Iranian Studies, volume 38, number 4, December 2005

Deborah Tor
Privatized Jihad and Public Order in the Pre-Seljuq Period:
The Role of the Mutatawwia
Whoever acts as vanguard before the Muslims in the path of God as a
mutatawwi, without a ruler [sultan] having taken him [i.e. voluntarily, not as
part of an ofcial campaign], shall never see the Fire with his own eyes except
[enough] to satisfy the conditions of the [Quranic] oath; for God, may He be
praised, who has no partner, says: There is none of you but he is coming to it1
Abu Yala al-Mawsili al-Hanbali, Musnad III, #1490
Until now, various phenomena central to the emergence of classical Islamic civilization the transference of religious authority from the caliphs to the scholars
of Prophetic tradition; the political disintegration of the Caliphate; the rise of
autonomous Persianate dynasties in the central Islamic lands; and the internecine
religious conict leading to violent chaos within the citieshave been viewed as
disparate and unrelated developments. In particular, scholars have failed to see
any connection between the changes in caliphal religious standing caused by
the rise of early Sunnism and the deep and far-reaching changes in public order
which took place between the ninth and eleventh centuries. As a result, scholars
have been at a loss when trying to explain how and why these sea changes
occurred.2 Obviously, each of these changes was extremely complex, the
product of many contributing factors; but for analytical purposes this paper
The author is in the Department of Middle Eastern History at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. She
warmly thanks Patricia Crone for her many helpful criticisms and remarks.
1
Ahmad b. Ali b. al-Muthanna Abu Ya la al-Mawsili al-Hanbali, Musnad Abi Yala al-Mawsili, ed.
Husayn Asad (Damascus, 1404/1984) 3, #1490. See also #1486, Whoever fasts one day in the path of
God while a mutatawwi, without its being Ramadan, is kept away from the Fire for a hundred years. . ..
2
Thus one nds, for example, that while Crone and Hinds adumbrate the progress of the transference of religious authority from the caliphs to the keepers of Prophetic hadith, beginning with the
new assertions of the Traditionists in the late Umayyad period (P. Crone and M. Hinds, Gods
Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam [Cambridge, 1990], 71, 84 85), through
their going public under al-Mahdi (87) and eventual triumph by al-Mutawakkils reign (97),
Crone and Hinds never answer the question of why the Traditionists won, nor do they link the
undermining of the caliphs religious authority to the undermining of his earthly authority as
well. See also Hinds, sv Mihna, EI2 7: 6: The principal consequences of the failure of the
mihna are clear enough: it brought to a decisive end any notion of a caliphal role in the denition
of Islam and it permitted the unchecked development of what in due course would become recognisable as Sunnism. That is, Hinds focuses exclusively on the loss of caliphal religious authority
without connecting this defeat to the caliphates political disintegration.

ISSN 0021-0862 print=ISSN 1475-4819 online=05=040555-19

#2005 The International Society for Iranian Studies
DOI 10.1080=00210860500338358

556 Tor

will examine the way in which, to some extent, all of these fundamental changes in
the major institutions of Islamic society were ramications of a radical transformation in the Jihad which took place in the mid-eighth century.
From the earliest days of the Islamic polity, one of the most important duties of
its leader, be he the Prophet or a caliph, was to lead and direct the jihad sabil
allahmilitary striving in the path of God against the unbelievers. The
Quran is quite unambiguous about this obligation; some of its numerous statements on the subject include Let those ght in the path of God who sell the life
of this world for the hereafter; and whoever ghts in the path of God, whether he
is killed or triumphs, we shall give him a great reward;3 or: God has bought
from the believers their lives and their wealth in return for Paradise; they ght
in the way of God, kill and get killed. That is a true promise from Him. . .and
who fullls His promise better than God?. . .4 This Quranic injunction was
put into effect from the time of the Prophet onwards, and resulted in the creation
of a vast Islamic Empire during the century after the religions founding.5
The chief enemy of the early Muslim state was unquestionably the Byzantine
Empire, which was not only the major military opponent of the Muslims, but
also posed the only serious ideological and religious challenge to Islam.6 The
early Islamic apocalyptic literature therefore envisions as one of the signs of
the Last Days the capture of both New Romethat is, Constantinopleand
3

Quran 4:74. For a discussion of the Quranic injunction see R. Firestone, Jihad: The Origin of Holy
War in Islam (Oxford, 1999), especially Part II, on Jihad in the Quran. In Vecchia Vaglieris words,
Islam. . .instilled into the hearts of the warriors the belief that a war against the followers of another
faith was a holy war, and that the booty was a recompense offered by God to his soldiers. (L. Veccia
Vaglieri, The Patriarchal and Umayyad Caliphates, The Cambridge History of Islam, ed. P.M. Holt
et alii, [Cambridge, 1995] 1: 60). See also Fred Donners thoughtful discussion of the tendency of
some Western scholars to dismiss the traditional Muslim view of the religious motivation underlying
the Islamic Conquests (F. Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests [Princeton, 1981], 270).
4
Quran 9:110. The translation is Majid Fakhrys, The Quran: A Modern English Version,
(Reading, 1997), p. 123, except that the present author has substituted God where Fakhry uses
Allah.
5
On the religious elaboration of the idea and its early practical execution see David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley, 2005), Chapter 1.
6
Thus Hugh Kennedy characterizes the campaigns of the Muslims against the Byzantines as the
focus of the military activities of Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs. (Kennedy, The Armies of the
Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State [New York and London, 2001], xiv). In Ibn alAdims Bughyat al-talab there is a tradition according to which the mutatawwi al-Fazari asks the
even more renowned Eastern Iranian mutatawwi Abdallah b. al-Mubarak why he had to come all
the way to the Byzantine march to battle Indels when there were plenty of Turkish ones close at
hand in Eastern Iran; Ibn al-Mubarak answers that whereas the Turks were ghting only about
worldly power, the Byzantines were battling the Muslims over their faith, So which is the more
worthy of defense: our world or our faith? (cited in D. Cook, Muslim Apocalyptic and Jihad, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam xx [1996]: 98). Abu Daud, a student of several of Ibn al-Mubaraks
students (vide infra) likewise includes a tradition stating that there is extra religious merit in ghting ahl
al-kitab (Abu Daud Sulayman b. al-Ashath al-Sijistani, Kitab al-Sunan: Sunan Abu Daud, ed. Muhammad Awwama [Beirut, 1998] 3: 204 205, in the section Kitab al-Jihad, chapter 8, In praise of
ghting the Byzantines above all other nations, tradition #2480).

