This dissertation focuses on how the Marrakech-based Almohads and their independent Muslim rivals in eastern al-Andalus contested spiritual and temporal power. The rulers of Sharq al-Andalus opposed Almohad claims to a divinely granted authority rooted in a new messianic interpretation of the caliphate. Instead, they articulated a vision of legitimacy linked to earlier Sunni forms, and connected their rule more closely to the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad than any previous Andalusī dynasty had done. One minted coins that included the name of the Abbasid caliph, and another received official permission from the Abbasids to rule as governor of al-Andalus. This dissertation examines the written sources, coins and architecture produced in the courts of Andalusī and Almohad rulers to explore how they legitimated their authority. It argues that the conflict among these Muslim rivals in many ways superseded their battles against Christians. The Almohads saw anyone—Muslim, Christian or Jewish—who did not submit to their rule and their conception of Islam as infidels, and said that jihad against non-Almohad Muslims was more important than jihad against Christians. Nevertheless, later Arabic sources attempted to cast the conflict between the independent rulers of al-Andalus and the Almohads as part of a broader Christian-Muslim clash. The alliances Andalusī rulers made with Christian kings, and, in some cases, their Christian roots, made their religious allegiance to Islam suspect. This attitude has continued in modern scholarship as well. This dissertation instead argues that the independent rulers of al-Andalus and their Almohad counterparts were engaged in a broader debate, common to the wider Islamic world, about what constituted righteous Islamic authority. As the population of the territories ruled by Muslims became majority Muslim, new groups began to gain power, eroding the primacy of the Arab caliphate. Like their Persian and Turkic contemporaries to the east, the Berber and Andalusī rulers of the Islamic west struggled to negotiate between the caliphal ideal of Islamic unity and the increasingly decentralized political world they encountered. Analyzing the conflicts among these rivals illuminates the questions that animated the Islamic world as new spiritual and political forms were emerging.

Notre recherche aborde la question de l'État dans la pensée islamique moderne chez les réformateurs du 19ème siècle et les islamistes du 20ème siècle selon une approche pluridisciplinaire. Le réformisme musulman a mené le combat entre le despotisme, contre l'ignorance des populations et contre les ingérences européennes. Il était plus ouvert au constitutionnalisme qui ne diffère pas de la shûra et des finalités de la charî'a.C'est dans ce sillage que se forme la pensée des théoriciens islamistes, du moins au début avant de s'en détacher car par la suite les islamistes entreront en conflit avec le nationalisme arabe ainsi qu'avec la pensée libérale, voire avec l'État-nation. Par conséquent deux logiques s'affrontent sur la nature de l'État, les limites des pouvoirs, la légitimité, et concernant essentiellement la relation entre État national et la religion, point de la discorde. Cette relations est restée ambiguë depuis un siècle. Il en est né un État national ni religieux ni laïque mais qui a modernisé le droit des emprunts à la juridiction occidentale, sans appliquer toutefois une vraie démocratie qui respecterait les droits de l'homme et de la citoyenneté. Il y a une laïcité et une sécularisation de fait au niveau individuel comme au niveau sociétal en pays arabo-musulmans sans que cela touche le dogme, malgré les tentatives de modernisation. Mais à partir des années quatre-vingt-dix un courant émerge appelé les néo-réformateurs, qui acceptent le jeu démocratique et la souveraineté populaire. Cela constituera un grand tournant dans la pensée politique islamique. / Our research deals with the subject of the State in 19th and 20th century Islamic modern reformist thought in accordance with a multidisciplinary approach. Islamic reformism has fought against despotism, ignorance of the populace and European interference. It was open to constitutionalism which is not different from the Shura system and goals of the Shariia. The thinking of Muslim theorists took shape within this framework, at least for a while before Islamists decided to break with it. Later, Islamists relations with both Arabic nationalism and liberal thinking, indeed with the Nation-State as a whole, became conflictual.Thus, two points of view concerning the nature of the State, the limits of power, legitimacy, and essentially the very controversial relationship between the Nation State and religion confronted each other. This relationship remained ambiguous for a century. The product has been a Nation State that is neither religious nor secular, but which has modernized the law by borrowing from the Western judicial system, without, however, applying real democracy able to respect human rights and citizenship. A de facto, secularism does exist on an individual and social level in Arab-Muslim countries without influencing the dogma, despite attempts at modernization. But from the 1990s on, a neo-reformist current of thought has emerged, which accepts democracy and sovereignty of the people. This will constitute a big turning point in Arab-Muslim political thought.

This study is about the so called Islamic States’ use of Islamic religious traditions in their propaganda magazine Dabiq. The purpose of the study is to find out how ISIS use history as a blueprint to perceive and interpret current events and occurrences. The theories of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, Capital, and sociopsychologist Hjalmar Sundén’s Role theory is used to analyze how the different religious traditions and stories are used by ISIS and what these represent in the Muslim’s religious frame of perception. The results of this study show that the religious traditions are being used in order to legitimize, justify and establish their so-called Caliphate according to the stories of old. The results also show that not only religious matters are used to emphasize their claim in the Middle East but profane examples as well.

