing than the traditional Muslim jurisprudential and theological definitions would later construct. Put all together, we are confronted with an ambitious project to reframe the development of political authority under the Umayyad and `Abbasid caliphates as a project of pragmatic state-building, instead of an outgrowth of a unique religious culture.

Before proceeding, however, a disclaimer is in order: the terms “disenchantment” and “secular” in the title of the book are not intended to suggest that the politics of the time chose to reject religion as a component in the process. Rather, the key to the author’s arguments rests on the term siyasa, which refers to temporal politics under the rule of a Muslim sovereign. Debates over political issues bedeviled the early Muslim community almost from its very inception. The Qur’an did not have a substantial political or legal component, and it was thus a text open to multiple interpretations that could breed political dissent. The process of consultation among the leaders of the community in choosing a ruler, pioneered by the Rashidun caliphs, soon fell victim to factional and tribal conflicts in the decades that followed. By the end of the First Civil War, the emerging Umayyad caliphs had reverted to an imperial model that mimicked that of the Romans and Sassanid Persians who had preceded them, much to the dismay of pious Muslims. The latter group complained that the Umayyad rulers had abandoned the “contractualism” that had marked the republican-style relationship between the caliph and the community founded in the Rashidun era, where the caliph had been chosen and acclaimed by councils of notable leaders in the community.

In traditional historiography, this eventually culminated in the `Abbasid Revolution of the mid-eighth century, which then struggled to resolve the internal contradictions between the positions of its partisans as it consolidated its power. When the modern historiography of that period was constructed under the rubric of Orientalism in the twentieth century, this process was subsumed under the terminology of “Islamic political thought” by both Muslims and Western Orientalists alike. Drawing on the sources of the later Umayyad and early `Abbasid political thinkers themselves, Yücesoy argues that it is time to retire the moniker of “Islamic” from the historiography of political thought under the medieval caliphates. In his view, there was instead a debate between religious and secular visions about how to best practice politics during this period—and the vision of the more secular thinkers won.

This movement toward a more secular model of political thought was grounded in circles of non-Arab converts to Islam, often of Persian background. The circle of Salim b. `Abd al-Rahman Abu al-`Ala during the later Umayyad caliphate of Hisham proved to be a breeding ground for the growth of siyasa politics as it worked to construct a functional bureaucracy out of the tribal aristocracy of the Umayyad house. From these circles emerged thinkers like `Abd al-Hamid b. Yahya b. Sa’d (d. 750) and Ibn al-Muqaffa’ (d. 757). As the Umayyad caliphate’s political unity disintegrated over the course of the 740s, the writings of `Abd al-Hamid seeking to advise the rulers on how to restore stability took on a new practical urgency that diverged from previous concerns over the religious legitimacy of the caliph, and focused more on the practicalities of governance and administration. While `Abd al-Hamid did not survive the `Abbasid Revolution that followed, his protégé Ibn al-Muqaffa’ did, and his writings during early `Abbasid rule about establishing a political and administrative state grounded in competent bureaucrats occupying fixed offices proved critical in establishing siyasa as the foundation of future imperial rule in the states that followed. Their influence can be tracked in the writings of the satirist al-Jahiz (d. 868) a century later, who complained about the moral laxity of the “scribes.”

However, Ibn al-Muqaffa’s future influence was not a foregone conclusion—indeed, he perished at the hands of his enemies in al-Mansur’s court shortly after producing his most well-known works. He occupied a political space wracked with the tensions of the revolution that had just taken place, where messianic `Abbasid partisans were rapidly rising to positions of power in the newly-established caliphate, as were former dissenting `ulama who wanted to elevate the religious law over the power of any sovereign. Ibn al-Muqaffa’s great contribution was to chart a middle path between those who desired to place the interpretation of the religious law completely in the hands of the `ulama, thereby making the caliph only its implementor, and partisans who sought to uphold the power of the sovereign even at the expense of the revealed law. In his view, the authority of the caliph could only be circumscribed in the case of sacred laws that are unambiguously outlined in the Qur’an or the sunna of the Prophet, and in these cases, his role was solely to uphold these laws. However, any ambiguous situations that arose in discussions of the sacred law, or in matters that would be designated as subject to the caliph’s ra’y, or reasoned opinion, would be within his purview to decide. Pointing out that the emerging multiplicity of jurisprudential schools were producing contradictory decisions often tied to specific local contexts, Ibn al-Muqaffa’ argued that sovereign power with only limited constraints was necessary to resolve the chaos that could otherwise emerge. In so doing, Ibn al-Muqaffa’ created a system whereby the sovereign and Muslim jurisprudents were encouraged to cooperate, by having recognizable limits placed on their power.

