State and religion in Islamic societies

Past & Present, May, 1996 by Ira M. Lapidus

In the Saljuq period, a new relationship was worked out between states and a society organized into sectarian religious bodies. The newly dominant conquering Turkish peoples and slave war-lords, eager to calm resistance, to assure the passivity of the governed populations and the steady flow of taxes, decided to use the local religious elites and the existing communal structures as a mechanism to enforce and facilitate their rule. To do this, they accepted the caliph as the nominal head of the Islamic community. They agreed to enforce Islamic law. They suppressed Shiism by force and assisted in the triumph of Sunni Islam throughout much of the Middle East. They upheld at least some of the symbols of an Islamic order in the ceremonial, literary and artistic statements of the courts. in order to secure the co-operation of the local religious elites, the Saljuqs constructed mosques and madrasas in every major city, endowed them with funds to train students and religious cadres and made themselves the patrons of the people who spread Islam, administered local affairs and taught obedience to the regime. Patronage allowed them to influence the appointments of judges and teachers, and gave the state indirect control over a religious establishment dependent upon it for financial support.

Reciprocally, the Muslim religious leaders, remaining true to the caliphate in principle, adapted themselves in practice to the new realities. They accepted the existing states as the necessary political condition of their era and claimed responsibility for the implementation of the Prophet's tradition in the domain of the small community and individual lives. They were not in fact committed to bringing about a restoration of the true caliphate, and accepted the legitimacy of the Saljuq states. While many religious leaders avoided the state, others served in government offices, assisted in local administration end taxation, and worked out the co-operative relationship between the military elites and the local religious elites, between amirs and a'yan, which became the basis of the Saljuq empires.(9)

V

THE LATER DIFFUSION AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE SALJUQ SYSTEM

The Saljuq system of relations between `ulama' and the state, worked out in Baghdad and Iran, was carried westward by the Saljuq conquests to Syria and Egypt, and was later adopted by the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia, the Balkans and the western parts of the Fertile Crescent. A similar system was constructed by the Safavids in Iran between 1500 and 1724. The expansion of Islam the world over by conquest, trade and missionary activities also introduced these institutions to the Indian subcontinent, the islands of South-East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and other regions.

In the Ottoman Empire the evolution of relations between state and religious elites led to the direct control of the state over religious institutions. The Ottomans brought `ulama' judicial and educational activities under bureaucratic control. In the course of their expansion, they created a sequence of colleges in Anatolia and the Balkans which they organized into a teaching hierarchy. The most recently founded colleges ranked highest in the bureaucracy. Teachers were appointed by the Ottoman state and all teachers participated in a graded hierarchy, advancing from college to college as part of a defined career path. A similar judicial hierarchy was created in which the cities of the empire were ranked in order of historic and practical importance. Judges were promoted from one city to another as they climbed through the judicial bureaucracy. At the top of this bureaucracy stood the shief qadis and the qadis of the army, who acted as informal administrators of the system. Judges were particularly important in the Ottoman system because they not only dealt with the administration of religious law, but assisted in the assessment of taxes, the administration of army regulations, the supervision of the urban guilds and the regulation of the urban economy. In the Ottoman system, an interlocked hierarchy with a defined career course for both judges and teachers, supported by state salaries and endowments, brought the whole of the religious establishment under state control. At the same time, the Ottomans suppressed independent Sufism. Sufis were either attached to the court or dispersed. Shiism was proscribed. By defining the limits of religious autonomy narrowly, the Ottomans transformed the system of state patronage of religious activities and informal religious acceptance of the state authority into a state-dominated version of Islam.(10)