Islamic Monarchy

The ninth and tenth centuries witnessed the Abbasids' gradual loss of control to military strongmen (emirs, sultans) who were fast becoming the de facto rulers in the Islamic world. This period also saw the rise of anti-caliphs, whether the Sunni Umayyads in Iberia (756–1031) or the Ismaili Shiite Fatimids (909–1171) in North Africa. Both developments led to important changes in Islamic theories about rule, for Muslim thinkers were forced to reconcile the new reality of military rule with the purely theoretical superiority of the caliph.

This was accomplished by thinkers such as the celebrated bureaucrat Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092) and his equally famous contemporary al-Ghazali (d. 1111). Such theorists penned elaborate manuals on the proper behavior of military rulers, who had no claims to religious authority. These works drew on pre-Islamic Persian ideas about the interdependence of kingship and religion, in which neither could exist without the other because religion furnished a base for kingship and kingship protected religion. Combined with this concept was the equally ancient notion of the Circle of Justice, which espoused a belief in the importance of balance within society among four elements: the king, the army, the subjects, and justice. According to this theory, there could be no king without an army, no army without the wealth obtained from subjects, no subjects without justice in the realm, and no justice without a king to uphold it. The military rule of a sultan fit easily into the models provided by the Circle of Justice and the notion of cooperation between religion and kingship; indeed, eventually the earlier designation of the caliph as the Shadow of God on Earth was transferred to the sultan. This model also allowed scholars and statesmen to function as interpreters of Islamic norms. In this way, rule became dominated by military monarchies and regulated by religious scholars, while the caliph became a figurehead who periodically bestowed recognition on the rulers. Pre-Islamic Persian cultural and literary traditions also contributed the notion of a king of kings (Pers., shahanshah), which was easily worked into Islamic ideology.