Loyalty and Leadership in An Early Islamic Society

by Roy Mottahedeh

An updated classic study of 10th- and 11th-century society in Buyid Iran. Arguing that medieval Islamic society must be understood in its own cultural terms, the author explains how it was able to function in a stable manner without the type of political institutions familiar to the West.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Iran, Academic, Middle East

239 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1980

About the author

Roy Mottahedeh is Gurney Professor of Islamic History at Harvard University. An internationallly renowned expert, his academic awards include a Guggenheim and a MacArthur Prize Fellowship.

Reviews

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

نام اصلی این کتاب «وفاداری و رهبری در ادوار آغازین جامعه‌ی اسلامی» است، اما چون موضوع اصلی آن حکومت آل‌بویه و اوضاع اجتماعی قلمروهای آن (شامل نواحی مرکزی و غربی ایران و منطق شرقی و مرکزی عراق امروزی) است، عنوان ترجمه به « تاریخ اجتماعی ایران در عصر آل بویه» تغییر یافته است تا برای خواننده ایرانی رساتر و ملموس‌تر باشد. نویسنده در این کتاب کوشیده است به شیوه‌ای توصیفی و تا حدودی همدلانه و پدیدارشناسانه ساختار جامعه‌ی آل بویه و پیوندها و روابط اجتماعی آن را واکاوی کند و تصویری نسبتا روشن از آن به دست دهد. دو مفهوم مهم وفاداری و رهبری در این پژوهش توسّع معنا یافته و از حد دولت و حکومت فراتر رفته و جوانب مختلف زندگی اجتماعی مردمان ایران و عراق را در قرن‌های چهارم و پنجم هجری دربر گرفته است.

این کتاب در پی آن است تا ساختار اجتماعی غرب ایران و جنوب عراق را در قرن‌های دهم و یازدهم میلادی توصیف کند و گزارشی به دست دهد از تعهدات اجتماعی‌ای که این ساختار را پدید می‌آورند.

این اثر در چهار فصل اصلی با عناوین: ۱. مقدمه، ۲. وفاداری اکتسابی، ۳. وفاداری گروهی، و ۴. عدالت، سلطنت و شکل جامعه تدوین یافته است، که هر کدام شامل بخش‌های مختلف و متنوع می‌شوند.

Merged review:

This classic study of 10th and 11th century society in Buyid Iran is published here for the first time in a paperback edition, revised with new material. Historian Roy Mottahedeh explains how Islamic society was able to function during the Middle Ages in a stable manner even without political institutions such as existed in the West.

Merged review:

نام اصلی این کتاب «وفاداری و رهبری در ادوار آغازین جامعه‌ی اسلامی» است، اما چون موضوع اصلی آن حکومت آل‌بویه و اوضاع اجتماعی قلمروهای آن (شامل نواحی مرکزی و غربی ایران و منطق شرقی و مرکزی عراق امروزی) است، عنوان ترجمه به « تاریخ اجتماعی ایران در عصر آل بویه» تغییر یافته است تا برای خواننده ایرانی رساتر و ملموس‌تر باشد. نویسنده در این کتاب کوشیده است به شیوه‌ای توصیفی و تا حدودی همدلانه و پدیدارشناسانه ساختار جامعه‌ی آل بویه و پیوندها و روابط اجتماعی آن را واکاوی کند و تصویری نسبتا روشن از آن به دست دهد. دو مفهوم مهم وفاداری و رهبری در این پژوهش توسّع معنا یافته و از حد دولت و حکومت فراتر رفته و جوانب مختلف زندگی اجتماعی مردمان ایران و عراق را در قرن‌های چهارم و پنجم هجری دربر گرفته است.

این کتاب در پی آن است تا ساختار اجتماعی غرب ایران و جنوب عراق را در قرن‌های دهم و یازدهم میلادی توصیف کند و گزارشی به دست دهد از تعهدات اجتماعی‌ای که این ساختار را پدید می‌آورند.

این اثر در چهار فصل اصلی با عناوین: ۱. مقدمه، ۲. وفاداری اکتسابی، ۳. وفاداری گروهی، و ۴. عدالت، سلطنت و شکل جامعه تدوین یافته است، که هر کدام شامل بخش‌های مختلف و متنوع می‌شوند.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made for the historical novelist. For other people too, I guess. He wants to tell us about the 'self-understanding of the societies discussed' - through 'self-description'. We see the society in its own terms. He says, I do not call a certain kind of status 'ascriptive' or a certain kind of social bond 'dyadic'. Great, because I don't know what the f*** that means. And I don't want to: I want to see the society in operation, to watch how people behave - how they understood themselves, yes. That's exactly what he does for us, through heavy use of anecdotes.

