Vasileios Syros, Finnish Center of Political Thought , and Conceptual
Change/ , Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
In the eighteenth century, Western intellectual history witnessed the production of a rich body of writing on the origins and decay of human civilization and the emergence and fall of empires, exemplified by such monumental works as Baron de Montesquieu’s (1689–1755) Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur déca dence (Reflections on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline, 1734), Giambattista Vico’s (1668–1744) Scienza Nuova (New Science, 1745), and Edward Gibbon’s (1737–1794) History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788). The quest to identify the forces that shape social evolution and the factors involved in the formation and decline of the state is not a phenomenon unique to the Western intellectual scene, however. In the eighteenth-century Mughal context, Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī (1703–1762), an eminent Sufi and theologian, propounded a theory of civilization and the origins and downfall of social organization that has much in common with Montesquieu’s, Vico’s, and Gibbon’s models and lends itself, as I will show, to a cross-cultural study of ideas on imperial formation and decay.1
Shāh
Walī Allāh’s father, Shah ‘Abd ar-Rahīm (1646–1719), was one of the founders and teachers
of the Madrasah-i-Raḥīmīyah in
Delhi.2 Shāh Walī Allāh received his early education in the tafsīr, hadīth, Qu’ranic sciences, and logic from his
father. He subsequently taught at his
father’s school and then left for Arabia in 1730 to pursue higher education. When he returned to Delhi
in 1732, he worked to spread knowledge
about Islam, attracted a number of illustrious disciples, and produced a number
of writings in Persian and Arabic. While
the bulk of his oeuvre is devoted to theological questions, in
certain sections of his principal
philosophical works, notably the Ḥujjat Allāh
al-Bālighah (The Conclusive Argument from God)3 and his Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah (The Full Moon Rising on the
Horizon),4 he formulates an intriguing
theory about the genesis of human civilization and the decay of social organization.
A substantial body of literature on Shāh Walī Allāh’s political doc
trines exists. But his theory of empire has been much misunderstood or neglected, due to a persistent tendency of
previous scholarship to
extrapolate and reconstruct Shāh Walī Allāh’s ideas on the “decline” of
the Mughal Empire by focusing on his vitriolic polemic against the proliferation of Hindu practices as expressed
in his letters and portray
Shāh Walī Allāh as an ardent apologist of jihād in the South Asian context.5
One of the main purposes of this paper is to show that Shāh Walī Allāh’s position is much more complex than has been hitherto assumed.
I propose to challenge the standard reading of Shāh Walī Allāh’s pri vate
writings as mere jeremiads against Hindu influences or part of a program designed to invigorate or revivify
Islamic rule in a state ener vated by constant conflicts. In particular, I call
attention to certain aspects of his
political theory as set forth in his philosophical treatises, and I argue that he pursues an agenda that is
not confined to the political and social realities that prevailed in late
Mughal India. Although I do not mean
to dissociate Shāh Walī Allāh’s private writings from his philosophical works
and will occasionally include references to
his letters, my goal is to uncover the broader political program
that he articulates, one that extends
beyond Mughal political realities. As
such, my analysis contrasts sharply with the traditional image of Shāh
Walī Allāh as the representative of a rabid trend of anti-Hinduism and the
harbinger of revivalist movements in South Asia.6 I show that his rationalistic approach to the dynamics of
social life and mechanics of power
reflects a nuanced understanding of the process of state7 forma tion that
heretofore has not found its due place in modern narratives of imperial state building and decline.8 In the first section of my article, I discuss how Shāh Walī Allāh’s
theory of the state relates to a broader scheme about the emergence and evolution of civilization. In particular, I
focus on his ideas on the origin of
communal life, the constituents of efficient rulership, the duties and attributes of a rightful ruler, the modes of
conduct necessary to preserve social
order, and the conditions for strong and lasting imperial rule. I will also identify potential sources and explore how Shāh Walī Allāh’s
theory relates to previous Islamic accounts of social origination—particularly
the akhlāq tradition as represented by Ṭūsī and Dawwānī—as well as Indo-Islamic political literature, notablyBaranī’s, Abū’l-Faẓl’s, and Najm-i Sānī’s works.9 In the second part
of the article I engage in a
detailed analysis of Shāh Walī Allāh’s views on the decline of the state
and empire/caliphate and investigate how they relate to the political and social realities that prevailed in late
Mughal India.
In
the concluding section, I suggest ways in which the findings of this article might be of more than historical
relevance for the study of
Shāh Walī Allāh’s political thought. I specifically examine how Shāh Walī Allāh uses the examples of the Sassanians and Byzantine empires
as heuristic devices to illustrate the process of decay of Mughal power.
I also point to parallels between Shāh Walī Allāh’s ideas on the economic
dimensions of imperial decay and the ways in which Byzantine statesmen and literati theorized remedies for
the weaknesses of Byzan tine society in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
I.
The Rise of the State
The
Origins of Social Life
The pivot point of Shāh Walī Allāh’s social theory is the concept of
irtifāq. The term bears connotations that cannot be adequately ren dered by any
single English term, but it generally refers to various stages in the process of social genesis.10 In the
first irtifāq, people engage in tillage,
create languages, learn how to cook food, and a man chooses one woman as his partner. The second irtifāq
witnesses the emergence and evolution of
sciences acquired through experience, elegance, deli cate living, and
comprehensive view (al-ra’y al-kullī).
Shāh Walī Allāh names five
types of wisdom: (1) the wisdom of
living (al-ḥikmah al-ma‘ashiyah), which deals with human conduct
and practical knowledge about eating,
drinking, dressing, and so forth; (2)
the wisdom of domestic life (al-ḥikmah al-manziliyah), which concerns the
organization of the household; (3) the wisdom of earning a livelihood (al-ḥikmah al-iktisabiyah), which
refers to functional special ization and the various crafts and professions
which people practice according to their
skills; (4) the wisdom of mutual dealings (al-ḥikmah al-ta‘amuliyah), which pertains to commercial
operations (mu‘āmalāt); and (5) the
wisdom of cooperation (al-ḥikmah al-ta‘awuniyah), which deals with partnership and commercial
enterprises.11 But social evils such as
avarice and envy soon creep in, giving rise to social tensions and disputes, and some men seek to overpower
others or are naturally inclined to
plunder and kill. Hence, the members of the community feel compelled to appoint a ruler, who
possesses abundant resources and is able
to attract wise men from other countries, to correct and punish evildoers and collect taxes. In the fourth
irtifāq a caliph is appointed to merge
together and rule over preexisting states and kingdoms.12
All men need food, drink, and shelter. In Shāh Walī Allāh’s view,
every species has a law implanted into the breasts of its individuals, and all creatures strive to meet their needs. But
man has three capacities that are not
found in other animals. First, he possesses a comprehensive view: while animals are directed to an
objective perceived through the senses
or to an imagined objective driven by their physical needs such as hunger, thirst, and lust, man is uniquely
endowed with the ability to perceive and
strive after a rational benefit that has no motivation in his physical nature. This prompts human beings to
establish a social order, perfect their
character, and seek mutual affection. Second, while ani mals desire things such
as food to fulfill their needs and protect them selves against the cold, man
has been equipped with aesthetic sensibil ity (zarāfah). He thus tries to move
beyond the level of bare necessity and
aspires to aesthetic and emotional delight and elegance, a beautiful partner, delicious food, good clothing, and a
comfortable house. Third, man is
characterized by takāmul, that is, an inner drive toward self perfection. Men
of intelligence discover and develop the appropriate supports of civilization, look for water
resources or dig wells and store water,
learn which seeds are edible and figure out how to cook or store them; those who are unable to discover those
supports on their own perceive their
utility and follow what the “wise” propose to them.13 Shāh Walī Allāh comes
very close to Montesquieu when he acknowledges that differences in
temperaments and social mores exist among
various peoples and explains that the three capabilities unique to men are not found in equal measure in all
nations. On one level, he explains, are
primitive societies such as the Bedouins, who live on mountain peaks and in regions far from sound
climates. On another, higher level are
settled populations and the urban centers of healthful regions that are inhabited by people endowed
by nature with superior virtues and
produce wise men.14
The
Emergence and Evolution of Human Civilization
Science
takes root during the second irtifāq, as men explore ways to go beyond the mere satisfaction of needs. It
specifically examines and tests
developments of the first irtifāq and lays down criteria for the selec
tion of attitudes that bring benefit. People with the best temperaments are predisposed toward superior virtues, and
they communicate these virtues and
morals to one another through social interaction. The refinement of morals concerns the proper
manner of drinking, walk ing, sitting, and clothing, and every nation develops
a style and set of manners and habits according to its own
temperament and habits.15 Language serves as a means of expressing and
designating acts, attitudes, and bodily
movements associated with a particular sound
through onomatopoeia and causal connection. Sounds are imitated and then used to derive forms that correspond
to various meanings. Arts and crafts
follow, such as agriculture, digging wells, cooking, mak ing pots,
domesticating and taming animals, creating shelter from heat and cold in caves and huts, and producing
clothing from animal skins or trees.16 A
male is guided to select a mate and not share her with anyone else in order to alleviate his lust,
perpetuate his lineage, and receive
assistance in domestic needs and in raising and educating chil dren. He is also
guided to create tools for cultivating, planting, digging wells, and domesticating animals, and soon
the exchange of goods and cooperation
take place. The wisest and strongest men subjugate others and become leaders, and people need to devise
methods for settling quarrels and
disputes, restraining malefactors, and repelling external enemies. The members of every nation
contribute differently to the evolution
of civilization: one might love beauty and luxury; another might excel in such qualities as courage,
magnanimity, eloquence, or intelligence;
and others might aspire to fame or higher ranks.17
The
second phase of social development signals the emergence of the art of economic transactions, that is,
the science that concerns the exchange
of products, cooperation, and the means of earning. As people become more refined and seek pleasures
and luxury, the crafts and professions
expand and become more diverse. Every man pursues a single occupation that suits his natural
disposition and skills.18 For example, a
courageous person enters the military and an intelligent man with a good memory goes into accounting.
Sometimes coincidence plays a role, as when a son or neighbor of a smith finds
the art of smithing easier or when a
person who lives by the sea practices the
art of fishing. However, some people lead parasitic lives or engage in activities harmful to society, such as
robbery, gambling, and begging.19
Men
exchange property for property or property for usufruct, that is, hire and lease. Goodwill and mutual affection
among the members of society are
essential conditions for domestic stability and prosperity. They develop practices for contracts and
conventions and establish guidelines for
share-cropping, partnerships, and hire and lease. They also lay down rules for borrowing and
entrusting money and redressing financial fraud; subsequently, witnessing, the
composition of legal documents, and
mortgages take place and a monetary system comes into being.20
The
second irtifāq gives rise to division of labor and aesthetics as well. People agree among themselves that
each one will pursue a distinct
occupation and will attain expertise in the use of its tools. When many people simultaneously desire the
same object, it becomes necessary to
develop conventions for commissioning and paying for goods, and gold and silver are used as means
of exchange because of their small size,
portability, homogeneity, and suitability to adorn the human body and be used as currency. Following
the emergence of the main
occupations—that is, agriculture, herding, and distribution of products, and crafts, such as carpentry, iron
smithing, and weavingtrade evolved into distinct professions, as did the
administration of the affairs of the
city.21
Shāh Walī Allāh’s discussion of
the third irtifāq—that is, the sci ence that investigates ways to preserve and
strengthen the bonds among the
inhabitants of the city—is his longest. Pursuant to his notion that human society arises from the
aggregation of persons who live in
proximity to one another and engage in mutual collaboration although they dwell in separate houses, Shāh Walī Allāh conceives of
the state as a single individual composed of distinct parts that share a common attitude and work together toward a
common purpose. But as the equivalent of
a living organism, human society also suffers from dis orders, disturbances, and illnesses. Shāh Walī Allāh sees strife and con
flict as endemic to social life: because human society comprises a large number of individuals, agreement on how to
maintain the just practice is elusive.
Moreover, it is difficult for one man to rebuke others unless he is distinguished by rank; anything else risks
infighting and killing. Thus, the
majority of influential people agree to obey a person who has his own circle of supporters and enough force
to contain disorder and punish those who
are greedy, violent, or prone to anger and killing.22
The
Ideal Ruler
Shāh Walī Allāh elaborates on
the practicalities of government, the qualities required in the paradigmatic
ruler, and the relations between the
sovereign and his subjects, staff, and subordinate officials. A ruler who lacks courage, valor, and fortitude in
combat and prowess to confront those who attempt to subvert his rule will incur
the contempt of his subjects. At the
same time, if he is not forbearing and lenient, he will crush them through his strength, and if
he lacks wisdom, he will be unable to
discover the best ways to administer the affairs of the city. The ruler should be in full possession of his
mental faculties, of mature age, free,
and male, and have the senses of sight, hearing, and speech intact. People must agree on his nobility and
that of his ancestors; he should display
praiseworthy skills and must convince the people that he will not spare any effort to uphold order
in his realm.23
Shāh Walī Allāh devotes particular attention to the skill sets nec
essary for a ruler to gain the confidence of his people. The exemplary ruler is expected to epitomize superior
leadership virtues such as cour age, wisdom, generosity, forgiveness for
malefactors and evildoers, and should be
driven by the desire to promote the public welfare. He should also have a keen insight into human nature,
exhibit sagacity and the ability to
discern the secrets in men’s hearts, and refrain from procras tinating, especially
if he detects animosity toward himself or attempts to undermine his position and erode his
power. To illustrate how the
sovereign ought to deal with his subjects, Shāh Walī Allāh employs the
metaphor of the hunter who studies a gazelle in the forest and deliber ates on
the best strategy, remaining in his position and lying in wait until he sees that his quarry is not paying
attention, at which moment he quietly
crawls toward it or tries to lure it with music and throw it a fine decoy. Similarly, the ruler ought to
cultivate bonds of love with the people
and display the attitude that people like in clothing, speech, and manners. He should approach them humbly,
offer them advice, and show affection in
a way that is not frivolous. But until he feels that they are convinced of his superiority and
preeminence and commands their loyalty
and respect, he must constantly remind them that no one is equal to him. Then he should strive to
keep them in this condition and grant
them favors.24
Shāh Walī Allāh also discusses how the sovereign should deal with
animosity and threats to his rule. He should compel obedience and punish the unruly. He should also raise the
rank or increase the salary of those who
excel in war or in the collection of taxes or management and shun and reprimand those who display
treachery, opposition, or disobedience
by reducing their salaries and demoting them. Although the ruler is entitled to lead a more
comfortable or luxurious life than the
people, he should not assign them too difficult tasks, such as cultivating
wasteland or guarding a remote district. He should not hesitate to punish malefactors, but only after there
is sound evidence adduced by officials
and for the sake of the common good.25
A
substantial part of Shāh Walī Allāh’s treatment of the principles of effective
leadership is devoted to the criteria for the selection of the various officials: the ruler needs people to
assist him in fulfilling his tasks and
administering financial resources to sustain the military and remunerate his aides.26 Able and loyal
administrators protect the ruler from
evil just as the hands carry weapons and protect the entire body. They also proffer advice to the ruler just
like the mind and the senses provide
information to the human organism. The ruler’s ministers must be trustworthy, carry out orders, and bear
goodwill both in private and in public.
The ruler must be quick to dismiss any official who strays from these principles.27
Shāh Walī Allāh enumerates five
principal aides and court func tionaries: (1) the judge (qāḍī); (2) the
commander of the armed forces (‘amīr) in
charge of selecting and training soldiers, deploying spies, and gathering intelligence about the plans of
potential enemies; (3) the governor of
the city (sā‘īs), who is in charge of appointing a leader for each group; (4) the revenue collector
(‘āmil); and (5) the minister (wakīl),
whose function is to administer the income and expenditure and minister to the ruler’s daily needs.28 In
the al-Budūr al-Bāzighah,
Shāh Walī Allāh provides an expanded list that includes another two offices:
(1) the head of religious affairs (shaikh-ul Islām) in charge of propagating religion and providing spiritual
guidance, and (2) the sage (ḥakīm) who
possesses expertise on medicine, poetry, astrology, history, mathematics, and letter writing.29
The
ruler should have the ability to distinguish between those who pretend to love him out of fear or greed and
those who genuinely sup port his rule. He should also be able to discern each
person’s merits, monitor the conduct and
activities of the state officials, and keep
abreast of new developments. He must select a number of assistants proportionate to the needs and the size of
the state and must deter mine their salaries. Shāh Walī Allāh recommends that the ruler adopt
a just system of collecting land taxes without burdening the people; taxes should be levied on those who possess
large property and wealth derived from
husbandry, agriculture, and commercial pursuits.30 In his exposition of the
modes conducive to stable and lasting rule,
Shāh Walī Allāh devotes special attention to the ruler’s relationship
with the military, using the analogy of a skilled and experienced rid ing
master who knows all of his horse’s gaits and bad habits, and the best way to train it: the trainer closely
observes the horse and, when it
displeases him or disobeys his orders, he tames its impetuousness in a way consistent with the horse’s nature.
He does not aim to per plex the horse’s mind, for the horse cannot understand
the trainer’s motives; instead, he seeks
to engrave the image of what he teaches
in the mind and heart of the horse. Once he has made sure that the horse will perform the right acts and refrain
from reprehensible ones, the trainer
continues his training until he is sure that the desired mode of behavior is habitual for the horse,
so that even without his whips the horse
will desist from actions that do not conform to the desired goal. Likewise, the ruler as the
trainer of the military must know the
best methods for taking action and for using the things that will serve as a warning to them.31
The
Caliphate
The
fourth irtifāq signals the apex of political organization. In each city a ruler is appointed, courageous persons
gather around him, and wealth is
collected in the form of taxes. The differences in the temperaments and abilities of the kings
elicit friction: certain rulers attempt
to conquer another’s territory or fight one another for unimportant reasons,
such as desire for wealth or land or due to envy, greed, resentment, and malice. Thus, the kings were
compelled to appoint a caliph or to obey
a single ruler who has the authority of the caliph ate (khilāfah). The true
caliph holds undisputed sway over his realm
and possesses so much military might and equipment that it is
almost impossible for another person to
challenge him. Just as the head of the
state soothes or remedies social tensions, the fourth irtifāq is the sci
ence that examines the policies of the cities and their rulers and the means whereby collaboration among people of
various regions can be fostered. And
just as political authority within the first political com munities originates
in a primordial compact the caliph is appointed
upon the consent of the rulers of existing states. The caliph must
be on guard against all factors that can
jeopardize his authority: emergen cies, natural calamities, disarray and
factious commotion, the expen diture of large amounts of money, and wicked
individuals who plunder the property of
the people, incarcerate their sons, and dishonor their wives.32
One of Shāh Walī Allāh’s novelties is that he offers one of the most
analytically refined accounts of the origin, nature, and function of the
caliphate. Shāh Walī Allāh goes beyond previous Islamic writers such
as al-Fārābī, who envisage the caliphate as the pinnacle of a constant process
of associational evolution starting from the creation of simple types of
political organization.33 As al-Fārābī puts it, the increase of human needs
leads to more complex forms of social organization and culminates in the creation of a universal
state encompassing all existing nations.
