'Civil' and 'Democratic' Polity A 9th-Century Treatise

Abstract

Among the political theorists of classical Islam invoked by scholars today, particularly in the context of discussions on 'democracy within Islam' and/or 'civil society in Islam', the name of cAmr b. Bahr al-Jahiz (d. 255/869) is, to the best of my knowledge, never mentioned. Yet, his political treatises or epistles have much to tell us moderns about the conceptualization of the ideal Muslim polity and its leadership by the turn of the 3r d century of the Islamic era. One of his epistles in particular, 'Risalat al-cUthmaniyya' (The Epistle of the cUthmaniyya), deserves closer study due to its possible implications for legitimizing modernist discourse on the extrapolation of democratic principles from the Islamic tradition.