Institutions and the Origins of Islam

An examination of the origins of a systematic government and its evolution in early Islamic societies

The separation of church and state is a hallmark of any modern, secular democracy, yet the origin of separation of powers between divine and sovereign is not a unique characteristic of Western governments. Predating the idea of the nation-state and the establishment of constitutional governments, the origins of Islam and its practice immediately following the death of the prophet Mohammad were inherently separate from the state and its rulers. Specifically, institutions were at the heart of joining religion and state in a way that took advantage of the cyclical nature of ruler legitimacy, finances, and religion. Institutions played the critical role in providing a means of partial integration between religion and state; however, such separation in Medieval Islam arose only after the introduction of systematic, formalized colleges into a legal system whose origins were deeply rooted in collective learning.

Institutions in Medieval Islam did not arise in the formal sense until a few centuries after the birth of the religion. Before the tenth century, study circles represented the original type of education system following the death of the Prophet. These study schools gathered a group of professors and students solely through the means of passion for the law. There was no formal payment system nor degrees representing completion of such schools, and students and professors financed their endeavors personally. At first, political interference was almost nonexistent in these early, informal institutions. Legal authority was knowledge-based rather than political or even religious.^[1] These personal schools lacked the necessary stability to anchor the rigidity of law into daily life, but they offered a first step in providing an axis of authority. The spread of Islam following the death of the Prophet caused caliphs to take the opinions of judges and religious scholars at face value, and caliphs would only interpret the law at the same level as Islamic scholars–not supercedeing them in any way. As they grew detached from religion, leaders further sought legitimacy by adopting religious policies and appointing legists and qadis to positions of high reverence. This was the first major intrusion of religious integration of the political system, yet at this point in history, law was mostly personal. Study circles eventually evolved into a more societally systematic part of the Medieval Islamic legal system.

Taking the form of madrasas, institutionalized legal colleges arose around three to four centuries following the birth of Islam. Literally derived from the Arabic word for school, madrasas were early colleges of Islamic jurisprudence and represented an ever-growing overlap between the semi-permeable break between religion and state. These madrasas were formal in their practice and were funded through the waqf, or a charitable trust. While many Muslims founded many madrasas spanning the rule of Medieval Islamic empires, rulers founded the most prestigious madrasas that garnered student diversity along with wide-ranging influence.

Proto-qadis were the principal officers of the law during the first century of Islam. The caliph was completely separate from adjudication, with the exception of occasional intervention. A few centuries later, caliphs and the ruling elite began to grow away from the egalitarian nature of early Islam and began to separate themselves further from the people they ruled.^[2] Waqfs acted as the financial sealant conjoining the newly institutionalized learning system in the late tenth-century. Waqfs represented deep financial obligations and were managed as such. The trust provided contributions towards mosque building, Sufi orders, hospitals, public fountains, and soup kitchens.^[3] The fund provided an alternative means of funding public services that one would find readily available in the modern welfare state. In this sense, even the waqf and its deep connection to the Islamic madrasa was an intrusion of personal religion into public affairs and, by extension, the state itself. By the end of the eleventh century, much of the legal elite was paid by the government through the waqf, including professors and judges. Islamic jurisprudence is epistemically rooted in becoming closer to God’s will, yet the introduction of madrasas provided the much needed link rulers needed between their own legitimacy and the state’s finances.

While the origins of Islam birthed a unique type of jurisprudence inherently separate from the ruling elite, the slow institutionalization of religion gave rulers a much needed outlet to find legitimacy. The first few centuries of Islam saw a clear separation between religion and rulers, and the Shari’a was an epistemic endeavor rather than a formal incorporation of religion by the ruling entities of the era. However, institutions were the primary vehicle through which the state sought legitimacy in its rule. With the founding of the madrasa, caliphs established some of the most prestigious and affluent legal schools and systematically incorporated them in societies, fully funded in a complicated web of political money. Caliphs first became amateur interpreters of the law, yet they slowly came to offer positions to Islamic judges and scholars as they became separated from the general public. While such entanglement is not unique to Medieval Islam, the slow encroachment of the state into religion over following centuries was by no means a concerted effort between the religion and state but rather a means through which rulers sought to gain legitimacy.

Sources

Hallaq, Wael B. An Introduction to Islamic Law. Cambridge University Press, 2011.