Ibn al-Muqaffa’s other contribution was the concept of a “caliph’s privy,” intended to be a group of scholars and bureaucratic experts who could rationalize the practice of government for the new caliphate, rather than just turning over governance to opportunists or the most zealous supporters of the ruler. Some of this argument was self-serving—Ibn al-Muqaffa’s ties to the former Umayyad circles worked against him in the competition for posts and patronage under the new government. But he knew that the experience and competence established by the former bureaucratic elites of the Umayyad court could prove useful in stabilizing the `Abbasids as well, and he pointed out that preserving the tax revenues of the imperial domains would be critical for the success of the rulers. For their part, the rulers needed to command a military force based on rationalized ranks and the competence of the soldiers, none of whom should be involved with the practice of tax collection and fiscal matters, lest it corrupt their primary purpose of defending the realm.

The development of siyasa was therefore constructed by these critical transitional thinkers as a way of escaping the trap of incompatibility between governing and moral values which emerged as a result of the initial entanglement of early Islam with politics. Rather than locating the process of legislating solely in the hands of either the caliph, the `ulama, or the partisan supporters of the ruler, Ibn al-Muqaffa’s idea of siyasa created a system of balance and consent to uphold the rule of the sovereign and his government. The adoption of the siyasa concept in later eras by thinkers as diverse as al-Mawardi and Ibn Taymiyya, along with the preponderance of surviving manuscripts in libraries that discuss siyasa over imamate visions of politics, testify to the impact of this transitional moment in the history of Islamic civilization.

For years, I have taught a selection from the Kitab al-Amwal (Book of Taxation) by Abu `Ubayd b. Sallam (d. 837) in the unit on the `Abbasid Caliphate for my course on Islamic History to 1750. It almost perfectly reflects the dynamics that Disenchanting the Caliphate outlines with such precision. Abu `Ubayd, like the mawali of the late Umayyad and early `Abbasid period who outlined siyasa political thought, was the son of a Byzantine slave who later became a noted scholar of both religious and administrative sciences. At one point in his Book of Taxation, he describes how the island of Cyprus became a matter of diplomatic and political contention for the `Abbasids early in the reign of Harun al-Rashid. In the Umayyad period, the Cypriots and the Byzantine Empire had made a treaty whereby the inhabitants of the island sent an equal tribute to both the Byzantines and the caliphate every year, and maintained a strict neutrality whereby they would not side with either party in a conflict. When the governor `Abd al-Malik b. Salih (d. 812) encountered a situation where he thought that some Cypriot leaders had violated this neutrality pact, he wrote to eight prominent Muslim scholars, including the notable jurist Malik b. Anas, and asked whether he should abandon the pact and declare war on Cyprus. From `Abd al-Malik government records (which would have dated from around 789-793, when he was governor of the frontier provinces), Abu `Ubayd extracted these opinions, and concluded from them that the preponderance of the jurists held that the actions of a few hostile individuals could not be used to justify war on the entire population of the island. As a result, `Abd al-Malik opted to continue honoring the agreement, and Abu `Ubayd preserved this case as a rule for how Muslim rulers and governors should practice diplomacy with the dar al-`ahd.

In teaching this text, I have always wanted my students to take away two important points from it. The first is how the rapidity of the early Muslim conquests generated a hodgepodge of ad hoc treaty arrangements that required additional clarification later on the part of Umayyad and `Abbasid administrators. But more importantly, in this case, I wanted them to note the fact that the rulers (or in this case, a prominent governor of the `Abbasid house) consulted with religious scholars rather than issuing a unilateral decision based solely on their own authority—with `Abd al-Malik even changing his mind about his proposed course of action once he reviewed the evidence and arguments presented. This event follows almost exactly the model advocated by Ibn al-Muqaffa’ about how a sovereign should govern. He first seeks out the advice of those most knowledgeable about a given issue, and then renders his decision based on the possibilities they present. While the power to issue that decision rests with him, it is a process that rests on the twin pillars of political cooperation and administrative expertise.

