Enacting Justice, Ensuring Salvation

Know that kingship and sovereignty are among the gravest duties of Islam . . . and the support of faith and the people depends on kings, who distinguish between justice [‘adl ] and oppression [ẓulm].1 In truth, the Sulṭān is he who spreads justice [‘adl ] among his servants, who does not commit injustice and depravity; a tyrannical Sulṭān is a disaster and will not last because the Prophet said: ‘kingship remains with unbelief, but not with tyranny [ẓulm].’2 Among the many charged words which have loomed large in recent American political discourse none are more prominent than ‘oppression’ and ‘freedom’; two abstract nouns which are often heard together, each being construed as the logical antonym of the other. This is neither unusual nor unexpected. The Enlightenment ideals which fuelled the French Revolution naturally juxtaposed the idea of ‘freedom’ (la liberté) against the perceived ‘oppression’ (l’oppression) of the ancien régime, positing a semantic opposition which has since served to frame so much of the discourse of Western European and American democracy. When asked to provide an antonym for the noun ‘oppression,’ a native speaker of American English will more often than not produce the noun ‘freedom.’ Again, this is neither unusual nor unexpected given the political, intellectual, and cultural genealogies informing American conceptions of national mission. However, when these two words are translated into Arabic (or, for that matter other major Islamicate languages such as Persian, Urdu, or Turkish) they do not form an antonymous pair — far from it. Simply put, at the level of popular speech, the logical antonym of the word ‘oppression’ (ẓulm) is not the word ‘freedom’ (Ar. ḥurr?ya; Per. & Urd. āzād?, āzādig?; Tur. özgürlük, hürriyet), but rather the abstract noun ‘justice’ (‘adl), a derivation (Per. & Urd. ‘idālat, Tur. adalet) or a near synonym (e.g., Per. and Urd., insaf, dād; Tur. inṣāf, doğruluk), most of which are possessed of closely associated adjectives, adverbs, and participles which carry the same semantic load. This is not to be glossed over lightly, for language is deeply telling, encoding basic cultural assumptions rooted in the collective worldview and ethos of those who speak them. For those familiar with the intellectual and cultural production of medieval Islamic civilization, the antonymity of these two terms is hardly surprising — both are possessed of a long history of theological, juridical, political, literary and poetic significations which overlap and impinge upon one another through and across multiple discourses, circulated so thoroughly that they eventually become engrained in everyday expression to such an extent that, in modern colloquial Urdu, for example, it is not uncommon for a hen-pecked man to be referred to tongue-in-cheek as an “oppressed little husband” (maẓlūm khāvand) and his wife as a “tyrant” (ẓālim). Such examples are trite but telling, for like many abstract nouns that have seeped into the lexicons of various Islamicate languages, the two terms ẓulm and ‘adl feature prominently in the Qur’ān, they and their associated derivations appearing over 340 times throughout the text. Although retaining a layer of their pre-Islamic meanings connoting physical displacement on the one hand and rectifying and counterbalancing on the other,3 in the Qur’ānic discourse both ẓulm and ‘adl come to be moralized, the former serving to connote a cluster of negative values associated with transgressing the limits imposed by God through various acts of moral displacement and the latter — also reflecting the physicality of its pre-Islamic, Bedouin usage — a cluster of positive values associated with various acts of equilibration which possess the potential to straighten, balance, and rectify a morally unbalanced situation.4 Thus, the Qur’ānic rootedness of the contextually expanded signification of ẓulm (‘oppression’) in the foregoing example drawn from Pakistani domestic life — the wife's tyranny jokingly displaces and subverts a perceived natural moral order. At the lexical level, the persistence of this antonymous pair is certainly reinforced by the Qur’ānic significations of ẓulm /‘adl and its influence on cultural poetics across Muslim societies, but at the same time the rhetoricity of this opposition is neither static nor timeless. As with all systems of meaning, at the level of audience-response the Qur’ānic system of signification is contextual, shifting and changing over time and space as each generation encounters, responds, and adds to the collective weight of an inherited past in light of the exigencies of their particular present. It is in the shifts between and among ‘meaning inherited’ and ‘meaning articulated’ where the intellectual, cultural, political and religious significations of worldview-building oppositions such as oppression/justice are to be sought, for while perceived vertically and synchronically, Qur’ānic oppositions are inevitably articulated horizontally and diachronically, being possessed of genealogies whose main continuity is that they set themselves in relief most visibly at moments of crisis. In his masterful study of the rise and fall of civilizations, the late Arnold Toynbee argued for the creative power of crisis as a prime determinant in shaping the historical trajectory of civilizations, positing that to understand the texture of a civilization is to understand the nature and scope of its