God's Caliph (University of Cambridge Oriental Publications)

This study examines how religious authority was distributed in early Islam. It argues the case that, as in Shi'ism, it was concentrated in the head of state, rather than dispersed among learned laymen as in Sunnism. Originally the caliph was both head of state and ultimate source of religious law; the Sunni pattern represents the outcome of a conflict between the caliph and early scholars who, as spokesmen of the community, assumed religious leadership for themselves. Many Islamicists have assumed the Shi'ite concept of the imamate to be a deviant development. In contrast, this book argues that it is an archaism preserving the concept of religious authority with which all Muslims began.

• God's Rule - Government and Islam: Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought
• Caliphate: The History of an Idea
• Slaves on Horses
• Islamic Historiography (Themes in Islamic History)
• Colonising Egypt
• The History of Islamic Political Thought, Second Edition: The History of Islamic Political Thought: From the Prophet to the Present
• Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran
• Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam
• Loyalty and Leadership in An Early Islamic Society
• The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History