But this raises a final point that marks the conclusion of Yücesoy’s account: the possibility, as he puts it, of “telling non-ulema-centric histories of good governance” in more productive ways. Given the widespread adoption of the siyasa model among religious scholars and political authorities alike in subsequent centuries, can the distinction between `ulama and non-`ulama practitioners of politics be so easily drawn in the wake of the `Abbasid consolidation? To what extent could the `ulama of the eighth and ninth century have moved toward a form of siyasa in their own right, even if they did not yet name it as such (as in the case of Abu `Ubayd above)? And finally, the post-`Abbasid world raises a whole separate set of issues, whereby the idea of siyasa could be paired with religio-mystical ideas, or take on different definitions depending on the genre of writing of the author, as Hüseyin Yılmaz has outlined in his recent work Caliphate Redefined. I do not claim to have answers to these questions, but the need to take up Yucesoy’s challenge to rethink them should be a starting point.

John J. Curry, an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, graduated from The Ohio State University with an M.A. in History and Arabic (1998) and a Ph.D. in History (2005). He specializes in the history of the early modern Ottoman Empire, Islamic Studies, and World History. He is the author of The Transformation of Muslim Mystical Thought in the Ottoman Empire: The Rise of the Halveti Order, 1350-1650 (Edinburgh University Press, 2010), and a translator for the Cihannüma geography of the Ottoman scholar Katip Çelebi.

Hayrettin Yücesoy’s Disenchanting the Caliphate (2023) is an ambitious book that pushes into many fronts. At its core, the book traces the development of a distinctly secular political discourse in medieval Islam centered on the concept of siyāsa (temporal politics), which emerged from the lay bureaucrat literati associated with Sālim b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Abū al-ʿAlāʾ (d. ca. 720) during the late Umayyad period and found its flowering in the works of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib (d. 750) and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 755 or 757). As a counterpoint and challenge to the ulema’s political discourse, “the idea of siyasa disenchanted politics” (x), with “disenchantment” understood not in the Weberian sense of “rejecting religion or the unidirectional demagification of the world” but in the sense of “dismantling the ulema-centric understanding of political cosmology and the associated politics” (267). The book’s study of siyāsa also serves a larger purpose in interrogating the idea of “Islamic political thought,” which, according to Yücesoy, takes for granted “Islam” as a stable analytical category for a diverse range of peoples, ideas, and practices simply labeled as “Muslim” or “Islamic.” In addition, scholars working on this field tend to privilege the religious discourses of the ulema, thereby taking the ulema’s perspectives as representative of everything “Islamic,” including “Islamic political thought.” These trends exacerbate the “over-religionization of the Muslim subject,” which in turn perpetuates the othering of Muslims in public and academic discourse (ix-x). In other words, the siyāsa discourse did not only disenchant politics in medieval times, but it also provides avenues to disenchant the field of Islamic studies as practiced today.

Yücesoy argues that the political language of siyāsa “exposed a competition between two regimes of rationality in political reflection: the political theology or religious governance of the ulema, ‘imamate discourse,’ and the secular politics of lay bureaucrat literati interested in diverse humanistic fields and mundane knowledge, ‘siyasa discourse’” (2). Prior to the emergence of siyāsa among the lay bureaucrats of the late Umayyad period, discourses on rulership––including but not restricted to the subject of the caliphate––were dominated by the ulema. The ulema’s political language, or the “imamate discourse,” was ultimately concerned with the ruler’s faith and piety and his adherence to the divine law (sharīʿa), whose jurisprudential precepts were framed by the ulema themselves. In terms of politics, this discourse hardly offered concrete proposals for day-to-day governance and was largely out of touch with the political realities and challenges associated with a rapidly evolving empire. Unlike the imamate discourse, the siyāsa discourse had its finger on the pulse of politics, all the more so since its early pioneers were “administrators of Grecophone and Persianate pedigree” who were “[s]killed in the art of civil and military administration” and “helped to integrate local practical administrative knowledge into the caliphal system” (83).

