Hayrettin Yucesoy, Abbasid Political Thought: Religious and Secular Discipline of Power

Hayrettin Yucesoy, Abbasid Political Thought: Religious and Secular Discipline of Power, Centre for the Study of Islam. Monday Majlis on the 20th of March.
Abstract
In my forthcoming book, Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought, cup.columbia.edu/book/disencha..., I argue that political thought traditions prevalent in the caliphal world in the middle decades of the long eighth century diverged in two dialogic regimes of rationality: the religious governance of the ulema elaborated in what I call “imamate discourse” and the secular politics of lay bureaucrat literati expressed in the discursive tradition of siyasa. Initially emerging in the crucibles of imperial bureaucracy and separate from “scholastic” knowledge connected with mosques and ulema, siyasa discourse exposed the distinction between the ulema-centric idea of the caliphate (khilāfa) and royal authority (mulk) and thus disrupted and relativized the idea of the imamate/caliphate. In this presentation, I will focus on Abd al-Hamid al-Katib’s and Ibn al-Muqaffa’s writings in the dialogic and intertextual context of “imamate discourse” in the early eighth century to highlight the pioneering idea of sovereignty and its governmentalization in siyasa. Siyasa governance, in this analysis, is not a question of theological deliberation or religious jurisprudence interested in universal truths, but an art of mitigating contingency and managing affairs through the ruler’s rational reflection and practical prudence in order to produce social good. One gathers from the references to and reproduction of the early texts of siyasa in later centuries, that these foundational texts launched an intellectual tradition that generated a space of exploration for non-Arabic Muslim dynasties in Afro-Eurasia, including those of the Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks, the Mongols, and the Mughals.
Bio
Hayrettin Yücesoy is Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies. He specializes in political thought and practice in the pre-Mongol Middle East, empire forms, and the Abbasid caliphate. Recently, he has been working on ideas of “good governance” and global forms of secularity as an entry-point to trace a genealogy of non-theological discourses of politics in the Middle East. Over the course of his career, he has published in English, Arabic, and Turkish. His publications include Disenchanting the Caliphate: The Secular Discipline of Power in Abbasid Political Thought (forthcoming in summer 2023 from Columbia University Press); Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Politics in Medieval Islam: The Abbasid Caliphate in the Early Ninth Century (Columbia, SC: South Carolina University Press, 2009); The Development of Sunni Political Thought: The Formative Period (published in Arabic), Amman Dar al-Bashir, 1993). He is also the author of “Language of Empire: Politics of Arabic and Persian in the Abbasid World,” PMLA 130/2 (March 2015); Political Anarchism, Dissent, and Marginal Groups in the Early Ninth Century: The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila Revisited,” The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner, Paul Cobb, ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2012): “Justification of Political Authority in Medieval Sunni Thought,” Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns, Asma Afsaruddin, ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); “Translation as Self-Consciousness: The Abbasid Translation Movement, Ancient Sciences, and Antediluvian Wisdom (ca. 750-850),” Journal of World History 20/4 (2009); Ancient Imperial Heritage and Islamic Universal Historiography: Al-Dinawari’s Secular Perspective,” Journal of Global History 2.2 (2007).
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Istvan T Kristó-Nagy arabislamicstudies.exeter.ac....