98 chapter three
the Islamic state. True, the Bedouin bowed to the will of the Prophet
and to the Prophet’s Islamic state, but Abù-Bakr was not the Prophet.
To the Bedouin, it was the Prophet in person, with his spiritual
charisma that emanated from the divine revelation, that deserved
full obedience, not an elected successor. The example of the Bedouin
who prayed, “O Lord, have mercy upon me and upon Muœammad
but upon no one else besides”, (ibid.) could be repeated. Abù-Bakr,
therefore, needed to emphasise the concept of the state in a purely
civil sense to the Arabian mentality (Al-Nabrawi and Mihanna,
1982).
Thirdly, the fight was inevitable to emphasise the special role of
Zakàh as an allocative tool in the process of wealth distribution and
social caring. Zakàh is an earmarked tax the revenue of which is to
be spent in a particular manner specified in the Qur"àn, in which
the beneficiaries are “the poor, the pauper, the people who collect
it, the new convert, the liberation of slaves, the indebted, in the
cause of God and the wayfarer” (Qur"àn, 9:60). The allocative role
of the tax as such needed to be emphasised and the role of the state
in assuming the responsibility of making sure that the system worked
had to be stressed. This should be looked at in conjunction with the
following point.
Fourthly, the state’s financial resources were very limited at that
time. The Islamic state at the beginning of the Orthodox Caliphate
was not particularly rich and with a great number of Muslims in
need of the state’s financial support there was a need for a policy
of public finance in which revenues and expenses were well con-
trolled. Furthermore, the Holy war, Jihàd, that aimed to establish
the authority of Islam in Arabia and beyond was imperative, an
expedition was on the way to south Syria and a scheme of large
scale expeditions to Syria and Iraq was envisaged, and that required
a well state-organised policy of public finance.
The apostasy wars ended in 633 A.C. and Caliph Abù-Bakr was
victorious: he established the political domain of the central gov-
ernment in al-Medìnah, the political unity of Muslims, the integrity
of the religion and the institution of Zakàh. By forcing the rebels to
pay Zakàh, the caliph established an important principle in Islamic
taxation: the Islamic tax, Zakàh, is one of the state’s rights with no
individual’s discretion. The compulsory element of the tax was there-
fore fulfilled but in a convenient manner as it was collected on har-
vest and/or after one year of owning the capital. The principle of
certainty was already introduced in the Qur"àn and the Sunnah, as