Book Review
Luke B. Yarbrough, Friends of the Emir: Non-Muslim State Officials in Premodern Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), xiv + 361 pp. ISBN 978-1-1087-2174-5. Price: £90/$120 (cloth) and £24.99/$32.99 (paperback).
Mohamad Ballan Stony Brook University
lthough there has been a consid- states. Recent approaches to the topic erable amount of scholarship have attempted to think carefully about devoted to the many dynasties, the importance of the production of Acaliphs, emirs, and sultans who exercised documents and administration,1 archives dominion throughout the Islamic world in and historical writing,2 connections and the medieval and early modern eras, until competition at royal courts,3 the nexus recently, comparatively little attention between rulers and religious author- has been paid to the officials tasked ity,4 and the emergence of particular with governing and administering these discourses of kingship and sovereignty,5
1. Marina Rustow, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), and Petra M. Sijpesteijn, Shaping a Muslim State: The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 2. Fozia Bora, Writing History in the Medieval Islamic World: The Value of Chronicles as Archives (London: I.B. Tauris, 2019). 3. Emma J. Flatt, The Courts of the Deccan Sultanates: Living Well in the Persian Cosmopolis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020); Samuel England, Medieval Empires and the Culture of Competition: Literary Duels at Islamic and Christian Courts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), and İlker Evrim Binbaş, Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ‘Alī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 4. Hüseyin Yılmaz, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), and John P. Turner, Inquisition in Early Islam: The Competition for Religious and Political Authority in the Abbasid Empire (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013). 5. Christopher Markiewicz, The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam: Persian Emigres and the Making of Ottoman Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
© 2020 Mohamad Ballan. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020): 436-442 437 • Mohamad Ballan while shedding light on the status, of the Emir a particularly important inter- function, and self-perceptions of military vention by prompting scholars to rethink and administrative elites.6 With Friends notions of sovereignty, cultural polemics, of the Emir: Non-Muslim State Officials and the practice of politics in the medieval in Premodern Islamic Thought, Luke Islamic world. Yarbrough’s considered and B. Yarbrough contributes to this growing nuanced approach to the subject provides body of scholarship by closely examining a productive framework for scholars the Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and seeking to look beyond sharp dichoto- other non-Muslim officials whose employ- mies between “normative discourses” and ment occasioned energetic discussions “historical realities” in their approach to among Muslim scholars and rulers. the premodern world. This masterfully written and well-argued The book is divided into three broad book reveals those discussions for the sections: “Beginnings” (chapters 1–4), first time in all their diversity, drawing on “Elaboration” (chapters 5–6), and unexplored medieval sources in the realms “Efflorescence and Comparisons” (chapters of law, history, poetry, adab, administra- 7–9). Chapter 1 (“An Introduction to tion, and polemic. It traces the discourse on the Prescriptive Discourse Surrounding non-Muslim officials from its emergence Non-Muslim State Officials”) establishes in the Umayyad era (661–750) through the historical, methodological, and medieval Iraq, Syria, Spain, and Egypt theoretical background for the study. The to its apex in the Mamluk period (1250– chapter provides a useful historiographical 1517). Yarbrough compellingly demon- overview of works written in English, strates that for all the diversity among French, and Arabic about the question of premodern Muslim thinkers on the topic non-Muslim officials, demonstrating that of non-Muslim officials, their writings much of the scholarship has been rooted constituted not a disjointed miscellany in ahistorical assumptions that posit a but a “continuously evolving prescrip- dichotomy between textual prescription tive discourse, characterized by numerous and historical practice. The remainder recurrent structures, themes, topoi, and of the chapter outlines Yarbrough’s schemata, as well as by pervasive and overt own methodological and theoretical intertextuality” (p. 4). Far from being an approach. It is here that he provides a intrinsic part of Islam, Yarbrough convinc- critical explanation of his interpretive ingly argues, views about non-Muslim state choices, particularly the development officials were devised, transmitted, and and utilization of the concept of “valued elaborated at moments of intense compe- resources,” which is heavily indebted to tition between Muslim and non-Muslim social theory (particularly the writings of learned elites. This focus upon competi- Pierre Bourdieu), in order to demonstrate tion, professional rivalry, and the “ubiqui- the utility of thinking carefully about tous pursuit of resources” makes Friends “resources” and “capital” as ways of