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 557

Old Rome.7 Moreover, the Islamic polity by the end of the seventh century
seemedat least to the Muslimswell on the way toward realizing this goal
of Roman conquest: it had taken from the Roman Empire in a space of less
than 70 years all of Syria, Egypt and North Africa, in addition to having
swallowed virtually the entire Sasanian Empire.
The Muslim wave of expansion met with a real check only at the Siege of
Constantinople of 717, some 90 years after the rst conquests. This setback
effectively resulted in a halt to the massive, centrally-directed warfare that had
been the hallmark of the Islamic state virtually from the time of its inception.8
The expansionist campaigns on the Byzantine front subsequently assumed a
somewhat different form from before: Instead of large-scale wars conducted
by whole armies, the Jihad in the 720s and 730s now focused solely on the
smaller-scale state-sanctioned raids known as ghazawat, and in particular the
summer raids, or sawaif, both of which had been in existence since early
Islamic times.9
7

Vide Nuaym b. Hammad b. Muawiyya b. al-Harith al-Khuzai al-Marwazi, al-Fitan (Beirut,

1418/1997), 295 301, the chapter entitled al-Amaq wa-fath al-Qustantiniyya, particularly the
long tradition #1163; Abul Husayn Ahmad b. Jafar b. al-Munadi, Malahim, ed. Abd al-Karim
al-Uqayli (Qumm, 1418/1998), 145 148; 210. One alternative apocalyptic vision (e.g. Ibn
al-Munadi, Malahim 105, 242) simply envisions the conversion of the Romans (and the saqaliba)
to Islam. Note that both these authors were intimately connected with early proto-Hanbalite circles.
8
See Khalid Yahya Blankinship, The End of the Jihad State: The Reign of Hisham Ibn Abd al-Malik and
the Collapse of the Umayyads (Albany, 1994), 19, 117 118. In the Byzantine context, Bosworth notes the
xing of the frontier in the wake of 717: After the high point of Sulayman b. Abd al-Maliks abortive
attack on Constantinople in 97 99/715 717, the frontier became stabilized. (Byzantium and the
Syrian frontier in the early Abbasid period, The Arabs, Byzantium and Iran: Studies in Early Islamic
History and Culture. Variorum Collected Studies Series [Aldershot, 1996], Article XII:56). That the conquests had a centralized nature even before the establishment of Umayyad rule is persuasively established by Fred McGraw Donner, Centralized Authority and Military Autonomy in the Early Islamic
Conquests, The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. Vol. 3: States, Resources and Armies, ed. Averil
Cameron (Princeton, 1995), 337 360.
9
On this change in tactic see Blankinship, The End of the Jihad State, 118. On the Eastern front the
state of things was even worse from a Muslim standpoint; from 724 until circa 740 the Muslims were
in a precarious defensive position (H.A.R. Gibb, The Arab Conquests in Central Asia [London, 1923],
65 86). As for the raids: The Prophet himself conducted raids (See Khalifa b. Khayyat b. Abi
Hubayra al-Laythi al-Usfuri, Tarikh Khalifa b. Khayyat, ed. Mustafa Fawwaz et al, [Beirut, 1415/
1995], e.g. 38, 60), as did the representatives of the Rashidun caliphs-e.g. Abu Musa
al-Asharis ghazw during Uthmans caliphate (ibid. 113). In fact, Uthman is the rst caliph for
whom we have a list of the commanders whom he appointed for the saifa raids upon Byzantium
(ibid. 134 135). Pace Michael Bonners assertion (Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the
Jihad and the Arab- Byzantine Frontier, American Oriental Series [New Haven, 1996] 81:57) that
Abbasid interest in the summer raids- and in particular the appointing of Abbasid princes to
lead them- was something novel, we see the Umayyads sending their relatives on ghazi raids- and
particularly the saifa- constantly: e.g. Muhammad b. Marwans leading of the saifa in the years
75 (Khalifa 209) and 83 (ibid. 256, where it is also mentioned that al-Abbas b. al-Walid raided);
the raids of the year 114, one raid of which was led by Mu awiya b. Hisham, and which joined
up with the forces of the legendary ghazi Abdallah al-Battal, and the other of which was
commanded by Sulayman b. Hisham (Khalifa 271).

558 Tor

While these resulted in some notable successes, they were campaigns which
seemed to have relinquished the hope of a quick and immediate conquest of
the Byzantine Empire, and focused on a long-term war of attrition instead. Moreover, even this limited policy collapsed entirely in the 740s due to the internal disorders of the Caliphate and the huge Berber revolt that marked the end of
effective caliphal rule in North Africa west of Tunis.10 In short, there was a diminution of the scale of campaigning from 717 until the resumption of grand (if
somewhat ritual) campaigns under the Abbasids; of greater concern was the
loss of governmental focus on the jihadic drive, and its attendant result on the
battleeld: the Muslims were on the defensive, on the Byzantine frontier and
elsewhere.
The immediate result of the collapse of even the limited Jihad policy was that
the Byzantines went on the offensive: in 740 the Emperor Leo defeated and killed
the famous ghazi Abdallah al-Battal and in the following years the Byzantines
repeatedly brought the conict into Muslim territory, capturing several
towns.11 The ` Abbasid Revolution further distracted the Muslim central authorities; even after the ofcial establishment of the ` Abbasid caliphate, for many
years the numerous Alid and other revolts kept the Caliphal armies tied up
within the Dar al-Islam itself.12 As a result, throughout the 750s as well, the
Arabs were generally on the defensive.13
The effective halting of the Jihadand, even worse, the reversal of the offensive into Muslim territorymust have posed an unprecedented crisis for the
Faithful. The Jihad, a central tenet of the faith, one which had constituted
the main focus of the Caliphates endeavours from the very beginning of the
Islamic polity, had fallen into abeyance. Obviously, the resulting moral and military vacuum at the frontier could not lastand, indeed, it did not. What has
been termed the Jihad State may have ended, but the Jihad itself did not; it
simply became what we today would call privatized; that is, it went from centrally directed state campaigns to independent, non-governmentally controlled,
smaller scale raids led and manned by mutatawwia, volunteer warriors for the
faith. This transferral of religious leadership in the Jihad, from the caliph to
the mutatawwia, in turn led to truly fundamental changes in all areas of
Islamic civilization.
10
On the Berber Revolt see M. Brett, The Arab Conquest and the rise of Islam in North
Africa, Cambridge History of Africa. Volume 2: From 500 BC to AD 1050, ed. J.D. Fage
(Cambridge, 1978), 516 521. For an account of the internal turmoil in the central lands of the
Caliphate see Moshe Sharon, Revolt: The Social and Military Aspects of the Abbasid Revolution
(Jerusalem, 1990), 25 48.
11
Bosworth, Byzantium and the Syrian Frontier, 56.
12
Thus Bosworth (Byzantium and the Syrian Frontier, 58) notes that it was not until the
760s, when the Abbasid caliphate, under the vigiorous direction of al-Mansur, achieved a
greater degree of internal stability. . .[that] a more activist policy along the frontier
was. . .pursued.
13
Ibid. 57.

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 559

The twelfth-century biographer and religious scholar al-Samani denes the

mutatawwia as
a group who have devoted themselves entirely to the ghazw and the jihad,
stationed themselves on the frontiers and devoted themselves to [tatawwau
bi] the ghazw and sought the ghazw in the lands of the indels when it was
not incumbent upon them and present in their land.14
The term mutatawwi does appear sporadically in reference to earlier,
seventh-century volunteer Jihad forces.15 Those early volunteers differ fundamentally from the movement which arose in the late Umayyad/early Abbasid
period in several essential aspects, however: First, they seem to have received
state stipends, and to have worked in close cooperation with the government.
Second, they are found mainly on the Eastern Iranian border and, interestingly, in Spainnot on the Byzantine frontier. Nor are there, before the
late Umayyad period, any biographies of individual mutatawwia, mutatawwi
chains of transmission from one generation to the next, or any special religious
ideology; religious volunteering in the Jihad, like the Jihad itself, was still a
state enterprise. All of this changes dramatically in the late Umayyad and
early Abbasid period when, in the process of their assuming leadership in
the Jihad, the mutatawwia came to signify a religious movement with its
own ideology.
The founders of the mutatawwia movementAbd al-Rahman b. Umar
al-Awzai, Abdallah b. al-Mubarak, Ibrahim b. Adham, and Abu Ishaq
al-Fazari (all eastern Iranians, with the possible exception of al-Awzai16)
were those gures whom Michael Bonner has referred to as scholars and
saints of the frontier.17 They were much more than a group of pious individuals, however; for under the inuence of these gures, mutatawwia became a
term that denoted a group unied by both social ties and, above all, a cohesive
14

