God’s Rule Government and Islam by Patricia Crone (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 462 pages.)

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Charles Fletcher

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Abstract

Originally intended as a short textbook codifying the existing knowledge of
Islamic political thought, Patricia Crone’s God’s Rule developed into a fuller
and more comprehensive examination of the first six centuries of government
and Islam. Crone, perhaps better known for her more controversial
works, such as Hagarism (Cambridge: 1977), God’s Caliph (Cambridge:
1986), and Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Oxford: 1987), is no
stranger to Islamic political theory, having written Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge: 1980). In her present book, the
reader will find an accessible, readable, and scholarly contribution that is
largely devoid of controversy while retaining a healthy skepticism of the
sources, as one would expect from an historian.
Primarily written for the non-specialist, the intention is to render the
contextual theory, practice, and development of political thought during the
early centuries of Islam (c. 622-1258) intelligible to the general reader.
Divided into four sections, Crone seeks to cover the broader trends and
themes in the transition from the Prophet’s polity to that of the Buyids and
the Seljuqs. Along the way, she guides the reader through the complex web
of Islamic history, starting, in part 1, with the basic Muslim conceptual
understanding of government and state up to the first civil war, sect formation,
and the Umayyad period. Here, the central importance was the leader,
as successor to the Prophet, who weds truth and power and thereby rightly
guides the Muslim community by providing legal legitimacy and a moral
example. The question of legitimacy came to the fore during the first civil
war, which resulted in the formation of various sects and the rise of the
Umayyad dynasty ...

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