402 Abdessamad Belhaj
son to a body for the sake of its promotion (the managed body could
be an animal, a human, individuals or groups).^4 Therefore, siyāsa is,
on the one hand, the formulation of an active behaviour in a way that
considers appropriately its consequences. On the other hand, it implies
a certain pragmatic rationalism in overseeing affairs that is, above all,
present in siyāsa as political management. In regard to this latter mean-
ing, siyāsa was used interchangeably in early Islam to denote statecraft,
government, the manner of governing or the ability to govern. Often,
the practice of siyāsa was understood as a mixture of both wisdom and
craft – hence Bernard Lewis’ conclusion that siyāsa denotes “a skill
or a craft rather than a doctrine or a philosophy”.^5 At this point, one
could ask whether Muslim jurists and theologians did not attempt to
formulate a political doctrine before the Muslim assimilation of the
Greek philosophy in the tenth century. One probable answer is that
the jurists did not feel the need to “invent” their own field of politi-
cal theory. Through Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) and Islamic theology
(kalām), they were able to express the general principles of Sharia on
the subject of politics. The opposition between Muslim political fac-
tions was theorized in kalām, whereas important institutions of the
state such as finance and courts were discussed in detail in fiqh books.
Nevertheless, things changed with the assimilation of Greek political
philosophy, which became a competing model that rallies adepts and
may even threaten the order of the Caliphate.^6 Most likely, this cleav-
age of opposing political visions pushed the jurists to take political
theory seriously and compose works dedicated specially to political
subjects from a juristic standpoint.
As for the term siyāsa sharʿiyya itself, to the best of my knowledge it
was used for the first time by Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/ 1240). Nonetheless,
later sources on siyāsa sharʿiyya rely heavily on Ibn Taymiyya.^7 At first,
4 Tamer, Georges: Islamische Philosophie und die Krise der Moderne. Das Ver-
hältnis von Leo Strauss zu Alfarabi, Avicenna, und Averroes, Leiden and Boston
2001, pp. 239–240. See also Najjar, Fauzi M.: Siyāsa in Islamic Political Philoso-
phy, in: Michael E. Marmura (ed.): Islamic Theology and Philosophy. Studies in
Honor of George F. Hourani, Albany 1984, pp. 92–93.
5 Lewis, Bernard: Political Words and Ideas in Islam, Princeton 2007, pp. 32–33.
See also Lewis’ brief notes on siyāsa in idem: The Political Language of Islam,
Chicago 1988, pp. 11, 19.
6 On siyasā in the Muslim philosophical perspective, see Tamer, Islamische Phi-
losophie, pp. 202–204.
7 Ibn al-Qayyim quotes the Ḥanbalī jurist Abū al-Wafāʾ ʿAlī b. ʿAqīl (d. 513/1119),
who seems to have used siyāsa sharʿiyya with the same meaning as that of Ibn
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