responses, failed or otherwise, offered to moments of challenge.5 As Toynbee might say, it is in piecing together historically definable moments of response to crises (whether propelled by the inertia of previous responses or eschewing precedent in favor of novelty) which allows us to come to terms with any one response, past or present, through understanding it as part of a continually unfolding historical process possessed of moments of action/reaction which are contiguous but at the same time historically distinct. This leads us to the heart of the question which has already been framed by our initial observations on the lexical antonymity of the words ẓulm / ‘adl in contemporary Islamicate languages, namely: if construed as possessing political significations, is this antonymity (lexically or rhetorically) a novel response to a crisis unique to Islamic civilization in the modern period, or is it possessed of an historically identifiable genealogy with pre-modern antecedents? If so (and I believe it is) how might have ‘justice’ (‘adl) and its antonym ‘oppression’ (ẓulm) been understood in an earlier (i.e., pre-modern) context by those possessed of the actual power to effect either and, in turn, how were both constituted as a subject of discourse and an object of reflection and self-representation? In short, when, where, how, and in what contexts might we find a decidedly political signification of the Qur’ānic ‘oppression/justice’ complex in the historical unfolding of Islamic civilization — can it be located it in an identifiable, historical discourse, preferably one emerging from a moment of crisis? Although intersecting, sharing, and in no small number of cases contesting a shared discursive space, as with so much in Islamic intellectual, political, and social history, charting the contours of pre-modern Muslim conceptions of justice demands looking beyond the oftentimes reified discourse of jurists and theologians to texts produced by and for those who more often than not provided the capital and patronage making their endeavors possible in the first place. What I have in mind is a discourse embodied in a group of texts similar to the popular didactic literary genre known to pre-modern Europe as Fürstenspiegel (Ger. ‘Mirror for Princes’), namely those medieval Islamic books of ‘advice for rulers’ (naṣ?ḥat al-mulūk) so well known to historians of the pre-modern Islamic world and beloved by students of Persian, Arabic, and Turkish belles-lettres.6 Possessed of a two-fold intention which attempts to balance the actual practice of statecraft (siyāsa, tadb?r al-mulk) with a political ethics (al-khuluq al-siyāsatiyya) demanding adherence to Islamic conceptions of the moral justice and righteousness which those in power are divinely obligated to maintain, the medieval Islamic Fürstenspiegel were composed at a time of major crisis, a period characterized by intense competition between powerful regional dynasties for public recognition of their self-perceived role as guarantors of proper, right, and universal justice as expressed in the creation, maintenance, and perpetuation of a perfect (Islamic) state — a state which ensures first and foremost that its citizens achieve prosperity in both this world and the next. Situated in a discursive space where various genres, literary modes, and collective oral and written wisdom traditions overlap, the internal environment of the Fürstenspiegel is much broader than other medieval Islamic discourses treating similar issues, being a place where Sassanian (and to a lesser extent Hellenistic, Indic, and Byzantine) traditions commingle with the Qur’ān and traditions of the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muḥammad (Ḥad?th), legends of the previous prophets and Sufi hagiography, aphoristic and gnomic lore, and of Islamic and positive the political of popular Muslim and of and pre-Islamic all the Fürstenspiegel are at the same time to the historical context in which they were a literary genre which a political characterized by the of in the Muslim in the in many a discourse of power and which the rise of the and in the when the of Although by and cultural as of a pre-modern discourse on the medieval Islamic Fürstenspiegel in with what them. the for example, the of these for were both and the process of and by from the their and of justice not in historical but in as of the and the medieval Islamic for were composed in the historical context of a where and were deeply where the of and national inevitably the much more of statecraft and political In the for us with what is the of a on the of rather than or a whose to ‘justice’ as such is all the more by the of the not have it any to the texts which are rooted in the ethos of a powerful with their as regional and with the religious and of a which as of regional for political a of while to the of that in and religious terms familiar and to the over which they the question of political in medieval one as the namely with the Qur’ānic and those in over If one is to it is for it is this which has Muslim conceptions of the nature of an which in the that all between and among any and all of the Muslim in a complex of informing and by into the of the to the historical of the of of the period in which most of the Fürstenspiegel were produced (i.e., the the question to which we not so much one of the Qur’ānic of a state which ensures the of its in both this world and the through the of the in the form of but