In order to secure the means for his subsistence, man by nature needs various things that he cannot
acquire by himself, so he relies on
mutual aid and is compelled to live in association with others. The increase of men results in the
formation of communities, some of which
are perfect, some of which are imperfect. The imperfect types include the union of people in a
village, a quarter, a street, or in a
house. The perfect types can be classified into small, medium, and great: the small one is the union of the
inhabitants of the city in the territory
of any nation, the middle one results from the formation of one nation in a certain region, and the great
one signals the union of all the
communities of the inhabited world.34 Just as people living in a city strive for those things that allow them
to attain ultimate perfection through
mutual collaboration, the excellent nation is one in which all of its cities aspire to felicity.
Accordingly, the excellent universal
state can come into being when all the nations that compose it work together to reach felicity.35
Shāh Walī Allāh provides a more detailed distinction among three
types of caliphate:36 caliphate in a special sense (khilāfat-i khāṣṣa);
caliphate in the general sense (khilāfat-i ‘āmma); and tyrannical caliph ate
(khilāfat-i jābira).37 When humankind was in a state of sin and anar
chy, God sent the Prophet Muḥammad for its guidance, and the func tion of the
first four special caliphs was to complete the mission of the Prophet. The general caliphate is a
human-made institution that emanates
from human agreement and the opinion or judgment (rā’y) of a particular group
of men. The caliph in the general sense, then, is an ordinary human being and as such he is
susceptible to human weak nesses; therefore his rule can easily slide into
tyranny. As I will discuss
later, Shāh Walī Allāh refers to the Sassanian and Byzantine empires as
exempla of the caliphate in the general sense. The tyrannical caliph ate comes
into being when the caliph breaks his obligation to enforce religious precepts and fails to wage jihād
and apply the sharī‘a or, when he
applies Islamic law, does so erroneously.
The
caliph ought to determine the purpose of war, suppress inter state conflict,
restrain malefactors, repel enemies, and crush those who ignite seditious activities by
intimidating them, assassinating or
arresting their leaders, or seizing their property. But at the same
time, Shāh Walī Allāh cautions
against the caliph’s setting goals beyond his capacity and resources or
seeking to acquire wealth by murdering
his supporters. The caliph should try to gain support from
resourceful people and the notables. In
war, he should inspire awe in his enemies
and attempt to erode their power. In case he suspects that his
former enemies engage in intrigues, he
should levy heavy land and poll taxes,
destroy their strongholds, and take all possible measures to
neutralize their power.38
Medieval
and Early Modern Islamic Sources
on
the Emergence of Social Life
It
will be instructive here to briefly explore Islamic accounts of the
origins of social life and identify possible sources of Shāh Walī Allāh’s
thought. One such source might be Nasīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī’s (1201–1274) Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī (The Nasirean Ethics), an
ethical-political treatise that had an
enduring influence on Syriac, Persian, and Indo-Islamic political writing. Affinities to Shāh Walī Allāh’s ideas may also be found in
the writings of Dawwānī, especially in his Jalalian Ethics, as well as in Abū’l-Faẓl’s Institutes of
Akbar and Najm-i Sānī’s Admonition of Jahāngīr.
Ṭūsī operates on the Aristotelian idea that humans are political by
nature39 but also stresses that they need crafts to meet their needs. He reckons that divine wisdom has ordained
disparity in the aspirations and
opinions of the members of society and that each person is inclined to a different occupation. The diversity of
the aptitudes and interests of the
members of human society generates internal disorder and division. Since mutual aid depends on a diversity of
crafts, which results from the diversity
of ends, the perpetuation of social life is contingent on the existence of a set of rules and a ruler in
charge of enforcing justice and
suppressing internecine strife.40
In
keeping with his idea that man is by nature formed to live in a society, Ṭūsī holds that man by nature needs a “civilized life.” But the
motives and ends of human actions differ. So, if men are left to their own natures, no cooperation can result,
because the powerful will seek to
exploit and oppress the others and the greedy will covet the property of the others. As soon as strife sets in, men
engage in mutual destruction and injury. Ṭūsī infers from this that government is a certain type
of management that is required to render what is deserved to each individual, to restrain each individual from
encroaching upon the rights or
disturbing the function of the others, and to ensure that each member of the society carries through the
specific duty at which he is adept by
nature.41
Ṭūsī’s
narrative of social genesis was reproduced in Muḥammad Dawwānī’s
(1426/7–1512/3) Akhlāq-i Jalālī (The Jalalian Ethics), a revised and expanded version of the Nasirean
Ethics that enjoyed wide dissemination
in the Mughal world.42 Like Ṭūsī, Dawwānī holds that humankind’s sustenance
depends on food, clothing, shelter, arms, and
the ability and methods to acquire the tools essential to the crafts,
such as carpentry and blacksmithing. Men
need to live together in such a way that
each individual pursues a distinct task and engages in cooperation with others
so as to obtain all things necessary to sustain life.43 Dawwānī restates Ṭūsī’s doctrine that man is by nature inclined to
civilization, which is derived from the term “city” (madīnah).44 At the same time, however, he warns of the danger of
social havoc and disrup tion, should a central authority within human society
cease to exist. Dawwānī’s justification of political authority rests on the idea of dispar
ity in the dispositions and claims of the members of human society. Men cannot be left to their own natures, because
each one of them would pursue his own
interest and would cause injuries to the other. Hence, some provision must be made for rendering all
individuals content with their rightful
portion and restraining them from causing mutual harm. This provision is a government, and to this
end there must be rules, an executive,
and a currency.45 The ruler is a person endowed with divine support in order to
satisfy the interests of the various segments of the body politic and uphold domestic stability
and order.46 Ṭūsī’s and Dawwānī’s views on social genesis had a
distinguished Nachleben in the Indo-Islamic context and penetrated Mughal
politi cal discourse through the circulation of copies of the Jalalian Ethics
by
former students of Dawwānī in the Deccan and Gujarat.47 Similar
ideas occur in the Ā’īn-i Akbarī
(The Institutes of Akbar), written by Abū’l Faẓl ‘Allāmī (1551–1602), the
famous vizier of the Mughal emperor
Akbar (1542–1605; r. 1556–1605). By Abū’l-Faẓl’s time the influence of the old Aristotelian doctrine about human
sociability seems to have
withered away: in his exposition of the genesis of social life, Abū’l-Faẓl builds on the akhlāq tradition48 but
dispenses with the standard formula that
man is by nature a gregarious creature destined to live in asso ciation with
others. He highlights instead the diversity characterizing human nature and sets forth the vision of the
state as consisting of het
erogeneous parts. These considerations form the basis for Abū’l-Faẓl’s vindication of kingship as the guarantee of
social stability: pād stands for
stability and shāh indicates that the ruler is the source of stability. The absence of authority gives rise to strife
and selfish ambitions, caus ing humankind to lapse into a state of anarchy and
lust. By the light of
imperial justice, Abū’l-Faẓl argues, some men follow with
cheerfulness the path of obedience,
whereas others abstain from violence through
fear of punishment.49
Shāh
Walī Allāh’s more immediate precursor was Muḥammad
Bāqir Najm-i Sānī (d. 1637), who served as governor in various parts
of the Mughal Empire under Jahāngīr (1569–1627, r. 1605–1627) and Shah Jahān (1592–1666, r.
1628–1658). According to Najm-i Sānī’s Mau‘iẓah-i Jahāngīrī (Admonition of
Jahāngīr or Advice on [the Art] of Rulership, 1612/13), the defining
characteristics of royal rule are exalted
rank and high station. Unless the ruler regulates the affairs of the people and acts as the refuge of the
vulnerable members of human society,
clandestine rebels and insurgents, who are driven by tyrannical feelings and engage in contumacious and
aberrant conduct, will seek to disturb
the nobility and the common people.50
A
salient theme in Shāh Walī Allāh’s theory of the state is the
variety of ways whereby domestic balance can be maintained and har
monious interaction among various social groups can be ensured. Shāh
Walī Allāh evokes the “circle of justice” formula in medieval Islamic
political literature. And these ideas are rooted even further back in history, in the works of ancient political
thinkers, such as Plato, and Iranian
ideals of rulership.
According
to Shāh Walī Allāh, the various parts of the state are interrelated; the
preservation of balance and harmony is like salt sea soning food.51 The third
irtifāq necessitates the appointment of a ruler
in charge of maintaining social balance and domestic tranquillity; with the multiplication of cities and states, in
the fourth irtifāq a caliph is appointed
to erase interstate conflicts.52 Shāh Walī Allāh is particularly emphatic
about the caliph’s function in maintaining balance among opposing and conflicting elements and purging
the body politic of excesses. The ideal
caliph ought to be on his guard against revolution ary activities and
subversive tendencies, must create an extensive net work of spies and
informers, and must effectively employ perspicacity about human character. As soon as he sees a
faction forming among his men, he should
swiftly form another group and ensure that it will not connive with the rebels. It is vital that
this new group obey the caliph’s
commands, show goodwill toward him, and pray for him, acclaiming his glory in large assemblies and on coins
bearing his name.53
The
ruler’s duty to uphold the delicate equilibrium among the vari ous segments of
the body politic is compared in medieval Islamic writ ing to the physician’s
function in maintaining the equilibrium (i‘tidāl) in the human body.54
Moderation is important both as a means for
moral perfection but also in the context of the ruler’s role as the
healer of the social organism who, like
a skilled physician, diagnoses diseases
and applies remedies.55 As Shāh Walī Allāh phrases it, the city is not
merely the presence of walls, markets, and high buildings but constitutes a
bond among the various orders of human society. In the progress of civilization, different groups engage in
mutual dealings and become
woven together like a single body. Shāh Walī Allāh deduces from this
the need for a physician (i.e., ruler) to preserve the healthy condition of the city and to treat maladies. By the
same token, on a transnational level,
the caliph is the physician of states that suffer from corruption and factional discord.56
Shāh Walī Allāh here stands in a philosophical tradition that can
be traced back to the “circle of justice” concept in medieval Islamic political writing. The “circle of justice” or
“circle of power” maxim57 has its roots in two popular dicta imputed
to Aristotle and Ardashīr, king of Persia (r. 224–241 c.e.) and founder of the
Sassanid dynasty.58 In the saying ascribed to Aristotle, the world is parallel
to a large gar den which is administered by the state; the state signifies
authority founded on the law; the law is
a way of ruling applied by the king, who
acts like a shepherd; the king is supported by the army, the suste nance of
which depends on tax revenues; tax revenues are sustenance procured by the subjects; the subjects are
slaves procured by justice, which is the
element that guarantees the proper function of the world.
Ardashīr is reported to have said that government is contingent on the
existence of men, men in their turn need money, money comes from cultivation of the land, and cultivation can
take place only if there is justice and
salutary rule.59 The “circle of justice” concept assumes that the ideal social organization can be achieved
by ensuring that each part of society
confines itself to its allocated duties and does not encroach upon the functions of the others. Integral to
the “circle of justice” is the notion
that the state encompasses diverse functional groupings with competing interests. The satisfaction of
these varied desires and interests is
seen as a prerequisite to social stability, and often the various social groups
are perceived as analogous to the four elements and humors of the natural body.
The
“circle of justice” had a pervasive influence on the akhlāq and Indo-Islamic political writing. Ṭūsī, in
the Nasirean Ethics, takes his cue from
the old Irano-Islamic division of social groups and sets forth a scheme of social organization based on four
main parts: (1) men of the pen, such as
the masters of the sciences, jurists, judges, secretaries, accountants,
geometers, astronomers, physicians, and poets, who correspond to water; (2) men of the sword,
that is, soldiers, who are the
counterpart of fire; (3) men of transactions, merchants, masters of crafts and professions, and tax collectors,
who are like air; and (4) farmers, who correspond to earth. Ṭūsī describes the ruler’s principal func
tion as upholding the balance among these groups, just as a balanced temperament depends on the equilibrium
of the four elements. Ṭūsī also points out that just as the domination of
one element over the others is likely to
upset the equilibrium of the human body, in similar fashion the predominance of one segment over
the rest would upset the equilibrium of
the body politic.60
In
his Jalalian Ethics, Dawwānī follows Ṭūsī and proposes a four fold division
of the populace into: (1) men of knowledge—theologians, jurists, secretaries, fiscal officials,
geometry experts, astronomers, phy sicians, and poets, whose task is to perform
religious duties; (2) war riors; (3) merchants, artisans, and craftsmen, who
procure the needs of life; and (4)
farmers, who produce food.61 Like Ṭūsī, Dawwānī points to the detrimental
effects of the domination of one of these groups over the others. As long as every class
retains its proper place, carries out
the specific tasks assigned to it, and receives the merits and rank due to it, the temperament of the social
organism remains in a state of
equilibrium. But as soon as one passes beyond its proper measure, domestic balance is disturbed, leading
eventually to the disintegration of the
state.62 Just as the equipoise of bodily temperament depends on the proper mixture of the four elements, the
equipoise of a well-formed body politic
is contingent on the balance among the four classes.63 And just as a physician must be acquainted with
the causes of disease and their proper
treatment and must seek to preserve the equilibrium of the human temperament, one of the first duties of
the king as the world’s physician is to
know the reasons and remedies for the political and social maladies and emergencies or
misfortunes that might befall his
domain.64
The
impact of the “circle of justice” is discernible in the politi cal literature
of the Delhi Sultanate period too. Baranī proposes in his Fatāwa-i
Jahāndārī (Precepts on [World] Rulership) a social divi
sion among farmers, traders, soldiers, and government officials. Baranī
advocates the strict regimentation of the populace and warns of the potential hazards deriving from mobility
among the various social
groupings. A prime condition for the stability of the
state for Baranī is that each person confines himself to his assigned profession. Baranī,
like Shāh Walī Allāh, emphasizes the economic factors that account for the
devolution of the state. He specifically advocates low prices so that each occupational group can devote
itself to its prescribed tasks. He also
maintains that high prices can create social chaos because they compel people to abandon their own profession
and station, leading soldiers to turn to
agriculture, farmers to take up trade activities, traders to aspire to high offices, shopkeepers to try
to become officers, men of noble birth
to become merchants, and merchants to seek government and army posts.65
In like manner, Abū’l-Faẓl
reckons division of labor to be the hall mark of a well-ordered society and
defines the principal duty of the ruler
as entrusting the citizens with specific functions and monitoring the operation of the segments of the body politic.
The ruler should put each of these in
its proper place. Drawing on the “circle of justice,” Abū’l-Faẓl outlines a scheme of four
occupational classes that corre spond to the four elements: (1) warriors, who
represent the element of fire and combat
rebellions and strife; (2) artisans and merchants, who may be compared to air; (3) the
learned—philosophers, physicians,
scholars of arithmetic, geometricians, and astronomers—who resemble water; and (4) farmers and laborers, who are
the equivalent of earth.66
II.
The Decline of States and Empires
The
Disorders of the State
Shāh Walī Allāh
does not confine himself to mapping out the vari ous developmental stages
of civilization; he also offers an extensive
account of emergencies:
a.
A number of wicked individuals who possess power form a group and pursue their interests; they subvert just
practice either out of desire to usurp
the wealth of others or to harm others out of hostility, malice, or the desire to dominate.
b.
An offender injures another person or abuses his family by molesting his wife, daughters, or sisters or tries to
tamper with his property by violence or
secret theft; or one person impugns the honor of another person by slandering or offending him.
c.
Persons engage in activities that disrupt social order, such as using black magic or poisons, spreading evil
habits, fomenting dissent and
discontent, or encouraging people to challenge the ruler, servants
to plot against their masters, and wives
against their husbands.
d.
The propagation of noxious habits, such as homosexuality and bestial ity, and
modes of conduct that can give rise to disputes and friction, such as a number of men desiring the same
woman or addiction to wine. This results
in disregard for the necessary supports of civilization.
e.
Persons engage in transactions harmful to the city, such as gambling, lending at interest, bribery, cheating in the
sale of commodities, high prices, and
hoarding commodities.
f.
People get embroiled in controversies and vacillate between different positions as long as the situation has not
been clarified.
g.
The community reverts into nomadic life or a condition similar to the first irtifāq, when people migrate to other
cities or engage in activities harmful
to the city, as is the case when most people turn to trade or make their living through warfare and
agriculture declines.
h.
The stampede of wild animals and the spread of vermin.67
In
addition to proposing special measures for each of the emergen cies mentioned above, Shāh Walī Allāh recommends a series of general
measures intended to enhance the defense of the state. For example, he counsels the construction of walls, forts,
and bridges; the appointment of border
garrisons; and the creation of markets. He also recommends securing water supplies, discovering water
springs, building wells, and
facilitating the transportation of merchandise through the construc
tion of docks at the shores of rivers. Shāh Walī Allāh’s program for
dealing with extraordinary circumstances is not confined to prescrip tions of
practical nature but extends to the moral aspects of domestic unity and the modes of interaction between
the ruler and his subjects. The
sovereign should cultivate bonds of friendship among the people and interact in a friendly manner with
merchants and foreigners; this will
prompt them to visit his realm more often. He should also make sure that farmers do not leave the land
uncultivated and should offer incentives
for artisans to improve their work. Finally, the ruler should encourage the people to acquire skills such
as calligraphy, arithmetic, history,
medicine, and methods of advancing knowledge. Protective measures include being able to distinguish
immoral from moral habits, identify which
citizens are in need of support, and employ the best craftsmen.68
Imperial
Decline
Shāh
Walī Allāh’s theory about the caliphate in the general sense revolves
around the two major factors which, in his view, account for imperial decline in his own day: (1) the
depletion of the public trea sury, and (2) parasitism, or the fact that many
people seek to secure income by serving
as soldiers or by becoming ‘ulamā’ (religious schol ars), ascetics, and poets
and by receiving gifts from the rulers. The lat ter causes heavy taxation on
farmers and traders, then the constant
increase of taxes leads to the ruin of the productive classes and
incites those who survive to stand up
against taxation and rebel against the
government.69
In his private writings and letters, Shāh Walī Allāh berates the fact
that wealth came to be concentrated in the hands of Hindus.70 But, more importantly, he construes the
malfunction of the Mughal govern ment as a sign of moral decadence and overall
failure to implement the teachings of
Islam. In an eleventh-hour attempt to save the Mughal
state from ultimate downfall, Shāh Walī Allāh called on the Afghan
ruler Aḥmad Shāh Abdālī (d. 1772) to invade India. He offers fulsome praise of the Afghan warlord for his bravery
and foresight and urges him to launch a
full-scale operation against the Marathas and Jats and to wipe out polytheistic practices.71
Shāh
Walī Allāh’s epistles on Mughal political disintegration should be read
against the background of a series of events that led to the gradual decay of Mughal rule:72 the
incursions by Maratha, Jat, and Sikh
forces;73 the invasion of the army of the Iranian ruler Nādir Shāh (1688–1747,
r. 1736–1747) in 1739, which struck a blow to the stature of the emperor and strained the Empire
economically and militarily; a
devastating military debacle of the Mughal forces at the battle of Karnal
on 24 February 1739 and the massive slaughter of residents of Delhi perpetrated by soldiers that gave rise to
popular resentment; and the constant
plots and intrigues of the nobles and courtiers. The situation
came to a head when, after the death of the Mughal ruler Muḥammad
Shāh (d. 1748), his son and successor Aḥmad Shāh Bahādur (1725– 1775, r.