Abd al-Karim b. Muhammad al-Samani, Kitab al-Ansab, ed. Abd al-Qadir Ata (Beirut, 1419/
1998) 5:213.
15
Although it is debatable whether or not the sources which mention such groups are not anachronistically projecting the term back in time, since the earliest of those sources dates to the ninth
century. The earliest references this author has been able to nd occur in works of the late-9th
century writer Ahmad b. Yahya al-Baladhuri, Ansab al-ashraf, ed. Mahmud al-Fardaws al-Azm
(Damascus, 1997) 6:422; and the tenth-century works of Tabari (Tarikh, ed. Muhammad
Ibrahim [Beirut, no date] 6:532) and the anonymously composed Akhbar majmua fath al-Andalus
wa-dhikr umaraiha, ed. Ibrahim al-Abyari (Cairo and Beirut, 1989), 14, which ends with the reign of
Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad al-Nasir (d. 961).
16
It is unclear where he was born. The number of conicting traditions that Al-Mizzi reports
(Tahdhib al-kamal asma al-rijal [Beirut 1418/1998] 11:314 315) regarding the nisba would
suggest that the attempts to explain its origin were simply guesswork on the part of the biographers;
although, signicantly, one of the traditions claims that his origins were to be found in Sind (315).
This, of course, would mean that, like the other founding gures, he came from the Iranian East.
17
Bonner, Aristocratic Violence, Chapter 4, 107 130.

560 Tor

ideology and shared religious outlook. Among the many religious and
ideological characteristics the mutatawwia shared were the following: strongly
ascetic leanings18 and associations19they composed not only the rst books
of Jihad in Islam, but also the rst books of zuhd;20 an unwavering commitment to what they viewed as ones personal obligation to engage in warfare
for the faith, irrespective of the directives of the caliph or the government;
and, most saliently, rm and unagging devotion to the ahl al-hadith Traditionist camp.21
These founding gures inaugurated a movement of volunteers, hailing
mostly from the eastern, Iranian part of the caliphate, who ocked to the
Byzantine marcher lands specically in order to uphold the Jihad and pursue
the new Traditionist version of the spiritual life generally. Their followers,
the mutatawwia as a group, suddenly begin to appear steadily and frequently
in the chronicles and other literary sources of the time, and to play an increasingly noticeable role in the events of their time. It is our contention that the rise
of the mutatawwia wrought some of the most signicant changes that occurred
during the eighth through tenth centuries, religiously, politically, and socially,
but particularly with regard to the religious authority and role of the
government.
Religiously, the mutatawwia movement brought about a revolution regarding the proper role of the political authorities in the Jihad. Certain scholars
have already noted that the concept of Jihad being formulated by these proponents of border warfare was fundamentally different from the concept of Jihad
being articulated at the same time in the Hijaz (most notably by Malik).22
There was a deep ideological conict expressed in these two opposing views:
namely, do political leaders have religious control over the Jihad, or is it,
rather, a religious obligation in which any believer may engage at any
timeas he is entitled to do with, say, the giving of almsirrespective of
the political authority. It was the latter view, the view of the mutatawwia,
18

Thus, to give just a few of the more spectacular examples, Ibrahim b. Adham is said to have
subsisted on clay alone for 20 days while on the Hajj (al-Imam Ahmad b. Abdallah Abu Nuaym
al-Isbahani, Hilyat al-awliya wa-tabaqat al- asya, ed. Mustafa Abd al-Qadir Ata [Beirut, 1418/
1997] 7:435); at another point, during Ramadan, he tormented himself by hard physical labor
and sleep deprivation: [He] harvested the crop during the day and prayed at night, so that he
lived for thirty days, not sleeping at night nor during the day.(Ibid. 7:439).
19
Associating, for instance, with such proto-Sus as Junayd, Sufyan al-Thawri, and Shaqiq
al-Balkhi.
20
E.g. Abdallah b. al-Mubarak, Kitab al-zuhd wal-raqaiq, ed. Habib al-Rahman al-Azami
(Beirut, no date).
21
On the very strong ahl al-hadith leanings of the early mutatawwia, vide D.G. Tor, The Ayyars: A
Study in Religious Warfare, Chivalry, and Violence in the Medieval Eastern Islamic World (Istanbuler Texte
und Studien series of the Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, forthcoming), chapter 2.
22
J. Chabbi, Ribat, EI2 8:495; she identies as a new type of activism the understanding of
Jihad being advocated by circles yet to be identied,which we are here identifying as the
mutatawwi[which] began to stress the meritorious aspect of military service on the frontier.

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 561

which won (at least in Iraq), and was eventually adopted by both the Shaite
and Hanbalite schools.23
The ramications of this mutatawwi victory were immense. Again in the
religious sphere, the early mutatawwia played a decisive role in the consolidation
of Sunnismand particularly Hanbalismin the decades around the turn of the
third Hijri century. The mutatawwi emphasis on the individual responsibilities of the
believer before Godparticularly concerning the Jihadand on guidance by
the Prophetic Sunna weakened the religious role of the Caliph, and marked, if
not the beginning, certainly one of the most signicant steps in the process
Crone and Hinds have described as the transition from Caliphal to Prophetic
sunna, and also accords well with the timeline they present.24 Thus, the
mutatawwia, the militant arm of the proto-Sunni Traditionists, played a signicant
role in Sunnisms victory through the religious prestige they acquired in their role
in leading the Jihad.25
For the mutatawwia belonged, in Juynbolls words describing Abdallah
b. al-Mubarak, to Islams rst orthodox, or proto-Sunnites;26 and many of
these fathers of tatawwu or their students taught people who were seminal
gures in Sunnism. The best way to illustrate this intimate connection between
the mutatawwia and the early Sunnis is with some specic examples. One
student of the rst generation of mutatawwia was Abu Ishaq al-Surini, who
was not only a jurisprudent but received the appellations of al-Muttawwii
al-Shahid and was also known as Ibrahim b. Nasr the Sunni the martyr.
Al-Surini is credited in the sources with being The rst who proclaimed
madhhab al-hadith in Nishapur.27 Following the common mutatawwi pattern,
al-Surini left Nishapur and journeyed to Syria to pursue the spiritual life of the
sunna and the Jihad. While in Syria he heard hadith from Abdallah
b. al-Mubarak, al-Fazaris uncle Marwan b. Muawiya, and Sufyan b. Uyayna28
23

Vide Roy Mottahedeh and Ridwan al-Sayyid, The Idea of Jihad in Islam before the Crusades,
in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki Laiou and Roy
Mottahedeh (Washington, D.C., 2001), 26 27. On one important point the present author disagrees with the article: Mottahedeh and Sayyid attribute the obvious doubt manifested in the questions to Malik regarding the legitimacy of participating in border warfare led by the Umayyads to
reservations about the legitimacy of Umayyad rule. The present author believes, rather, that
the question at that time- particularly in light of the ideological competition- was whether or not it
was legitimate at all for a volunteer warrior to place himself under the political establishment. This
would recast the debate from one about the nature or legitimacy of Umayyad rule into one about the
nature of tatawwu, which seems a far more likely topic for religious discussion in the context of this
time.
24
Crone and Hinds, Gods Caliph 82 93.
25
Vide infra for a description of how they were regarded in their own time.
26
G.H.A. Juynboll, An excursus on the ahl al-sunna in connection with Van Ess, Theologie und
Gesellschaft, vol. IV, Der Islam lxxv (1998): 330. Juynboll points out (321) that the rst denition
of a sahib sunna is given by Abdallah b. al-Mubarak in Ibn Abi Yalas Tabaqat al-Hanabila.
27
Ibn Asakir, Tarikh madinat Dimashq, 7:238.
28
Samani, al-Ansab 3:358; Ibn Asakir, Tarikh madinat Dimashq 7:236, 238.