It's 10th-11th century in Iran and Iraq, but his effective descriptions are such that you can use this for far wider purposes. I'm set in the 13th century but this is valuable, because he gets into the groundwork, into the human axioms, behind/beneath the politics. If you need a look at medieval Islamic society, this is for you, and even... even outside Islam. If you need to know about loyalties, about obligations, in a time when people ran their lives on these, you can come here.

We have a sense how important oaths and vows were in old days: he gives much information - by example - of how oaths functioned, of how seriously people took them, and the cynical usages too. This is a society that works person-to-person - you didn't have a loyalty to institutions or to abstractions. He piles up examples and you start to see how that hangs together. He looks at leadership in operation, too. It's the first time I've felt I have a grasp on the who, how and why of these very often unofficial, non-government (in my sense) leaders I meet in the sources - where did they come from, why does the city take these as spokespeople?

[Shagha · Rating 4 out of 5]

ترجمه محمدرضا اصلاني و علي يحيايي را پيشنهاد مي كنم. نثر كتاب روان و گيرا بود.

[Mahmood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good hisory

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book on the various kinds of social bonds that tied men (yes, no women mentioned in this book as far as I remember) together during the Buyid dynasty of Western Iran/Eastern Iraq during the 10th and 11th centuries. He starts the book right off the bat by saying that he will not employ modern sociological theory in approaching Buyid society. Rather, he is more interested in how people themselves at the time classified the different social bonds that held their society together. This means that Mottahedeh was not at all concerned about deconstructing some of the historical documents he used as evidence, for, even if some historical accounts were embellishments, these embellishments reveal a lot about perceptions of (if not the reality of) Buyid social relations. This approach had me convinced, and was frankly a breath of fresh air. Additionally, I initially started reading this book on the advice of a teacher who suggested I check out Mottahedeh simply for his clear and lucid writing style, a style which he suggested I take inspiration from. And indeed, he writes jargon-free, and one feels that not a sentence is wasted in getting his point across.

The book is divided into three sections: "Acquired Loyalties", "Loyalties of Category", and "Justice, Kingship, and the Shape of Society." In the first two chapters Mottahedeh delves into the subject matter and navigates between different loyalties with great ease and lucidity. However, the only reason why this book does not get 5 stars is that the last section felt way too short, and he relies much less on historical accounts and more on generalizations about kingship based on his research. There were moments where I wish he would elaborate more. For example, when he explains the subtler meaning of the word ẓulm, (which in current-day Arabic means "oppression," but back then had more of a sense of upsetting the balance of society), but then we have no examples of this subtler meaning in action. I suppose that he intended the last chapter to be a conclusion, but if that was the case he shouldn't have introduced so much new material at that point.

Overall though, this book, though about a very specific subject, is highly recommended for anyone interested in Islamic history and society generally.

[Haris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit dry for my taste (3.5 stars, really). But I have to give it credit. It rightly feels like a thick, sturdy thorn in many modern retrospective ideas about premodern Islamic/Muslim (...semantics...) cultures, bolstered by an attention to details, particulars, and facts. Although--I also found it difficult to see it as an encompassing portrait of "an early Islamic society" when Mottahedeh admits that he can't really say much about lower or more "humble" categories of the society or its peoples because they weren't deemed worthy of recording by historians of the time. Also he seems to see Shari'a more as existing within the mosque/courtroom than also outside of it, more as pure law... He opens his argument against the dominance of Shari'a by pointing out the ambiguities and problems with 'ijma (consensus), when, out of the four most often cited sources of Shari'a (Qur'an, Hadith, qiyas, 'ijma), 'ijma is the last and weakest source. Kind of like gravity being the weakest of the four fundamental forces but using its weakness to say that the strong nuclear force isn't as strong as we think (rough analogy there). But I loved Mottahedeh's unfettered, detail-oriented approach, and the holes he pokes in our retrospective idea of the time period. The way in which relationships between elements in the Buyid dynasty prevented the amalgamation of highly-organized non-person entities (aka state or corporate bureaucracies, or a sense of allegiance to a "nation") was strongly argued and very interesting to read.

[Celeste · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are several major problems with this book. The author's intention is to use the social categories used in the sources to discuss tenth century near eastern society, rather than the categories of modern social science since the use of such categories is anachronistic ad can be misleading. However, he is insufficiently reflective regarding the possibility of "entering fully and imaginatively" into the culture of another time and place. (vii) Also, throughout the book he describes loyalties and social arrangements between "men" thereby creating a world in which, apparently, there were no women. Finally, he refers to places like "Iraq" and "Iran" which did not exist in the tenth century, thereby projecting nations backward in time.

[Tosca Wijns-Van Eeden · Rating 2 out of 5]

A really interesting perspective on loyalty and leadership

[Azadeh · Rating 1 out of 5]

من این کتابو با ترجمه محمد دهقانی خوندم. متاسفانه ترجمه بسیار بد بود و از این نظر مطالب کتابو تحت شعاع قرار داده بود.ب کسی توصیه نمیکنم با این ترجمه بخوندش.