Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 Sources
- 1 Hamdan al-Atharibi’s History of the Franks Revisited, Again
- 2 Legitimate Authority in the Kitab al-Jihad of ‘Ali b. Tahir al-Sulami
- 3 Politics, Religion and the Occult in the Works of Kamal al-Din Ibn Talha, a Vizier, ‘Alim and Author in Thirteenthcentury Syria
- Part 2 Christians
- 4 Adapting to Muslim Rule: the Syrian Orthodox Community in Twelfth-century Northern Syria and the Jazira
- 5 The Afterlife of Edessa: Remembering Frankish Rule, 1144 and After
- Part 3 Convivencia
- 6 Diplomatic Relations and Coinage among the Turcomans, the Ayyubids and the Crusaders: Pragmatism and Change of Identity
- 7 Symbolic Conflict and Cooperation in the Neglected Chronicle of a Syrian Prince
- 8 A Critique of the Scholarly Outlook of the Crusades: the Case for Tolerance and Coexistence
- Part 4 War and Peace
- 9 The Portrayal of Violence in Walter the Chancellor’s Bella Antiochena
- 10 Infernalising the Enemy: Images of Hell in Muslim Descriptions of the Franks during the Crusading Period
- Part 5 Cities
- 11 Sunnites et Chiites à Alep sous le règne d’al-Salih Isma‘il (569–77/1174–81): entre conflits et réconciliations
- 12 The War of Towers: Venice and Genoa at War in Crusader Syria, 1256–8
- 13 Gaza in the Frankish and Ayyubid Periods: the Run-up to 1260 CE
- Part 6 Saladin’s Men
- 14 Picture-poems for Saladin: ‘Abd al-Mun‘im al-Jilyani’s Mudabbajat
- 15 Ayyubid Realpolitik and Political–Military Vicissitudes versus Counter-crusading Ideology in the Memoirist–Chronicler al-Katib al-Isfahani
- 16 Assessing the Evidence for a Turning Point in Ayyubid– Frankish Relations in a Letter by al-Qadi al-Fadil
- Part 7 Key Personalities
- 17 Saladin, Generosity and Gift-giving
- 18 Hülegü: the New Constantine?
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Index of Places
- Index of Terms/Concepts
2 - Legitimate Authority in the Kitab al-Jihad of ‘Ali b. Tahir al-Sulami
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Part 1 Sources
- 1 Hamdan al-Atharibi’s History of the Franks Revisited, Again
- 2 Legitimate Authority in the Kitab al-Jihad of ‘Ali b. Tahir al-Sulami
- 3 Politics, Religion and the Occult in the Works of Kamal al-Din Ibn Talha, a Vizier, ‘Alim and Author in Thirteenthcentury Syria
- Part 2 Christians
- 4 Adapting to Muslim Rule: the Syrian Orthodox Community in Twelfth-century Northern Syria and the Jazira
- 5 The Afterlife of Edessa: Remembering Frankish Rule, 1144 and After
- Part 3 Convivencia
- 6 Diplomatic Relations and Coinage among the Turcomans, the Ayyubids and the Crusaders: Pragmatism and Change of Identity
- 7 Symbolic Conflict and Cooperation in the Neglected Chronicle of a Syrian Prince
- 8 A Critique of the Scholarly Outlook of the Crusades: the Case for Tolerance and Coexistence
- Part 4 War and Peace
- 9 The Portrayal of Violence in Walter the Chancellor’s Bella Antiochena
- 10 Infernalising the Enemy: Images of Hell in Muslim Descriptions of the Franks during the Crusading Period
- Part 5 Cities
- 11 Sunnites et Chiites à Alep sous le règne d’al-Salih Isma‘il (569–77/1174–81): entre conflits et réconciliations
- 12 The War of Towers: Venice and Genoa at War in Crusader Syria, 1256–8
- 13 Gaza in the Frankish and Ayyubid Periods: the Run-up to 1260 CE
- Part 6 Saladin’s Men
- 14 Picture-poems for Saladin: ‘Abd al-Mun‘im al-Jilyani’s Mudabbajat
- 15 Ayyubid Realpolitik and Political–Military Vicissitudes versus Counter-crusading Ideology in the Memoirist–Chronicler al-Katib al-Isfahani
- 16 Assessing the Evidence for a Turning Point in Ayyubid– Frankish Relations in a Letter by al-Qadi al-Fadil
- Part 7 Key Personalities
- 17 Saladin, Generosity and Gift-giving
- 18 Hülegü: the New Constantine?
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index of Names
- Index of Places
- Index of Terms/Concepts
Summary
Modern scholarship on jihad in the Crusading period has tended to focus on the practice of jihad rather than the ideology of jihad. This is, in part, due to the nature of the surviving source material: where there is considerable evidence for the practice of jihad, there is a paucity of sources which reveal what twelfth-century figures meant when they referred to and invoked jihad. The sources which allow us to document and reconstruct the practice of jihad – reports of military victories in chronicles, the poetry and monuments which celebrate these victories, and so on – are ill-suited to helping us recover contemporary understandings of the ideology of jihad. We are not, however, entirely without sources; one such source is the Kitab al-jihad of ‘Ali b. Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106).
Composed in a series of majalis over the course of 1105, the Kitab aljihad is one of the earliest surviving Muslim responses to the First Crusade; at its simplest it is a call to jihad which seeks to exhort the residents of al-Sham – in particular Damascus – to unite and fight against the Crusaders. Al-Sulami did not, however, intend his work to be merely an exhortation: in the prefatory descriptions to each part, he states that the work concerns also siyar (the literary genre which focuses on the establishment of rules for proper conduct in war), fada’il al-Sham (the merits of al-Sham), and recent events. In short, al-Sulami envisaged his work to be a comprehensive guide to the performance of jihad, from first motivation through to proper conduct in war, all against the background of the historical and political developments which necessitated its performance. Not all of this material survives: the Kitab al-jihad is preserved in a single fragmentary manuscript, which comprises the second, eighth, ninth and twelfth parts of the work. The manuscript gives no indication whether the twelfth part was also the final part.
The second part of the work has found particular favour amongst modern scholars: when the work was first discussed, Emmanuel Sivan chose to focus only on the second part, which he partially edited and translated into French. His decision is not hard to understand: the bulk of the second part is devoted to exhortation, whilst the rest of the work focuses primarily on siyar.
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- Syria in Crusader TimesConflict and Co-Existence, pp. 21 - 33Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020