¹ Adapted from Oaths of Peace: Sovereignty and Political Theology in Islam by A. Azfar Moin. Forthcoming in 2022 from Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

² Abu al-Fazl ibn Mubarak and Henry Beveridge, The Akbar Nama of Abu-l-Fazl: History of the Reign of Akbar Including an Account of His Predecessors, 3 vols (Vols 1 and 2 bound in one) (Calcutta, 1897–1921; repr., Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2005), Vol. 2, p. 421.

³ For the positions that jurists of early and classical Islam took on the predominance of Islam over other religions, see Friedmann, Yohanan, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 34–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 88–96.

⁵ Quoted in ibid., pp. 55–56. For Islam as a phenomenon of late antiquity, see Stroumsa, Guy G., The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; al-Azmeh, Aziz, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ The coins are inscribed with the first portion of this verse (the portion that is duplicated in 48:28 and 61:9), leaving out ‘however much the idolaters (mushrikin) may be averse’. Donner, Fred McGraw, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 210Google Scholar.

⁷ Assmann, Jan, The Price of Monotheism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁸ The following summary is a simplified description. For a nuanced and exhaustive treatment, see Friedmann, Tolerance.

⁹ Even oaths on the Prophet were frowned upon. Johs Pedersen, ‘Ḳasam’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam. First Edition, (eds) M. Th. Houtsma, T. W. Arnold, R. Hartmann and R. Basset (Leiden: Brill, 1913–1936), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2214-871X_ei1_SIM_3960, [accessed 21 December 2021].

¹⁰ Although Zoroastrians were mentioned in the Qur'an, the bulk of juridical opinion in early and classical Islam did not treat them as biblical scriptuaries equivalent to Christians and Jews. According to Friedmann, Tolerance, p. 184: ‘Zoroastrian women constitute a special category … the Zoroastrians were given dhimmı status, though most schools of law do not consider them People of the Book, and so Qur'an 5:5 is not applicable to them: Muslims may not marry Zoroastrian women and may not consume meat slaughtered by Zoroastrians.’

¹¹ Hanafi jurists were the most pragmatic, declaring all non-Arab ‘idolaters’ to be ‘protected people’, effectively separating this category from that of the ‘people of the book’. Ibid., pp. 84–85. However, even this expansive compromise provided no mechanism for accepting oaths on non-monotheistic deities.

¹² Lefèvre, Corinne, ‘Beyond Diversity: Mughal Legal Ideology and Politics’, in Law Addressing Diversity. Premodern Europe and India in Comparison (13th–18th centuries), (eds) Ertl, Thomas and Kruijtzer, Gijs (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2017), pp. 116–41Google Scholar, 116–17.

¹³ Habib, Irfan, ‘A Political Theory for the Mughal Empire—A Study of the Ideas of Abu'l Fazl’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 59 (1998), pp. 329–40Google Scholar; Ali, M. Athar, ‘Sulh-i Kul and the Religious Ideas of Akbar’, in Mughal India: Studies in Polity, Ideas, Society, and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 158–72Google Scholar; Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas, ‘Dimensions of Sulh-i kul (Universal Peace) in Akbar's Reign and the Sufi Theory of Perfect Man’, in Akbar and His Age, (ed.) Khan, Iqtidar Alam (New Delhi: Northern Book Centre, 1999), pp. 3–22Google Scholar; Ali, M. Athar, ‘Akbar and Islam (1581–1605)’, in Islamic Society and Culture: Essays in Honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad, (eds) Israel, Milton and Wagle, N. K. (New Delhi: Manohar, 1983), pp. 123–34Google Scholar; Khan, Iqtidar Alam, ‘Akbar's Personality Traits and World Outlook—A Critical Appraisal’, Social Scientist 20, no. 9/10 (1992), pp. 16–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moosvi, Shireen, ‘The Road to Sulh-i Kul: Akbar's Alienation from Theological Islam’, in Religion in Indian History, (ed.) Habib, Irfan (New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2007), pp. 167–76Google Scholar.

¹⁴ The only author among the ones listed above who did not spend the majority of his career at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was S. A. A. Rizvi, but even he began his teaching career at AMU, and his scholarship is referred to by the other AMU historians.

