Tracing Nuance in Māwardī’s al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭāniyyah: Implicit Framing of Constitutional Authority

Abstract

The normal or canonical list of Western scholars to whom we turn for understanding Sunni fiqh constitutional thought has been Gibb, Lambton, and now Crone. Bernard Weiss in his Spirit of Islamic Law very aptly captures how scholars now understand the emergence of a sharīʿah controlled by scholars of fiqh and articulated as fiqh . In Mawardi's book, we see a fiqh scholar - writing a book of fiqh , not kalam or adab -for the first time successfully declaring that fiqh dictates the legitimacy of the state and defines its functions, not the reverse. In other words, it represents a daring assault on a summit - and, on attaining it, defines and legitimates, by criteria stated by it. This chapter proposes a complete re-reading of al-Aḥkām al- sulṭāniyyah , to sketch out several of the methods or strategies that Māwardī deploys in his effort to launch a fiqh constitutional system. Keywords: al-Aḥkām al- sulṭāniyyah ; Bernard Weiss; constitutional authority; fiqh constitutional system; Mawardi's book; Spirit of Islamic Law