6. Jo van Steenbergen (ed.), Trajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia: Eurasian Parallels, Connections and Divergences (Leiden: Brill, 2020), and Maaike van Berkel and Jeroen Duindam (eds.), Prince, Pen, and Sword: Eurasian Perspectives (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020) Luke B. Yarbrough’s Friends of the Emir: Non-Muslim State Officials • 438 evaluating the practices of historical combinations of dependence, loyalty, actors and their motivations. One of special competencies, and lower cost the most valuable contributions of the in both material and symbolic terms. book is its exploration of the ways in The remainder of the chapter is which exclusionary behavior, including dedicated to a survey of several late- the articulation and dissemination of ancient antecedents to the discourse, not particular discourses about non-Muslim necessarily as part of an argument about officials, constituted a discursive tool the degree to which these antecedents in the ubiquitous pursuit of resources. influenced the emergence of Muslim While rejecting the notion that these prescriptive discourses but in order to discourses constituted a smokescreen explore the similar dynamics at play within for sociopolitical motives, Yarbrough the Eastern Roman and Sasanian Empires. demonstrates that many medieval Yarbrough demonstrates that in the late Muslims who shaped the discourse about Roman Empire, a number of imperial laws non-Muslim officials wrote to achieve restricted or prohibited the employment specific personal ends, which included of officials who dissented from Christian both worldly renown and ultimate orthodoxy, while in the Sasanian Empire, salvation. non-Zoroastrian officials were sometimes Chapter 2 (“Preludes to the Discourse: viewed as problematic because their Non-Muslim Officials and Late Ancient elevation destabilized the hierarchies that Antecedents”) presents a synchronic study structured Sasanian society. The chapter of non-Muslim officials and the reasons illustrates the importance of considering for their employment while surveying the emergence of Islamic polities against late antique discourses around dissenting the backdrop of the world of late antiquity officials, particularly surviving writings while serving as a useful comparative on non-Christian officials in the Eastern study of the three empires (Sasanian, Roman Empire and non-Zoroastrian Roman, and early Islamic). officials in the Sasanian Empire. The Chapter 3 (“The Beginnings of the chapter carefully defines the various Discourse to 236/851”) introduces the categories, terms, and interpretive oldest stratum of the discourse proper, frameworks employed throughout the which encompasses a wide range of book, delineating how and why the sources and consists largely of parabolic study of the prescriptive discourse about stories about early caliphs and their non-Muslim officials can shed important putative statements about non-Muslim light on premodern Islamic politics and officials. The chapter argues that society. In the first part of the chapter, these stories should be interpreted as Yarbrough argues that non-Muslim officials instruments of competition and were were ubiquitous in the administration of composed in various settings long after premodern Islamic states, primarily in a the events that they purportedly describe. bureaucratic capacity. He stresses that According to Yarbrough, the narrators of their continued employment, despite these stories used them to challenge rivals considerable opposition, was due to a for social, material, and political resources. number of factors, including various This chapter, which brings together several
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020) 439 • Mohamad Ballan case studies, demonstrates the historical which the discourse was effectively value of parables as a window into the mobilized by the state itself to articulate normative imaginations of Muslims during a change in policy. Beyond providing an the first two centuries of Islamic history. instructive case study of the intersection It convincingly argues that the earliest of prescriptive discourse and notions elements of the Islamic prescriptive of sovereignty in the premodern Islamic discourse concerning non-Muslim officials world, this chapter underscores that did not rest on pre-Islamic foundations the articulation and deployment of but originated in second/eighth- and the prescriptive discourse concerning third/ninth-century Iraq, as literate non-Muslim officials needs to be situated Muslim elites produced and propagated within the broader context of intra-Muslim disapproving parables that were ascribed competition and rivalry. to revered early authorities, specifically the The next section of the book traces caliphs ʿUmar I and ʿUmar II. The chapter the continued development of the demonstrates Yarbrough’s command of prescriptive discourse about non-Muslim the early Islamic source material and officials by studying its two major aspects: context and illustrates the utility of his juristic and literary. Chapter 5 (“Juristic larger theory of “valued resources” for Aspects of the Discourse”) illustrates thinking about the emergence of Islamic the discourse’s blossoming into a minor prescriptive discourses about non-Muslim