¹⁵ For a history of when this term was first used in earlier non-imperial sources, see the article by Gommans and Husseini in this special issue.

¹⁶ Cited in Habib, ‘Political Theory’, p. 331.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 334.

¹⁸ A. Azfar Moin, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 141.

¹⁹ This point was emphasized by Ali, ‘Sulh-i Kul’, p. 164.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 168.

²¹ Cited in Khan, ‘Akbar's Personality’, p. 22.

²² Daniel Sheffield, ‘The Language of Heaven in Safavid Iran: Speech and Cosmology in the Thought of Āẕar Kayvān and His Followers’, in There's No Tapping around Philology, (eds) Alireza Korangy and Daniel Sheffield (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), pp. 161–83, 179. Also see his article in this special issue.

²³ Audrey Truschke, Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 132, 52. Also see Christian Blake Pye's article in this special issue on the preface to the Razmnama.

²⁴ A. Azfar Moin, ‘Dabistān-i madhāhib’, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, (eds) Gudrun Krämer, Kate Fleet, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson (Leiden: Brill, 2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_25769, [accessed 21 December 2021].

²⁵ Mubarak and Beveridge, The Akbar Nama, Vol. 3, p. 627.

²⁶ Abd al-Sattar ibn Qasim Lahuri, Riza Allah Shah Arif Nawshahi and Muin Nizami, Majalis-i Jahangiri: Majlisha-i Shabanah-i Darbar-i Nur al-Din Jahangir (Tehran: Markaz-i Pizhuhishi-i Miras-i Maktub, 1385), pp. 34, 71; Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Frank Disputations: Catholics and Muslims in the Court of Jahangir’, Indian Economic Social History Review 45, no. 4 (2009), pp. 457–511, 492, 96.

²⁷ Rajeev Kinra, ‘Handling Diversity with Absolute Civility: The Global Historical Legacy of Mughal Sulh-i Kull’, The Medieval History Journal 16, no. 2 (2013), pp. 251–95.

²⁸ Syed Akbar Hyder, ‘Ghalib and His Interlocutors’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 26, no. 3 (2006), pp. 462–75, 471.

²⁹ Quoted in ibid.

³⁰ Muzaffar Alam, The Languages of Political Islam: India, 1200–1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 77.

³¹ Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, University of Chicago Press edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics), (trans.) Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Walter Benjamin, ‘Critique of Violence’, in Reflections (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), pp. 277–300.

³² Indeed, Agamben equates the law-destroying capacity of the absolute sovereign with the ability of the messiah in monotheistic traditions to annul all previous law. Agamben, Homo Sacer, pp. 57–58.

³³ Moin, Millennial Sovereign, pp. 130–69.

³⁴ Lefèvre, ‘Beyond Diversity’, pp. 131, 35.

³⁵ The basmala is more typically used as an invocation, but it has the grammatical form of an oath. William A. Graham, ‘Basmala’, in Encyclopaedia of the Qur'an, (ed.) Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Leiden: Brill, 2001).

³⁶ At times equivalency tables (sun god to sun god, moon god to moon god, and so on) across multiple pantheons and languages were maintained that were six columns deep for the purposes of oath-taking in the ancient world: Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, pp. 19, 23.

³⁷ Jahangir and W. M. Thackston, The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, 1999), p. 40.

³⁸ For this reason, the Brahmans at the Mughal court tried to frame their Jain rivals as atheists. Truschke, Culture of Encounters, p. 45.

³⁹ Moin, Millennial Sovereign, p. 178.

⁴⁰ Ghazali wrote that without the caliph the entire Muslim world would be plunged into disorder and sin: the ‘carpet of the law would be rolled up in its entirety’ and ‘all public appointments would be invalid, marriages would not be lawfully contracted, all the dispositions of all officials in all parts of the Muslim world would be void, and all humans would be engaging in forbidden acts’. Quoted in Patricia Crone, God's Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 239.

⁴¹ Eric Voegelin, ‘The Mongol Orders of Submission to European Powers, 1245–1255 (1941)’, in Published Essays: 1940–1952, (ed.) Ellis Sandoz (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), pp. 76–125, 93, passim.