1748–1754) became a pliant tool in the hands of influential ministers and nobles, which rendered the
Empire’s capital vulnerable to assaults
by rebels.
Shāh Walī Allāh reproves the imperial administration for its inabil
ity to suppress sedition. He points to the Jats’ taking over Gujarat and Malwa; the rulers’ luxurious way of life,
profligate spending, and self aggrandizement; the irregular and disrupted flow
of revenues from the provinces; the corruption
of local governors and tax agents in the col lection and administration of
revenue; and the oppression of the lower
social strata of the population. In addition to the letters which he
sent to Aḥmad Shāh Abdālī, Shāh Walī Allāh made a direct appeal to the
emperor and the nobles and spelled out an elaborate program intended to ensure the stability and continued
existence of the Empire:74
a.
He cautions against the policy of appointing a large number of jagirs (fief
lords) who end up shirking their duties to the army and rent out their lands. He recommends assigning large
pieces of land to nobles
and reintroducing Shāh Jahān’s practice of paying the lower members of
the nobility in cash.
b.
He impresses upon the government the need to ensure that soldiers receive a regular salary, because delays in
paying salaries compels sol diers to rely on loans at high rates of interest
and neglect their duties.
c.
He exhorts the emperor to expand the state property (khāliṣa) to the region surrounding Delhi, Hisar, and Sirhind.
d.
He suggests that the central administration reassert its authority and regain its capacity to gather revenues.
e.
He urges the emperor and nobles to give up their extravagant and luxurious way of life.
Shāh Walī Allāh stands forth as an intimate observer of the politi
cal events of his time.75 His interest in Mughal politics can partly be explained by his affiliation with the
Naqhsbandi order.76 The order advocated
the active involvement of leading Sufi figures in politics, with the aim to influence the policies and
decisions of rulers and thereby affect
the lives of Muslims.77 In the context of the central 820 journal of world history, december 2012 and
eastern Islamic empires, rulers often had to muster the support of the order to legitimize and consolidate their
rule and secure popular support.78
Shāh
Walī Allāh on Byzantine Decline
What gives particular poignancy to Shāh Walī Allāh’s theorizing about
imperial decline is his use of the Persian and Byzantine paradigms as a heuristic device to trace the root causes of
the decay of Mughal power. Shāh Walī
Allāh castigates the Sassanian (‘ajam)79 and Byzantine (rūm) empires, noting that their failure to
collect sufficient revenues and build up
necessary defenses was the principal factor that led to their collapse. Their rulers had passed on
hereditary kingship for many generations
and had become so engrossed in the pleasures of this world that they neglected the next world. They
became deeply immersed in comforts and
derived pride from possessing them; in fact, scholars came from far lands to learn the arts
associated with fine living. The
Persians and Byzantines pursued life’s pleasures with increasing enthusiasm;
their rulers competed and showed off to one another until they used to rebuke those rulers who did not wear
beautiful clothes or who wore a girdle
or crown whose value was less than a hundred thousand dirhems or who did not reside in a lofty
palace that included bathtubs, bathing
pools, gardens, swift riding animals, and handsome servitors, or those who were not generous in
distributing food. This emphasis on
luxury and pleasure penetrated their lives to such an extent that it was like an incurable disease that caused
their markets and cities to perish.80
Luxurious
living papered over mounting expenditures, and to make up for draining the state budget, rulers
imposed exorbitant taxation on the
peasantry and traders and oppressed them to the point that if they refused to pay taxes they were subjected
to torture, and if they obeyed they
became like donkeys and cattle, which are used for farming according to their
master’s needs and whims. Consequently, greed
and luxury set in, and the people were so desperate in such a state
of depredation and misery that they
totally neglected religion; they were
concerned solely with material comforts, and they abandoned the prin
ciples
of the professions upon which the order of the world is based. Some people ingratiated themselves with the
rulers; others emulated the habits of
their leaders but did not perform what was necessary and tried instead to merely subsist; still others
engaged in parasitic activities by
becoming poets, ascetics, and Sufis, relying on gifts and financial aid from the emperors; and some of these
groups ended up oppressing and
exploiting others and sought to make their living by befriending or flattering the rulers.81
Shāh
Walī Allāh’s statements on Byzantine decline point to a major lacuna
in scholarship. Previous studies rarely address medieval and early modern Islamic views of the
political organization of the Byzantine
Empire and the ways in which Byzantine historiography and political writing perceived the rise of
Mongol rule and the spread of Islam in
central and south Asia.82 Medieval Islamic literature is characterized by the
tendency to refer to political leaders and methods of government before the advent of Islam or in
non-Muslim lands in the context of
discussions on the conditions for salutary rule according to the tenets of Islam. The earliest references
to pre-Islamic rulers occur
in the Qu’rān, in which the term malik (king)83 is applied to the pha
raohs of ancient Egypt to signify unrighteous political conduct and arbitrary and unjust rule,84 although later
Arab authors took a more favorable
stance toward ancient Egyptian kingship and commended the pharaohs for such virtues as generosity,
piety, and dedication to the welfare of
their subjects.85
One
of the first references to Byzantium (al-rūm) appears in the
Qur’ān in the context of the Byzantine-Sassanid war at the beginning of
the seventh century.86 Just like Shāh Walī Allāh, a number of Arab writers saw
Byzantine emperors (qayṣar) and Sassanian kings (kisrā) as exemplifying a form of royal rule
incompatible with the principles of
Islam.87 However, whereas the Persian Empire proved very vulnerable to Muslim attacks and quickly fell under the
sway of Islam, Byzantium in the
aftermath of the Arabs’ efforts to capture Constantinople, especially in the
tenth century, came to be widely perceived as a resilient political and military power that posed a
formidable and lasting chal lenge to its Arab neighbors and that would perish
only with the coming of the Day of
Judgment.88 Al-Jāḥiẓ (781–869) notes that Mu‘āwiyah’s (602–680, r. 661–680)
ascension to power as the first Caliph of the
Umayyad dynasty marked a period of oppression and violence in which the imamate mutated into a kind of kingdom as
the one during Chos roes’s reign and the caliphate degenerated into a tyranny
that only per tained to a caesar (≈ Byzantine emperor).89
Arab
authors also denounced luxury, wasteful extravagance, pomp, and overtaxation as symptoms of the
devolution of Byzantine author ity. The geographer and traveler Ibn Ḥawqal (tenth century)
reports that in an effort to cover the expenses of his military expeditions against the Muslims Emperor Nikephoros II
Phokas (912–969, r. 963– 969) imposed heavy taxes instead of using his own
funds and provoked popular discontent
and agitation which led to his assassination.90 Such an assessment persisted down to the fourteenth
century as indicated by the
characterization of the Byzantines as ungenerous and self-conceited in al-Nuwayrī’s (d. 1333) history of the
Mongol conquest of Syria.91 Ibn Khaldūn
(1332–1406) likewise observes that whereas Muslims were originally averse to royal decorum and pomp,
the caliphate gradually mutated into
royal rule and Muslims paid increasing attention to splen dor and developed a
penchant for luxury, especially after inter acting and mingling with Persians and Byzantines who
displayed to them their ways of
ostentation and luxury.92 Finally, an interesting precedent
to Shāh Walī Allāh’s ideas on the Byzantine practice of imperial power
may be found in the Talkhīṣ kitāb al-khiṭābah li-Arisṭū (Middle Com mentary on
Aristotle’s Rhetoric) of the famous Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198): elaborating on
Aristotle’s typology of the various
regime types, Ibn Rushd distinguishes between cities that are ruled according to fixed and immutable
laws, as is the case with the Islamic
law, and cities whose laws change according to what is most expedient, as is the case with many of the
laws in Byzantium.93
Assessing the veracity of Shāh Walī Allāh’s account of Byzantine
decline would require a closer survey of the image of the Byzantine Empire in medieval and early modern Islamic
writing, especially in the central and
eastern lands of Islam, that exceeds the scope of this arti
cle.94 It is possible that Shāh Walī Allāh’s intention is to alert Mughal
rulers to the imminent fall of the empire by invoking Byzantium as a negative example of a great imperial state
that collapsed due to an eco nomic crisis very similar to the one that
afflicted eighteenth-century
India.95 Even so, Shāh Walī Allāh’s statements attest to a keen aware
ness and appreciation of the economic factors involved in the decline of Byzantine power and the affinities between
Mughal and Byzantine political realities
and calls for a comparative study of Mughal and
Byzantine reactions to the
phenomenon of imperial decline. As noted earlier, a number of medieval Islamic
accounts of the Byzantine Empire
centered around excessive taxation as one of the major flaws of Byzantine imperial administration. Just like Ibn Ḥawqal,
who ascribed the social tensions that arose during Nikephoros Pho kas’s reign
to high taxation and the exploitation of the people, John Skylitzes (late eleventh century) mentions in
his Synopsis Historiōn (A Synopsis of
Histories) that Phokas, who was vilified by some of his contemporaries as a belligerent ruler,
incurred the hatred of his subjects by
imposing excessive taxation and turning a blind eye to the abuses of the military and the plundering and pillage
of the people’s prop erty. Skylitzes denounces Phokas’s policies to create
additional sources of revenues and raise
supplement taxes: in particular, he criticizes the Byzantine emperor for abrogating some of the
financial benefits of the members of the
senate on the pretext of lacking funds to sustain the war effort, terminating the financial aid
offered to religious houses and
churches, and passing a law that prohibited the expansion of ecclesias
tical property. Last but not least, the emperor caused the devaluation of the existing currency (nomisma) by
introducing an additional form of
currency, the tetarteron.96
The
degeneration of Byzantine political strength was visible as early as the eleventh century,97 as evidenced
by Michael Attaleiates’s
(1020/1030–1085) references to misgovernment and venality in the imperial administration as the prime causes
of Byzantine decadence especially in the
aftermath of the Byzantine army’s defeat by Seljuq forces at the battle of Mantzikert
(Malazgirt, 1071) and the Turkish
occupation of a large part of Asia Minor.98 In his Historia
(History) Attaleiates berates the
Byzantine rulers and court officials for engaging in impious and illicit activities in the name
of the public welfare. Attaleiates also outlines the process whereby Byzantine
military fortunes reached a low ebb as
the army leaders were concerned solely with mak ing profit and shirked their
duties and the soldiers imitated the conduct
of their commanders, behaving in an unjust and cruel manner toward the people and seeking to destroy, usurp, or
plunder their property as if they were
the enemies of their own country.99
The
steady increase of costs for the administration and sustenance of the Byzantine army, for luxury, finery,
and pomp, coincided with Venice’s and
Genoa’s dominance in Mediterranean trade. With the Turkish menace looming large in the mid
thirteenth century, some of the
protagonists of late Byzantine intellectual and religious life engaged in sustained reflection on the causes and
effects of the factional strife that
raged through the empire. Tirades against profit making, injustice, and rampant corruption were common. Similar
to Shāh Walī Allāh, who identified tax burdens laid on the peasantry and the
parasitic activities of religious
figures as two of the major reasons for imperial decline, a number of Byzantine political
theorists blamed the economic problems
of the empire on the exploitation of the productive classes and on the tax privileges of the monasteries.100
Amidst
a famine in Constantinople in the 1300s, the then Patri arch of Constantinople
(1289–1293 and 1303–1309), Athanasios I
(1230/35–ca. 1323), addressed a number of letters to the Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos (1259–1332;
r. 1282–1328) in which he makes an
impassioned plea for the fair distribution of food supplies:101 just as the sun radiates warmth,
so too is one of the emper or’s prime tasks to uphold security and justice.
Athanasios specifically calls upon the
emperor to restrain those who, driven by greed, seek to profiteer by hoarding for themselves public
revenues and inflict pov erty102 and recommends drastic measures against those
who receive bribes and slander the
Church.103 He advocates tight central control
over the purchase of grain and bread104 and the judicious selection
of revenue collectors.105 He also calls
for strict monitoring of the bakers and
of the transportation and delivery of grain so that cargoes do not end up in the hands of grain dealers and
profiteers but are distributed to those
who are in need of food,106 and he threatens to excommunicate all grain dealers.107
Economic
inequities and the outbreak of the Zealot revolution in Thessalonike, the empire’s second most
important city after Constan tinople, provoked intense debates on the political
and social maladies that afflicted the
Byzantine state in the first half of the fourteenth cen tury.108 Following
Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos’s (1296–1341, r. 1328–1341) death in June 1341, his chief
minister, John Kan ta kouzenos (1292–1383), served as the effective regent for
John V (1332– 1391), Andronikos’s infant son, and proclaimed himself emperor
four months later. In 1342, a political
group that called themselves Zealots and
were led by the grand duke (= commander-in-chief of the Byzan tine navy)
Alexios Apokaukos (late thirteenth century–1345) set up a popular regime in Thessalonike. The
conflict touched off a series of revolts
in other cities, with the nobility backing Kantakouzenos and the middle and lower classes supporting John
V and the Zealots. The Zealot regime
came to an end when Kantakouzenos recovered Thes salonike in 1350.
Nikephoros
Choumnos’s (1250/55–1327) speech Thessalonikeusi sum vouleutikos peri Dikaiosunēs (Exhortatory
Oration on Justice) pro vides intriguing insights into the background of the
events surrounding the Zealot movement
and a vivid description of the poverty conditions and inequality in late Byzantine
Thessalonike.109 Choumnos, a distin guished scholar and prime minister
(mesazōn) of Emperor Andronikos II,
served as governor of Thessalonike in 1309/10.110 The speech, writ ten most
probably around 1284/85,111 was originally intended for the citizens of Thessalonike, but it was never
delivered in public and circu lated within Choumnos’s circle of friends and
associates.112 Choumnos castigates the
rich for contriving to take over the property and houses of the poor in order to build their luxurious
multi-storey residences and points out
that the poor in their turn, though initially trying to nego tiate, become
desperate and succumb to the demands of those who, driven by covetousness and cupidity, seek to
seize their property.113 Similar sentiments are echoed in Tois Thessalonikeusi
peri omonoias ([Oration] to the Citizens of Thessalonike on Concord),114 an
exhorta tory speech composed by Thomas Magister (or Magistros, also known by his monastic name Theodoulos, ca.
1280–1350/51), an eminent classical
scholar and theologian.115 The speech draws to some extent on ancient Greek models, especially Aelius
Aristides’s (117 c.e.–after 181)
orations, and captures the sense of anguish and the political dec adence that
prevailed in Thessalonike in the wake of the civil wars between Andronikos II and his grandson
Andronikos III over the succession to
the throne during the years 1321–1328 and on the eve of the Zealot revolution.116 Magister also
wrote two treatises on the proper
qualifications for kingship (Peri vasileias [On Kingship]) and the duties of citizens (Peri politeias [On the
Commonwealth]),117 in which he makes an
urgent appeal to the civic body of Thessalonike to restore unity and uphold justice, and alerting
readers to the deleterious effects of
sedition and factional discord (stasis).
The
theme of economic injustice was seconded by Alexios Makrem volites (d. after
1349), who offers a prescient analysis of the fall of the Byzantine state as the result of a
decision of the world-governing
Providence
that causes the fluctuations in the affairs of the world and transfers sovereignty from one people to
another. In the fictional Dialo gos plousiōn kai penētōn (Dialogue [between]
Rich and Poor, ca. 1344), Makremvolites
captures the feverish strife and social rifts that con vulsed the Byzantine
world in the thirteenth century and points to the suffering of the poor, who were at the mercy
of the wealthy.118 Another major late Byzantine intellectual who witnessed the
reper cussions of the Zealot episode and got embroiled in contemporary debates on the economic and social ills that
plagued the empire was Nikolaos
Kavasilas (ca. 1322–ca. 1390), a cleric and scion of a promi nent noble family
from Thessalonike. In his Peri tokou (On Interest), an oration addressed to Anna of Savoy
(Palaiologina, 1306–ca. 1365) that was
written around 1351, he expresses unqualified disdain for the rich who, as he observes, engage in unjust
actions, seek profit by ruin ing others, and behave like robbers, thieves, and
wild animals.119 In his Logos kata tokizontōn (Oration against Usurers),
Kavasilas
offers
an extensive treatment of lending at interest and hoarding of resources onto which he has grafted patristic
and legal definitions of usury. He also
points to the moral dimensions of usury, which he equates with other kinds of crimes such as
adultery, murder, and theft, with the
only difference that these crimes entail a certain degree of risk, whereas usury is a more detestable form
of crime because it is free of risks.120
Kava silas specifically denounces laws that associate interest rates and the character of the lender and
forbid clerics from loaning at interest
or allow nobles to charge only low rates while permitting wicked and morally corrupt individuals to
charge high interest rates.121
If
the Zealot rebellion was construed by both pro- and anti-Zealot intellectuals as a portent of Byzantium’s
fall, in the first half of the
fourteenth century the political disintegration of Byzantine rule
due to the wrongs and injustices
perpetuated by the imperial administration, a long series of economic crises,
and the advances of the Turk ish forces came to be broadly regarded as a fait
accompli. A number of Byzantine thinkers
felt despondent about the process of Byzantine
decline, explaining it as a manifestation of divine wrath for misrule
or a divine punishment for the
Byzantines’ refusal to endorse the union
of the churches.122 But George Gemistos Plethon (d. 1452), a towering figure of late Byzantine intellectual life
and purveyor of ancient Greek and
Byzantine learning in Renaissance Italy, pinned his hopes for sur vival on the
organization of the Peloponnese as an autonomous politi cal entity that would
serve as the last refuge for Byzantines of “Hellenic” stock, as shown in the two memoranda which he
addressed to Theodoros II Palaiologos
(1396–1448, r. 1407–1443), Despot of Mystra, in 1416,123 and Emperor Manuel II
Palaiologos (1350–1425, r. 1391–1421) in
1418.124
The
ideal form of regime envisioned by Plethon is one with a strong monarch with a moderate number of educated
men drawn from the middle class acting
as his advisers. Plethon also advocates abolition of private property, regulation of commercial
activities with an eye to local needs,
and strict currency control.125
Conclusion
In this article, I elucidated the central premises of Shāh Walī Allāh’s
theory of the state and human civilization and engaged in a closer discussion of the ways in which his political
ideas relate to previous Islamic
political discourse, notably the akhlāq (Ṭūsī, Dawwānī) and Indo-Islamic
strands of political thought (Baranī, Abū’l-Faẓl, Najm-i
Sānī). I demonstrated that Shāh Walī Allāh articulates a naturalistic
approach to the phenomenon of social genesis and posits the goal of meeting human needs as the prime motivating
force behind the formation of human society.
