Open AccessThe Ṣiffīn Arbitration Agreement and statecraft in early Islamic political documents
Author(s) -
Ibrahim Mohamed Zein,
Ahmed El-Wakil
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of islamic studies/journal of islamic studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.146
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1471-6917
pISSN - 0955-2340
DOI - 10.1093/jis/etac001
Subject(s) - arbitration , parallels , covenant , agreement , terminology , politics , islam , political science , law , set (abstract data type) , linguistics , computer science , philosophy , economics , theology , operations management , programming language
In this article we study the different recensions of the Ṣiffīn Arbitration Agreement and classify them into six different versions. Despite the differences in length and language among them, we note that these can be traced to a source document. We then highlight the key features and terminology found in the different versions of the Ṣiffīn Arbitration Agreement and observe the striking parallels that they share with the covenants attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad. We argue that the key political actors who composed the Ṣiffīn Arbitration Agreement were in all likelihood part of the same governing and administrative body that had a hand in drafting the Covenants. The startling similarities between the Ṣiffīn Arbitration Agreement and the Covenants therefore set the foundations for a comparative method that will help us better understand statecraft in the study of early Islam’s political documents.