⁴² Quoted in ibid., p. 113. Also see Denise Aigle, ‘The Letters of Eljigidei, Hülegü, and Abaqa: Mongol Overtures or Christian Ventriloquism?’, Inner Asia 7, no. 2 (2005), pp. 143–62, 147.

⁴³ This notion left a clear trace on post-Mongol Islamic law. Guy Burak, ‘The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Post-Mongol Context of the Ottoman Adoption of a School of Law’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 03 (2013), pp. 579–602.

⁴⁴ Christopher P. Atwood, ‘Validation by Holiness or Sovereignty: Religious Toleration as Political Theology in the Mongol World Empire of the Thirteenth Century’, The International History Review 26, no. 2 (2004), pp. 237–56. Also see his article in this special issue.

⁴⁵ Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the Islamic World: From Conquest to Conversion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), pp. 297–327.

⁴⁶ Iqtidar Alam Khan also speculated that Akbar's policies might have been influenced by a memory of Chinggis Khan's law, or yasa, which maintained that a king's duty was to treat all religions equally. However, the full implication of the changes wrought by the Mongols were not worked out by him nor any of the other scholars who contributed to the Aligarh perspective. Khan, ‘Akbar's Personality’, p. 18. It was during the collaborative writing of the Tarikh-i Alfi at Akbar's court in the 1580s that earlier Ilkhanid and Timurid sources were quoted to explicitly praise the Mongol imperial practice of judiciously managing religious difference. See the article by Gommans and Husseini in this special issue.

⁴⁷ Jackson, Mongols and the Islamic World, p. 114.

⁴⁸ Judith Pfeiffer, ‘Confessional Ambiguity vs. Confessional Polarization: Politics and the Negotiation of Religious Boundaries in the Ilkhanate’, in Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th–15th Century Tabriz, (ed.) Judith Pfeiffer (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 129–68.

⁴⁹ Quoted in ibid., p. 158.

⁵⁰ A. Azfar Moin, ‘The Politics of Saint Shrines in the Persianate Empires’, in The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere, (eds) Abbas Amanat and Assef Ashraf (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 105–24.

⁵¹ Matthew Melvin-Koushki, ‘Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Religiopolitical Legitimacy’, in The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam, (eds) Armando Salvatore et al. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2018), pp. 353–76.

⁵² Moin, Millennial Sovereign, pp. 23–55. For Shah Jahan, the title Second Lord of Conjunction summed up all his other titles, royal and saintly. See the list of this emperor's 40 titles in Rajeev Kinra, Writing Self, Writing Empire: Chandar Bhan Brahman and the Cultural World of the Indo-Persian State Secretary (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015), p. 103.

⁵³ Matthew Melvin-Koushki, ‘Astrology, Lettrism, Geomancy: The Occult-Scientific Methods of Post-Mongol Islamicate Imperialism’, The Medieval History Journal 19 (2016), pp. 142–50; Melvin-Koushki, ‘Early Modern Islamicate Empire’; Kevin Thomas Van Bladel, The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); John Walbridge, The Wisdom of the Mystic East: Suhrawardi and Platonic Orientalism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001); A. Azfar Moin, ‘The “Ulama” as Ritual Specialists: Cosmic Knowledge and Political Rituals’, in The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam, (eds) Salvatore et al., pp. 377–92.

⁵⁴ Melvin-Koushki, ‘Astrology, Lettrism, Geomancy’; A. Azfar Moin, ‘Cosmos and Power: A Comparative Dialogue on Astrology, Divination, and Politics’, Medieval History Journal 19, no. 1 (2016), pp. 122–29, 127.

⁵⁵ The concept of tahqiq in Ibn ‘Arabi is multifaceted, and one that has not received much attention in the historiography of the Mughal empire. For a philosophical overview, see William Chittick, ‘Ibn Arabi’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (ed.) Edward N. Zalta (2014), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/ibn-arabi/, [accessed 21 December 2021]. For a new comparative and historical perspective, see the review article by Matthew Melvin-Koushki, ‘Taḥqīq vs. Taqlīd in the Renaissances of Western Early Modernity’, Philological Encounters 3, no. 1–2 (2018), pp. 193–249. Also see the article by Christian Blake Pye in this special issue.

