God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (University of Cambridge Oriental Publications)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.57 (782 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0521541115 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 164 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-12-21 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Originally the caliph was both head of state and ultimate source of religious law; the Sunni pattern represents the outcome of a conflict between the caliph and early scholars who, as spokesmen of the community, assumed religious leadership for themselves. Many Islamicists have assumed the Shi'ite concept of the imamate to be a deviant development. This study examines how religious authority was distributed in early Islam. In contrast, this book argues that it is an archaism preserving the concept of religious authority with which all Muslims began.. It argues the case that, as in Shi'ism, it was concentrated in the head of state, rather than dispersed among learned laymen as in Sunnism
Roshan said The late early Caliphs were 'those who associate'. This is a great book of late early (i.e. later than the 'righteously guided caliphs') religious and political authority amongst the early Muslims.What it conclusively shows is that previous generations of Muslims had not placed such emphasis on the persona of 'Muhammad'. It shows that the early caliphs shared both political and religious authority within the early Muslim (?Islamic) empire. Coinage i. what does "the caliphate" mean? This book has given us the Umayyad definition of "the caliphate". This turns out to be pretty much the same as the early 'Abbasid definition, and it remains the Shi'a definition - "God's viceroy". Tron Honto's review has covered the main points, so I'll just add a few addenda here.The arguments in this book weren't exactly new; Crone and Hinds admit a debt to Emile Tyan's work during the 1950s, and . "Back in Print and in a nicely price paperback" according to Tron Honto. This is a classic investigation into the nature of the most archaic form of Islamic polity. Though highly controversial, it is nonetheless a classic in the field.The thesis set forth by Crone and Hinds can be succinctly stated thus: the Imamî/Shicî view of the caliphate is an archaism rather than an innovation as suggested by previous scholarship, which characterized the early Umayyad Ca