I also reconstructed Shāh Walī Allāh’s theory about the factors that
account for the decline of the state and the empire and of his program for dealing with a broad range of emergencies. I argued that Shāh Walī Allāh’s statements on the causes of Mughal decay open a window into the
intellectual atmosphere in the last centuries of Mughal rule, but also bear intriguing affinities to the ideas
expressed by earlier thinkers
on the economic aspects of imperial decline. Shāh Walī Allāh’s use of
the Byzantine paradigm as an instrument of analysis of the sociopo litical
conditions that prevailed in his contemporary India brings him close to a number of Byzantine authors who
perceived the eclipse of Byzantine rule
as the outcome of social inequalities, oppression of the lower strata of society, and overtaxation. Moreover,
the findings of the preceding analysis of Shāh Walī
Allāh’s political thought call for a reassessment of Bernard Lewis’s the sis
that the decline of the Islamic world occurred due to intrinsic flaws in the Islamic tradition, notably the status
of slaves, women, and unbe lievers,126 and cultural obstinacy and aversion to
secularization.127 Shāh Walī Allāh is in substantial agreement with Byzantine thinkers on the
primacy of economic factors in the process of imperial decline. His ref erences
to the Byzantine and Sassanian empires reflect a vivid aware ness of the
importance of maladministration and financial corruption as universal causes for the decay of any type
of state organization that extends well
beyond the Islamic context.
While
previous scholarly attempts to study the history of the Mughal Empire from a cross-cultural
perspective have primarily focused on
comparisons with the Roman and Ottoman empires,128 the results of this article highlight the need
for a detailed investigation of
Indo-Islamic attitudes toward the political history of the Byzantine Empire and a comparative study of the
Byzantine and Mughal pat terns of imperial organization. They also call for a
critical reevaluation of Shāh Walī
Allāh’s political ideas and philosophy of history that will help place
him in conversation with eighteenth-century Western thinkers (Montesquieu, Vico, Gibbon) and
revisit the relevance of his ideas to
ongoing debates on the economic dimensions of state decline.
Notes
*
Thanks are due to Muzaffar Alam, Razi Aquil, Christos Baloglou, Jonathan Har
ris, Anthony Kaldellis, Dimitris Krallis, and Niketas Siniossoglou for reading
drafts of the paper and offering
valuable feedback. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Centre of Excellence in
Political Thought and Conceptual Change of the
Academy of Finland (2008–2011) and the Marty Martin Center for the
Advanced Study of Religion at the
University of Chicago (2010/2011).
1
For an intriguing comparison of Shāh Walī Allāh’s and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s (1712–1778) ideas, see Jacques Berque, L’islam au temps du monde
(Paris: Sindbad, 1984), chap. “Un
contemporain islamo-indien de Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” pp. 113–146. Early modern European perceptions of the Mughal
Empire are surveyed in Frederick G. Whelan,
Enlightenment Political Thought and Non-Western Societies: Sultans and
Savages (New York: Routledge, 2009),
esp. chap. “Burke, India, and Orientalism,” pp. 103–129.
2
On Shāh Walī Allāh’s life and works, see Mawlavi M. Hidayat Husain, “The Persian
Autobiography of Shāh Walīullah bin ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al-Dihlavī: Its
English Translation and a List of His Works,” Journal of the Asiatic Society
of Bengal 8 (1912): 161–175; as well as
Jens Bakker, Šāh Walīy Allāh ad-Dihlawīy (1703–1762) und sein Aufenthalt in
Mekka und Medina: Ein Beitrag zur
Erforschung des islamischen Reformdenkens im frühen 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin:
EB-Verleg, 2010); Ghulam H. Jalbani, Life of Shah Waliyullah (Lahore: Sh. Muham
mad Ashraf, 1978); Fazle Mahmud, “An Exhaustive Study of the Life of Shah Wali Allah Dehlavi,” Oriental College Magazine 33 (1956): 1–45; as well as the following articles in M. Ikram Chaghatai, ed., Shah Waliullah (1703–1762): His Religious and Political Thought (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2005; henceforth SWRPT): Marcia K. Hermansen, “Shāh Walī Allāh” (pp. 11–14); A. S. Bazmee Ansari, “Shah Wali Allah al-Dihlawi” (pp. 15–18); Bashir A. Dar, “Wali Allah: His Life and Times” (pp. 19–50; first published in Iqbal Review 6, no. 3 [1965]: 1–36); Abdul H. Siddiqi, “Shah Wali Allah Dihlawi” (pp. 51–77; first published in Mian M. Sharif, ed., A History of Muslim Philosophy: With Short Accounts of Other Disciplines and the Modern Renaissance in Muslim Lands [Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1966], 2:1557–1579); and Alessandro Bausani, “Note su Shāh Walīullāh di Delhi (1703– 1762),” Annali dell’ Istituto Orientale di Napoli, n.s., 10 (1960): 93–147. Also broadly on the intellectual climate in Shāh Walī Allāh’s time, consult Saiyid A. A. Rizvi, Shāh Walī-Allāh and His Times: A Study of Eighteenth Century Islām, Politics and Society in India (Canberra: Ma’rifat Publishing House, 1980), esp. pp. 111–202; and, in general, Peter J. Marshall, ed., The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003); Seema Alavi, ed., The Eighteenth Century in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002).
3
Shāh Walī Allāh ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥīm, Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 2 vols.
(Cairo: Dār al-Turāth, 1978); English trans.: The Conclusive Argument from
God: Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi’s Ḥujjat
Allāh al-Bāligha, trans. Marcia K. Hermansen (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996; repr.,
Islamabad: International Islamic University, Islamic Research Institute, 2003).
I have relied on the English
translations of some of the Arabic, Persian, and Byzantine sources
mentioned throughout this paper with
some amendments not indicated due to space limitations. On the Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, see the
following chapters in SWRPT: Marcia K. Hermansen, “Shah Wali Allah’s Hujjat Allah al-Baligha”
(pp. 529–552); Hermansen, “Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi’s Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāligha:
Tension between the Universal and the Particular in an Eighteenth-Century Islamic Theory of
Religious Revelation” (pp. 597–614; first published in Studia Islamica 63 [1986]: 143–157); Sabih
A. Kamali, “The Concept of Human Nature
in Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah and Its Relation
to Shāh Walīy Allāh’s Doctrine of Fiqh” (pp.
553–596; first published in Islamic Culture 36, no. 3 [1962]: 207–224;
36, no. 4 [1962]: 256–274); as well as
Fazle Mahmud, “Shah Wali Allah’s Hujjatullahil balighah,” Journal of the Arabic and Persian Society of the Panjab
University 5, no. 4/6:1 (1960/61): 1–28.
4 Shah Waliyullah, Al-Budur al-Bāzighah, trans. Ghulam N. Jalbani, 2nd ed. (New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 2005); Full Moon Appearing on the Horizon: English Translation of Shah Wali Allah (Al-Budur al-Bazighah), trans. Johannes M. S. Baljon (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1990). On the Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah as a source of Shah Walī Allāh’s political ideas, see Saeeda Khatoon, “Shāh Walī Allāh’s Philosophy of Society—an Outline,” Hamdard Islamicus 7, no. 4 (1984): 57–67, repr. in SWRPT, pp. 421–431; Ghulam N. Jalbani, Teachings of Shāh Walīyullāh of Delhi (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1967; repr., New Delhi: Nusrat Ali Nasri Lor Kitab Bhavan, 1988), pp. 126–147; Muhammad ‘A. Baqi, “Theories of State and Problems of Sociology as Expounded by an Indian Muslim Divine of the Eigh teenth Century,” Islamic Review 38 (1950): 9–14. A comparative study of the Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bāli ghah and Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah remains a desideratum.
5
Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard Uni versity Press, 2008), pp. 40–57. Consider also Muhammad T. Mallick,
“Rationale of Jihād as Expounded by Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi,” Journal of
the Pakistan Historical Society 34 (1986): 14–25.
6
See, for example, Mahmood A. Ghazi, Islamic Renaissance in South Asia
1707–1867: The Role of Shāh Walī Allāh
and His Successors (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute/Inter national
Islamic University, 2002); Ahmad Dallal, “The Origins and Objectives of
Islamic Revivalist Thought, 1750–1850,”
Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (1993): 341– 359; Muhammad
al-Faruque, “Some Aspects of Muslim Revivalist Movements in India During the
18th Century: The Activities of Shāh Walī-Allāh of Delhi,” Islamic Culture 63
(1989):
19–41; Shafi A. Khan, “Nationalist ‘Ulama’s Interpretation of Shāh Walī Allah’s
Thought and Movement,” Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society 37 (1989):
209–248; Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi,
Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Agra: Agra University
Press, 1965; repr., New Delhi: M. Manoharlal,
1993).
7
Shāh Walī Allāh uses the Arabic term madīnah, which literally means “city” and
is roughly equivalent to the Greek
polis, in the sense of a political entity that encompasses a number of cities and is characterized by an
administrative and governmental organization
similar to that of the modern state. Accordingly, Shāh Walī Allāh envisions the caliphate as
incorporating a multiplicity of existing states and political units. On the
meaning of madīna and its derivatives in
medieval Arab political writing, see Soheil M. Afnan, A Philosophical Lexicon in Persian and Arabic (Beirut:
Imprimerie Catholique, 1969; repr., Tehran: Nashr-i Nuqrih, 1362 [1983]), s.v. madīna (278–279);
Dimitri Gutas, “The Meaning of madīnah in
al-Fārābī’s ‘Political’ Philosophy,” in The Greek Strand in Islamic
Political Thought, ed. Emma Gannagé et
al. (= Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph;
57; Beirut: Dār el-Machreq, 2004), pp.
259–279. For a useful orientation to the various definitions of the concept of
“empire,” consult Kathleen D. Morrison, “Sources,
Approaches, Definitions,” in Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, ed. Susan E.
Alcock et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), pp. 1–9, esp. 1–3.
8
Given the enormous amount of scholarship on imperial ascendancy and decline,
I confine myself to mentioning some of
the most important studies I consulted in the process of writing this paper: Niall Ferguson,
“Complexity and Collapse: Empires on the Edge of Chaos,” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 2 (2010):
18–32; Peter Turchin, Historical Dynamics: Why
States Rise and Fall (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2003); Alexander J. Motyl, Imperial
Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2001); Motyl,
“Thinking about Empire,” in After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the
Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires, ed. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1997), pp. 19–29; Charles
Tilly, “How Empires End,” in Barkey and von Hagen, After Empire, pp.
1–11; Emil Brix et al., eds., The Decline
of Empires (Vienna: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik; Munich: Olden-bourg
Verlag, 2001); Richard Lorenz, ed., Das Verdämmern der Macht: Vom Untergang
grosser Reiche (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer
TB Verlag, 2000); Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Ran dom House, 1987); Joseph A. Tainter,
The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press,
1988); Michael W. Doyle, Empires (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986); Carlo M. Cipolla, ed., The
Economic Decline of Empires (London: Methuen,
1970); Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Decline of Empires (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1967); Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems
of Empires (London: Free Press of
Glencoe, 1963; repr., New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993); and
Geir Lundestad, ed., The Fall of Great
Powers: Peace, Stability, and Legitimacy (Oslo: Scandinavian Univer sity Press,
1994). For stimulating reflections on the history of empires and its relevance
to current debates on the role of the
United States as a global power, see Craig Calhoun et al., eds., Lessons of Empire: Imperial Histories
and American Power (New York: New Press,
2006). The phenomenon of state failure is discussed in Robert I.
Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes
and Consequences (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004). On
the theme of decline, consult, e.g.,
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty
(New York: Crown Publishers, 2012); Rein hart Koselleck and Paul Widmer, eds.,
Niedergang: Studien zu einem geschichtlichen Thema (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta,
1980); Peter Burke, “Tradition and Experience: The Idea of Decline from Bruni to Gibbon,” in Edward Gibbon and
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Glenn W. Bowersock et al.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp. 87–102; Randolph Starn, “Meaning-Levels in the
Theme of Historical Decline,” History
and Theory 14 (1975): 1–31.
9
On the sources of Shāh Walī Allāh’s political ideas, see the remarks
by Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam: India 1200–1800 (London:
Hurst, 2004), pp. 50, 171–173; as well
as Muhammad al-Ghazali, The Socio-Political Thought of Shāh Walī Allāh
(Islamabad: International Institute of Islamic Thought and Islamic Research
Institute, 2001; repr., New Delhi: Adam
Publishers and Distributors, 2004), pp. 33–43; and Saiyid A. A. Rizvi, “The Political Thoughts of Shāh Walī Allāh,” Abr-Nahrain
16 (1975/76): 91–107, 91–92, repr. in
SWRPT, pp. 277–308. A general treatment of Shāh Walī Allāh’s political theory
can be found in Mahmood A. Ghazi, “State and Politics in the Philosophy of
Shah Waliy Allah,” Islamic Studies 23
(1984): 353–371, repr. in SWRPT, pp. 225–241.
10 For a similar interpretation, see Johannes M. S. Baljon, “Social and Economic Ideas of Shah Wali Allah,” in Readings in Islamic Economic Thought, ed. Abul Hasan M. Sadeq and Aidit Ghazali (Dhaka: Islamic Foundation Bangladesh, 2006), pp. 356–368, 358. The term irtifāq (literal meaning: support) derives from the Arabic root r.f.q., which signifies kindness or gentleness. For further discussion, see Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,pp. xviii–xix.
11
Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 48–49; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on
the Horizon, pp. 56–58. See further
Abdul A. Islahi, “Shah Wali Allah’s Concept of Al-Irtifaqat (Stages of Socio-Economic Development),”
Journal of Objective Studies 1–2 (1990): 46–63,
51 (repr. in Fazlur R. Faridi, ed., Aspects of Islamic Economics and the
Economy of IndianMuslims [New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1993], pp.
73–93); as well as Sabih A. Kamali,
“Shah Waliy Allah’s Doctrine of Irtifaqat,” Iqbal 11, no. 3 (1963): 1–17, repr.
in SWRPT, pp. 401–420.
12
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:39; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 117–118.
13
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:38; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 115–116; Waliyullah, Al-Budūr
al-Bāzighah, pp. 22–23; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on the Horizon, p. 32. See also the discussion in
Johannes M. S. Baljon, “The Ethics of Shâh Walî
Allâh Dihlawî (1703–62),” in Akten des VII. Kongresses für Arabistik und
Islamwissenschaft,
ed.
Albert Dietrich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1976), pp. 66–73, 67–69,
repr. in SWRPT, pp. 397–405.
14
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:39; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God, p.
117. 15 Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:40; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from
God, p. 121. 16 Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:39–40; Hermansen, The Conclusive
Argument from God,
p.
119; Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 53–54; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing
on the Horizon, pp. 61–63.
17
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:40; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 119–120.
18
Compare Plato, Politeia, 372A–374E.
19
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:41–42; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
p. 127.
20
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:43–44; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
p. 128.
21
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:42; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God, p.
127. 22 Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:45; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from
God, p. 129. 23 Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:45; Hermansen, The Conclusive
Argument from God, p. 132.
24
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:45–46; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 132–133; Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 79–81; Baljon, Full Moon
Appearing on the Horizon, pp. 86–88.
25
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:46; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God, p.
133.
24
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:45–46; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 132–133; Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 79–81; Baljon, Full Moon
Appearing on the Horizon, pp. 86–88.
25
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:46; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God, p.
133.
26
Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 77–78; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on
the Horizon, pp. 85–86.
27
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:46; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God, p.
134. 28 Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:46–47; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument
from God, pp. 135–136; Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 94–96; Baljon,
Full Moon Appearing on the Horizon, pp.
99–101.
29
Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 94–95; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on
the Horizon, p. 100.
30
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:46; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 134–135.
31
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:46; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God, p.
135.
32
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:45; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
p. 137. See also Waliyullah, Al-Budūr
al-Bāzighah, pp. 97–98; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on the Horizon, pp. 101–103.
33
On the reception of al-Fārābī’s political ideas in the
Indo-Islamic world as medi ated by Ṭūsī’s Nasirean Ethics, see Saiyid A. A.
Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of
the Muslims in Akbar’s Reign, with Special Reference to Abuʾl Fazl
(1556–1605) (New Delhi: M. Manoharlal
Publishers, 1975), pp. 355–357.
34
Al-Farabi on the Perfect State: Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī’s Mabādiʾ ārāʾ ahl al-madīna
al-fāḍila. A revised text with
introduction, translation, and commentary by Richard Walzer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985; repr., Chicago: KAZI
Publications, 1998), Arabic text p. 228,
English trans. p. 229. Consider also Al-Farabi, The Political Writings:
Selected Aphorisms and Other Texts,
trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
2001), pp. 23–26, 46. For further
discussion, see Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 177, 260–261, 343; Shlomo Pines,
“The
Societies Providing for the Bare Necessities of Life According to Ibn Khaldūn and to the
Philosophers,” Studia Islamica 34 (1971): 125–138, repr., in Pines, The
Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, vol. 3,
Studies in the History of Arabic Philosophy, ed. Sarah Stroumsa (Jerusa
lem:
Magnes Press, 1996), pp. 217–230.
35
Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, p. 230/231, as well as pp. 424, 432–433, 497.
36
The following account is based on Abdur R. Bhat, Political Thought of Shah
Waliul lâh (An Analytical Study) (New Delhi: Delhi, Rightway Publication,
2002), chap. “Shah Waliullah’s Political
Theory in Islamic Context,” pp. 65–73; Aziz Ahmad, “An Eighteenth Century
Theory of the Caliphate,” Studia Islamica 28 (1968): 135–144. Consider
also Johannes M. S. Baljon, Religion and
Thought of Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī, 1703–1762 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), pp. 121–125, 195–196.
