The Formation of Islam Religion and Society in the Near East, 600–1800

Despite the importance of the preceding centuries, the medieval period was a creative one for Islam. Political theory and structure provide an instructive example. Most discussions of Islamic political thought begin with and focus on the office of the caliph. It is easy to see why this should be the case, given the struggles over leadership within the early Islamic community. But the result is often to measure later developments against standards of legitimacy based on events and decisions of that early period. And so, for instance, when viewed from this perspective, the extinction of the cAbbasid caliphate in Baghdad by the Mongols in the mid-thirteenth century appears to mark the end of a normative institution and phase of Islamic history. In fact, however, far from marking an end, the Mongol invasions provided an opportunity for solidifying and extending the social, political, and religious developments of the previous two centuries.

For all of their differences, the Islamic societies of the Middle Period shared certain common patterns – for example, that of political dominance by alien, mostly Turkish or Mongol military elites, or the social and institutional forms in which religious learning was transmitted from one generation to the next. More-over, those patterns had long-term effects that stretched down to the modern period.