of how those in power their as its and in were to effect the religious of on the part of their It is where the nature of and justice and oppression are to be for as the medieval are to the political of a of rooted in the of regional and of the and of medieval time and time with the religious and of the in in a over who the of the and moral of the Muslim state in the of its In this the of the an — one which a particular of justice (‘adl) and its in political the contours of this it is to the main with and power to which the medieval Islamic were in their historically in particular those of and religious associated with the of the by various jurists and theologians a period when the its In to earlier conceptions of what in this discourse is that the of not one of power as much as it is one of moral the to a in the Islamic by and the of moral and the power to effect in light of a political Thus, we find in the of the and a of the which the nature and scope of the and of as possible a where the actual of power Although other the of of the on the same the of a on the of Qur’ānic and the of his for the of the but for recognition of his role as of the its actual being by various who the and his the of the in a similar its on the of and the of the but as he and political but does not effect the which from these is understood to be a by which medieval Muslim jurists religious and in to the continuity of the political and of the such that were no the powerful dynasties of the period have to it at This us to the question of the of and power what by all a period in the medieval Islamic world and, in turn, its to Qur’ānic of ‘adl and the regional and for the Fürstenspiegel were written not their to their on the of the religious possessed by the as by the What they is their and in a the public of the as the political of the by one of its proper, right, and universal justice by the creation, maintenance, and perpetuation of a perfect (Islamic) state which ensures first and foremost that its citizens achieve prosperity in both this world and the next. Although through of in the discourse of the Fürstenspiegel the to a state to be through a between the of the religious and of the as a of justice and and the of those who over the state in which it to be In the world of these this through a rooted in the of the In to the political of a deeply the Fürstenspiegel the political between religious and through a certainly of statecraft at the actual of the and who constituted their a which the of the a who ‘justice’ (‘adl) and (ẓulm) in of his and life through the proper, right, and of past rulers’ in a perceived present. to both and of as in a in the of the the medieval Fürstenspiegel often beyond the Islamic of the jurists and theologians as in a process of a of cultural already been by of the are constituted as the which a contemporary of a Islamic to be The of this discourse of is that it to conceptions of power and by looking to an past while to an Islamic of the present, in positing a which not Qur’ānic of the between justice and nor their in contemporary political but rather so as to to as a as Thus, we find in the of of the and of the a which upon a of and and genealogies from a of Islamic and pre-Islamic which — as it a particular — by that the is and time God one of the and, with and with the of the word and the of his This of which — reflecting the of his with both the of the and the Qur’ānic is characterized first and foremost by its on justice and the of an and the being by God for these to in the of for al-mulūk) of a which in the that the is the of God on and that in his as divinely he is with a a which from those over he while with it the moral by which is in the first place. As with the of kingship As will in the traditions the Sulṭān is on which that he is and the over It be that this kingship and the have been to by and that they be and with is and to is for God on has God and the Prophet and those among who which God and the prophets and The which the is for to it is upon the each of which are in the of rulers’ from the pre-Islamic past from the Islamic the being at the of justice in the of the of into oppression and tyranny (ẓulm) — which the and not the of the that the the and of these who and like on to that and power are upon the of the of justice with right, which is universal and not to the Islamic as The or of this depends upon for if the is the is and the are as the in the times of . . . when the is the as it in the times of . . . The Sulṭān in is he who and does not injustice and . . . because the Prophet that when is unbelief, but will not where is It is in the that for this by the and the in their This because they justice among the In their religious system they not injustice or and through their justice and they the At the same both and are to their of through in the Islamic of a divinely system of and which between all of the Muslim the latter for example, any matter between and the God the same as that and that in any matter between and people in a in if were a subject and another were that be of is the in all and is the of of pre-Islamic kings, or the first to the Prophet Muḥammad As one of such is to the than of and tyranny and injustice are for in an historical where the perceived as and in each of these texts we find through the particular or and of past a of the (e.g., the pre-Islamic or the Muslim of or his the pre-Islamic or his Islamic The of this is that in this of the through the