37
A precedent of this distinction can be found in the Fatāwā-i-Jahāndārī
(Precepts on [World]
Rulership) of Ziyā’ al-Dīn Baranī (1284–1356), a confidant of the sultan of
Delhi Muḥammad bin Tughluq (ca. 1300–1351,
r. 1325–1351) and major historian of fourteenth century India: Baranī
distinguishes two forms of justice, one that aims at general equal ity
(‘adl-i musāwāt-i talabī-yi ‘ām) and one concerned with special equality (adl-i
musāwāt-i talabī-yi khāss). The former
is the ideal form of justice, can be realized only in the Islamic setting, and was exemplified by Caliph ‘Umar
(ca. 586–644, r. 634–644). The latter was
applied by the Persian king Anūshirwān (Chosroes I, r. 531–579) and
presupposes the exis tence of a ruler acting as an arbitrator and settling disputes.
For further references and com ment, see Alam, The Languages of Political
Islam, pp. 38–39.
38
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:48–49; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 138–139.
39
Aristotle, Politics 1253a1–3. On the following, see also Vasileios Syros,
“Shadows in Heaven and Clouds on Earth:
The Emergence of Social Life and Political Authority in the Early Modern Islamic Empires,” Viator 43, no.
2 (2012): 377–406.
40
Naṣīr al-Ṭūsī, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī (Lahore: Punjab University, 1952), p. 242; The
Nasirean Ethics by Naṣīr ad-Dīn Ṭūsī,
trans. from the Persian George M. Wickens (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), p. 189. See also Guang-Zhen
Sun, “Nasir ad-Din Tusi on Social Coopera tion and the Division of Labor:
Fragment from The Nasirean Ethics,” Journal of Institutional Economics 5 (2008): 403–413.
41
Al-Ṭūsī, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, p. 243; The Nasirean Ethics, pp. 190–191. 42
[Jalāl al-Dīn Dawwānī], Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, trans.
W. F. Thompson (London: W. H. Allen,
1839; repr., Karachi: Karimsons, 1977); The English Trans lation of the
Akhlak-i-Jalali: A Code of Morality in Persian composed by Jalal-ud-Din Moham
mad Alias Allama Dawwani, trans. S. H. Deen (Lahore: Sh. Mubarak Ali, 1939).
Scholarly discussions of Dawwānī’s political ideas include Erwin
I. J. Rosenthal, Political Thought in
Medieval Islam: An Introductory Outline (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1958), chap. “Al-Dawwāni: Application
and Integration,” pp. 210–223; Mohammed-Taqi Dan ishpazhouh, “An Annotated
Bibliography on Government and Statecraft,” trans. Andrew Newman, in Authority and Political Culture in
Shi‘ism, ed. Said Amir Arjomand (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 213–239, esp. 221–222;
Muhammad A. Haq, “A Critical Study of
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawwāni’s Contribution to Social Philosophy” (PhD diss.,
Aligarh Muslim University, n.d.).
43
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, pp. 318–320, 245–250; Deen,
The English Translation of the
Akhlak-i-Jalali, pp. 161–162, 126–128.
44
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, p. 321; Deen, The English
Translation of the Akhlak-i-Jalali, p.
163.
45
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, p. 322; Deen, The English
Translation of the Akhlak-i-Jalali, p.
163.
46
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, pp. 324–325; Deen, The English
Trans lation of the Akhlak-i-Jalali, pp. 164–165.
47
Alam, The Languages of Political Islam, p. 50; Alam, “State Building under
the Mughals: Religion, Culture and
Politics,” in L’Héritage timouride: Iran-Asie centrale-Inde XVe–XVIIIe siècles, pp. 105–128, 111–117;
Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the Mus lims in Akbar’s Reign, pp.
355–356, 366–369.
48
In the administrative manual (dastūr al-‘amal) issued by Akbar in 1594, the
Nasirean Ethics was included in the
standard readings for Mughal officials—see Mukātabāt-i-‘Allāmī (Inshā’i Abu’l Faẓl) Daftar I: Letters of the
Emperor Akbar in English Translation, ed. Mansura Haidar (New Delhi: M. Manoharlal Publishers,
1998), p. 79.
49
Abū’l-Faẓl ‘Allāmī, Āīn-i Akbarī, trans. Henry Blochmann, 2nd ed. (Calcutta:
Asi atic Society of Bengal, 1927), p. 2.
46
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, pp. 324–325; Deen, The English
Trans lation of the Akhlak-i-Jalali, pp. 164–165.
47
Alam, The Languages of Political Islam, p. 50; Alam, “State Building under
the Mughals: Religion, Culture and
Politics,” in L’Héritage timouride: Iran-Asie centrale-Inde XVe–XVIIIe siècles, pp. 105–128, 111–117;
Rizvi, Religious and Intellectual History of the Mus lims in Akbar’s Reign, pp.
355–356, 366–369.
48
In the administrative manual (dastūr al-‘amal) issued by Akbar in 1594, the
Nasirean Ethics was included in the
standard readings for Mughal officials—see Mukātabāt-i-‘Allāmī (Inshā’i Abu’l Faẓl) Daftar I: Letters of the
Emperor Akbar in English Translation, ed. Mansura Haidar (New Delhi: M. Manoharlal Publishers,
1998), p. 79.
49
Abū’l-Faẓl ‘Allāmī, Āīn-i Akbarī, trans. Henry Blochmann, 2nd ed. (Calcutta:
Asi atic Society of Bengal, 1927), p. 2.
50
Muḥammad Bāqir Najm-i Sānī, Advice on the Art of Governance: An Indo-Islamic
Mir ror for Princes (Mau’iẓah-i Jahāngīrī), ed. and trans. Sajida S. Alvi
(Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1989), Persian text p. 147/English trans. p. 45.
51
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:44; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 129–130. See also Waliyullah,
Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 85–86; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on the Horizon, pp. 91–93.
52
Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 49–50; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on
the Horizon, p. 58.
53
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:49; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God, p.
139.
54
For further discussion on the use of medical metaphors in early modern
Islamic political writing, see Vasileios
Syros, “Galenic Medicine and Domestic Stability in Early Modern Florence and Islamic Empires,” Journal
of Early Modern History 17, no. 1 (2013,
forthcoming).
55
Alam, The Languages of Political Islam, pp. 47, 57–58, 61, 140; A. J. Halepota,
Philoso phy of Shah Waliullah (Lahore: Sind Sagar Academy, [197-?]), p. 166.
56
Waliyullah, Al-Budūr al-Bāzighah, pp. 49–50; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on
the Horizon, p. 58. See also Alam, The
Languages of Political Islam, p. 173. 57 Antony Black, The West and Islam:
Religion and Political Thought in World History
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 58, 104–105; Black, The
History of Islamic Political Thought:
From the Prophet to the Present (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 53–54, 111.
58
My discussion of the “circle of justice” is based on the following studies by
Linda T. Darling: “Islamic Empires, the
Ottoman Empire and the Circle of Justice,” in Constitutional Politics in the Middle East: With Special
Reference to Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, ed. Saïd Amir Arjomand (Oxford: Hart Publishing,
2008), pp. 11–32; “Political Change and
Political Discourse in the Early Modern Mediterranean World,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 38 (2008):
505–531; “Medieval Egyptian Society and the Concept of the Circle of Justice,” Mamlūk Studies Review 10 (2006):
1–17; “‘Do Justice, Do Justice, For That Is Para
dise’:
Middle Eastern Advice for Indian Muslim Rulers,” Comparative Studies of South
Asia, Africa and the Middle East 22
(2002): 3–19; as well as Jennifer A. London, “The ‘Circle of Justice,’” History of Political Thought 32
(2011): 425–447; Maria E. Subtelny, Le monde est un jardin: Aspects de l’histoire culturelle de
l’Iran médiéval (Paris: Association pour l’avancement des études iraniennes, 2002), chap. “Le
cercle de justice: l’éthique dans le gouvernement,” pp. 53–76; Joseph Sadan, “A ‘Closed-Circuit’
Saying on Practical Justice,” Jerusalem Studies
in Arabic and Islam 10 (1987): 325–341; Ann K. S. Lambton, “Justice in
the Medieval Per
sian
Theory of Kingship,” Studia Islamica 17 (1962): 91–119, repr. in Lambton,
Theory and Practice in Medieval Persian
Government (London: Variorum, 1980), no. 4.
59
Ihsān ‘Abbās, ed., ‘Ahd Ardashīr (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādir, 1967), p. 98; Mario
Grignaschi, “Quelques spécimens de la
littérature sassanide conservés dans les bibliothèques d’Istanbul,” Journal Asiatique 254 (1966): 1–142, 46–90.
For another set of maxims on rulership that
bears the title Ā‘īn-i Ardashīr and has been ascribed to Ardashīr, see Grignaschi, “Quelques
spécimens de la littérature sassanide,” pp. 91–133.
60
Naṣīr al-Ṭūsī, Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī, p. 303; The Nasirean Ethics, p. 230.61
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, pp. 388–390; Deen, The English
Trans lation of Akhlak-i-Jalali, pp. 201–203. See also Black, The History of
Islamic Political Thought, p. 185.
62
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, pp. 384–385; Deen, The English
Trans lation of Akhlak-i-Jalali, pp. 199–200.
63
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, p. 388; Deen, The English
Translation of Akhlak-i-Jalali, p. 201.
64
Practical Philosophy of the Muhammadan People, pp. 325–326, 383–384; Deen,
The English Translation of
Akhlak-i-Jalali, pp. 165, 199.
65
Mohammad Habib and Afsar U. S. Khan, The Political Theory of the Delhi
Sultanate (Including a Translation of Ziauddin Barani’s Fatāwā-i Jahāndārī,
Circa, 1358–9 a.d.) (Alla habad: Kitab Mahal, [1961]), pp. 38,
97. On Baranī’s ideas on social organization, see also Iqtidar A. Khan,
“Medieval Indian Notions of Secular Statecraft in Retrospect,” Social Sci
entist 14 (1986): 3–15,
6–7. Baranī’s views on price control are discussed in Najaf Haider, “Justice
and Political Authority in Medieval Indian Islam,” in Justice: Political,
Social, Juridi cal, ed. Rajeev Bhargava et al. (New Delhi: SAGE Publications,
2006), pp. 75–93; Irfan Habib, “Ziya
Barani’s Vision of the State,” Medieval History Journal 2 (1999): 19–36;
and Habib, “The Price Regulations of
‘Alā’ uddīn Khaljī—A Defence of Ziā’ Baranī,’ Indian Economic and Social History Review 21 (1984):
393–414.
66
Abū’l-Faẓl ‘Allāmī, Āīn-i Akbarī, p. 2. On Abū’l-Faẓl’s use of medical
analogies, see also the discussion in
Peter Hardy, “Abul Fazl’s Portrait of the Perfect Padshah: A Political Philosophy for Mughal India—or a Personal Puff
for a Pal,” in Islam in India: Studies and
Commentaries, vol. 2, Religion and Religious Education, ed. Christian W.
Troll (New Delhi: Vikas Pub. House,
1985), pp. 114–137, 133–135.
67
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:44; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 129–130; Waliyullah, Al-Budūr
al-Bāzighah, pp. 85–86; Baljon, Full Moon Appearing on the Horizon, pp. 91–93. For earlier
Indo-Islamic ideas on emergencies, see Vasileios Syros, “Indian Emergencies: Baranī’s Fatāwā-i
Jahāndārī, the Diseases of the Body Politic, and Machiavelli’s accidenti,” Philosophy East and
West 62, no. 4 (2012): 545–573.
68
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:44–45; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
pp. 130–131.
69
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:40; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
p. 131.
70
Khalid A. Nizami, ed., Shāh Valī Dihlavī ke siyāsī maktūbāt (Delhi: Nadvat
al-Musan nifin, 1969), pp. 102–105.
71
Nizami, Shāh Valī Dihlavī ke siyāsī maktūbāt, pp. 15, 52. See also Jalbani,
Teachings of Shāh Walīullah of Delhi,
pp. 114–117.
72
On Mughal “decline,” see, e.g., Douglas E. Streusand, Islamic Gunpowder
Empires: Otto mans, Safavids, and
Mughals (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2011), pp. 283–287; Muzaf far Alam, The Crisis of Empire in
Mughal North India: Awadh and the Punjab, 1707–48 (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1986; repr., 1997); Andrea Hintze, The Mughal Empire and Its Decline: An Interpretation of the Sources
of Social Power (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997); Karen Leonard, “The ‘Great Firm’ Theory of the
Decline of the Mughal Empire,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 21 (1979): 151–167; John F. Richards,
“The Imperial Crisis in the Deccan,”
Journal of Asian Studies 35 (1976): 236–256, repr. in Richards, Power, Adminis
tration
and Finance in Mughal India (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993), no. 12; M. Athar Ali,
“The Passing of Empire: The Mughal
Case,” Modern Asian Studies 9 (1975): 385–396, repr. in Ali, Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society,
and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2006), pp. 337–349; Saiyid A. A. Rizvi, “The Breakdown of
Traditional Society,” in
The
Cambridge History of Islam, vol. 2A, The Indian Sub-continent, South-East Asia,
Africa and the Muslim West, ed. Peter M.
Holt et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970; repr., 1980), pp. 67–96.
73
See, in general, Catherine B. Asher and Cynthia Talbot, India before Europe
(Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), chap. “Challenging Central
Authority, 1650– 1750,” pp. 225–255.
74
The following account is based on Islahi, “Shah Wali Allah’s Concept of
Al-Irtifaqat (Stages of Socio-Economic
Development),” pp. 48–49; Fazl-e-Mahmud Asiri, “Shah Wali Allah as a Politician,” Islamic Literature 7
(1955): 35–41.
75
For a similar interpretation, see A. J. Halepota, “Shāh Waliyullāh and Iqbāl, the Phi
losophers of Modern Age,” Islamic Studies 13 (1974): 225–233, repr. in SWRPT,
pp. 649–656;
Halepota, “Affinity of Iqbāl with Shāh Walī Allāh,” Iqbal Review 15
(1974): 65–72; Fazlur Rahman, “The
Thinker of Crisis Shah Waliy-Ullah,” Pakistan Quarterly (1956): 44–48.
76
Shāh Walī Allāh’s political activities are discussed in A. Sattar Khan and Zulfiqar
Anwar, “The Movement of Shah Waliullah and Its Political Impact,” Journal of
the Research Society of Pakistan 32, no.
4 (1995): 13–23; Freeland Abbott, “The Decline of the Mughal Empire and Shah Waliullah,” Muslim World 52
(1962): 115–123; Aziz Ahmad, “Political
and Religious Ideas of Shāh Walī-Ullāh of Delhi,” Muslim World 52
(1962): 22–30, esp. 28–30, partly repr.
in Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 201–209; Franco
Coslovi, “Osservazioni sul ruolo di ‘Šāh Walīullāh Dihlawī’ e ‘Šāh ‘Abd al-‘Azīz’ nella ‘Naqšbandiyya’ Indiana,” Annali
dell’ Istituto Orientale di Napoli,
n.s., 29 (1979): 73–84, esp. 73–81; Irfan M. Habib, “The Political Role of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah,”
in Indian History Congress: Proceedings of
the Twenty-third Session Aligarh—1960, pt. I (Calcutta, 1961), pp.
209–223; Sh. Muhammad Ikram, “Shah
Waliullah (I) (Life and Achievements in the Religious Sphere),” in A
History of the Freedom Movement (Being
the Story of Muslim Struggle for the Freedom of Hind-Pakistan, 1707–1947), vol. 1, 1707–1831 (Karachi:
Pakistan Historical Society, 1957), pp. 491–511; Khaliq A. Nizami, “Shah Waliullah (II) (His
Work in the Political Field),” in A History of
the Freedom Movement, 1:512–541; Nizami, “Shah Wali-Ullah Dehlavi and
Indian Politics in the 18th Century,”
Islamic Culture 25 (1951): 133–145, repr. in SWRPT, pp. 143–157; ‘Ubaidullah Sindhi, Shah Wali Allah and His
Political Movement [in Urdu] (Lahore: Sindh
Sagar Akademy, 1952).
77
On the history of the order, see Butrus Abu-Manneh, The
Naqshbandiyya-Khâlidiyya Sufi Order
(Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 2008); Itzchak Weismann, The Naqsh
bandiyya: Orthodoxy and Activism in a Worldwide Sufi Tradition (London:
Routledge, 2007); Sajida S. Alvi, “The Naqshbandī Mujaddidī Sufi
Order’s Ascendancy in Central Asia through the Eyes of Its Masters and
Disciples (1010s–1200s/1600s–1800s),” in Reason and Inspiration in Islam: Theology,Philosophy and
Mysticism in Muslim Thought, ed. Todd Lawson (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 418–431;
Elisabeth Özdalga, ed., Naqshbandis in Western
and Central Asia: Change and Continuity (Istanbul: Svenska
Forskningsinstitutet Istanbul, 1999);
Marc Gaborieau et al., eds., Naqshbandis: Cheminements et situation actuelle
d’un ordre mystique musulman (Istanbul:
Isis, 1990); Richard Foltz, “The Central Asian Naqshbandī Connections of the
Mughal Emperors,” Journal of Islamic Studies 7 (1996): 229–239; Hamid Algar, “The Naqshbandi Order: A Preliminary
Survey of Its History and Significance,” Stu dia Islamica 44 (1976): 123–152. A
number of seminal essays dealing with Sufi influences on medieval Indian society have been reprinted
in Raziuddin Aquil, ed., Sufism and Society in
Medieval India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010). Consult also
Raziuddin Aquil’s introduction to Sufism
and Society, pp. ix–xxiv.
78
Jürgen Paul, Die politische und soziale Bedeutung der Naqšbandiyya in
Mittelasien im 15. Jahrhundert (Berlin:
W. de Gruyter, 1991), chap. “Politische Tätigkeit,” pp. 208–244; and Jo-Ann Gross, “Khoja Ahrar: A Study of
the Perceptions of Religious Power and Pres tige in the Late Timurid Period”
(PhD diss., New York University, 1982). The role of the Naqshbandi order in Mughal political life is
discussed in Muzaffar Alam, “The Mughals,
the Sufi Shaikhs and the Formation of the Akbari Dispensation,” Modern
Asian Studies 43 (2009):
135–174; David W. Damrel, “The ‘Naqshbandī Reaction’ Reconsidered,” in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities
in Islamicate South Asia, ed. David Gilmar tin and Bruce B. Lawrence
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), pp. 176–198; Arthur F. Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet:
The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the
Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1998); Muhammad Farman, “Shaikh Ahmad
Sirhindi,” in A History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. Mian M. Sharif (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1966),
2:873–883; Khaliq A. Nizami, “Naqshbandi Influence on Mughal Rulers and Politics,” Islamic
Culture 39 (1965): 41–52; Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries, “The Naqshbandis,”
pp. 176–201; and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, “The ‘ulamā’ in Indian
Politics,” in Politics and Society in
India, ed. Cyril H. Philips (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), pp. 39–51.