The temporal political concerns of siyāsa are on clear display in Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s Risāla fī al-Ṣaḥāba (“Epistle on the Caliph’s Privy”), a treatise intended as a political blueprint for the caliph al-Manṣūr (r. 754–775) to build an effective state following the Abbasid Revolution. In fact, Yücesoy devotes most of Disenchanting the Caliphate, especially its second half, to a close reading and reappraisal of this treatise. Among its many interventions, the “Epistle” redefines the role of the caliph as a monarch whose legitimacy depends on his political prudence and effectiveness in governing his empire rather than on his piety. Far from subjecting the caliph to the jurisprudential norms of the ulema, as is the case for the imamate discourse, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ turns this discourse on its head by circumscribing the legislative powers of the ulema and subordinating them to the caliph, who would serve as the final arbiter in approving laws, including those drawn up by the ulema. These features make Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s work “a disruptive and pioneering archetype of siyasa text” (xiii) that “is concerned with the here and now: pressing challenges, empire building, the details of governance, political culture, and ways to naturalize the sovereign’s power––a blueprint for establishing effective monarchical government” (118).

Yücesoy contends that siyāsa’s disruptive intervention also extended to the ulema’s imamate discourse, a development he treats briefly with reference to the works of al-ʿAnbarī (d. 785) and Abū Yūsuf (d. 798). Living after the time of Sālim and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, these members of the ulema could no longer ignore practical matters of governance––including taxation, imperial frontiers, and legal administration––when formulating ideas about rulership, resulting in what Yücesoy calls the “imamate discourse in practice” (50). Writings such as al-ʿAnbarī’s letter of advice to the caliph al-Mahdī (r. 775–785) and Abū Yūsuf’s Kitāb al-Kharāj (“Book of Land Tax”) display “a transposition of style (political, practical, specific), known to be practiced by bureaucrats, into jurisprudential writing” (67). Later, with thinkers like al-Māwardī (d. 1058) and Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), we see the fullest expression of the ulema’s incorporation of siyāsa language into their political discourses, during a time “when the term ‘siyasa’ was no longer snubbed by the ulema” (2). For instance, al-Māwardī, in his treatise on government, al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyya (“The Ordinances of Government”), states that the role of the caliph lay in “upholding the revealed law and managing the affairs of the world” (ḥirāsat al-dīn wa-siyāsat al-dunyā), while the title of Ibn Taymiyya’s political treatise, al-Siyāsa al-Sharʿiyya (“Governance Based on the Divine Law”), signifies an attempt to harmonize both the siyāsa and imamate discourses.

Given my own work on political discourses in the late Abbasid period (c. 1055–1258), I would like to bring up three points regarding these later developments of siyāsa while fully recognizing that they constitute more of an epilogue to Yücesoy’s main narrative. First, his point about siyāsa’s impact on the ulema’s political thought pushes us to rethink the intellectual genealogy of the classical Sunni caliphate discourse (I use this term to distinguish this later discourse from the early pre-siyāsa imamate discourse) that crystallized in the eleventh century. Usually found in legal (fiqh) and theological (kalām) treatises, the caliphate discourse has long been regarded as most emblematic of the ulema’s political theology during the medieval period, with scholars like al-Māwardī, al-Juwaynī (d. 1085), and al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) often studied as its main representatives. Yücesoy’s account should serve as a reminder that more is to be done in uncovering the different intellectual trends that constituted the caliphate discourse, one of which was certainly siyāsa and its lay bureaucrat pioneers. After all, what has usually been regarded as a “religious” discourse on rulership formulated by the ulema did include elements from the more secular-oriented siyāsa discourse.

My second point concerns how exactly the transition from “imamate discourse” to ‘imamate discourse in practice” took place, which Yücesoy does not delve into, though he acknowledges that it warrants a separate study. Since I work on a later period, it would have been of immense interest to see some preliminary remarks on the specific mechanics of this transition, even if conjectural or speculative. In particular, what were the debates and negotiations involved? Did this transition reflect any divisions among the ulema along intellectual and political lines? Answers to these questions would have greatly enriched Yücesoy’s already meticulous tracing of political discourses in the early centuries of Islam.