⁵⁶ Muhammad Hashim Kishmi, Zubdat al-Maqamat (Kanpur: Nawal Kishore Press, 1889), pp. 131–32. The incident is mentioned in Habib, ‘Political Theory’, p. 331.

⁵⁷ Van Bladel, Arabic Hermes, Vol. 3, pp. 164–233.

⁵⁸ Quoted in Alexander D. Knysh, Ibn ʻArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image in Medieval Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), p. 97.

⁵⁹ Ibn al-ʻArabī and R. W. J. Austin, The Bezels of Wisdom (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), pp. 82–89. Muyhi al-Din bin 'Arabi, Fusus al-Hikam, (ed.) Abu al-'Ala 'Afifi (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Kitab al-'Arabi, 2002), pp. 75–80.

⁶⁰ Melvin-Koushki, ‘Taḥqīq’, p. 231.

⁶¹ Said Amir Arjomand, ‘The Law, Agency, and Policy in Medieval Islamic Society: Development of the Institutions of Learning from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 2 (1999), pp. 263–93, 271–72.

⁶² Matthew Melvin-Koushki, ‘Persianate Geomancy from Ṭūsī to the Millennium: A Preliminary Survey’, in The Occult Sciences in Pre-modern Islamic Cultures, (eds) Nader El-Bizri and Eva Orthmann (Beirut: Ergon Verlag, 2018), pp. 151–99.

⁶³ Alam also observes that the non-Muslim Mongol environment may have had something to do with the success of Tusi's ideas. Alam, The Languages of Political Islam, p. 49.

⁶⁴ F. J. Ragep, Nasir al-Din Tusi's Memoir on Astronomy (al-tadhkira fī ʻilm al-hayʼa), 2 vols (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993), Vol. 1, p. 19.

⁶⁵ Moin, ‘“Ulama”’.

⁶⁶ Tijana Krstić, ‘Illuminated by the Light of Islam and the Glory of the Ottoman Sultanate: Self-Narratives of Conversion to Islam in the Age of Confessionalization’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51, no. 01 (2009), pp. 35–63.

⁶⁷ In broad terms, this is Thapar's argument in Romila Thapar, Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History (London: Verso, 2005).

⁶⁸ C. E. Bosworth, ‘The Titulature of the Early Ghaznavids’, Oriens 15, no. 1 (1962), pp. 210–33.

⁶⁹ Muhammad Nazim, The Life and Times of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1971), p. 165. Thapar, Somanatha, p. 51.

⁷⁰ Nizam al-Mulk provided a detailed story about Mahmud's intense machinations in the competition for such caliphal titles against other Turkic rulers of the time. Nizam al-Mulk, The Book of Government; or, Rules for Kings: the Siyāsatnāma or Siyar al-mulūk, (trans.) Hubert Darke (London: Curzon Press, 2002), pp. 148–57.

⁷¹ A. Azfar Moin, ‘Sovereign Violence: Temple Destruction in India and Shrine Desecration in Iran and Central Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 57, no. 2 (2015), pp. 467–96, 472–75.

⁷² Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil fi al-Tarikh, 13 vols (Beirut: Dar al-Sadir, 1965), Vol. 9, p. 187.

⁷³ The fortress was reportedly large enough to accommodate 500,000 men, 20,000 cattle, and 500 elephants.

⁷⁴ Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval ‘Hindu-Muslim’ Encounter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 83–87.

⁷⁵ Bar Hebraeus, The Chronography of Bar Hebraeus, (trans.) E. A. Wallis Budge (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1976). For a brief biography and description of his works, see Denise Aigle, The Mongol Empire between Myth and Reality: Studies in Anthropological History (Boston: Brill, 2014), pp. 66–88.

⁷⁶ Bar Hebraeus, Chronography, p. 190.

⁷⁷ Ibid.

⁷⁸ Flood, Objects of Translation, p. 83.

⁷⁹ Bar Hebraeus, Chronography, p. 191.

⁸⁰ Ibid.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² Flood, Objects of Translation, pp. 83–87.