theme in juristic works of many kinds officials. In addition to showing that the and demonstrates that these discussions most important proof texts emerged in were more historically embedded and a particular time and place, Yarbrough more diverse than has been previously traces how the discourse was shaped by recognized. The chapter examines this specific individuals, circumstances, and diversity while observing the development concerns. of Muslim juristic writings on the issue, Chapter 4 (“The Discourse Comes of Age: an investigation that encompasses Sunni The Edicts of the Caliph al-Mutawakkil”) jurisprudence as well as Ibāḍī and Shiʿi provides a translation, contextualization, juristic thought. Yarbrough shows that the and detailed analysis of the principal juristic writings were motivated not only prescript (tawqīʿ) of the Abbasid caliph by contemporaneous historical factors but al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–47/847–61), which also by the desire to uphold the established Yarbrough dates to 236/851. The chapter positions of the authors’ own juristic locates the edict within al-Mutawakkil’s traditions and to regulate non-Muslim broader strategy to secure his rule and officials within the coherent prescriptive stave off challenges to his legitimacy by systems that those systems aspired to rewarding the detractors of non-Muslim create. In addition to cataloging and officials. Al-Mutawakkil was the first caliph evaluating the various aspects of the juristic for whose sweeping directive against strands of the prescriptive discourse, non-Muslim officials we have plentiful this chapter is particularly valuable for and solid evidence, and Yarbrough’s its contextualization and analysis of the contextualization and analysis of this writings of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Māwardī document illustrates the manner in (d. 450/1058) on the issue of non-Muslim
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020) Luke B. Yarbrough’s Friends of the Emir: Non-Muslim State Officials • 440 officials, particularly his argument (in the Following this exploration of literary Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya) that permitted a sources, chapter 7 (“The Discourse at non-Muslim to be appointed an executive Its Apogee: The Independent Counsel vizier (wazīr al-tanfīdh). Throughout the Works”) focuses on a small cluster of chapter, Yarbrough highlights how Muslim works that were written in the central jurists developed diverse rationales for Islamic lands, from Iraq to Egypt, between limiting, discouraging, or prohibiting the the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, employment of non-Muslim officials; how and that were dedicated entirely to the these rationales were frequently repeated issue of non-Muslim officials. The chapter and developed during moments of tension introduces these works, their authors, and with states or non-Muslim elites; and the circumstances of their composition, how jurists sought, above all, to mediate situates them within a long literary between their madhhab traditions and tradition, and offers a historical account contemporary exigencies. of the flowering of the prescriptive Chapter 6 (“Literary Aspects of the discourses that they contain. As Yarbrough Discourse”) examines the role of rivalry masterfully demonstrates, these works and defamation across various genres combined numerous earlier elements of literature (adab), and in premodern of the discourse—including exegetical, Islamic political life more generally, before literary, juristic, and historical strands— turning to diverse literary representations with components hitherto outside it to of non-Muslim officials. The chapter points produce distinctive polemical amalgams. out that some of these literary texts shared One of the most interesting and insightful materials and themes with juristic strands of these works, ʿUthmān b. Ibrāhīm of the discourse. It also sheds important al-Nābulusī’s Tajrīd sayf al-himma, has light on the ways in which particular been recently translated and annotated rhetorical practices—especially in the by Yarbrough.7 The chapter shows how genre of counsel literature (naṣīḥa)— such books were fashioned by Muslim formed part of a larger set of competitive learned elites as tools of competition in practices deployed by elites in pursuit of their own pursuit of resources that were scarce resources. A work of adab—whether increasingly mediated by the Ayyubid and a chronicle, a biography, a compendium Mamluk states. Yarbrough also positions of entertaining stories, or a mirror for these works within a larger social and princes—could deliver a prescription as political context that was characterized forcefully as a handbook of substantive by extended conflict among Muslims, law could. The chapter confirms the non-Muslims, and the state in Egypt; importance of the various genres of adab as such, Yarbrough argues, they were for illuminating both the prescriptive both products of, and contributors to, that discourse, in particular, and premodern larger climate of conflict. Islamic society and politics, in general.
7. ʿUthmān b. Ibrāhīm al-Nābulusī, The Sword of Ambition: Bureaucratic Rivalry in Medieval Egypt, trans. Luke B. Yarbrough (New York: New York University Press, Library of Arabic Literature, 2016).