Lastly, while I concur with Yücesoy’s assertion that the siyāsa discourse compelled the ulema to account for practical matters of governance in their political writings, the extent to which the term siyāsa itself “was no longer snubbed by the ulema” (2) remains an open question. Looking at later political discourses, I am more inclined to argue that more heated tensions between the ulema and siyāsa lay ahead. The twelfth-century scholar Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1201), for one, lashes out against those who claim that siyāsa, based on the ruler’s discretionary opinion (raʾy), is required to complement the sharīʿa, which they claim is insufficiently equipped to deal with matters of government.[1] The tension seems to have gotten worse during the Mamluk period, with the jurist al-Maqrizī (d. 1442) even going so far as to deem siyāsa a satanic word derived from the Mongol legal code yāsa.[2] In this polemical context, efforts at harmonization like Ibn Taymiyya’s might only be part of the story. Nevertheless, these attitudes should not obscure the fact that siyāsa had become such an entrenched concept in political culture that members of the ulema engaged with it intensely even when they harbored deep resentment toward it.

Disenchanting the Caliphate is a sorely-needed intervention that has given me much food for thought. It urges us to be more sensitive to political languages and their relationship with political practices. At a broader level, it pushes us to rethink concepts such as “religious” and “secular” in the study of Islam.

[1] Abū al-Faraj b. al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī Tārīkh al-Mulūk wa-l-Umam, eds. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā and Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, 19 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992), 1:117.

[2] Ovamir Anjum, Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 105; Yossef Rapoport, “Royal Justice and Religious Law: Siyāsah and Shariʿah under the Mamluks,” Mamluk Studies Review 16 (2012): 71–102.

Han Hsien Liew is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He obtained his A.M. in History and Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. His research focuses on premodern Islamic history and political thought, especially in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. He is currently working on a monograph that examines the relationship between political thought, homiletic preaching, and emotions in the medieval Middle East through the writings of the twelfth-century preacher Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201).

Something is stirring in the field of medieval Islamic studies. Behind all the noise and chatter created by the events in the Middle East, the Medievalists have been gradually transforming the study of medieval Islamic history into the like of any other medievalist field. The Qurʾan that used to be inaccessible to historical analysis is no longer a distant text thanks to the efforts of those scholars who started reading and interpreting the text as a historical narrative, not just a sacred text, more than three decades ago. Archaeologists and epigraphers have been showering us with petroglyphs discovered in the Arabian desert, as if they suddenly appeared like the monolith at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s cult movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Where have these objects been since the serious study of early Islamic history started for more than a century ago? We had already learned – the hard way – treating the early Islamic chronicles like any other chronicle after the interventions of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook in the 1970. Is this the great normalization of Islamic studies? It is fair to suggest that the field of early Islamic history is losing its mystique, in a good way, to become like any other period in history.

Hayrettin Yücesoy’s Disenchanting the Caliphate: the Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought is a milestone contribution in this process of normalization. At its core, the work is trying to tell us the following: we should study political thought in Islamic history as any other tradition of political thought, away from an obfuscating layer of religious ideas, concepts, and dogmas. There are concepts (imamate and caliphate) and actors (caliphs, state officials, and scribes), and society (the Muslim community and other communal ethnic groups that constituted what we call the Islamic Empire). Yücesoy argues, quite convincingly, that the idea of “Islamic political thought” was an extension of 19th century colonial simplifications that allowed scholars to impose various reductionisms and overgeneralizations that were not applicable elsewhere, especially in the history of European political ideas. The material that he presents is in fact quite familiar to the specialists of Islamic history: ideas of the imamate and caliphate – imama-discourse – woven into the tumultuous history of late antique Arabia and the Middle East in distinction to ideas of political power – siyasa-discourse – which are legitimized through practices of good governance and the authority’s relationship with the subjects of the empire. We were aware of this divergence in the history of political thought, but we had a completely different explanation. As the explanation went, the cause for this divergence was external influence, most prominently that of the pre-Islamic Iranian practices of governance. The background of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 759), a key figure in this story and a secretary in the late Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates, made this argument plausible. A convert to Islam with an Iranian background, he supposedly introduced the pre-Islamic Iranian notions of politics, governance, and legitimacy to the Islamic thinking on politics. Yücesoy challenges this puritan reading of the sources. He argues that the siyasa-discourse was not an external influence per se, but it emerged in the context of the early caliphal political discourse through the interventions of those secretary-scholars, like ʿAbd al-Hamid al-Katib (d. 750) and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, who were involved in the daily governance of the Islamic empire. In other words, both imama-discourse and siyasa-discourse were products of Islamic politics, culture, and indeed civilization. One might smell the recent trend of considering “Islam” a civilizational category with its internal cohesion and contradictions, as popularized by Shahab Ahmad’s seminal book What is Islam?, but this would be an injustice to Yücesoy’s formation. He is a product of the University of Chicago’s rigorous Hodgsonian training, and he brilliantly demonstrates how a true civilizational analysis can be achieved in the study of political ideas.

