Mediation

Whereas the great majority of disputes in industrial societies are nowadays resolved by state-instituted courts of law or arbitration regulated by state law, typically pre-industrial societies, and certainly those of Islam, were only marginally subject to government intervention. To put it slightly differently, in pre-modern Islamic societies, disputes were resolved with a minimum of legislative guidance, the determining factors being informal arbitration and, equally, informal law courts.

Furthermore, it appears to be a consistent pattern that, wherever mediation and law are involved in conflict resolution, morality and social ethics are intertwined, as they certainly were in the case of Islam in the pre-industrial era. By contrast, where they are absent, as they are in the legal culture of Western and, increasingly, non-Western modern nation-states, morality and social ethics are strangers. Morality, especially its religious variety, thus provided a more effective and pervasive mechanism of self-rule and did not require the marked presence of coercive and disciplinarian state agencies, the emblem of the modern body-politic.

In speaking of the “legal system,” it would be neither sufficient nor even correct to dwell on the law court as the exclusive vehicle of conflict resolution. In any system, what goes on both outside the court and prior to bringing litigation before it are stages of conflict resolution that are just as significant to the operation of the legal system as any court process.

Definitions: state, ulama, secularists and Islamists

In the previous chapter, we discussed the processes by which the law was modernized, as well as the cultural and other forces that underlay these transformations. Notable Westernizing trends began in India at the end of the eighteenth century, and in the Middle East at the beginning of the nineteenth, culminating in the 1940s and 1950s. The changes, as we saw, were massive, involving the structural dismantling of the Shariʿa legal system, and leaving behind a distorted and gradually diminishing veneer of Islamic law of personal status.

At one point, it seemed that Islam as a religion of legal norms was out of favor, having once and for all lost to the modernists and their new states. But the 1970s and early 1980s saw powerful events that appeared to halt the collapse of this religious force. The questions that confront us then are as follows. What were the sources of the re-Islamization trends that appeared during and after the 1970s? How far back do the origins of these sources extend? Are they a reenactment of pre-modern Islamic tendencies or are they, strictly speaking, the results of the modern project? What have they managed to accomplish in terms of converting the secularist legal changes, the engineered law of the state, into an Islamicized narrative? What methods and means have they pursued in order to accomplish this end, and where and when have they been successful?

‘QUEEN OF INSCRIPTIONS’

In the opening chapter of his Annals, Tacitus briefly outlines the changes in political structure that Rome experienced from the regal period onwards, and maps onto these changes the ways in which history has been written. He comments, ‘But the successes and failures of the Roman people of old have been recorded by famous writers, and there was no lack of people of fair talent for telling of the times of Augustus, until they were scared off by the flattery that was swelling up’ (sed veteris populi Romani prospera vel adversa claris scriptoribus memorata sunt, temporibusque Augusti dicendis non defuere decora ingenia, donec gliscente adulatione deterrerentur). Although we cannot be sure which authors Tacitus had in mind here, we do know of histories about the civil wars and the earlier years of Augustus' era written by Asinius Pollio, Livy, Cremutius Cordus, Seneca the Elder, and Titus Labienus. It is unlikely that these were unduly influenced by flattery: Horace remarked upon the hazardous nature of Pollio's undertaking to write about the civil wars between 60 bc and 42 bc, whilst Cremutius Cordus praised Brutus and Cassius in his histories that covered the period from the civil wars down to at least 18 bc, and was later condemned under Tiberius; Labienus was otherwise known as ‘Rabienus’ because of his violent style, and his books were burned for their libellous content during Augustus' later years.

EXPLANATORY NOTE

This edition provides a composite text of both Latin and Greek versions, as derived from the inscriptions surviving from Ancyra, Pisidian Antioch, and Apollonia. The aim is to provide as full a text as possible, sometimes including letters that are no longer extant on the inscriptions but that have been read in the past, indicating editorial supplements where the letters have never been legible to modern eyes. In cases where letters have been faintly discerned by only a single modern viewer, but appear secure from the context or by comparison with the version in the other language, these letters have not been bracketed. These composite texts are indebted to the exemplary recent edition by John Scheid (2007), to which the reader is directed for a full presentation of the epigraphic texts, with apparatus criticus. See Appendix for a list of readings that diverge from Scheid's composite text (Scheid (2007) 4–25).

The following standard symbols are used:

HEADING

With this Latin heading, we perhaps start with an implicit statement that Augustus' deeds are worthy both of being recorded in history and of being celebrated in the highest form of poetry, epic. This might be indicated if the way in which the words rerum gestarum divi Augusti quibus orbem form a solemn spondaic hexameter verse is not purely coincidental (Koster (1978) 242; Hoeing (1908) 90; see 1.1n. exercitum privato consilio ; 27.1n. Aegyptum ).

The heading at Ancyra is in much larger lettering (8–4 cm) than the rest of the inscription (2 cm), and extends over the first three columns of the text. At Antioch, the heading extends above the first two columns. The original inscription at Rome must also have had a similar heading (perhaps, taking our cue from Suetonius, index rerum gestarum divi Augusti quibus orbem terrarum imperio populi Romani subiecit et impensarum quas in rem publicam populumque Romanum fecit, ‘summary of the achievements of the deified Augustus, by which he made the world subject to the rule of the Roman people, and of the expenses which he incurred for the state and people of Rome’), since otherwise the start of the inscription, annos undeviginti natus (‘Aged nineteen years old’), is too abrupt (Koster (1978) 246). The grandeur of the language suggests that the heading was composed at Rome, even though not by Augustus himself.

I'm glad to be able to take this opportunity to thank Graham Oliver, whose enthusiastic and congenial collaboration over a paper for the Triennial Conference on the RGDA initially inspired the idea of undertaking this project. I'd also like to acknowledge the role played by my students at Warwick, notably the three cohorts who have grappled the Augustan age with me, who often make me clarify my ideas, and generally help inspire me by their enthusiasm for the subject. Michael Sharp has been supportive of the book from start to finish, offering invaluable practical help. Three Cambridge University Press assessors made helpful suggestions in planning the shape of the book in its infancy; Stephen Mitchell and the other Cambridge University Press reader provided copious suggestions for guiding the original typescript towards maturity; I hope that they like what they find now. Any faults in the book remain the result of my oversight or stubbornness. For help in compiling the illustrations I'm indebted to Michael Sharp, Stephen Mitchell, and my father. I'm grateful to Richard Abdy of the British Museum for permission to reproduce some of the images of coins already to be found in the LACTOR sourcebook, The Age of Augustus, ed. M. G. L. Cooley. Family support has been crucial, and I'm incredibly fortunate to have such tolerant children, husband, parents, and mother-in-law. Among other things, I'd single out the constructive criticism and practical help from Melvin and my parents, and the innumerable hours of childcare undertaken by my mother-in-law.