Abstract:

Finishing an Atlas of Islamic History has led to me to reflect on the nature of Islamic history, and on whether there might be some kind of ‘natural’ end date to it. I decided to end the Atlas just before 1914, since the period after the First World War saw the disintegration of the land empires of Austria-Hungary, Germany, the Ottomans, the Qajars, and Russia, and the emergence of new national states all over the world formed mostly on the basis of language and/or ethnicity. I have begun to think about what ‘Islamic history’ actually means: the notion may sound somewhat flawed, suggesting, perhaps, that ‘Islam’ is some monolithic entity that has maintained itself as constant and unchanging since its origins. In fact, Islam has shown enormous vitality and a profound capacity to adapt to a host of different situations.  I would also like to revisit the notion of the ‘Islamic state.’ While Medina at the time of the Prophet can be described as an ‘Islamic polity,’ based upon the Constitutions of Medina, scholars generally agree that the concept of an Islamic state did not exist in the classical period, and that its modern form does not antedate the early twentieth century. In fact, there is no agreement among Muslim theologians either as to how such a state might or should be set up, or indeed whether its existence would be permissible in Islamic terms.