The binary opposition between the imama-discourse and the siyasa-discourse very much resembles the famous ascending and descending theories of sovereignty as formulated by Walter Ullman (1910-1983). Whereas the descending theories formulated that political sovereignty flows from Godhead to king, the ascending theories formulate a normative sovereignty in which popular consent plays a key role. Yücesoy presents a more nuanced categorization. First, the imama-discourse is normative, merely outlining a contractual form of politics in which caliphal sovereignty is a product of the community’s relationship with God. The siyasa-discourse, however, is practical and consequential. It aims at achieving good governance without any strict normative and prescriptive rules. In Yücesoy’s analysis, even the title khalifa does not escape his contextualization. Unlike the standard narrative, which ascribes the title to the Prophet’s followers, including the four Rightly Guided Caliphs, he argues that the title achieved its final shape only in the later Umayyad period, when the the qurʾanic term khalifa and the political leadership of the dynasty merged.

Yücesoy introduces much needed historicism to the study of Islamic political ideas, but I don’t feel at ease with the term “secular” in the context that he covers. True, he says that his concern is “secularity” in the sense that certain political and intellectual processes take place outside of the realm of religion, as opposed to “secularism,” a primarily early modern concept that defines an irreligious sphere in which politics is rooted. I am aware that Yücesoy is relying on a growing literature on secularity, but I have yet to be convinced by the usefulness of this concept, as the term “secularity” practically ringfences the concept of “religion” and takes it as an axiom in historical studies. Is it not more productive to take the religion out of its protected zone and make it mundane instead of imagining a parallel zone that is untouched by religion? In other words, religion was and has always been political, ideological, and mundane. There is no need to define a parallel sphere with novel forms of politics.

In any case, Hayrettin Yücesoy’s book is a pioneering work that contributes immensely to the great normalization of Islamic studies. No study on political thought in the Middle East (not “Islamic political thought”) will be complete without thorough engagement with Disenchanting the Caliphate. Having said this, I must end with a more personal note, as a student of late medieval and early modern history. I should admit that Yücesoy’s assertion that the political thought of the Abbasid period is understudied put a smile on my face, as I am sure it will do to historians of the Mongol, Timurid, Turkmen, Mamluk, and even Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal periods. I believe a bit of humility is necessary for all of us involved in the history of political ideas.

Dr. Evrim Binbaş teaches Islamic history at the University of Bonn. He studies early modern Islamic history with a particular focus on Iran and Central Asia in the 15th century. His award winning first book on the Timurid historian Sharaf al-Din ‘Ali Yazdi (d. 1454) was published by Cambridge University Press (Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters) in 2016. Currently he is preparing a monograph on the modalities of sovereignty in the 15th and 16th centuries.

I must first express my gratitude to my colleagues for their incisive and inspiring comments. I am humbled not only by their generous evaluation of my work but also by the intellectual rigor with which they have engaged with it. Their comments highlight the potential of this field for future research and challenge me to reflect on the nuances of my arguments. I must also acknowledge The Maydan for facilitating such a wonderful conversation.

My central contention has been that Abbasid political thought has too often been judged through a narrow, ulema-centric lens. Academics, globally, have tended to reduce political discourse to religious doctrines espoused by the ulema, glossing over the pluralistic landscape of political thinking in the Abbasid centuries. They have also failed to conceptualize the early developments of political language that led to the emergence of a temporal vision of governance as a counterpoint to the ulema’s imamate. The assumption that discussions on rulership and governance were dominated by the ulema is a modern invention that does not hold up considering the historical record.