The Caliphate was a fundamental part of Islamic society for nearly 1300 years. This paper seeks to uncover what effect the removal of this institution had on the mobilization of Muslims in several parts of the world; Turkey, Egypt, and British India. These countries had unique experiences with colonialism, secularism, nationalism, that in many ways conditioned the response of individuals to this momentous occasion. Each country’s reaction had a profound impact on the future trajectory of civil society, and the role of Islam in the lives of its citizens. The conclusions of this paper challenge the monolithic depiction of Islam in the world, and reveal the origins of conflict that these three centers of Muslim power face today. Much of the religious narrative now commonplace in Muslim organizations derive from this pivotal event in world history.

Thesis advisor: Robin Fleming / This dissertation charts the movement of slaves from Western Europe, through Scandinavia, and into the frontiers of the Caliphate, a movement which took shape in the early 700s and flourished into the late 800s. The victims of this movement are well attested in texts from either end of their journey, and the movement of everyday things allows us to trace the itineraries they followed. Necklace beads—produced in the east, carried to the north, and worn in the west—serve as proxies for human traffic that traveled the same routes in opposite directions. Attention to this traffic overcomes four impasses—between regional particularism and interregional connectivity; between attention to exchange and focus on production; between privileging textual or material evidence; and between definitions of slavery that obscure practices of enslavement. The introduction outlines problems of studying medieval slavery with regard to transregional approaches to the Middle Ages, the transition to serfdom, and the use of material evidence. Chapter One gathers narrative texts previously dealt with anecdotally to establish patterns for the Viking-Age slave trade, with eastward traffic thriving by the late 800s. Chapter Two confirms these patterns by graphically comparing viking violence to reports of captive taking in the annals and archival documents of Ireland, Francia, and Anglo-Saxon England. Chapter Three investigates how viking captive taking impacted Western societies and the creation of written records in Carolingian Europe. Chapter Four turns to the material record, using beads to trace the intensity and flow of human traffic that fed from early viking violence. Chapter Five establishes a corresponding demand for slaves in the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate through Arabic archival, legal, historical, and geographic texts. The conclusion places this research in the context of global history. By spanning periods, regions, and disciplines, this dissertation brings to focus people who crossed boundaries unwillingly, but whose movements contributed to epochal change. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

(in English): This master's thesis is based on analysis of the essential sources of the international organization Ḥizb al-taḥrīr providing focus on its concept of the caliphate which is compared to other international Islamist organizations that struggle for the restoration of the abolished caliphate.

Magister Artium - MA / Imāmah, (imamate) literary means leading, and khilāfah (succession) means representative. but, in the terms of "Islamic concept", the medieval theologian and jurists has termed it «Religious–Political leadership».1 the major dispute concerning the imamate surrounding the question of investiture to exercise the prophet’s comprehensive authority (Wilāyah‘āmah), as the temporal and spiritual leader of the ummah (community). From demising of the prophet, the matter of imamate, between Ash‛arī and Shī‘ah (twelve) there are two main opinions. Ash‛arī’s views are prevalent among the early Muslims headed by Abûbakar and his associates regarded the imamate to be right of the ummah (nation), and they chose Abûbakar. The Shī‘ah implicitly rejected the previous opinion, and maintained that the leadership was passed on through a special designation. This regarded the imamate divinely invested in ‘Ali ibn Abī Ţālib, the prophet cousin and son-in-law. Therefore, controversy between Ash‛arī and Shī‘ah on the question of leadership arise after the prophet returns and coherences to the two fundamentals central points: First: The nature of the relationship of the prophethood to the political leadership. The Shī‘ah regarded political leadership as an extension of the prophetic mission after the demise of the prophet: «Meaning that political leadership is not simply political rule but it is the corollary of the interpretation of religion, and takes imamate in depth interpretation»2. Other hands, Ash‛arī consider and include it in the matter of masāliħ Al ‛āmah (public interest). The Islamic jurists definite the masāliħ al ‛āmah (public interest), any issue whether it is religion or matter of world that could not fixed with fact proof from holy Qur'ān and prophet’s tradition. Therefore, the matter of caliphate emerges it in the masāliħ al-‛āmah (public interest) which, relies on human agency. Second: The contract of political leadership and authority between the problematic of mutual consultation and divine appointment. This point focus on ‘aqd (contract) of khilāfah (repress- entative of God) between leader and ummah (nation) and evolves around the problem of consultation, mainly in the Ash‛arī’s view, which is based on "selection system". So, in the historical experience, it can be noted that the consultation as mechanism in the choosing the ruler was not achieved as an "organized system" neither in the period of the rightly guided caliphs, nor in the periods of dynastic rulers. The imamate as a «supreme leadership» had a major problem issue in the contemporary scholars, both the Islamic and secular, since it was announced in the modern context Dawlah (government), which based on nationality and separated from religious hegemony. Its dialectic, in the present article, is to deal with theological and judicial theory. Therefore, in 1979, the Islamic council of Europe published a «concept of Islamic state». Most of the figures shaded are based on the Khomeini's thought (the founder of Islamic republic revolution of Iran), and Karāchī’s Muslim council scholar (they constituted Ash‛arī view). In the Islamic state, the Khomeini thought based on «the Islamic state is constitutional; Government is based on law and the Paramount legislative authority resides on God himself». On the other hand,«the Islamic state» shaped as «the principals of an Islamic state which centers on the supremacy of God, citizens rights and proper government» 3 Therefore, caliphate it is difficult to separate or detach from prophethood in the perspective of the commentary and interpretation of equally the Qur'anic and Sunna texts. So, difference between Ash‛arī and Shī‘ah around immāmah (leadership in Islam) are based on the theological principles which rise from the problem of cosmology, divine justice and human destiny. Therefore, the difference can be based on the idea (thought) about these theological principles.

