Chapter 12 Civility and Charisma in the Long-Term Genesis of Political Modernity within the Islamic Ecumene

In: Islam in der Moderne, Moderne im Islam
Author:
Armando Salvatore
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Abstract

Following a historical sociology approach critiquing and reconstructing key social theory categories, the chapter delineates some key trajectories in the history of the Islamic ecumene through which combinations of saintly charisma and practices of civility originating both within Sufi brotherhoods and courtly milieus were appropriated by various rulers and their courts for the sake of buttressing the political legitimacy of their ever more centralizing states, starting in the Later Middle Periods (13th to 15th centuries) and going into early modernity. The study appraises these developments as significant for the genesis of endogenous Islamicate patterns of precolonial political modernity. The analysis shows how these patterns, and the role played by both religious scholars and state administrators in shaping them, can be contrasted with the European Leviathan-model of sacral sanctioning of sovereignty. Examples are mainly drawn from the evolution of Timurid and Ottoman rule and court cultures in the larger context of late-medieval and early modern Islamicate empires, along with their changing religiopolitical balances. Through this, I also enucleate the potential space of a ‘sociology of Islam,’ of which I am a practitioner, and which I do see as influenced by Reinhard Schulze’s work.

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