562 Tor

(who himself transmitted hadith not only to Ibn al-Mubarak and al-Fazari but also
to al-Shai and Ahmad b. Hanbal29).
The inuence of the mutatawwia becomes even clearer in the second generation
after the founders. Perhaps the most outstanding example from the second generation, since he himself taught many important Sunni traditionist gures, is
Ibrahim [b. Muhammad] b. Arara al-Mutatawwii.30 A disproportionate
number of Ibrahims major teachers studied directly with Abdallah
b. al-Mubarak; out of the ten names listed in Dhahabis Siyar as having taught
Ibn Arara, fully half of those named transmitted from Ibn al-Mubarak. 31
Ibrahim b. Arara himself taught many of the most important early Sunni religious gures: Muslim, Abu Yala al-Mawsili, Abu Bakr Abdallah
b. Muhammad b. Abi al-Dunya, Abu Zura [Ubaydallah b. Abd al-Karim
al-Razi]; and Abu Hatim Muhammad b. Idris al-Razi.32
By the ninth century, some of the most prominent gures among the protoSunni Traditionists not only had a religious lineage stretching back to the
mutatawwi founders, but were themselves continuing the militant strain and producing mutatawwi students. Most signicantly, all of the six canonical Sunni Traditionists, with the exception of Ibn Maja,33 studied with al-Husayn b. Hurayth
al-Khuzai al-Marwazi, who was a student of several of the major mutatawwii
founding gures: Ibn al-Mubarak, Fudayl b. Iyad, al-Fazaris uncle Marwan
b. Muawiya, and Sufyan b. Uyayna.34 Additionally, all of the cannonical
Sunni hadith compilers except Muslim studied with Muhammad b. Aban
al-Mustamli, who in turn was a pupil of Marwan b. Muawiya, Sufyan
b. Uyayna, and several of Ibn al-Mubaraks more famous pupils, including
Yahya b. Said al-Qattan and Abd al-Razzaq [b. Hammam].35
Al-Tirmidhi, Muslim, and al-Nasai also shared in common hadith studies with
Abd al-Jabbar b. Ala al-Attar, himself a student of some of the main mutatawwi
ulama, most notably Marwan b. Muawiya and Sufyan b. Uyayna.36 Ibn Maja,
another of the canonical authors of Sunni hadith compendium, studied in
Nishapur with Muhammad b. Yahya al-Dhuhli, who in turn was one of
29
Shams al-Din Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Uthman Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala (Beirut, 1403/
1983) 8:456.
30
Thus termed by Ibn Asakir, Tarikh madinat Dimashq 13:385.
31
Abd al-Razaq b. Hammam; Mutamir b. Sulayman; Yahya b. Said al-Qattan: Ibrahim
reported as having transmitted from them: Yusuf b. al-Zaki Abd al-Rahman al-Mizzi, Tahdhib
al-kamal 1:413; Ibn al-Mubarak reported as having taught them: al-Mizzi, Tahdhib al-kamal 10:
469-471; Jafar b. Sulayman al-Dubai, Abd al-Rahman b. Mahdi: Ibn Arara listed as having
studied with them in Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 11:480.
32
Muhammad Ibn Sad al-Zuhri, al-Tabaqat al-kubra (Beirut 1417/1995) 7:173, for death date.
Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 17:69 70 for death date and partial list of students; idem, Siyar alam
al-nubala 1:480; al-Mizzi, Tahdhib al-kamal 1:413 414; death date on 415.
33
Who, however, studied with a different one of Ibn al-Mubaraks students; vide infra.
34
Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 11: 400; Mizzi, Tahdhib 4: 456.
35
Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 11: 116; Mizzi, Tahdhib 16: 5.
36
Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 11: 401.

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 563

Ahmad b. Hanbals closest associates, and, together with Ibn Hanbal, a student of
several of the most famous pupils of Ibn al-Mubarak.37 Abu Daud studied with
Said b. Mansur, 38 who was close to Ibn al-Mubarak and exchanged hadith with
him; Abu Daud, Muslim, and al-Bukhari all studied with Ahmad b. Yunus
al-Yarbui, who transmitted from Sufyan al-Thawri and, like Ibn al-Mubarak,
from al-Hasan b. Salih as well.39
This connection between Sunni Traditionists on the one hand and the mutatawwi founders on the other is particularly evident when we examine the Hanbalites. Ahmad b. Hanbal himself had numerous connections going back to the early
mutatawwia. The list of his teachers includes, in addition to al-Fazaris uncle
Marwan b. Muawiya, many prominent people who heard hadith from Abdallah
b. al-Mubarak, including Mutamir b. Sulayman al-Taymi, Affan b. Muslim,
Abd al-Rahman b. Mahdi, and the two teachers of one of the main instructors
of almost all the canonical hadith compilers, Yahya b. Said al-Qattan and Abd
al-Razzaq [b. Hammam]. Ibn Hanbals prominent students, on the other hand,
included mutatawwia, for instance Abu Bakr Yaqub b. Yusuf b. Ayyub
al-Mutatawwi,40 who is supposed to have confessed that in his youth it was
his custom to recite Say: He is God 31,000or even 41,000times a day.41
Moreover, many of Ibn Hanbals close friends and associates show the same
kind of mutatawwi inuence in their religious pedigrees. Muhammad b. Yahya
al-Dhuhli, for instance, was an important Hanbalite associate who transmitted
to Sunni luminaries such as Ibn Maja, Said b. Mansur and Abu Daud
al-Sijistani.42 Ahmad b. Hanbal, so we are told used to praise [Muhammad
b. Yahya] and broadcast his excellence; 43 Ibn Hanbal is also reported to have
said that he never met anyone who knew more of al-Zuhris traditions,44 and
37
Abul-Husayn Muhammad Ibn Abi Yala al-Baghdadi al-Hanbali, Tabaqat al-fuqaha al-hanabila,
ed. Ali Muhammad Umar (Cairo, 1419/1998) 2: 201.
38
Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 13: 205.
39
On al-Yarbui vide Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 10: 457; for the list of al-Hasan b. Salihs students, ibid. 7: 362. The canonical authors also number mutatawwia among their most prominent students. One of al-Nasais important pupils, for instance, was Abul-Abbas al-Hasan b. Said b. Jafar
al-Abbadani al-Muttawwii (d. 981); he is described as al-shaykh al-imam, shaykh al-qurra.
(Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 16: 260 261); It is stated under Ibn Majas biographical entry
that one of . . . the most famous in relating traditions from him. . .[was] Abu Jafar Muhammad
b. Isa al-Muttawwii, Abd al-Karim b. Muhammad al-Rai al-Qazwini, al-Tadhwin akhbar
Qazwin (Beirut, 1408/1987) 2:49 50.
40
Ibn Abi Yala, Tabaqat al-fuqaha al-hanabila 1: 548; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 21: 338.
41
Abu Bakr Ahmad b. Ali al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Tarikh Baghdad (Beirut, no date) 14: 289;
Abul Faraj Abd al-Rahman Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam tarikh al-muluk wal-umam, ed.
M. A. Ata et alii (Beirut, 1412/1992) 12: 414 415.
42
Tarikh Baghdad 3: 415 416. Note that both of these latter two gures composed some of our
earliest contributions to the Kitab al-jihad literature as well.
43
Tarikh Baghdad 3: 415 416.
44
Tarikh Baghdad 3: 417; al-Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 12: 281. An even stronger statement is
the following: I used to hear our religious leaders [mashaikhana] saying: The tradition that
Muhammad b. Yahya does not know is not worth knowing [lit.: is insignicant]. Ibid. 12: 280.

