Search

3 results

4 - LAW AND JUSTICE
from PART VIII - ISLAMIC SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION
- By J. Schacht, Columbia University, New York
Edited by P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, Bernard Lewis
Book:

The Cambridge History of Islam

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

21 April 1977, pp 539-568
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Summary

The sacred law of Islam, the Sharia, occupies a central place in Muslim society, and its history runs parallel with the history of Islamic civilization. Islamic law had its roots in pre-Islamic Arab society. Muhammad began his public activity in Mecca as a religious reformer, and in Medina he became the ruler and lawgiver of a new society on a religious basis, a society which was meant, and at once began, to replace and supersede Arabian tribal society. Muhammad's legislation, too, was a complete innovation in the law of Arabia. At an early period, the ancient Arab idea sunna, precedent or normative custom, reasserted itself in Islam. The Safavids supervision of the religious institution was more thorough than had been that of the preceding Sunni rulers, and by the second half of the eleventh/seventeenth century the subordination of the religious institution to the political was officially recognized.

2 - THE SOURCES OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
from PART VIII - ISLAMIC SOCIETY AND CIVILIZATION
- By G. V. von Grunebaum, University of California
Edited by P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, Bernard Lewis
Book:

The Cambridge History of Islam

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

21 April 1977, pp 469-510
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Summary

The establishment of Arab Islam in the alien world from Spain to the Oxus marks one of those periods in history when man loses his contact with his ancestors, and when the psychological continuity appears almost, even totally, broken. The new civilization, which represents the means and the goal of recovering lost bearings, creates a common memory constituted by a selection of shared memorabilia, largely historical events and judgments on the one hand, human and doctrinal assumptions on the other. The speed of the Muslim expansion, and the speed of the growth of Islamic civilization, prevented fundamental social changes below the highest level and apart from the arrangements which followed logically from the basic rationale of Muslim community structure. The dominant concerns of Muslim civilization had originated in the Arab milieu. Sufism may have absorbed more of Indian mentality than the terminology of its self-statements would indicate.

18 - ARABIC LITERATURE IN IRAN
- By Victor Danner, Indiana University
Edited by R. N. Frye
Book:

The Cambridge History of Iran

Published online:

28 March 2008

Print publication:

26 June 1975, pp 566-594
- Chapter
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Summary

Arabic literature in Iran can be traced from the 1st/7th century onwards, it is nevertheless true that for the first two centuries or so the sources available are scanty and widely dispersed in later works. Yet during the Umayyad epoch Arabic literature in Iran was not much different from what obtained elsewhere in the Muslim world. Nevertheless, the hold of the Arabs over their empire and the identification of Islam with Arabism persisted down to the end of the Umayyads. Other genres of Arabic literature appear in the early 'Abbāsid period. Iran saw two important dynasties arise on its soil in the 4th/10th century: the Būyids, who ruled in the south and also in Iraq, and the Sāmānids, who ruled in the east from their court at Bukhārā. Like the Būyids in the south and west of Iran, the Sāmānids were also great patrons of the arts and sciences.