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020) 441 • Mohamad Ballan
Chapter 8 (“The Discourse in intertextual continuity and coherence, its Wider Perspective: Comparisons and sophistication, and its sheer magnitude. Conclusions”), which is among the As a possible explanation, Yarbrough offers most ambitious parts of the book, looks the peculiar evolving relationship between beyond Islamic history to medieval “postclassical” Islamic state power and Latin Christendom, particularly Arpad authority, which he contrasts with the Hungary, and Yuan China in order to think persistent salience of exclusive communal comparatively about the prescriptive affiliation that was shared by rulers and discourse. Before pursuing this learned elites in the case of China, and the comparative study, however, Yarbrough separation of moral authority and political summarizes his own arguments about the power in the case of late medieval Europe. Islamic prescriptive discourse concerning While the reader may take issue with some non-Muslim officials. According to of Yarbrough’s particular choices and Yarbrough, the four key factors that broader conclusions in this chapter, his explain the discourse’s flourishing in comparative approach is to be commended some historical settings and its faltering for its integration of the Islamic world into in others are “(1) ideological communal a larger conversation about the interplay diversity in which intercommunal rivalry between prescriptive discourses, notions for prestige has a zero-sum dimension; of sovereignty, and practices of politics (2) direct competition for scarce resources across late medieval Eurasia. The book among literate elites who belong to concludes with chapter 9 (“Afterword: The distinct ideological communities; Discourse to the Nineteenth Century”), (3) existing exclusionary discourses which provides some observations on the within those communities; and (4) access afterlives of the prescriptive discourse to ruling elites who would be expected in the nineteenth-century Middle East, to sympathize with expressions of indicating the ways in which it survived in discontent” (p. 263). Yarbrough finds all attenuated form under the Ottomans. four of his criteria—ideological diversity, Friends of the Emir is a groundbreaking direct competition for scarce resources, work. Its original and innovative approach traditions of exclusionary rhetoric, and to the topic of non-Muslim officials in the receptivity of ruling elites—present premodern Islamic states is underpinned in Arpad Hungary, but he nonetheless by a robust theoretical and methodological determines the Latin Christian discourse framework; command of a vast array to be substantially different in both form of sources across regions, time periods, and substance. Examining the case of languages, and genres; and a commitment Yuan China, Yarbrough concludes that to both interdisciplinarity and comparative no exclusionary discourse surrounding approaches. The book paves the way for a outsider-officials as such was generated, nuanced understanding of governance in despite the existence of ostensibly the medieval Islamic world that seeks to similar circumstances. Although each of encompass normative juristic discourses, the three cases had distinctive features, theories of sovereignty, and the practice the chapter argues that the Islamic of politics. Yarbrough has produced a discourse is unrivaled in its thematic and remarkable account of the emergence and
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020) Luke B. Yarbrough’s Friends of the Emir: Non-Muslim State Officials • 442 dissemination of prescriptive discourses been strengthened by an elaboration on about non-Muslim officials at the fraught the notion of “friendship” as articulated nexus of Islamic authority, textual and discussed within the prescriptive production, state power, and communal discourse concerning non-Muslim officials difference. By demonstrating that the in the premodern Islamic world. Yarbrough prescriptive discourse was the contingent, indicates that “direct service to rulers cumulative creation of particular historical . . . frequently assumed a personal rather actors rather than an ahistorical, indelible than official quality” (p. 29), but a more feature of Islam, Friends of the Emir elaborate discussion of this distinction reorients our view of how non-Muslims would have been helpful, especially as it participated in premodern Islamic politics. would have underscored the importance Yarbrough’s most significant contribution of personal access to and intimate bonds is to historicize the surviving textual of affinity with the ruler as yet another evidence of that prescriptive discourse “valued resource” to be pursued. Indeed, by situating it not within understandings the very title of the book, Friends of the of “dhimmī law” or “Islamic legal Emir, alludes to the importance of the norms” but within the dynamic social, personal bonds between the king and his political, and ideological context of subordinates, which led this reviewer professional rivalry and competition over to expect a sustained discussion of the resources. The development and notion implications of friendship, bonds of of valued resources, which historicizes obligation, and intimacy within a royal and contextualizes the emergence context. Although there is already an of prescriptive discourses, serves to extensive body of literature on this reintegrate Islamic history into broader question in the case of Latin Christendom, conversations about the transformation it awaits further exploration in the context of society and politics across premodern of the medieval Islamic world. Eurasia. These are minor quibbles with Even though there is much that is an otherwise comprehensive and laudable about the book in terms of its pathbreaking book, which will provoke comprehensiveness, originality, and numerous conversations among scholars interdisciplinary approach, this reviewer of history, literature, and Islamic studies. was hoping to learn more about the Friends of the Emir is an original piece of different ways in which women and gender scholarship that is thoroughly researched figured in the larger discourses about and beautifully written. It will be useful for non-Muslim officials. Since exclusionary anyone seeking to think critically about discourses directed against female counsel the relationship between Muslim learned and intimates—whose number would elites and state power, the historical have included a significant proportion development of prescriptive thought, of non-Muslims, especially in the royal and the manner in which discourses of courts—were also widespread during this sovereignty and political practice were period, it would have been useful for the deeply intertwined in the medieval Islamic author to have engaged more directly with world. this question. The book would also have
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020)