One of the key points I made was that political thought was initially developed by court secretaries, whom I associate with the “Salim school of siyasa,” in response to pre-political imamate theologies. Operating within the courtly context, these professionals not only developed a political vision aimed at establishing a normalized and sustainable social order but also pushed the ulema to think more deeply about political practice and the realities of governance. This intellectual challenge became evident in the works of ulema figures like al-Anbari and Abu Yusuf as early as the eighth century, both of whom attempted to reconcile the demands of governance with the principles of Islamic jurisprudence. I described this process as the practical turn in imamate political theology. As Curry has mentioned, and as I noted in chapter 2 of Disenchanting, the move toward appreciating siyasa’s concern with practical matters is documentable from the late eighth century onward.

As intellectual developments expanded beyond the boundaries of Islamic learning, and new social practices became commonplace from the ninth century onward, the ulema found themselves grappling with an increasingly challenging set of questions. Just as the ulema came to recognize the legitimacy of the natural sciences and their independence from the ulema’s own sphere of authority, they were also forced to acknowledge the secular space of governance, whether they normatively approved of it or not. Many consented, either in their writings or through silence, that politics did not have to submit entirely to sharia, while others remained aloof to secular claims. As Liew points out, not all ulema jumped on the bandwagon. I describe this engagement between lay thinkers and the ulema as happening gradually, in a process where the ulema appropriated the concerns and orientation of siyasa. The process was dialectical and wide-ranging, leading to a remarkable diversity of positions over the course of the Abbasid centuries. Even during the era of the “gunpowder empires,” when more centralized empires and millennial sovereigns shaped political imagination, as Curry and Binbaş have pointed out, the ulema had to contend with the distinction between yasa/kanun (customary law) and sharia, as well as the emergence of the early modern “state” as a distinct institution from the spiritual authority of the sovereign. One can also speak of siyasa thinkers incorporating some of the arguments of the ulema by making more explicit references to the significance of sharia. No doubt such “crossover” thinkers from siyasa and imamate added more nuance to political visions. However, I would argue that without recognizing the foundational distinction between the imamate and siyasa, one cannot make sense of core differences in political ideas. The problem goes beyond identifying the genre in which political thought is expressed, though that is very significant; it is related to elucidating positions on ways of living and moral self-constitution. For this reason, as my colleagues have observed, Abbasid and post-Abbasid political thought requires further dedicated study.

The elephant in the room, as the reviewers have noted, is the problematic nature of the terminology we use when discussing political thought, particularly terms like religion, secularity, and sovereignty. These concepts are so fraught with modern connotations that they can sometimes obscure more than they clarify. I share the concern that using them without qualification risks anachronism, reductionism, and even not admitting the voice of the “native.” However, by the same token, avoiding them risks losing the ability to communicate and relate (can the native ever speak?), and further renders invisible key ideas and practices that offer the opportunity to produce critical knowledge. It is true that in this book, I have opted for visibility and relevance, trying as much as I could to define the terms and seeking to open spaces for further discussion.

But what is also important, I think, is how this temporal language of politics opened new possibilities of reflection on key issues of political thought, such as authority, power, good governance, territory, subjects of the empire, the role of religious confession in ways of ruling, the sociocultural foundations of diverse political visions, and the functioning of the power mediating relations. What is probably left out or mentioned only in passing (such as the brief discussion of Muslim anarchists, and of “subalternity”), which warrant further discussion, is what was happening outside the empire and the resistance to it.

Another point that makes Disenchanting challenging is my position on political discourse. Whereas many studies take “the reality” of the caliphate as a starting point, I see the caliphate itself as a discourse and what is considered reality as a construct within contending political discourses. I do not assume an independently existing objective caliphate against which one could evaluate discourse. “Whose caliphate?” is, therefore, a pertinent question in the book.

I’ll conclude by saying that I’m pleased Binbaş sees the field of Abbasid political thought as thriving. I’d like to add, with a touch of humor, that this is all for the better, as Abbasid political thought and practice provide a foundation for many later developments.

Hayrettin Yücesoy is a historian with a specialization in the premodern Middle East. He is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, History, and Global Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His work focuses on political thought and practice, political messianism, visions of social order, ideas of monarchy, and republican discourses throughout premodern literature. His latest monograph, Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought from Columbia University Press is a significant contribution to the history of political thought in the Middle East.