564 Tor

to have deemed Muhammad b. Yahya the Imam of hadith [ jaalnahu al-imam

l-hadith. . .].45 al-Dhuhli heard from disciples of Ibn al-Mubarak such as Said
b. Mansur (to whom, as we have just seen, he also imparted traditions), Abd
al-Rahman b. Mahdi, Affan b. Muslim, and Yahya b. Said al-Qattan.46
There are some indications that Muhammad b. Yahyas teachings possessed the
militant Sunni tendency that was the hallmark of the mutatawwia: both of his
known sonswho studied with himand at least one of his pupils are described
as ghazis in the biographical literature, while one of those sons and yet another
pupil died a martyrs death.47 Moreover, Muhammad b. Yahya seems to have
acted as theological watchdog for the Hanbalites. He warned Ahmad b. Hanbal
against associating with the theologian Daud al-Zahiri because of the latters
espousal of certain heretical beliefs.48 Subsequently, he was personally responsible
for the expulsion of al-Bukhari from Nishapur on the same grounds.49 This kind
of uncompromising attitude toward the religiously erring accords well with the
practice of Ibn al-Mubarak, who is said, for instance, to have refused to speak
for thirty days with one of his close associates simply because that man had
eaten with an innovator[sahib bida].50 If space permitted, we could take
virtually every one of the important proto-Hanbalite gures and demonstrate
the same kind of direct social, religious, and ideological connections with the
militant mutatawwi tradition. We shall, however, have to content ourselves
merely with noting that the mutatawwi movement was central to the formation
of early Sunnism generally and Hanbalism in particular.
The rise of the mutatawwia, and the signicance of their victory in reshaping
the Jihad, was not limited to the religious sphere, though; it was fraught with political consequences as well. Jihad had traditionally lain at the heart of the Muslim
polity from the time of the Prophet; the very rst governmental organization, the
diwan, had been an outcome of this focus on bringing Gods rule to the Dar
al-Harb. The fact that the Jihad now passed largely out of governmental hands
meant that a major factor in the religious identication of Islam with the government was removed. More importantly, since the nongovernmental mutatawwi
45
Al-Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 12: 280. A similar tradition states: The Imam of imams Ibn
Khuzayma said: Muhammad b. Yahya al-Dhuhli, the imam of his age, may God cause him to dwell
in His garden with those who love him, related to us. (ibid. 12: 284).
46
Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 12: 273 274.
47
For Abul Husayn Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Yahya al-Naysaburi al-Ghazi see al-Samani,
al-Ansab 4: 244, #7476; for al-Dhuhlis pupil Abu Hamid Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Rifa
al-Ghazi al-Naysaburi, see ibid. 4: 245, #7477; his pupil Abul-Abbas Hamid b. Mahmud
b. Muhammad al-Sikshi al-Naysaburi al-Shahid can be found in ibid. 3: 292, #5269.
48
Christopher Melchert, The Adversaries of Ahmad b. Hanbal, Arabica xliv (1997): 2, pp.
244 245; al-Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 20: 93 also speaks about Muhammad b. Yahyas having
warned against these doctrines of Dauds.
49
Salah al-Din Khalil b. Aybek al-Safadi, Kitab al-wa bil-wafayat (Wiesbaden, 1970) 5: 187;
Melchert, ibid. 245 246. For this quarrel, and Ahmad b. Hanbals alliance with Muhammad
b. Yahya on this matter, see al-Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 12: 284 285.
50
Abu Nuaym, Hilyat al-awliya 8: 178, #11799.

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 565

view of the Jihad was part of a complete religious outlook regarding the relative
worth of the contemporaneous imamate compared to that of the Prophet and
the early Muslims as preserved by the Traditionists, the undermining effect
that the mutatawwii victory in the Jihad had upon the caliphs religious standing
and authority was not and could not be limited to that one religious area. Rather,
once the question of who would wield religious authority in Islam had been
settled in favor of the Traditionistsin no small part, thanks to the prestige of
the mutatawwiacaliphal religious stature and authority crumbled, with political
authority and power soon following in their wake.
The early Abbasid caliphs realized they were losing their moral high ground
and religious prestige to the mutatawwia, and attempted to remedy the situation
by trying to compete with the mutatawwia on their own ground; it is no accident,
for instance, that Harun al-Rashids pattern of Jihad one year,51 Hajj the next
mirrors exactly the behaviour attributed to Abdallah b. al-Mubarak.52 To state
the matter differently: one indication of the political importance that began to
accrue to the mutatawwia in the early Abbasid period is the way in which they
affected caliphal policy. The sudden renewed interest shown in Jihad by the
early Abbasid caliphs indicates the degree to which they felt pressured to
emulate the mutatawwia, and also that perhaps the most important way of bolstering ones religious legitimacy and manifesting religious leadership was through
personally undertaking Jihad activities.53 The intensity of Caliphal involvement
in the ghazw is especially marked in the period extending from the caliphate of
al-Mahdi through that of Harun al-Rashid.
Thus we read that from the mid-760s to the 780s al-Mahdi sent numerous
raids, many led by either himself or his son Harun, into Byzantine territory,
frequently in cooperation with mutatawwia forces.54 Once Harun became
51

Pace Bonner, who noted the unusual Jihadi behaviour, but considered it, rather, to be a countermeasure to the weakening of central power which he attributed to the supposed power of aristocratic warlords; Vide Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War, chapter 3.
52
Thus Abu Nu aym al-Isbahani, Hilyat al-awliya 8: 172, calls him Friend [alif] of the Quran,
the Hajj and the Jihad. Note that these religious priorities are echoed in at least one of the traditions of Ahmad b. Hanbal: The Prophet. . .was asked: What is the most praiseworthy of
works? He replied: Faith in God and His Messenger. [The inquirer] said: Then what? He
responded: The Jihad in the path of God. It was said: Then what? [The Prophet] replied:
Then the blessed Hajj [hajjun mabrurun]. (Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Hanbal, al-Musnad, ed.
A. M. Shakir (Cairo, 1950 1956) 14: 23 24, tradition #7580)
53
While the Umayyads (at least until decline set in) did make a practice of appointing their relatives to conduct raids against the Indel (vide supra, note 9), the scale of the raids, their frequency,
and the prominence of the people involvedincluding the caliph himself and his own sonswas
something new and qualitatively different during the early Abbasid period from what came before.
54
Ibn Asakir, Tarikh madinat Dimashq 59: 444 445; Tabari, Tarikh 8: 116 117, 128, 136, 146,
148, 150; Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 10: 14, 17;. Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam 8: 227; and, most spectacular of all, Haruns successful raid in 165/782, which reached the Sea of Marmara and succeeded in
extracting tribute payments (which the Muslims interpreted as the jizya) from the Empress Irene
and the Byzantines. Al-Maqdisi, Kitab al-bad wal-tarikh (Beirut, 1980) 6: 96; repeated in Tabari,
Tarikh 8: 152 153; Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam 8: 277 278; Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 10: 18 19.