79
The Arabic term ‘ajam generally refers to a foreigner (non-Arab), but is often
used to
designate an Iranian/Persian as is the case with Shāh Walī Allāh’s discussion of Sassanian
political history. See, in general, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, “Contested
Memories of Pre Islamic Iran,” Medieval History Journal 2 (1999): 245–275.
80
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:105; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from God,
p. 306. For references to Byzantine and Sassanian political history and royal
practices in earlier Indo-Islamic
political literature, consider, e.g., Afsar Afzal ud-din, “The Fatawa-i
Jahandari of Zia ud-din Barni, Translation with Introduction and Notes” (PhD
diss., School of Oriental and African
Studies, 1955), pp. 107, 152–153, 417–418, 424–429, 450–451, 466, 484–491.
81
Ḥujjat Allāh al-Bālighah, 1:105–106; Hermansen, The Conclusive Argument from
God, pp. 306–307.
82
Byzantine views on the Mongols and the emergence of the Islamic empires of
central Asia are discussed in, e.g.,
Antonis K. Petrides, “Georgios Pachymeres between Ethnog raphy and Narrative:
Συγγραφικαὶ Ἱστορίαι 3.3–5,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 49 (2009):
141–164, esp. 295–296, 316–317; Nikolaos Nikoloudes, “Byzantine Historians
on the Wars of Timur,” Journal of
Oriental and African Studies 8 (1996): 83–94; Alexis G. K. [C.] Savvides, “The Knowledge of the Byzantines about
the Turkish-Speaking World of Asia, the
Balkans and Central Europe through Name Giving,” in Communication in Byzantium,
ed. Nikos G. Moschonas (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation/Institute
for Byzantine Research, 1993), pp.
711–727 [both in Greek]; Savvides, Byzantium in the Near East: Its Relations with the Seljuk Sultanate
of Rum in Asia Minor, the Armenians of Cilicia and the Mongols, A.D. c. 1192–1237 (Thessalonike:
Center for Byzantine Studies/University of
Thessaloniki, 1981); John W. Barker, Manuel II Palaeologus (1391–1425):
A Study in Late Byzantine Statesmanship
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969), Appendix XVIII: “Byzantine Relations with Timur,” pp.
504–509. Also of note are John S. Langdon,
“Byzantium’s Initial Encounter with the Chinggisids: An Introduction to
the Byzantino Mongolica,” Viator 29 (1998): 95–139; Angeliki E. Laiou, “On
Political Geography: The Black Sea of
Pachymeres,” in The Making of Byzantine History, ed. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché (Aldershot: Variorum,
1993), pp. 94–121, 112–121; Bruce G. Lippard, “The Mongols and Byzantium, 1243–1341” (PhD
diss., Indiana University, 1983); Maria Mathilde Alexandrescu-Dersca, La
campagne de Timur en Anatolie (1402) (Bucharest: Monitorul Oficial şi Imprimeriile Statului, Imprimeria Naţionalǎ, 1942;
2nd ed., London: Variorum Reprints,
1977); Andreas Graf, “Die Tataren im Spiegel der byzantinischen Lit eratur,” in
Jubilee Volume in Honour of Prof. Bernhard Heller on the Occasion of His
Seventieth Birthday, ed. Alexander
Scheiber (Budapest, 1941), pp. 77–85; Fedor I. Uspensky, “Byz antine Historians
on the Mongols and the Egyptian Mamluks,” Vizantiysky Vremmenik 24 (1923–1926):
1–16 (in Russian); Ottokar Intze, “Tamerlan und Bajazet in den Literaturen des Abendlandes” (Erlangen: E. Th. Jacob,
1912), pp. 5–9. On Byzantine perceptions of
Islam and the Arabs, see Wolfram Brandes, “Der frühe Islam in der
byzantinischen Histo riographie: Anmerkungen zur Quellenproblematik der
Chronographia des Theophanes,” in
Jenseits der Grenzen: Beiträge zur spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichen
Geschichtsschreibung, ed. Andreas Goltz et al. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2009),
pp. 313–343; Elizabeth M. Jef freys, “The Image of the Arabs in Byzantine
Literature,” in The 17th International Byzantine Congress: Major Papers (New Rochelle, N.Y.:
A. D. Caratzas, 1986), pp. 305–323; Spe ros Vryonis Jr.,“Byzantine Attitudes
toward Islam during the Late Middle Ages,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 12 (1971):
263–286, repr. in Vryonis, Studies on Byzantium, Seljuks, and Ottomans: Reprinted Studies
(Malibu: Undena Publications, 1981), no. 8; Alain Ducellier, “Mentalité historique et realités
politiques: L’Islam et les Musulmans vus par les Byzantins du XIIIème siècle,” Byzantinische
Forschungen 4 (1972): 31–63; John Meyendorff,
“Byzantine Views of Islam,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18 (1964): 114–132;
and Wolfgang Eichner, “Die Nachrichten
über den Islam bei den Byzantinern,” Islam 23 (1936): 133–162 and 197–244.
83
For medieval Islamic ideas on kingship, see, e.g., Anne F. Broadbridge,
Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and
Mongol Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Aziz al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship: Power and the
Sacred in Muslim, Christian, and Pagan Polities
(London: I. B. Tauris, 1997); Saiyid A. A. Rizvi, “Kingship in Islam:
Islamic Universalism through the
Caliphate,” in Patterns of Kingship and Authority in Traditional Asia, ed.
Ian Mabbett (London: Croom Helm, 1985),
pp. 108–130; Rizvi, “Kingship in Islam: A Histori
cal
Analysis,” in Kingship in Asia and Early America, ed. Arthur L. Basham (Mexico
City: El Colegio de México, 1981), pp.
29–82; Tilman Nagel, Staat und Glaubensgemeinschaft im Islam: Geschichte der politischen
Ordnungsvorstellungen der Muslime, 2 vols. (Zurich: Arte mis, 1981); Roy P.
Mottahedeh, “Some Attitudes towards Monarchy and Absolutism in the Eastern Islamic World of the Eleventh and
Twelfth Centuries A.D.,” Israel Oriental Studies 10 (1980): 86–91.
84
For further discussion, see the following studies by Bernard Lewis: The
Political Lan guage of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp.
55, 93, 96–97; “Malik,” Cahiers de
Tunisie 35 (1987): 101–109; “Usurpers and Tyrants: Notes on Some Islamic Terms,” in Logos Islamikos, ed. Roger M.
Savory and Dionisius A. Agius (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), pp.
259–267, both repr. in Lewis, Political Words and Ideas in Islam (Princeton, N.J.: M. Wiener
Publishers, 2008), pp. 77–86 and 49–58, respec tively. Note also Fred Halliday,
“Monarchies in the Middle East: A Concluding Appraisal,” in Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of
Modernity, ed. Joseph Kostiner (Boulder, Colo.:
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), pp. 289–303, 292–293; Ami Ayalon,
Language and Change in the Arab Middle
East: The Evolution of Modern Political Discourse (New York: Oxford Uni versity
Press, 1987), chap. “Sultans, Kings, Emperors,” pp. 29–42; Ayalon, “Malik in
Modern Middle Eastern Titulature,” Die
Welt des Islams 23/24 (1984): 306–319, esp. 307–312; Herib ert Busse,
“Herrschertypen im Koran,” in Die Islamische Welt zwischen Mittelalter und
Neuzeit, ed. Ulrich Haarmann und Peter Bachmann (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1979),
pp. 56–80, esp. 67–71; Arent J.
Wensinck-[Georges Vajda], s.v. “Fir‛awn,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, new ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill; London: Luzac,
1965), vol. 2, pt. 2: 917–918. Medieval Islamic per ceptions of ancient Egypt
are surveyed in Konrad Hirschler, “The ‘Pharaoh’ Anecdote in Pre-Modern Arabic Historiography,” Journal of
Arabic and Islamic Studies 10 (2010): 45–74;
Ulrich Haarmann, “Medieval Muslim Perceptions of Pharaonic Egypt,” in
Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and
Forms, ed. Antonio Loprieno (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), pp. 605–627; Haarmann, “Das pharaonische Ägypten bei
islamischen Autoren des Mittelalters,” in Zum
Bild Ägyptens im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, ed. Erik Hornung
(Freiburg [i. Ü.]: Uni versitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 1990), pp. 29–58; Hans
R. Roemer, “Der Islam und das Erbe der
Pharaonen: Neuere Erkenntnisse zu einem alten Thema,” in Ägypten—Dauer und Wandel (Mainz am Rhein: P. v. Zabern, 1985),
pp. 123–129; Michael Cook, “Pharaonic
History in Medieval Egypt,” Studia Islamica 57 (1983): 67–103. Consider
also Adam Silver stein, “The Qur’ānic Pharaoh,” in New Pespectives on the Qur’ān:
The Qur’ān in Its Historical Context 2,
ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 467–477; and
Reuven Firestone, “Pharaoh,” in
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, ed. Jane D. McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 4:66–68. For a general treatment of
medieval Islamic views of the pre-Islamic era, see Monika Springberg-Hinsen, Die Zeit vor dem
Islam in arabischen Universalgeschichten des 9.
und 12. Jahrhunderts (Würzburg: Echter; Altenberge: Telos-Verlag, 1989).
85
Okasha El-Daly, Egyptology: The Missing Millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval
Arabic Writings (London: UCL Press,
2005), pp. 122–126.
86
On the etymology and use of the term rūm and its derivatives in medieval
Arabic writing, see Nadia Maria El Cheikh,
Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard
University, 2004), pp. 21–33; as well as Niko lai Serikoff, “Rūmī and yūnānī:
Towards the Understanding of the Greek language in the Medieval Muslim World,” in East and West in
the Crusader States: Context—Contacts—Con frontations, ed. Krijnie Ciggaar et
al. (Leuven: Peeters, 1996), pp. 169–194, esp. 172–183.
87
El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, pp. 86–87. On Byzantium’s image
in medieval Islam and Byzantine-Arab
relations, see in addition to El Cheikh: Olof Heilo, “Seeing Eye to Eye: Islamic Universalism in
the Roman and Byzantine Worlds, 7th to 10th
Centuries” (diss., University of Vienna, 2010); Ulrike Koenen and
Martina Müller-Wiener, eds., Grenzgänge
im östlichen Mittelmeerraum: Byzanz und die islamische Welt vom 9. bis 13. Jahrhundert (Wiesdaben: Reichert Verlag,
2008); Michael Bonner, ed., Arab-Byzantine Rela
tions
in Early Islamic Times (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Ahmad M. H. Shboul, “Arab
Islamic Perceptions of Byzantine
Religion and Culture,” in Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions: A Historical Survey, ed. Jacques Waardenburg
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),
pp. 122–135; Shboul, “Arab Attitudes towards Byzantium: Official, Learned,
Popular,” in ΚΑΘΗΓΗΤΡΙΑ: Essays
Presented to Joan Hussey for her 80th Birthday (Camberley, Sur
rey:
Porphyrogenitus, 1988), pp. 111–128; and Speros Vryonis Jr., “Byzantium and
Islam, Seven–Seventeenth Century,” East
European Quarterly 11 (1968): 205–240, repr. in Vry onis, Byzan tium: Its
Internal History and Relations with the Muslim World: Collected Studies (London: Variorum Reprints, 1971), no. 9.
88
El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, p. 70; David Cook, “Muslim
Apocalyptic and Jihād,” Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam 20 (1996): 66–104, esp. 83–96. 89 Ḥasan
al-Sandūbī, ed., Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiz: Wa-hiya rasāʾil muntaqāt min kutub lil-Jāḥiẓ
lam tunshar qabl al-ān (Cairo: Yuṭlab min al-maktabah al-Tijārīyah al-Kubra, 1933),
p. 117;
Charles
Pellat, “La Nâbita de Djâhiz: Un document important pour l’histoire
politico-reli gieuse de l’Islâm,” Annales de l’Institut d’Études Orientales 10
(1952): 302–325, 314. See also El
Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, p. 87; Lewis, The Political Language of
Islam, p. 55.
90
Abī al-Qāsim ibn Ḥawqal al-Naṣībī, Kītāb ṣūrat al-ard (Beirut: Manshurat Dar
Mak tabat al-Hayāh, [1963]), p. 181; Ibn Hauqal, Configuration de la terre
(Kitab Surat al-ard), trans. Johannes H. Kramers and G. Wiet (Paris: G. P.
Maisonneuve et Larose, 1964), 1:194. 91 El Cheikh, Byzantium Viewed by the
Arabs, p. 197.
92
Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz
Rosenthal (New York: Pantheon Books,
1958), 2:50.
93
Averroès (Ibn Rušd), Commentaire moyen à la Rhétorique d’Aristote, ed. and
French trans. Maroun Aouad (Paris: Vrin,
2002), 2:70. For further discussion, see Commentaire moyen à la Rhétorique, 3:35; as well as Rémi
Brague, The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophi cal Explorations of Medieval
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, trans. from the French Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2009), pp. 122–123.
94
General accounts of the decline of the Byzantine Empire include Jonathan
Harris, The End of Byzantium (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010); John F. Haldon, “The Byzantine Empire,” in The Dynamics of
Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to
Byzantium, ed. Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009), pp. 205–254; Motyl, Imperial
Ends, pp. 59–61; Franz Georg Maier, “Byzanz: Selbstbehauptung und Zerfall einer Großmacht,” in Das
Verdämmern der Macht: Vom Untergang großer Reiche, ed. Richard Lorenz
(Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000), pp. 44–59; Peter Schreiner, “Schein und Sein: Überlegungen zu
den Ursachen des Untergangs des byzan
tinischen
Reiches,” Historische Zeitschrift 266 (1998): 625–647; Donald M. Nicol: “Der
Fall von Byzanz,” in Das Ende der
Weltreiche: Von den Persern bis zur Sowjetunion, ed. Alexander Demandt (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1997), pp.
61–73; Nicol, “Der Niedergang von Byzanz,”
in Byzanz, ed. Franz G. Maier (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1973; repr.,
Augsburg: Weltbild
Verl.,
1998), pp. 348–406; Nicol, Church and Society in the Last Centuries of Byzan
tium: The Birkbeck Lectures, 1977
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979; repr., 1993); Klaus-Peter Matschke, “Der Untergang einer
Großmacht. Thesen und Hypothesen zur Stel lung von Byzanz in einer
vergleichenden Niedergangsgeschichte von Staaten und Gesell schaften,”
Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 37 (1989): 890–904; Franz Tinnefeld,
“Zur Krise des Spätmittelalters in
Byzanz,” in Europa 1400: Die Krise des Spätmittelalters, ed. Fer dinand Seibt
and Winfried Eberhard (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), pp. 284–294; as well
as Ivan Dujčev, “Die Krise der
spätbyzantinischen Gesellschaft und die türkische Eroberung des 14. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte
Osteuropas 21 (1973): 481–492; Peter Cha ranis, “Economic Factors in the Decline
of the Byzantine Empire,” Journal of Economic His tory 13 (1953): 412–424,
repr. in Charanis, Social, Economic and Political Life in the Byzantine Empire, no. 9; Dionysios A. Zakythinos, Crise
monétaire et crise économique à Byzance du XIIIe au XVe siècle (Athens:
L’Hellénisme contemporain, 1948); Rodolphe Guilland, “Vénalité et favoritisme à Byzance,” Revue des Études
Byzantines 10 (1952): 35–46; and, in general,
Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State and Society
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1997); Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453, 2nd
ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). A detailed discussion of the
role of the Byzantine Empire in
Mediterranean trade appears in Angeliki E. Laiou [-Thomadakis], “The Byzantine Economy in the Mediterranean
Trade System; Thirteenth–Fifteenth Cen turies,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34–35
(1980/81): 177–222, repr. in Laiou, Gender, Society and Economic Life in Byzantium (Hampshire:
Variorum, 1992), no. 7. Consider also Lazaros
Houmanidis, Byzantine Commerce, the Impact on It of Arab Expansion and
of the Rise of the Italian Cities
(Thessalonike, 1968).
95
I am grateful to Professor Anthony Kaldellis for discussions on this point.
96
Hans Thurn, ed., Ioannis Scylitzae Synopsis historiarum (Berlin: De Gruyter,
1973), pp. 273–274; John Skylitzes, A
Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811–1057, trans. John Wortley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Presss,
2010), pp. 262–264. Skylitzes’s views on Pho kas’s reign are discussed in
Eirene-Sophia Kiapidou, John Skylitzes’ Synopsis of Histories and Its Sources (811–1057): A Contribution to
Byzantine Historiography during the 11th Century [in Greek] (Athens: Kanakes, 2010), pp. 345–359.
See, in general, also Rosemary Morris, “The
Two Faces of Nikephoros Phokas,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 12
(1988): 83–115. On the tetarteron in
particular, consult Cécile Morrisson, “Monnayage et monnaies,” in Économie et société à Byzance (VIIIe–XIIe
siècle): Textes et documents, ed. Sophie Métivier (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2007),
pp. 157–165, 163; Michael F. Hendy, Studies in
the Byzantine Monetary Economy, c. 300–1450 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985), pp. 506–508;
Hendy, “Light Weight Solidi, Tetartera, and The Book of the Prefect,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 65 (1972): 57–80,
repr. in Hendy, The Economy, Fiscal Administra
tion
and Coinage of Byzantium (Northampton: Variorum Reprints, 1989), no. 9;
Hélène Ahrweiler[-Glykatzi], “Nouvelle
hypothèse sur le tétartèron d’or et la politique monétaire de Nicéphore Phocas,” Zbornik Radova
Vizantološkog Instituta 8 (1963): 1–9, repr. in Ahrwei ler, Etudes sur les
structures administratives et sociales de Byzance (London: Variorum
Reprints, 1971), no. 3. Gustave
Schlumberger’s Un empereur byzantin au dixième siècle, Nicéphore Pho cas
(Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot et cie, 1890) is an older study, but still
valuable for its insights into
Byzatine-Arab relations during Phokas’s reign.
