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Friday Prayer and the juristic theory of government: Sarakhsī, Shīrāzī, Māwardī

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Norman Calder
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Extract

Outstanding amongst the scholastic compendia of jurisprudence produced in the fifth/eleventh century are the Muhadhdhab of the Shāfi 'ī scholar Abū Ishāq al-Shīrāzī (d. 476) and the Mabsūt of the Ḥanafī scholar Shams al-Dīn al-Sarakhsī (d. 483). These works encoded three centuries of juristic speculation while confirming and promoting the distinctive patterns of their respective law schools. Both scholars, Sarakhsī in Qarakhanid Trasoxania, and shīrāzī in Saljūq Baghdad, were involved in the politics of their day, but produced no political theory seeparate from their large-scale works of furū' which followed the traditional pattern of furū' literature, established as early as Mālik. The holistic approach to divine law was the conformity to type of Sarakhsī's and shīrāzī's works helped to ensure them the classical status they acquired in the developing law-schools, and in the curricula of madrasas. The Kitāb al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya of Māwardī (d.450)was in contrast, to a great extent, innovatory in subject matter and in structure, if not in juristic methodology. The difference between writers like Sarakhsī, on the one hand, and Māwardī, on the other, is not however simply formal: it includes a nicely distinguished approach to political power. The nature of this distinction might be demonstrated under a number of discrete headings selected from furū' literature. This essay is concerned with Friday Prayer (FP), a ritual generally recognized as having in some degree a political aspect.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 1986 , pp. 35 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1986

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References

1 al-Shīrāzī, Abū Ishāq, Kitāb al-Muhadhdhab, 2 vols., Beirut 1379/1959;Google Scholar Friday prayer is discussed in vol. I; pare references are given in brackets in the text. al-Sarakhsī, Shams al-Dīn, Kitāb al-Mabsūt, 30 vols., egypt 1324;Google Scholar Friday prayer is discussed in vol, II; page references are given in text. For both scholars q.v.in EI (I).

2 This work is too well-known to require comment; for a recent survey of its contents including references to all major secondary materials, see Lambton, A. K. S., State and government in medieval Islam, Oxford, 1981,Google Scholar ch. vi. Reference to Gibb, below is to Gibb, H. A. R., ‘Al-Mawardi's theory of the caliphate’, in Studies on the civilisation of Islam, London, 1962.Google Scholar

3 See EI(I) ad ṣalāt and djum 'a; EI(II), djum'a and refs. given there.

4 See further below, p. 42–3.

5 cf.G., Makdisi, The rise of college, Edinburgh, 1981, 13, f.Google Scholar

6 The idea of the ruler as chosen or delegated by God was common in the bureaucratic as well as in the juristic tradition: see Lambton State and government, 56 ff.; also e.g. ‘The dilemma of government in Islamic Persia’, Iran, XXII, 1984, 57.

7 Appropriately careful expression of this may be found in Lambtion, State and government, passim.

8 In these paragraphs I am particularly concerned to qualify the view of Gibb that ‘the efforts of jurists were necessarily directed to justifying the actual situation’ in ‘Some considerations on the Sunni theory of the caliphate’, in Studies on the civilisation of Islam, 141–2.

9 SarakhsĪ, op.cit., I, 40–2; Shirāzī, op. cit., I, 104ȓ6.

10 I take this to be a historical reference to the caliphate of the Rāshidūn and in particular to that of abū Bakr; ‘caliph’ is not a term used by Sarakhsī to refer to contemporary governors.

11 It is a consideration of this king that led Shīrāzī to express his view that FP was valid with out the permission of the sultān.

12 For the fuler as ‘shepherd’ see e.g. Abū Yūsuf in Lambton, State and government, 57.

13 There is no doubt that both in Būyid and in Saljūq times it was generally the milirtary amir/sultān who appointed judges and imāms of mosques; see further n. 14.

14 Makdisi, op.cit., 13–14. It may be that under al-Qādir the caliph was indeed capable of controlling and appointing to the mosques of Baghdad; Mamlūk sources and caliphal court historians would have their own reasons for stressing this. Māwardū specifically states in his chapter on the imāra that appointing to the imamate of communal and Friday prayers was part of the functions of the amir (Cairo ed., 1973, 30). al-Mulk, Nizām confirms this for the Saljūq period in Siyāsatnāma, ed. Darke, H., Tehran, 1962, 56.Google Scholar

15 My intention in this essay has been to demonstrate that Māwardī is markedly different in his aims from Shī and Sarakhsī. I have stated throughout that the latter are representative of the juristic tradition and that Māwardi is the innovator. Space has not permitted me to demonstrate this in detali; the matter may broadly be verified by study of earlier juristic writers, such as Mālik, shāfi', Shaybāni et.al.