This thesis will examine the succession to the Islamic Caliphate as it existed during the time of the orthodox Caliphs (632-661).

A content analysis of "Islamic State" (IS) propaganda material released around the movement's proclamation of a Caliphate in 2014, this study is an attempt at analysing ways in which presented arguments express a coherent narrative of symbolic meaning. Using Robert Benford & David Snow's ideas on the so-called three core framing tasks as a clarifying template, I discuss ways in which the analysed material argues for the legitimacy and relevance of the IS movement. IS propagandists argue that the Muslim umma is under attack, and that Muslims need to unite under a common authority that can protect their religion, restore their strength, and counteract their humiliation. The IS Caliphate is presented as a hopeful sign, but is in need of committed recruits who are willing to sacrifice for what is presented as the greater good. As the analysed propaganda is particularly focused on this latter (motivational) aspect of the narrative, it focuses extensively on formulating arguments that reinforce it. I hold that many of these arguments can be traced back to what can be described as appeals to virtues like sincerity, authenticity, and truthfulness – and that all of these are also used to argue for the credibility of the IS Caliphate as an Islamic authority. Arguing that this Caliphate will serve the role of an aiding sword of Islam, it is furthermore presented as a necessary and vigorous structure aimed at protecting "truth" and at eradicating "falsehood".

L’incursion de l’Islam en Afrique subsaharienne à partir du IXe siècle, s’est opérée via le commerce transsaharien entre les peuples d’Afrique du Nord et ceux du Sahel. Ce contact entretenu par les caravanes commerciales entre les deux peuples a engendré l’islamisation progressive de la population hausaphone. Sous l’influence de l’arabe, plusieurs vocables sont introduits dans le lexique du hausa. Cet effet islamique s’accompagne d’une révolution dans la production de la littérature arabe-ajami. Grâce à l’adaptation de l’écriture ajami, Nana Asma’u, une polyglotte de renommée écrit au 18e siècle, plusieurs œuvres poétiques dont la plupart sont en langues - hausa, fulfulde et arabe. Sur la base de ces observations, cette thèse se propose d’analyser les emprunts lexicaux arabes dans les œuvres poétiques de l’auteur, et leur intégration dans la langue hausa. Sur le plan méthodologique, notre travail de recherche s’appuie sur la combinaison de deux méthodes : linguistique et statistique ; ce qui nous a permis d’analyser tous les phénomènes afférant au métissage linguistique et culturel dans les œuvre de Nana Asma’u. Notre corpus comprend 15 œuvres poétiques que nous avons lemmatisées en préalable aux calculs statistiques à l’aide du logiciel Excel. Les principaux résultats obtenus sur les formes graphiques, montrent une fréquence d’utilisation très élevée des emprunts arabes. L’association de l’analyse linguistique et des traitements informatiques, nous a permis ainsi de confirmer, de façon formelle et impartiale, que la plupart des emprunts les plus fréquents relèvent de domaines religieux, et donc liés aux lexiques de situation. / The incursion of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa from the 19th Century was operated through trans-Saharan commerce between the peoples of North Africa and those of the Sahel. This contact, maintained by the commercial caravans of these two peoples engendered the progressive islamisation of the Hausa-speaking populations. Under the influence of Arabic, several terms were introduced into Hausa lexicon. This Islamic effect comes with a revolution in the production of Arabic-Ajami literature. Thanks to the adaptation of Ajami writing, Nana Asma’u, a renowned polyglot, wrote several poetic works in the 18th Century, most of which are in the Hausa, Fulfulde and Arabic languages. On the basis of these observations, this thesis proposes to analyse the borrowed Arabic lexicon in the poetic works of the author, and their integration into the Hausa language. From the methodological perspective, our research work relies on a combination of two methods: linguistic and statistical; which enable us to analyse all the phenomena relating to linguistic and cultural hybridization in the works of Nana Asma’u. Our corpus is made up of poetic works that we have first of all lemmatized using statistical calculations with the help of Excel software. The principal results, obtained in the form graphs, indicate a frequency of very high usage of words borrowed from Arabic. The association of the linguistic and computer analyses enabled us to confirm, in a formal and impartial manner, that most of the frequent borrowings fall under religious domains, and as such linked to situational vocabulary.