97
An extensive treatment of critiques of Byzantine leadership as articulated in
Byz antine historiography in the period between the sixth and thirteenth
centuries appears in Franz Hermann
Tinnefeld, Kategorien der Kaiserkritik in der byzantinischen Historiographie
von Prokop bis Niketas Choniates
(Munich: W. Fink, 1971).
98
For further discussion, see Paul J. Alexander, “The Strength of Empire and
Capital as Seen through Byzantine Eyes,”
Speculum 37 (1962): 339–357, 356–357, repr. in Alexander, Religious and Political History and Thought
in the Byzantine Empire (London: Variorum, 1978), no. 3. The process of economic decline in
twelfth-century Byzantium has been studied by
Alan Harvey, “Economy,” in Palgrave Advances in Byzantine History, ed.
Jonathan Harris (Lon don: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005), pp. 83–99, esp. 91–96; Harvey, Economic Expansion in the Byzantine Empire 900–1200 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990); Michael F.
Hendy, “Byzantium, 1081–1204: An Economic Reappraisal,” Transactions of
The Royal His torical Society, ser. 5, 20 (1970): 31–52, repr. in Hendy, The
Economy, Fiscal Administration and
Coinage of Byzantium, no. 2. For other aspects of the decay of Byzantine power
during the same period, see Vassiliki N.
Vlyssidou, ed., The Empire in Crisis (?): Byzantium in the 11th Century (1025–1081) (Athens: National
Hellenic Research Foundation/Institute for
Byzantine Research, 2003); Judith Herrin, “The Collapse of the Byzantine
Empire in the Twelfth Century: A Study
of Medieval Economy,” University of Birmingham Historical Jour
nal
12 (1970): 188–203; Speros Vryonis Jr., “Byzantium: The Social Basis of Decline
in the Eleventh Century,” Greek, Roman
and Byzantine Studies 2 (1959): 157–175, repr. in Vryonis, Byzantium: Its Internal History and Relations
with the Muslim World, no. 2. On the erosion of
Byzantine identity and the spread of Islam in Asia Minor, see Speros
Vryonis Jr., The Decline of Medieval
Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh
through the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1971; repr., 1986); and, in general, Manzikert to Lepanto: The Byzantine
World and the Turks 1071–1571 [= Byzantinische
Forschungen 16 (1991)], ed. Anthony Bryer and Michael Ursinus
(Amsterdam: A. M. Hak
kert,
1991); Alexis G. Savvides, The Turks and Byzantium, vol. 1, Pre-Ottoman Tribes
in Asia and in the Balkans [in Greek]
(Athens: Domos, 1996). For the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, see George Georgiades Arnakis, The
Early Osmanlis: A Contribution to the Problem
of the Fall of Hellenism in Asia Minor (1282–1337) [in Greek] (Athens:
N. Frandjeskakis, 1947; repr., Athens:
Archipelagos, 2008). Finally, Muslim reactions to the Byzantine defeat at Mantzikert are covered in El Cheikh, Byzantium
Viewed by the Arabs, pp. 178–181. Also
of value are the following studies by Speros Vryonis Jr.: “A Personal
History of the History of the Battle of
Mantzikert,” in Byzantine Asia Minor (6th–12th cent.) (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation/Institute for
Byzantine Research, 1998), pp. 225–244; “The
Greek and Arabic Sources on the Battle of Mantzikert, 1071 A.D.,” in
Byzantine Studies: Essays on the Slavic
World and the Eleventh Century, ed. Speros Vryonis Jr. (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1992), pp.
125–140; as well as Claude Cahen, “La campagne de Mantzikert d’après les sources musulmanes,”
Byzantion 9 (1934): 613–642.
99
Miguel Ataliates, Historia, ed. and parallel Spanish trans. Immaculada Pérez
Martín (Madrid: Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Científicas, 2002), pp. 144–145; Wladimir Brunet de Presle and Immanuel Bekker, eds.,
Michaelis Attaliotae historia (Bonn: Weber,
1853), pp. 195–198. An English translation of Attaleiates’s History by
Anthony Kaldellisand Dimitris Krallis for the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
series is currently in prepa ration. On Attaleiates’s views on the military
disintegration of the Byzantine Empire, see
Speros Vryonis Jr., “The Eleventh Century: Was There a Crisis in the
Empire? The Decline of Quality and
Quantity in the Byzantine Armed Forces,” in Vlyssidou, The Empire in
Crisis (?), pp. 17–43, 18–34.
Attaleiates’s political ideas are discussed in Dimitris Krallis, Michael Attaleiates and the Politics of Imperial
Decline in Eleventh-Century Byzantium (Tempe: Ari zona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 2012); Krallis, “‘Democratic’ Action in Eleventh-Century Byzantium: Michael
Attaleiates’s ‘Republicanism’ in Context,” Viator 40 (2009): 35–53; Anthony
Kaldellis, “A Byzantine Argument for the Equivalence of all Religions: Michael Attaleiates on Ancient and
Modern Romans,” International Journal of the
Classical Tradition 14 (2007): 1–20; and Alexander Kazhdan, Studies on
Byzantine Literature of the Eleventh and
Twelfth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Édi tions de
la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1984), “The Social Views of Michael Atta
leiates,” pp. 23–86.
100
The economic aspects of Byzantine decay are examined in Angeliki E. Laiou
and Cécile Morrisson, The Byzantine
Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 228–230; and, in general, the studies by
Angeliki E. Laiou, “Economic Thought and
Ideology,” and “The Byzantine Economy: An Overview,” both in The
Economic History of Byzantium: From the
Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou (Washing
ton,
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2002), pp. 1123–1144
and 1145–1164, respectively. Consider
also Christos P. Baloglou, “Economic Thought in the Last Byzantine Period,” in Ancient and
Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice, ed. S. Todd Lowry and
Barry Gordon (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 405–438; Alexander N. Dio medes,
“Economic Vicissitudes of the Decaying Byzantium,” Revue des Sciences
Économiques et Financières 8 (1939):
277–303 [in Greek]. For heavy taxation as a cause of Byzantium’s fall, see notably Peter Schreiner,
“Zentralmacht und Steuerhölle. Die Steuerlast im Byzan tinischen Reich,” in Mit
dem Zehnten fing es an: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Steuer, ed. Uwe Schulze, 2n ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1986),
pp. 64–73. Critiques of monastic property
are discussed in Peter Charanis, “The Monastic Properties and the State
in the Byzantine Empire,” Dumbarton Oaks
Papers 4 (1948): 53–118, repr. in Charanis, Social, Economic and Political Life in the Byzantine Empire:
Collected Studies (London: Variorum Reprints, 1973), no. 1. On tax exemptions, see Nicolas
Oikonomidès, Fiscalité et exemption fiscale à Byz ance (IXe-XIe s.) (Athens:
National Hellenic Research Foundation/Institute for Byzantine Research, 1996). Consider also Emili[o]
Herman, “Zum kirchlichen Benefizialwesen im
Byzantinischen Reich,” Studia et Documenta Historiae et Iuris 3 (1937):
253–264. For lateByzantine debates on decline, see, e.g., Speros Vryonis Jr.,
“Crises and Anxieties in Fifteenth
Century Byzantium: The Reassertion of Old, and the Emergence of New
Cultural Forms,” in Islamic and Middle
Eastern Societies, ed. Robert Olson (Brattleboro, Vt.: Amana Books, 1987), pp. 100–125; Jan-Louis van Dieten,
“Politische Ideologie und Niedergang im Byzanz
der Palaiologen,” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 6 (1979): 1–35;
Ihor Ševčenko, “The Decline of Byzantium
Seen through the Eyes of Its Intellectuals,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 15 (1961):
169–186, repr. in Ševčenko, Society and Intellectual Life in Late Byzantium
(Lon
don:
Variorum Reprints, 1981), no. 2; Franz Dölger, “Politische und geistige
Strömungen im sterbenden Byzanz,”
Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinisischen Gesellschaft 3 (1954): 3–18; Hans-Georg Beck, Theodoros Metochites,
die Krise des byzantinischen Weltbildes im 14.
Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1952).
101
The factors that led to the famine are surveyed in Angeliki Laiou, “The
Provision ing of Constantinople during the Winter of 1306–1307,” Byzantion 37
(1967): 91–113. On Andronikos’s rule in
general, see Angeliki Laiou, Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of Andronicus II, 1282–1328
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972); Ursula Victoria Bosch, Kaiser Andronikos III.
Palaiologos: Versuch einer Darstellung der byzan tinischen Geschichte in den
Jahren 1321–1341 (Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert, 1965).
102
The Correspondence of Athanasius I, Patriarch of Constantinople: Letters to the
Emperor Andronicus II, Members of the
Imperial Family, and Officials, ed., trans., and comm. Alice Mary Maffry Talbot
(Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, 1975), Letter 93 (Greek text p. 242, English
trans. p. 243). On Athanasios, see Correspon dence of Athanasius I, “General
Introduction,” pp. xv–xxxi; as well as Emmanuel Patedakis, “Athanasios I Patriarch of Constantinople
(1289–1293, 1303–1309): A Critical Edition
with Introduction and Commentary of Selected Unpublished Works” (PhD
diss., University of Oxford, 2004); John
L. Boojamra, The Church and Social Reform: The Policies of the Patri arch
Athanasios of Constantinople (New York: Fordham University Press, 1993); Boojamra, “Social Thought and Reforms of Athanasios of
Constantinople (1289–1293; 1303–1309),”
Byzantion 55 (1985): 332–382; Boojamra, Church Reform in the Late
Byzantine Empire: A Study of the
Patriarchate of Athanasios of Constantinople (Thessalonike: Patriarchal
Institute for Patristic Studies, 1982);
Demetrios J. Constantelos, “Life and Social Welfare Activ ity of Patriarch
Athanasios I (1289–1293, 1303–1309) of Constantinople,” in Byzantine Ecclesiastical Personalities, ed. Nomikos M.
Vaporis (= The Byzantine Fellowship Lectures;
2) (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1975), pp. 73–88;
Klaus-Peter Matschke, “Politik und
Kirche im spätbyzantinischen Reich: Athanasios I., Patriarch von Konstanti
nopel 1289–1293; 1303–1309,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der
Karl-Marx-Universität Leipzig:
Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 15 (1966): 479–486,
repr. in Matschke, Das spätbyzantinische
Konstantinopel: Alte und neue Beiträge zur Stadtgeschichte zwischen 1261
und 1453 (Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač,
2008), pp. 89–113; and with an eye to the relations between Athanasios and Andronikos, Joseph
Gill, “Emperor Andronikos II and the Patri- arch Athanasius I,” Byzantina 2
(1970): 13–19; and Nicolae Bănescu, “Le patriarche Atha nase Ier et Andronic II
Paléologue: État religieux, politique et social de l’empire,” Académie roumaine. Bulletin de la section historique
23 (1942): 28–56. Consider also Joseph Kalothetos’s (fl. 1336–1341) biography of Athanasios: “Vios kai politeia tou en agiois patros ēmōn archi
episkopou Kōnstantinoupoleōs Athanasiou,” in Ioseph Kalothetou Suggramata, ed.
Demetrios
G.
Tsames (Thessalonike: Center for Byzantine Studies, 1980), pp. 453–502. 103 The
Correspondence of Athanasius I Patriarch of Constantinople, Letter 65
(152/153). 104 Ibid., Letter 93 (242/243).
105
Ibid., Letter 68 (160 and 162/163 and 165). On the transportation of grain
supplies and food provisions in the
Byzantine Empire, see Johannes Koder, “Maritime Trade and the Food Supply for Constantinople in the Middle
Ages,” in Travel in the Byzantine World, ed.
Ruth Makrides (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 109–124; John L. Teall,
“The Grain Supply of the Byzantine
Empire, 330–1025,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 13 (1959): 87–139; Georges
I. Brătianu [Bratianu], “Nouvelles contributions à l’étude de l’approvisionnement de Con
stantinople
sous les Paléologues et les empereurs ottomans,” Byzantion 6 (1931):
641–656;
Brătianu, “La question de l’approvisionnement de Constantinople à l’époque byzantine et
ottomane,” Byzantion 5 (1929/30): 83–107.
106
The Correspondence of Athanasius I Patriarch of Constantinople, Letter 100
(256/257). See also ibid., Letter 106
(266/267).
107
Ibid., Letter 106 (266/267).
108
Vasileios Syros, “Between Chimera and Charybdis: Byzantine and
Post-Byzantine Views on the Political
Organization of the Italian City-States,” Journal of Early Modern History 14 (2010): 451–504, 467–472; Angeliki
E. Laiou, “Economic Concerns and Atti tudes of the Intellectuals of
Thessalonike,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 57 [= Symposium on Late Byzantine Thessalonike] (2003): 205–223;
Laiou, “Social Justice: Exchange and Prosperity in Byzantium,” Proceedings of the Academy of
Athens 74 (1999): 107–132 [in Greek]; Peter Cha ranis, “On the Social Structure
and Economic Organization of the Byzantine Empire in the Thirteenth Century and Later,”
Byzantinoslavica 12:94–153, repr. in Charanis, Social, Eco nomic and Political
Life in the Byzantine Empire, no. 4. On the Zealot revolution, see John W. Barker, “Late Byzantine Thessalonike: A
Second City’s Challenges and Responses,” Dumbar ton Oaks Papers 57 (2003):
5–33, esp. 14–21; Donald M. Nicol, The Reluctant Emperor: A Biography of John Cantacuzene, Byzantine
Emperor and Monk, c. 1295–1383 (Cambridge:
Cam bridge University Press, 1996), pp. 45–83; Konstantinos
Kotsiopoulos, “The Zealots of
Thessalonike and their Popular Basis,” Ta Vyzantina 18 (1995/96): 277–284 [in
Greek]; Klaus-Peter Matschke,
“Thessalonike und die Zeloten: Bemerkungen zu einem Schlüssel ereignis der
spätbyzantinischen Stadts- und Reichsgeschichte,” Byzantinoslavica 55 (1994):
19–43; Matschke, Fortschritt und Reaktion in Byzanz im 14. Jahrhundert:
Konstantinopel in der
Bürgerkriegsperiode von 1341 bis 1354 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1971); Daphne
Papadatou, “Political Associations in
the Late Byzantine Period: The Zealots and Sailors of Thessa lonica,” Balkan
Studies 28 (1987): 3–23; Peter Charanis, “Internal Strife in Byzantium
during the Fourteenth Century,”
Byzantion 15 (1941): 208–230, repr. in Charanis, Social, Economic and Political Life in the Byzantine Empire,
no. 6; Oreste Tafrali, Thessalonique au quatorzième siècle (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1913; repr.,
Thessalonike: Idryma Meleton Hersonesou tou Aimou, 1993); and in general Günter Weiss, Johannes
Kantakuzenos—Aristokrat, Staatsmann, Kaiser
und Mönch—in der Gesellschaftsentwicklung von Byzanz im 14. Jahrhundert
(Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1969);
Franz Dölger, “Johannes VI. Kantakuzenos als dynastischer Legitimist,” Seminarium Kondakovianum 10 (1938): 19–30,
repr. in Dölger, Παρασπορα: 30 Aufsätze zur
Geschichte, Kultur und Sprache des byzantinischen Reiches (Munich:
Buch-Kunstverlag Ettal, 1961), pp.
194–207. On the intellectual life of late Byzantine Thessalonike, consult
Costas N. Constantinides, “The Origin of
the Flourishing of Learning in Thessaloniki during the Fourteenth Century,” Dodonē 21 (1992):
133–150 [in Greek]; Daniele Bianconi, Tessalonica nell’età dei Paleologi: Le pratiche
intellettuali nel riflesso della cultura scritta (Centre d’études byzantines, néo-helléniques et
sud-esteuropéennes, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2005); Franz Tinnefeld,
“Intellectuals in Late Byzantine Thessalonike,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 57 (2003): 153–172; Vassilis
Katsaros, “Literary and Intellectual Life in Byzan tine Thessaloniki,” in Queen
of the Worthy: Thessaloniki, History and Culture, ed. Ioannes K. Hassiotis (Thessalonike: Paratiritis, 1997),
pp. 305–332; Constantine N. Constantinides,
“The Beginnings of the Intellectual Acme in Thessalonike in the 14th
Century,” Dōdōnē 21 (1992): 133–150 [in Greek]; Ioannes E. Anastasios,
“Education in Thessalonike in the 14th
Century,” Vuzantina 13 (1985): 909–921 [in Greek]; Donald M.
“Thessalonica as a Cultural Centre in
the Fourteenth Century,” in Ē Thessalonikē metaxu Anatolēs kai Duseos (Thessa
lonike: Etaireia Makedonikōn Spoudōn, 1982),
pp. 121–131, repr. in Nicol, Studies in Late
Byzantine History and Prosopography (London: Variorum Reprints, 1986),
no. 10; as well as the articles in
Macedonia during the Palaeologan Era (Thessalonike: Aristotle University
of Thessalonike, 1992), esp. Basiliki
Papoulia, “Intellectual Currents in Macedonia during the Fourteenth Century” (pp. 63–73) and Alkmini
Stavridou-Zafraka, “The Physiognomy of
Thessalonike as the Second City of the Byzantine Empire during the
Palaeologan Era” (pp. 75–84) [both in
Greek].
109
Jean F. Boissonade, Anecdota græca e codicibus regiis (Paris: Excusum in Regio
Typog rapheo, 1830; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 1962), 2:137–187.
110
On Choumnos, see Ihor Ševčenko, Études sur la polémique entre Théodore
Métochite et Nicéphore Choumnos: La vie
intellectuelle et politique à Byzance sous les premiers Paléologues (Brussels:
Byzantion, 1962); and Jean Verpeaux, Nicéphore Choumnos: Homme d’État et humaniste byzantin (ca 1250/1255–1327)
(Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1959). 111 Verpeaux, Nicéphore Choumnos, p. 35.
112
Tinnefeld, “Intellectuals in Late Byzantine Thessalonike,” p. 165.
113
Boissonade, Anecdota græca e codicibus regiis, 2:168–169. See also Zakythinos,
Crise monétaire et crise économique à
Byzance, pp. 46–47.
114
The text was first edited by Vasileios Laourdas, “Thoma Magistrou Tois
Thessaloni keusi peri omonoias,” Epistēmonikē Epetēris Scholēs Nomikōn kai
Oikonomikōn Epistēmōn Aris toteleiou Panepistēmiou Thessalonikēs 12 (1969):
751–775, 753–768, and has been reprinted
with facing modern Greek translation (pp. 66–115) and commentary (pp.
