Jihad

Warfare and territorial expansion were a priority for the rulers of the early Islamic state. Soon, however, jurists raised the question of individual participation. Is jihad an obligation that each must perform to the best of his or her ability, like pilgrimage and daily prayer? There was broad consensus that volunteering for the armies was a meritorious act. From a practical, military point of view, however, these undisciplined volunteers could create more problems than they solved. In Islamic law the problem was resolved in the doctrine of "obligation according to sufficiency," associated with the great jurist al-Shafi'i (767–820). This doctrine declares that the obligation of jihad may be considered fulfilled so long as a sufficient number of volunteers perform it. However, if a military emergency occurs and the enemy threatens the lands of Islam, then the obligation falls upon each individual.

Many people sought to participate in the jihad through residence in frontier regions and in fortified strongholds (often called ribats), whether for a limited period or for a lifetime. These included jurists, ascetics, mystics, and others in search of religious merit and knowledge, in addition to people seeking simply to fight the enemy. It is here, along Islam's many frontiers, that the jihad acquired its social expression. In many cases it is not known whether people were engaged in devotional practices, the transmission of learning, or combat or guard duty against the enemy. For many of them, jihad consisted precisely in the combination of all these. "Internal" and "external" jihad were thus always present. In this way the jihad was a basic element—social and political as well as rhetorical—in the rise and success of a long series of Islamic dynasties and states, including that of the Almoravids in Morocco and Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Ottomans from the fourteenth century until the twentieth, and many more.