⁸³ Hudaybiyya is a well-studied incident of early Islam, but there is much that scholars still argue about in terms of the historicity of the early narratives surrounding the foundational moment of Islam, the precise chronology of events, and even if there were any pagans in Mecca or only various types of ‘monotheists’. Here, I provide the account closest to the dominant Sunni tradition. However, see Furrukh B. Ali, ‘Al-Hudaybiya: An Alternative Version’, The Muslim World 71, no. 1 (1981), pp. 47–62; Andreas Gorke, ‘The Historical Tradition about al-Hudaybiya: A Study of ‘Urwa b. al-Zybayr's Account’, in The Biography of Muhammad: The Issue of the Sources, (ed.) Harald Motzki (Boston, MA: Brill, 2000), pp. 240–75; G. R. Hawting, ‘al-Ḥudaybiyya and the Conquest of Mecca: A Reconsideration of the Tradition about the Muslim Takeover of the Sanctuary’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 8 (1986), pp. 1–23.

⁸⁴ As is the case with most events of early Islam, the sources were written down more than a century later and contain multiple reports of the incident, ostensibly handed down from known eyewitnesses and others who lived a generation after the event.

⁸⁵ This is Hadith 19, book 54, titled ‘Book of Conditions’ (kitab al-shurut) in Muhammad ibn Ismaʻil Bukhari and Muhammad Muhsin Khan, The Translation of the Meanings of Sahih al-Bukhari: Arabic-English, 4th rev. edn, 9 vols (Lahore: Kazi Publications, 1979). Unless otherwise indicated, all citations from Sahih al- Bukhari in the original Arabic or English translations are from this version. ‘Book of Conditions’ follows the book on ‘peacemaking’ (sulh), which also carries other shorter traditions related to Hudaybiyya. A detailed technical analysis of the early history of this report and the events it covered is in Gorke, ‘Historical Tradition’, pp. 240–75.

⁸⁶ This has caused modern scholars to question the report's facticity. Ali, ‘Hudaybiya’, pp. 48–52.

⁸⁷ For a discussion of the resistance of the oral reciters of the Qur'an to its canonization, see Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Silent Qur'an and the Speaking Qur'an: Scriptural Sources of Islam between History and Fervor, (trans.) Eric Ormsby (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 55–62. The concept of ‘stream of tradition’ in oral cultures of memory is discussed in Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 76–86.

⁸⁸ Abd al-Malik Ibn Hisham, Muhammad Ibn Ishaq and Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah with Introduction and Notes by A. Guillaume (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 515.

⁸⁹ Christian Julien Robin, ‘Ḥimyar, Aksūm, and Arabia Deserta in Late Antiquity’, in Arabs and Empires before Islam, (ed.) Greg Fisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 127–71. Also see Sigrid Kjaer's article in this special issue.

⁹⁰ Jomier Jacques, ‘Le nom divin “al-Rahman” dans le Coran’’', in Mélanges. Massignon Louis (Institut français de Damas, 1957), pp. 361–81. Also see al-Azmeh, Emergence, pp. 293–15.

⁹¹ This theonym, which also appears widely in the Qur'an, was used in pre-Islamic Arabia as a generic epiclesis, an invocation to all divinities ‘from on high’: al-Azmeh, Emergence, pp. 229–30.

⁹² More broadly on the topic of the Prophet's body, see Brannon Wheeler, ‘Gift of the Body in Islam: The Prophet Muhammad's Camel Sacrifice and Distribution of Hair and Nails at his Farewell Pilgrimage’, Numen 57, no. 3–4 (2010), pp. 341–88.

⁹³ Abu Ja'far Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari, Tafsir al-Tabari: Jami’ al-Bayan ‘an Ta'wil Ay al-Qur'an, 25 vols (Cairo: Markaz al-Bahuth wa al-Dirasat al-‘Arabaiyya wa al-Islamiyya, 2001), Vol. 21, pp. 320–21.

⁹⁴ Abu al-Layth al-Samarqandi, Tafsir al-Samarqandi: Bahr al-'Ulum, 3 vols (Beirut: Dar al-kutb al-'ilmiyya, 1993), Vol. 3, pp. 258–59.

⁹⁵ Donner, Muhammad, p. 210.

⁹⁶ Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2006), pp. 202–22. For a recent treatment of the same legal issue from the perspective of sovereignty, and with a more detailed look at the treaty of Hudaybiyya, see Anver M. Emon, ‘On Sovereignties in Islamic Legal History’, Middle East Law and Governance 4 (2012), pp. 265–305.