116–140) in Sotiria Triantari-Mara, The
Political Thought of Fourteenth Century in Thessaloniki: Oration to the Thessalonicans on Concord by Thomas
Magistros; an Approach on the Contribution of Politi cal Philosophy to Modern
Times (Athens: Herodotos, 2002). Surveys of Magister’s life and oeuvre include Sotiria A. Triantari,
Politics, Rhetoric and Communication in the Fourteenth and the Twenty-first Century: Oration about
Kingdom and about State of Thomas Magistros [in Greek] (Thessalonike: A.
Stamoulis, 2009), pp. 17–37; Bianconi, Tessalonica nell’età dei Paleologi, pp. 72–90; and Stephanos K.
Skalistes, Thomas Magistros: His Life and Œuvre [in Greek] (Thessalonike: Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, 1984).
115
For Magister’s contribution to the reception and study of the classical
legacy, see Niels Gaul, Thomas Magistros
und die spätbyzantische Sophistik: Studien zum Humanis mus urbaner Eliten in
der frühen Palaiologenzeit (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 2011); Gaul, “Moschopulos, Lopadiotes, Phrankopulos (?),
Magistros, Staphidakes: Prosopographisches
und Methodologisches zur Lexikographie des frühen 14. Jahrhunderts,”
Super alta perennis 4 (2008): 163–196,
184–190; Gaul, “The Twitching Shroud: Collective Construction of Paideia in the Circle of Thomas Magistros,”
Segno e Testo 5 (2007): 263–340; Vasileios Laour das, “Classical Philology in
Thessalonike in the Fourteenth Century,” Etaireia Makedonikōn Spoudōn. Idruma Meletōn Hersonesou tou Aimou
37 (1960): 5–20 [in Greek]. On lateByzantine philologists in general, see
Sophia Mergiali, L’Enseignement et les Lettrés [sic] pen dant l’époque des
Paléologues (1261–1453) (Athens: Société des Amis du Peuple, Centre d’Études Byzantines, 1996), pp. 49–59.
116
There is no scholarly consensus as to which of the two events Magister is
referring to. I am inclined to the view
that Magister alludes to both the conflict between Andronikos II and his grandson Andronikos III and the
events that precipitated the Zealot revolt. For
a similar interpretation and review of previous scholarship, see
Triantari-Mara, The Political Thought of
Fourteenth Century in Thessaloniki, pp. 37–53. On the conflict between Androni
kos
II and his grandson, see Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, chap. “The
Question of the Succession and the First
Civil War,” pp. 151–166; as well as Leonidas Mavrommatis, The First Palaiologoi: Problems of Political
Praxis and Ideology (Athens: Syllogos pros Diadosin ton Hellenikon Grammaton, 1983), pp. 52–78;
Konstantinos P. Kyrris, Byzantium in the 14th
Century (Nicosia: Lampousa, 1982) [both in Greek].
117
Patrologia Græca; 145, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris: J.-P. Migne and
Garnier, 1904), pp. 447–495 and 495–547;
partial English trans. in Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, from Justinian I to the Last Palaeologus;
Passages from Byzantine Writers and Docu ments, trans. Ernest Barker (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1957), pp. 163–168 and 168–173, respectively; modern Greek trans. and
commentary in Triantari, Politics, Rhetoric and Com munication in the
Fourteenth and the Twenty-First Century, pp. 166–403; Italian trans. Toma Magistro, La regalità, ed. and trans. Paola
Volpe Cacciatore (Naples: M. D’Auria, 1997).
Scholarly treatments of Magister’s political ideas include: Sotiria [A.]
Triantari[-Mara], Poli tics, Rhetoric and Communication in the Fourteenth and
the Twenty-first Century, pp. 75–164;
Triantari, The Political Views of Byzantine Thinkers from Tenth to
Thirteenth Century (Thessa lonike: Herodotos, 2002), pp. 167–257; Triantari,
“Political Views in Thomas More’s Utopia and Thomas Magistros’s On Kingship and
On the State,” Parnassos 44 (2002): 317–338 [all in Greek]; Christos P. Baloglou, “Thomas
Magistros’ Vorschläge zur Wirtschafts- und Sozi alpolitik,” Byzantinoslavica 60
(1999): 60–70; Ioannis G. Leontiadis, “Untersuchungen zum Staatsverständnis der Byzantiner aufgrund der
Fürsten- bzw. Untertanenspiegel (13. bis 15.
Jahrhundert)” (PhD diss., University of Vienna, 1997), pp. 107–149;
Léon-Pierre Raybaud, Le gouvernement et l’administration centrale de l’empire
byzantin sous les premiers Paléologues
(1258–1354) (Paris: Sirey, 1968), pp. 24–35. For a study that situates
Magister in the history of late
Byzantine advice literature, see Konstantinos D. S. Paidas, The Byzantine
Mirrors of Princes of the Late Period
(1254–1403): Expressions of the Byzantine Royal Ideal [in Greek] (Athens: Grigoris, 2006).
118
Ihor Ševčenko, “Alexios Makrembolites and His Dialogue between the Rich and
the Poor,” in Zbornik Radova
Vizantološkog Instituta 6 (1960): 187–228, 213, 225, repr. in Šev čenko,
Society and Intellectual Life in Late Byzantium (London: Variorum Reprints,
1981), no. 7. Makrembolites’s social
ideas are discussed also in Dimitrios G. Magriplis, “Sociologi cal Approaches
to Byzantine History: Conclusions from the Study of Alexios Makremvoli tis’
Dialogue between the Rich and the Poor (14th Century),” Vyzantinos Domos 15
(2006): 107–124 [in Greek]; Klaus-Peter
Matschke and Franz Tinnefeld, Die Gesellschaft im späten Byzanz: Gruppen, Strukturen und Lebensformen
(Cologne: Böhlau, 2001), pp. 344–347; Eva
de Vries-van der Velden, L’élite byzantine devant l’avance turque à
l’époque de la guerre civile de 1341 à
1354 (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1989), pp. 251–289; and Costas P. Kyrres, “Elé
ments traditionnels et éléments révolutionnaires dans l’idéologie d’Aléxios
Makrembolitès et d’autres intellectuels
byzantins du XIVe s.,” in Actes du XIVe Congrès International des Etudes Byzantines (Bucharest: Editura
Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1975),
2:177–188.
119
Rodolphe Guilland, “Le Traité inédit ‘sur l’usure’ de Nicolas Cabasilas,” in
Eis mnēmēn Spyridōnos
Lamprou (Athens: Epitropē Ekdoseōs tōn kataloipōn Spyridōnos Lam prou, 1935),
pp. 269–277, 274; Laiou, “Economic Concerns and Attitudes of the Intellectu als
of Thessalonike,” p. 217; Matschke and Tinnefeld, Die Gesellschaft im späten
Byzanz, pp. 347–349. See further
Marie-Hélène Congourdeau, “Hésychasme et palamisme,” in Histoire du christianisme, vol. 6, Un temps d’épreuves
(1274–1453) (Paris: G. Beauchesne, 1990), pp.
557–563, 508–510; Christos P. Baloglou, “Kavasilas’ Economic Thought,”
Byzantiaka 16 (1996): 191–213 [in Greek]; as well as Niketas Siniossoglou,
Radical Platonism in Byzantium:
Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), pp. 359–369;
Peter Charanis, “Observations on the ‘Anti-Zealot’ Discourse of
Cabasilas,” Revue des Etudes Sud-Est
Européennes 9 (1971): 369–376, repr. in Charanis, Social, Economic and Political Life in the Byzantine Empire,
no. 7. For Kavasilas’s life and works, consult Marie Hélène Congourdeau,
Correspondance de Nicolas Cabasilas (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2010), pp. xi–xvii; Yannis Spiteris and Carmelo G.
Conticello, “Nicola Cabasilas Chamaetos,” in La
Théologie byzantine et sa tradition, vol. 2, XIIIe–XIXe s., ed. Carmelo
G. Conticello and Vassa Conticello
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), pp. 315–410; Yannis Spiteris and Patrizia
Morelli, Cabasilas, teologo e mistico
bizantino: Nicola Cabasilas Chamaetos, e la sua sintesi teologica (Rome: Lipa, 1996); Constantine N. Tsirpanlis, “The
Career and Writings of Nicolas Cabasilas,”Byzantion 49 (1979): 414–427; George
T. Dennis, “Nicholas Cabasilas Chamaëtos and His Discourse on Abuses Committed by Authorities
against Sacred Things,” Byzantine Studies/ Études Byzantines 5 (1978): 80–87,
repr. in Dennis, Byzantium and the Franks, 1350–1420 (London: Variorum
Reprints, 1982), no. 11; Horst Müller-Asshoff, “Beobachtungen an den Hauptschriften des Gregorios Palamas und
Nikolaos Kabasilas,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 70 (1977): 22–41; Athanasios A.
Angelopoulos, Nikolaos Kavasilas Chamaetos, His Life and Work (A Contribution to Macedonian Byzantine
Prosopography) [in Greek] (Thessalonike:
Patriarchal Institute for Patristic Studies, 1970); Sévérien Salaville,
“Quelques précisions pour la biographie
de Nicolas Cabasilas,” in Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress
of Byzantine Studies (Athens: Myrtides,
1958), 3:215–226; as well as the following studies by Ihor Ševčenko: “Nicolas Cabasilas’
‘Anti-Zealot’ Discourse: A Reinterpretation,” Dumbar ton Oaks Papers 11 (1957):
81–171; “The Author’s Draft of Nicolas Cabasilas’ ‘Anti-Zealot’ Discourse in Parisinus Gr. 1276,” Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 14 (1960): 181–201; “A Postcript
on Nicolas Cabasilas’ ‘Anti-Zealot’ Discourse,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 16
(1962): 403–408, all three repr. in
Ševčenko, Society and Intellectual Life in Late Byzantium, nos. 6, 5, and
4, respectively. A survey of Byzantine
attitudes to interest appears in Lazaros T. Houmanidis,
“On
Usury during the Byzantine Era,” Vuzantinai Meletai 6 (1995): 104–122 [in
Greek]. 120 Patrologia Graeca 150: 727–750. See also Laiou, “Economic Concerns
and Attitudes of the Intellectuals of
Thessalonike,” p. 213; Matschke and Tinnefeld, Die Gesellschaft im späten Byzanz, pp. 349–355.
121
Laiou, “Economic Concerns and Attitudes of the Intellectuals of Thessalonike,”
p. 215.
122
For further references and discussion, see Jonathan Harris, “Laonikos Chalkokon
dyles and the Rise of Ottoman Turks,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 27
(2003): 153– 170; Harris, “The Influence of Plethon’s Idea of Fate on the
Historian Laonikos Chalko kondyles,” in Proceedings of the International
Congress on Plethon and His Time, Mystras, ed. Linos G. Benakis and Christos P.
Baloglou (Athens: International Society of Plethonian and Byzantine Studies, 2003), pp. 211–217.
Eschatological interpretations of Byzantine
decay are discussed in Siniossoglou, Radical Platonism in Byzantium, pp.
356–361; Paul Mag dalino, “The End of Time in Byzantium,” in Endzeiten: Eschatologie
in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen,
ed. Wolfram Brandes and Felicitas Schmieder (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 119–133, esp. 132–133; Magdalino, “The
History of the Future and Its Uses: Proph ecy, Policy and Propaganda,” in The
Making of Byzantine History, ed. Roderick Beaton and Charlotte Roueché (Aldershot: Variorum,
1993), pp. 3–34; Marie-Hélène Congourdeau,
“Byzance et la fin du monde. Courants de pensée apocalyptiques sous les
Paléologues, in Les traditions
apocalyptiques au tournant de la chute de Constantinople, ed. Benjamin
Lellouch and Stéphane Yerasimos (Paris:
Harmattan, 2000), pp. 55–97; Agostino Pertusi, Fine di Bisanzio e fine del mondo: Significato e
ruolo storico delle profezie sulla caduta di Costantinopoli in Oriente e in Occidente, ed. Enrico Morini
(Rome: Nella Sede dell’Istituto Palazzo Borromini, 1988); Gerhard Podkalsky, “Der Fall
Konstantinopels in der Sicht der Reichsechatologie und der Klagelieder. Vorahnungen und
Reaktionen,” Archiv für Kulturgeshichte 57 (1975): 71–86; Podkalsky, Byzantinische
Reichseschatologie: Die Periodisierung der Weltgeschichte in den vier Grossreichen (Daniel 2 und 7) und dem
tausendjährigen Friedensreiche (Apok. 20): Eine
motivgeschichtliche Untersuchung (Munich: W. Fink, 1972); C. J. G.
Turner, “Pages from Late Byzantine
Philosophy of History,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 57 (1964): 346–373; and Alex
ander
A. Vasiliev, “Medieval Ideas on the End of the World: West and East,” Byzantion
16 (1942/3): 462–502.
123
Exhortatory Address to Despot Theodore about the Peloponnese—Spyridon P. Lam
pros, Palaiologeia kai Peloponnēsiaka (Athens: V. N. Gregoriades, 1972),
4:113–135—par tial English trans. in Barker, Social and Political Thought in
Byzantium, pp. 207–212. Com pare the nineteenth-century English translation by
the Scottish historian George Finlay
(1799–1875)
in Christos P. Baloglou, “George Finlay and Georgios Gemistos Plethon. New Evidence from Finlay’s Records,” Medioevo
greco 3 (2003): 23–42, 26–35, repr. in Baloglou, Mele tē mata peri Geōrgiou Gemistou-Plēthōnos
(Athens: Eptalofos, 2011), pp. 100–119. For
further discussion of Pletho’s memoranda, see Siniossoglou, Radical
Platonism in Byzantium,
part
3, “Mistra versus Athos,” pp. 327–392; Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, Trattato delle
virtù, intro., Italian trans., notes, and apparatuses Moreno Neri (Milan:
Bompiani, 2010), pp. 47–73; Peter
Garnsey, “Gemistus Plethon and Platonic Political Philosophy,” in Transfor
mations of Late Antiquity, ed. Philip Rousseau and Manolis Papoutsakis
(Farnham: Ash gate, 2009), pp. 327–340, esp. 334–338; Christos P. Baloglou,
Georgiou Gemistou Plēthōnos peri
Peloponnēsiakōn pragmatōn (Athens: Eleftheri Skepsis, 2002), pp. 97–127;
Proceedings of the Inter national
Congress on Plethon and His Time, esp. Savvas P. Spentzas, “The Mili tary
Organization of the Peloponnese: G. Gemistos Plethon’s Economic, Social and Fis
cal Proposals,” (pp. 243–265) [in Greek]; Anastassios D. Karayiannis, “Georgios
Gemistos Plethon on Economic Policy,”
(pp. 306–310); Christos P. Baloglou, “The Institutions of Ancient Sparta in the Work of Pletho,” (pp.
311–326; first published as “The Institutions of Ancient Sparta in the Work of Pletho,” Antike
und Abendland 51 [2005]: 137–149); Yannis
Smarnakis, “A Contribution to the Archaeology of Modern Utopian Thought:
History and Utopia in Plethon’s Oeuvre,”
Historein 7 (2007): 103–113, esp. 106–109; Vryonis, “Crises and Anxieties in Fifteenth Century
Byzantium,” pp. 120–122; Christopher M. Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon: The
Last of the Hellenes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986; repr., 2000), pp. 92–109; N. Patrick Peritore, “The
Political Thought of Gemistos Plethon: A
Renaissance Byzantine Reformer,” Polity 10 (1977): 168–191; Johannes
Irmscher, “Die Wandlungen der Staatsidee
im ausgehenden Byzanz,” Rivista di cultura classica e medioevale
19
(1977): 446–450; J. Duncan M. Derret, “Gemistus Plethon, the Essenes, and
More’s Utopia,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme
et Renaissance 27 (1965): 579–606; John Mamalakis, “The Impact of Contemporary Events on George
Gemistos’ Ideas,” in Proceedings of the
Ninth International Congress of Byzantine Studies, ed. S. Kyriakides et
al. [in Greek] (Athens: Typographeion
Myrtidi, 1956), 2:498–532, esp. 504–511; Johannes Draseke, “Plethons und Bessarions Denkschriften über die
Angelegenheiten im Peloponnes,” Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und
deutsche Literatur 27 (1911): 102–119; and Henry F. Tozer, “A Byzantine Reformer,” Journal of
Hellenic Studies 7 (1886): 353–380.
124
Georgios Gemistos to Manuel Palaeologus concerning the Affairs in the
Peloponnese— Lampros, Palaiologeia kai Peloponnēsiaka, 3:246–265—partial
English trans. in Barker, Social and
Political Thought in Byzantium, pp. 198–206. Consider also Finlay’s translation
in Balo glou, “George Finlay and Georgios Gemistos Plethon,” pp. 36–42.
125
Lampros, Palaiologeia kai Peloponnēsiaka, 3:263. Plethon’s economic ideas are
dis cussed in Christos P. Baloglou, “Economic Thought in the Last Byzantine
Period,” pp. 405–438, 424–430; Baloglou,
Georgios Gemistos-Plethon: Ökonomisches Denken in der spät byzantinischen
Geisteswelt (Athens: Historical Publications St. D. Basilopoulos, 1998); Sav
vas P. Spentzas, G. Gemistos Plethon, the Philosopher of Mystra: His Economic,
Social and Fiscal Views [in Greek]
(Athens: Ekdoseis M. Kardamitsa, 1987).
126
Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in
the Middle East (New York: Perennial,
2003), chap. “Modernization and Social Equality,” pp. 82–95.
127 Lewis, What Went Wrong?, chap. “Secularism and the Civil Society,” pp. 96–116. 128 See, for example, the following two collections of essays edited by Peter F. Bang and Christopher A. Bayly: Tributary Empires in Global History (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmil lan, 2011) and Tributary Empires in History: Comparative Perspectives from Antiquity to the Late Medieval [= The Medieval History Journal 6, no. 2 (2003)]. The comparative study of the Roman, Mughal, and Ottoman empires is the subject of the international research project “Tributary Empires Compared” at the SAXO Institute at the University of Copenhagen. A comparative investigation of the decline of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires can be found in Rohan D’Souza, “Crisis before the Fall: Some Speculations on the Decline of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals,” Social Scientist 30 (2002): 3–30. See also in general: Stephen F. Dale, The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Francis Robinson, “Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals: Shared Knowledge and Connective Systems,” Journal of Islamic Studies 8 (1997): 151–184; Halil Berktay, “Three Empires and the Societies they Governed: Iran, India and the Otto man Empire,” Journal of Peasant Studies 18 (1992) [= New Approaches to State and Peasant in Otto man History, ed. Halil Berktay and Suraiya Faroqhi]: 247–263; İ. Metin Kunt, “The Later Muslim Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals,” in Islam: The Religious and Political Life of a World Community, ed. Marjorie Kelly (New York: Praeger, 1984), pp. 113–136.
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