of a poetics of the Fürstenspiegel ‘justice’ (‘adl) and ‘oppression’ (ẓulm) in decidedly in the process it with a of contemporary which and the past in an to a or the of the in It is in the in of the of the idea of where these texts to the public of the and of the in its as the moral of the Muslim on the at its is — it is a social and the of to the of and the of to the that all rulers’ to the of the and all while the of such as and the Fürstenspiegel both the of so to the of while at the same the of ‘justice’ (‘adl) as an in the Qur’ānic in which their by of their shared the Qur’ānic opposition between ‘adl and it is the on justice in the of oppression where power and in the the former as an which from God to the upon and from to each and social to such an extent that the oppression of a is to be an of a major in the The in the idea that kingship and political are to the of both and political from a if he allows a of oppression and tyranny to into his As the of the of justice ensures not but more that by justice and in both and any by injustice in both The of the discourse of justice associated with the medieval Islamic Fürstenspiegel is in the of one of those who the intellectual of one of those in with an and so that of intellectual, and political history come to be by their Although not of as to the Fürstenspiegel genre proper, The that of from which the so much of their and Although upon a of of and political The is an of previous but rather a and creative of and the Qur’ān, and other Islamic texts into of a discourse of as one modern of his . . . to the of the discourse and its political in the or it constituted an discourse of on the of which any an and life of the it provided a not of moral and political for the in this the which of is that of an ethics which and the of the jurists as the of on of a while at the same time a much over the of a rooted in of In matter of discourse of moral is on the of of as social to by a and upon an earlier of the of in the of the on the of political ethics a of and which idea of the with of that the the of its to the of the as well as the that to the which to in which inevitably to a state of tyranny over the collective be by a who is from by in that they with and that a be Such a to by the the of the and his the the referred to as the religious and to his as the religious In to this religious on to that in the of the is a for a who is from by support so that he be to to their to such a an by the whose they the of for the he is the and his the his role being the same as of the or on to that not and generation has of a the world does a who is charged with the and to his being the of over the of the in with the of and As with and the of this is to a who is of the of the world and through his is to and any which the of the In its Islamic on to state that it is the of the of justice in the of tyranny (ẓulm) which ensures that this is The of how to this are given by in the same in which they are in other in the of particular such and of and the of the of the its and the the that The his the of the for in its of a universal of and justice which all of a perfect — or — as of and universal rooted in the ẓulm / ‘adl is not so much a to the of the discourse of the jurists nor a matter of as it is a an of power already being in the of a in In the the of the Fürstenspiegel genre proper, like the of is a in its particular historical namely serving as an of a political ethics which to contemporary in this the broader ethos of his with their crisis of their power and in terms familiar to the of an civilization over which they as the and for this he For it is in the of a universal to universal power which over their of the to be and on not the of a justice to It is more than a to to our earlier example from modern colloquial Urdu, that perceived as a is often rather a is among the as a of wisdom and As examples of a discourse of justice and political ethics emerging in the of a crisis characterized by political the medieval Islamic unique on how a powerful group of historical in a civilization to come to terms with the of the process of and its oftentimes and upon state and As we have in of the of the of and the of over its the of our to to with a for a in an in an to the space of public of power and a which the internal environment of the this is expressed in a which to a a of political on the of the acts of whose are as much a and of long since wisdom traditions as they are for contemporary in a Islamic discourse rooted in the Qur’ānic ẓulm / ‘adl an opposition which — as the Muslim world another crisis — its previous lexical and, for charged Although not proper, like The of the medieval Islamic for are because they at times of political and as such of political discourse in in this of a particular of political ethics which how a pre-modern Muslim might have making public of power and by and to through the practice of a and near system of statecraft rooted in a of justice (‘adl) which does not ‘freedom’ as its but rather oppression and the texts of the medieval Muslim Fürstenspiegel the crisis this particular response has long since from the of popular but at the same time its inertia has into the present, in the collective weight of an inherited past which in languages, in the worldview and ethos of their a which might possess a in the and as Western the of their of and the crises which it for not but for each of the

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