RES OURCES63-71, whose point of departure was merely that the imperial capital
of one dynasty lay in former Byzantine territory while that of the other
lay in former Sasanian territory. His conclusions seem to have gone
unchallenged ever since.
Islamic political theory was a mixture of Arab ideas of leadership
and responsibility, Islamic doctrine, and Sasanian tradition combined
in different proportions by different people. The earliest systematic
expression of Islamic statecraft from the point of view of !:Ianafi law
was probably the political section of the Kitiib as-siyar al-kabtr of the
Iraqi scholar Mu!).ammad ibn al-!:Iasan ash-Shaybani (132/750-189/
804) who was born at Wasit and raised in Kufa. This work survives
embedded in its commentary by the later !:Ianafi: scholar Mu!).ammad
ibn A!).mad ibn Sahl as-Sarakhsi (d. 48311090) called Shar~ kitiib as-
siyar al-kabtr li-sh-Shaybiint (Cairo, 171-72). Shaybani's work has
been extracted and translated into English by M. Khadduri as the
Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybiints Siyar (Baltimore, 1966). The first
book (Kitiib as-sultiin) of Ibn Qutayba's 'Uyun al-akhbiir concerns
political theory and administrative principles. So does the anonymous
Kitiib al-imiima wa-s-siyiisa (Cairo, 1937, 1967), which is sometimes
falsely ascribed to Ibn Qutayba. The first book of Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi's
<Iqd ai-farM is also about politics and administration.
Unfortunately early modern scholarship comparing Sasanian and
Islamic political institutions has tended to pass over these earlier works
and to concentrate on two eleventh-century works. Al-A~kiim as-
sultiiniyya wa-l-wiliiyat ad-dtniyya (Cairo, 1966, 1971) by 'An-ibn
Mu!).ammad ibn !:Iabib al-Mawardi (974?-1058) is a summary and
abstraction of four hundred years of Islamic political theory and ad-
ministrative practice from a legal point of view. It also seems to have
been part of the propaganda of the 'Abbasi Commander of the Faithful
during the collapse of the Buwayhi principalities, for which Mawardi
drew on historical precedents. There are two French translations of
this work, one by L. Ostrorog, El-Akham Es-Soulthaniya Traite de
droit public musulman d'Abou 'l-Hassan AI; ibn Mohammad ibn Ha-
bfb El-Mawerdf (Paris, 1901, 1906) and the other by E. Fagnan, Les
statuts gouvernementaux ou regles de droit public et administratif
(Algiers, 1915). The ideas are available in Q. Khan's al-Mawardi's
Theory of the State (Lahore, n.d.) and]. Mikhail's "Mawardi, a Study
in Islamic Political Thought" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univ., 1968). Ma-
wardi has been used widely by orientalists seeking a touchstone and
a single version for Islamic political theory and institutions. Much of