566 Tor

caliph, he continued to focus on the Jihad. Raids on Byzantium were continually

led from the frontier districts from the beginning of al-Rashids reign;55 this has
led scholars such as Bosworth and Bonner to term Harun the rst ghazicaliph.56 Most spectacularly, there is Haruns dedication of his son al-Qasim
to God in the year 804, apparently through pledging him to border warfare:
And in [this year] Harun al-Rashid sent his son al-Qasim to raid the summer
raid, and he gave him to God, and made [al-Qasim] a sacrice to Him and an
entreaty [unto Him], and appointed [al-Qasim] governor over the frontier
districts [awasim].57
The relative strength of caliphal religious prestige and position vis-a-vis the
mutatawwia can be seen in the disregard and even scorn the mutatawwia were
in many instances reported to have demonstrated toward earthly authority and
power, particularly in the person of the caliph; and, in striking contrast,
the great respect which the caliphs are depicted as having shown toward the
mutatawwia. One such instance can be found in al-Awzais relationship to the
caliph al-Mansur, in which the former always has the patronizing and instructional role. For example, once, when al-Mansur had refused to redeem Muslim
captives from the Byzantines, after receiving a letter from al-Awzai excoriating
his behaviour, al-Mansur reversed himself and . . .ordered the redeeming
[of the captives]forthwith.58
According to another anecdote, al-Mansur once summoned al-Awzai to come
to him and instruct him. At a certain point, one of al-Mansurs people was so
offended by al-Awzais tone and attitude towards the caliph that he drew his
sword against the alim, but was stopped by the caliph, who then sat patiently
through a rather long verbal castigation by al-Awzai.59 At least one associate
of al-Awzais, Sulayman b. Mihran (known as al-Amash),60 was declaiming
hadiths stating that obedience, even to legitimate political authority, was owed
only so long as that authority was commanding the right.61
55
For a summary of the raiding activity between 170 and 189, see Bonner, Aristocratic Violence
89 95.
56
Thus Bosworth (The History of al-Tabari Vol. XXX: The Abbasid Caliphate in Equilibrium
[Albany, 1989], xvii), refers to his image as the great Ghazi-Caliph; cited and concurred with
by Bonner, Aristocratic Violence 99. See also Bonners article on the subject, Al-Khalifa
al-Mardi: The Accession of Harun al-Rashid, Journal of the American Oriental Society cix (1988):
79 91, passim.
57
Tabari, Tarikh 8: 302; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil 6: 189. Khalifa (Tarikh 375) and al-Yaqubi
(Tarikh 2: 297) do not speak of the dedication to God and sacrice.
58
Abu Nuaym, Hilyat al-awliya 6: 146 147.
59
Abu Nuaym, Hilyat al-awliya 6: 147 151.
60
From whom al-Awzai related traditions; Vide al-Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 6: 227.
61
Ahmad b. Hanbal, Musnad 2: 47 48, #622. In this tradition, the Prophet himself has appointed
a particular commander over a group of the Ansar, and enjoined that they obey him. When the
commander orders the troop to cast themselves into a re, however, they balk and inquire of the
Prophet, who says to them: If you had entered [into] it you would never have left it forever,
for obedience is only in [what is] good [al-maruf].

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 567

al-Awzais attitude, like that of the other early mutatawwia, exemplies the
attitude toward Prophetic sunna which exalted tradition, incidentally magnifying the religious authority of the traditionists and scholars at the expense of
Caliphal authority, particularly caliphal religious authority.62 This attitude
was common to the other leaders of the movement as well: It is said that
Ibn al-Mubarak was asked: Who are the notables [al-nas]? He replied:
The ulama. It was said: And who are the kings [al-muluk]? He replied:
The ascetics [al-zuhhad].63 In yet another tradition, Ibn al-Mubarak contrasts
what he views as the importance of the ulama and of worldly leadersto the
detriment of the latter: Ibn al-Mubarak said: Whoever scorns the ulama, loses
his Next World [dhahabat akhiratuhu], and whoever scorns princes, loses this
world. . .64
A similar tradition recounts how Harun al-Rashid exclaimed one day to Ibn
al-Mubaraks friend and close associate Fudayl b. Iyad:
What an ascetic you are! [Fudayl] replied: You are more of an ascetic than I!
[Harun] said: How so? [Fudayl] said: Because I renounce pleasure in this
world [only], whereas you renounce pleasure in th e Next World; this world
is transitory, whereas the Next World is eternal.65
Another of the leading mutatawwia, al-Fazari, showed his scant use for and low
opinion of the government in his practice of ejecting all Qadarites and all
those who had dealings with the government from his majlis.66 It is notable
that the reservation, verging at times on disdain, felt by the traditionist ulama
toward their ruler was not, however, reciprocated, for this in itself demonstrates
the relative moral strength and public standing of the warrior-traditionists and
the caliphs.67
The relative approbation and respect in which the two sides were respectively
held by the public is made very clear in the sources. At least one story contrasts
the reverence and love people felt toward mutatawwi gures such as Ibn
al-Mubarak with their less adulatory attitude toward their caliph:
al-Rashid came to al-Raqqa, but the people ran away after Ibn al-Mubarak, so
that their shoes were cut up and the dust was raised. Umm Walad [Khayzuran]
was watching the Commander of the Faithful from a tower. . . and she said:
What is this? They replied: A Khurasani alim arrived. She said: This,
62

Crone and Hinds, Gods Caliph, 58.

Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 8: 399.
64
Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 8: 408.
65
Siraj al-Din Abu Hafs Umar b. Ali b. Ahmad b. al-Mulaqqin, Tabaqat al-awliya, ed. Mustafa
Abd al-Qadir Ata (Beirut, 1419/1998), 206.
66
Bonner, Aristocratic Violence, 110.
67
Abu Nuaym, Hilyat al-awliya 8: 174.
63

568 Tor

by God, is kingship [mulk], not the kingship of Harun, for whom the people do
not gather except by means of the police and guards.68
After Harun, the careful cultivation of and competition with the mutatawwia
was abandoned; al-Mamun tried direct confrontation instead. By the end of
al-Mamuns reign, with the failure of his somewhat desperate attempts to
harness rst the Shia and then the Rationalists to regain the religious lustre
and authority of the caliphate,69 the passing of religious authority from the
caliphs to the Traditionist scholars was virtually completed. The signicance of
the nal outcome of this struggle has been stated most clearly by Hinds:70
. . .It brought to a decisive end any notion of a caliphal role in the denition of
Islam and it permitted the unchecked development of what in due course
would become recognizable as Sunnism. . . It was now unquestionably the
ulama, rather than the caliphs, who were the legatees of the prophets. . .and
henceforward it would be they who, armed with this spiritual authority, and at
a distance from those who held temporal power, elaborated classical Islam.71
This triumph of the Traditionistsand of the mutatawwia as the militant proponents of Traditionismcan be seen in the political sphere in the fact that by the
mid-ninth century at least some caliphs and court circles began to regard the militant
warrior traditionists as posing an actual threat to political power. As early as the year
820in the closing years of the caliphal-ulama dramathe mutatawwia were
viewed as such: in that year al-Mamun appointed Tahir b. al-Husayn governor
over the entire mashriq, from Baghdad to the furthest provinces of the Mashriq.72
And it is said that the reason for his appointment was that Abd al-Rahman
al-Muttawwii gathered many troops in Nishapur in order to ght with them
the Kharijites, without the command of the governor of Khurasan; and [the
68

That is, they do so only under compulsion, when prodded by armed troops. Ibn Khallikan,
Wafayat al-ayan wa-anba abna al-zaman, ed. Muhammad Abd al-Hamid (Cairo, 1949) 3: 23;
Al-Mizzi, Tahdhib al-kamal 10: 476; Dhahabi, Siyar alam al-nubala 8: 384.
69
Although al-Mamun campaigned as well, he seems to have realized that he was ghting a
losing battle with the Traditionists to reclaim the lost religious luster from the ulama on Jihadi
grounds, hence his courting of the Shiites and then the Mutazilites to counterbalance the
Traditionists. For his Shiite experiment, vide D.G. Tor, A Re-examination of the Appointment
and Death of Ali al-Rida, Der Islam lxxviii (2001): 103 128. Regarding the mihna, Watt notes
that The doctrine of createdness [of the Quran] enhanced the power of the caliph and the
secretaries, that of uncreatedness the power of the ulama. (W.M. Watt, The Formative Period of
Islamic Thought [Edinburgh, 1973], 179).
70
In reference to the mihna alone, rather than to the much longer and larger struggle of which the
mihna was only the last battle.
71
M. Hinds, Mihna, reprinted in Studies in Early Islamic History, ed. J. Bachrach et alii
(Princeton, 1996), 243.
72
Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil 6: 360.

