Law and Order According to
Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya
A Re-Examination of siyāsa sharʿiyya
Abdessamad Belhaj
Introduction
In this paper, my purpose is to investigate the relationship between
Sharia and public order as understood by Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328)
and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350). For the sake of focus, I
limit the scope of my study to Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya fī
iṣlāḥ al-rāʿī wal-raʿiyya (Islamic Public Policy for the Righteousness of
the Ruler and the Ruled)^1 and Ibn al-Qayyim’s al-Ṭuruq al-ḥukmiyya
fī al-siyāsa al-sharʿiyya (The Judicial Methods in Islamic Public Policy).^2
In more than one way, these two books have considerably influenced
other works on siyāsa sharʿiyya, Islamic public policy,^3 up to modern
times. I do not intend to explore in detail the contents of the two works.
Rather, I will focus, first, on their scholarly reception and the prob-
1 It has been translated into French by Henri Laoust as Le traité de droit public,
Beirut 1948. My translation here of fī as for is based on the fact that the title
of the book appears in some biographies of Ibn Taymiyya as li-iṣlāḥ. See Ibn
Taymiyya, Taqī al-Dīn: al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-rāʿī wal-raʿiyya, ed. by
ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-ʿUmrān, Mecca 1429/2008, p. 19 of the editor’s introduc-
tion. The book is also available in English under the title Ibn Taymiyya on Public
and Private Law in Islam or Public Policy in Islamic Jurisprudence, transl. by
ʿUmar Farrūkh, Beirut 1966.
2 Ala’eddin Kharofa translated this into English as The Legal Methods in Islamic
Administration, Kuala Lumpur 2000.
3 The subject-matter of siyāsa sharʿiyya is the description and the justification of a
set of public coercive regulations that derive their authority from sharīʿa. Most
of these regulations are discussed in the discipline of Islamic jurisprudence, fiqh
as judiciary or criminal law issues. Chiefly, siyāsa sharʿiyya deals with issues of
administration, market, judiciary system, crimes and rebellion.
Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University
Authenticated