To ascertain soldiers’ potential status as wage labourers, this chapter discusses the process of initial enlistment and the ensuing terms of service, questioning especially whether soldiers enlisted of their own accord and retained their free status. It emerges that, from the reforms by Philip II of Macedonia onwards, political circumstances dictated a strong drift towards greater and at times complete reliance on so-called voluntary troops, who enlisted in exchange for pay. Thus, while the bulk of troops under Philip and Alexander were conscripts, these armies from the outset encouraged the enlistment of hired, voluntary troops in both elite and ordinary divisions. The lines between different troop types were blurred significantly under Alexander, whose conscript forces re-enlisted as hired men mid-way through his campaign. The Successors, whose often fickle claims to territory complicated the conscription of troops, were almost wholly reliant on voluntary troops. Accordingly, it is at this point that the epigraphic record attests military contracts, in which soldiers’ continued freedom of movement is guaranteed, alongside other terms of service. In the subsequent Hellenistic kingdoms, we see a return to conscription, especially in times of greatest need, alongside an enduring preference for professional, hired soldiers to man the standing armies.

Chapter 2 examines the doctrines of two sociopolitical factions that influenced later Sunnī thought: the Umayyads and the ʿUthmāniyya. These two factions were most active in the earliest periods of Islamic history (the seventh and eighth centuries). Historians have attributed the earliest expressions of anti-ʿAlid sentiment to members of these groups (alongside the Khawārij). Since anti-ʿAlids active before the fall of the Umayyads did not leave primary documents discussing ʿAlī, this chapter relies on ḥadīth and on biographical and historical literature to elucidate the doctrines of the two groups. The case studies in Chapter 2 include Companions of the Prophet and other early Muslims who were portrayed as anti-ʿAlids. A commitment to the belief in the righteousness of the Companions played an important role in the reception of anti-ʿAlid ḥadīth in Sunnī Islam. It created an incentive for scholars to reject or charitably reinterpret not only texts that disparaged ʿAlī but also those that portrayed other Companions despising him.