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 569

power players in al-Mamuns court- that is, Tahir b. al-Husayn, Ahmad b. Abi
Khalid, et alii] were scared that this would be the foundation of [the bestowing
of] the vicegerency upon him. . .73
The court gures therefore manipulated al-Mamun into appointing one of their
own, instead of Abd al-Rahman.
Here we note several characteristics of the mutatawwia as they existed in the
ninth century: First, the volunteer warriors operated with apparent total
disregard for established authority (in this case the governor of Khurasan);
they had a mandate from on high, and obviously felt that they needed no
other. Second, they were very active in ghting those who deviated from the
Sunni position (here, the Kharijites). Third, this ideological position must have
been very appealing to the public, in much the same way that, as we have seen,
Ibn al-Mubaraks was, for the most prominent gures in al-Mamuns court
were worried that by pursuing such a course Abd al-Rahman would win the
most powerful role in the government.
From this timethe time of al-Mamunonwards we see the energies of the
mutatawwia both increasingly organized, and increasingly prominent in two areas
of endeavour apart from the Byzantine frontier: the indel East, and the
commanding of the good and forbidding of evil (al-amr bil-maruf wa al-nahy
an al-munkar) inside Muslim society. Regarding the rst element, organization,
the mutatawwia were so well established by the late ninth century, that when
they set forth in companies to battle we hear that they brought their own resident
faqih with them.74 We also know that by the mid-ninth century there was a rais
al-muttawwia in Bukhara; thus implying a very organized, perhaps even ofcially
recognized presenceand Bukhara may well not have been the only city with a
person so titled.75
More ominously for what remained of caliphal authority, throughout the ninth
and tenth centuries the mutatawwia increasingly concentrated their energies on
al-amr bil-maruf within the Dar al-Islam. This was in many ways a logical
outgrowth of their attempt to order the world according to Gods will, for
Jihad and al-amr bil-maruf were, in essence, complementary activities: one
focused on imposing the divinely-ordained order within the Dar al-Islam,
while the other sought to impose this same order upon the Dar al-Harb. It is
therefore unsurprising that as caliphal power crumbled and internal disorders
consequently proliferated, mutatawwi amr bil-maruf activity included, to an
ever-growing degree, combating the internal religiously non-normative
73

Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil 6: 361.

Under the biography of Abu Ishaq Ibrahim b. Muhammad b. Abdallah b. Yazdadh
al-Mudhakkir al-Muttawwii, for instance, we are told that he was . . . among the army of the
muttawwia going out to Tarsus . . . and Abu Ishaq was their faqih and their preacher. . .
Al-Samani, al-Ansab 2: 365.
75
Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 18: 33; Abu Nasr Ali b. Hibatallah Ibn Makula, al-Ikmal, ed.
Abd al-Rahman b. Yahya Muallimi (Hyderabad, 1967) 1: 21.
74

570 Tor

elementKharijites, Shiites, and Indels within the Dar al-Islam.76 In tandem

with this growing internal focus on setting to rights the Dar al-Islam, the characteristic mutatawwi disregard for political authorities from the caliph on down,
when their injunctions do not seem to be in accordance with religious dictates,
becomes ever more noticeable.
The caliphs tried to ght back as the balance of power tipped ever more
strongly in favor of the mutatawwia; but it was increasingly a rearguard action.
We read, for instance, that in the mid-840s a particularly prominent volunteer
warrior and traditionist, Ahmad b. Nasr al-Khuzai al-Shahid, was killed personally by the caliph al-Wathiq:
. . . Al-Wathiq killed him with his own hand because he refrained from saying
that the Quran was created, and because of his speaking rudely to al-Wathiq in
public addresses. . ..He was a leader in commanding the good and forbidding
evil. And there arose with him a group of the muttawwia and their power
became excessive [istafhala amruhum], so that the Abbasid state [al-dawla]
feared a schism would be accomplished by this.77
Even after caliphal power had crumbledin large part, due to their own inadvertent sapping of the caliphs moral and religious authoritythe mutatawwia continued to play an important military and political role within the Islamic world. For the
dynamic and militant ghting force that the mutatawwia established, which neither
was under government control nor received governmental pay, did not vanish with
the temporal power of the caliphate, but remained both to provide a new source of
political leadership and, conversely, to pose a challenge to all subsequent dynasties
which wielded power in the central and eastern Islamic lands. Indeed, it was as a
natural extension of their mutatawwi activities, both in combating internal heretics
as well as in unaggingly leading the Jihad, that the Saffarids, the rst of the autonomous dynasties in the Caliphal heartland, rose to power.78 Even more striking,
though surprisingly little-remarked, is the fact that the major Persianate,
prominently Sunni dynastiesthe Saffarids, Samanids, and Ghaznavidswhich
from the mid-ninth century until Seljuq times lled the moral and political
vacuum left by the victory of Traditionism, all succeeded in gaining power and
legitimacy because they had taken up the mantle of leadership in the Jihad.79
76
This is in consonance with what we know about the behaviour of the groups to which they
were most closely akin: the Hanbalites. Vide Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding
Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 2000), 116 121.
77
Shams al-Din Muhammad b. Ahmad b. Uthman al-Dhahabi, al-Ibar khabar man ghabar, ed.
Salah al-Din Munjjid and Fuad Sayyid (Kuwait, 1960) 1: 408.
78
Vide D.G. Tor, Historical Representations of Yaqub b. al-Layth al-Saffar: A Reappraisal,
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society xii (2002): 247 275.
79
Thus we have the extensive attestations not only regarding Ya qub b. al-Layth as a leader in
the holy war (ibid.), but also regarding Ismail b. Ahmad, the real founder of Samanid greatness and
power. On his holy warrior activities and persona vide e.g.Anon., Tarikh-i Sistan., ed. Muhammad
Taqi Bahar (Tehran, 1935) 254, 256; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil 7: 264 265; Tabari, Tarikh 10: 34; and

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 571

Not only did dynasties such as the Saffarids and the Samanids rise to power as
volunteer warriors, but the mutatawwia continued to constitute a vital component
of the military might of the armies of both these dynasties. The present writer has
documented extensively elsewhere that Yaqub b. al-Layths power and success
was based upon the mutatawwia.80 Regarding the Samanids, there are numerous
attestations to the prominent part mutatawwia played as an auxiliary to that
dynastys military forces. For instance, when the ruler of China sent envoys to
the Samanid ruler Nasr b. Ahmad, Nasr sent a commander to meet and escort
them, accompanied by his muttawwia. 81 In the year 904 [291 AH], during the
most famous Samanid campaign against the indel Turks, the mutatawwia are
mentioned by name as having gone out together with the Samanid army,
apparently providing a key part of the ghting force.82
Similarly, the mutatawwia supplied an important source of strength for
the Ghaznavids throughout their period of ascendancy. During Sebuktegins
rise to power, in the year 976f, as a result of Sebuktegins ghazi activites, Jibal
King of India saw [the calamity] that was threatening to overtake him, and
that his country was going to be conquered piecemeal, so he gathered an
army which included a large number of elephants, and invaded Sebuktegins
lands in return. Sebuktegin went from Ghazna to [meet] him, and with him
were his armies and a large body of the muttawwia; and [the opposing forces]
met and fought for many days.83 The outcome of this episode was that
Sebuktegin, accompanied by his ghting forces, advanced into India,
laid waste all of that country which he came across, and repaired to Mughan [?],
among the most fortied of their strongholds, and he took it by force and
destroyed the temples of the idols and established in it the rites of Islam.
He went from there conquering the land, and killing its people, and when
he had achieved what he wished he returned to Ghazna.84
In the days of the dynastys retrenchment further East, the mutatawwia continued to occupy a prominent place in the Ghaznavid ghting forces, particularly in
relation to the Indian indels. For example, in the year 435/1043f a number of
Indian potentates leagued together in order to try to capture Lahore while
Masud was busy on his western front:
And in that year some padishahs from among the kings of Hind leagued
together and a numerous army was collected to capture Lahore. The army of
Dhahabi, Tarikh al-Islam 20: 243. Mahmud b. Sebuktegin, of course, is known to history as
Mahmud Ghazi.
80
Vide D. Tor, The Ayyars, chapter 3.
81
Al-Qadi Ahmad b. al-Rashid b. al- Zubayr (attributed), Kitab al-Dhakhair wal-tuhaf, ed.
M. Hamid Allah (Kuwait, 1959), 145.
82
Tabari, Tarikh 10: 116; Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil l-tarikh 7: 533.
83
Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil 8: 686.
84
Ibid. 687.

572 Tor

Islam was in Lahore; messengers were sent to Ghazna and they asked for
assistance. Mawdud sent an army to succour them, but before the arrival of
the army of Ghazna among the kings of India who were involved in the
siege discord arose: some of them with the mutatawwia of Mawdud entered
into friendship together with the people of the city, so that a troop returned
towards their own country.85
This war was brought to a satisfactory conclusion, as the Muslim forces and their
allies killed a multitude of Hindu rufans, and those who were spared the sword
[baqiyat al-sayf] were summoned to accept the Faith.
Furthermore, mutatawwia appear to have been social pillars of the community
as well as pillars of the army during the Ghaznavid period; we read of people such
as al-Imam Abu Dharr Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Muttawwii al-Nishapuri, a
prominent Traditionist alim who died in 401/1010f and came of a long line of
religious gures of the same stripe: All the ancestors of this Abu Dharr had
been ulama of the ghazis and muttawwia. 86
On the other hand, we nd the mutatawwia posing a grave problem for rulers
whose religious leadership or whose policies they did not accept. This is particularly apparentunsurprisingly, given the fervently Sunni ideology of the
mutatawwiaduring the Buyid period. In the year 966 (AH 355), for example,
after the Byzantines had retaken Tarsus, a vital center of volunteer holy
warrior activity,87 a large group of Khurasani Sunni mutatawwia on their way
to the frontier demanded of the Buyid governor of Rayy that he hand over the
tax revenue to them since, in the words of Jurgen Paul, it was meant exactly
for the purpose they were serving, ghting the indels and defending the Dar
al-Islam.88 Upon the governors refusal to hand over the money in support of
the ghazw, the volunteer warriors subsequently clashed with the Daylamite
troops.89 As Paul observes: There are clearly two political principles in conict
here; The state (in this case, the Buyid governor) insists on its right to decide on
85
Mir Muhammad b. Sayyid Burhan al-Din Khwavand Shah, Tarikh-i rawdat al-safa (Tehran
1339) 4: 133.
86
Abul Hasan Ali b. Zayid Bayhaqi (Ibn Funduq), Tarikh-i Bayhaq, ed. Ahmad Bahmanyar
(Tehran, n.d.), 220.
87
On the role of Tarsus as the epicenter of volunteer holy warfare, vide C.E. Bosworth, The city
of Tarsus and the Arab-Byzantine frontier, The Arabs, Byzantium and Iran: Studies in Early Islamic
History and Culture. Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot, 1996), Article XIV.
88
J. Paul, The State and the Military: The Samanid Case, Papers on Inner Asia 26 (1994): 16; cf.
Anon., The sea of precious virtues (Bahr al-favaid): a medieval Islamic mirror for princes, tr. and ed. Julie
Scott Meisami (Salt Lake City, 1991), 216: . . .The Bayt al-Mal rightfully belongs to the ulama, the
judges, the Koran readers, the poor, the orphans, and the ghazis. But [the unjust, tyrannical kings]
have taken it all, and have established a treasury for astronomers, physicians, musicians, buffoons,
cheats, winesellers, and gamblers. Woe to them; and again woe to them. Mottahedeh, too, seems to
view this episode much in the same light as does Paul- that is, one of conicting agendas and
priorities (R. Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society [London, 2001], 34).
89
Ahmad b. Muhammad b. Miskawayh, Tajarib al-umam: The Eclipse of the Abbasid Caliphate, ed.
and trans. H.F. Amedroz and D.S. Margoliouth (Oxford, 1920) 2: 223.

The Role of the Mutatawwia in the Pre-Seljuq Period 573

matters of peace and war, and above all, of taxation, whereas the volunteers
brandish the banner of their religious legitimation. 90
Another example of the disruptive role mutatawwii Sunni militancy played in
the Buyid era can be found in the wake of the Byzantine offensive of the early
1030s.91 This military offensive culminated in the raid of 1031 in which
Byzantium conquered al-Ruha, killed the Muslims, and destroyed the
mosque.92 As a result, a Su shaykh named al-Khazlaji began gathering volunteers in Baghdad for the holy war. The Shaykh then proceeded to pass through a
Shiite neighborhood with his retinue of would-be Sunni holy warriors, crying
loudly in remembrance of Abu Bakr and Umar . . . saying: This is the day of
Muawiya. But the people of al-Karkh contradicted them, and pelted them,
and tna broke out.93 As frequently happened during this century preceding
the Saljuqs, an intended campaign against the Indels at the border turned into
a campaign against the heretics within the body politic. Paradoxically, the
mutatawwia, in their struggle to restore right order and regain the lost unity
and purpose of the earlier caliphate, frequently ended up contributing to the
disorder that was racking the central Islamic world.
In conclusion, the privatization of the Jihad by the volunteer warrior movement, led by ascetic Iranian proponents of Prophetic Traditionism, was not
some minor, peripheral phenomenon of the period between 750 and 1055, but,
rather, one fraught with great and continuing consequences for Islamic society
as a whole. The mutatawwia played a signicant role in the undermining of
caliphal religious prestige and authority, as well as in the formation of caliphal
policy in the early Abbasid period. The Abbasids failure to regain the
ground they had lost to the Traditionist warrior-scholars played no small part
in the transference of the religious authority and power that had originally
belonged to the caliphs to the Traditionists as a body, and in the ensuing political
crumbling of the caliphate. As we have seen, all the Sunni founding fathers are
connected by direct links to the mutatawwi tradition, particularly to
Ibn al-Mubarak. Moreover, even after that transference of religious authority
had occurred, and the caliphate had as a result more or less unraveled, the mutatawwia remained a potent force to be reckoned with, for good or ill, by all the
rulers that arose in the Eastern Islamic world between the ninth and the mideleventh centuries.

90

Paul, The State and the Military 16.

Ibn al-Athir, al-Kamil 9: 404.
92
Ibid. 413.
93
Ibid. 418; Ibn al-Jawzi, al-Muntazam 15: 213 214; an abbreviated version can be found in Ibn
Kathir, al-bidaya wal-nihaya 12: 35. Presumably, the meaning of yawm here would be the archaic
one of the Prophets time- that is, battle, with the implication that the Sunnis were doing battle in
the name of, or in defense of the reputation of, Muawiya. According to Ibn al-Jawzis version the
Sunni volunteers shouted this is the day of the maghazi, but Ibn al-Athirs version seems to be
more in line with the other partisan Sunni cries and the hostile reaction of the Shiites.
91