Rethinking the Dhimma System: Comparative Perspectives in Legal History

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In my capacity as the director of the Mellon program on minorities in the Middle East, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the first event of our lecture series for 2020 21

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with our senior scholar talk rethinking the Dima system, comparative perspectives in legal history by Dr John Tolan from the university de Nantes.

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The Mellon program examines the question of how the concept of minority, religious and ethnic has emerged as a key factor in the cultural, economic, political, linguistic, religious and educational lives of modern MENA nation states.

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This is our second year of workshops, lectures and faculty, graduate student research groups, meeting. We plan to organize an international conference to explore the historical dynamics of intercommunal conflict and contacts later in early 2022

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one of our key objectives is to further curricular development at UCLA and beyond

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as an interdisciplinary project, our programmatic initiatives approach the issue of minorities from the perspective of the humanities and humanistic social sciences by considering histories, ethnographies, biographies, works of fiction and documentaries to help us understand ethnic tensions and relations. I would like to thank Dr Ali Baghdad, Lamia bulafish, Kevan Harris, Asma Sayed, Susan slimovic, Luke Yarrow, for their work and commitment to this program. I want also to acknowledge our graduate students from different departments. ISAM aral Witham shaibi, would you buggu, Robert Farley, Timothy, Garrett, Ava heth, Jesse stuhlman Atiya taghi and Abdullah packet, huge. Thanks go to the CNA staff, Johanna and Christian and the director, Dr Ali badad.

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With that said, I would like to introduce my colleague and friend, Luke Yarrow, who will introduce our speaker. Dr Yarbro is an associate professor of the history of pre modern Islamic societies now UCLA with historical and Islamic Studies training. His work centered on non Muslims, non Muslim officials and bureaucrats in Muslim states. Dr Yarborough has published widely in this area and others. I would like to say something. A few things specifically here about these excellent monographs, friends of the emir, enemies of God, non Muslim states, officials in pre modern economic thought. So I really encourage everyone of you to buy and read the book. Draws on drawing on unexplored medieval sources in the realms of law, history, poetry, entertaining, literature, administration and polemic to highlight powerful Jewish Christian the worst in another, non Muslim state officials whose unemployment, whose employment occasioned energetic discussions among Muslim scholars and rulers

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with this background, there is no better person to introduce, Dr Tolan than my friends and colleague and colleague. Dr Yarborough,

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Luke The floor is yours.

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Thank you very much, Professor boom, for that very generous introduction. And I'd like to echo your thanks also to the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, to Christian and Joanna and to Professor Ali behta The center of the director of the Center for hosting this event as part of the center's melon minorities in the Middle East project. Now, in recent months, we've all learned that Zoom events work best when they're short and sweet. So accordingly, this event will last just an hour, including the question and answer session. So I'll attempt to keep this introduction of our speaker as brief as humanly possible, which I dare say is no mean feat, given Professor toland's stature in the field of medieval history, and indeed far beyond it.

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John Toland is professor of medieval history, history at the University of Nantes, and CO principal investigator in the ongoing European Quran or UQ project, which is running from 2019 to 2025

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most salient for our purposes today is Professor tolands, past leadership of the ERC Relman project, which from 2010 to 2015 studied the legal status of religious minorities in the medieval Euro Mediterranean world. The source website that emerged from that project, which I'll share with all of you in the course of this event.

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Eight, as well as the 10 books to date in the breppel series that the project helped to spawn have transformed the study of pre modern religious groups and their interactions around the Mediterranean basin.

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Professor Tolan has also authored many books as well as scholarly articles. Beyond counting among his best known books are Petrus Alfonsi and his medieval readers, 1993

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sons of Ishmael, personal favorite of mine, 2008

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St Francis and the Sultan.

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2009

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and most recently, faces of Muhammad, Western perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to today, which came out last year and is really complimenting and joining a very exciting

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recent crop of books that focus on the Prophet Muhammad.

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These scholarly achievements have led to numerous prizes and distinctions, among them the pride Diane Poitier Boas from the Academy Fran says in 2008

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Professor Tolan is internationally recognized as one of the world's pre eminent scholars of medieval Islam in its intimate relationships with European cultures, and we are extraordinarily fortunate to have him speak to us as part of the center's melon minorities in the Middle East series. The title of his talk this morning, afternoon or evening, is rethinking the vimma system, comparative perspectives in legal history. Thank you all for joining us. And Professor Tolan, I turn it over to you.

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Thank you very much, Luke for that generous introduction, and thank you for the invitation. Many thanks to you, to Omar boom and to Ali behdad and to the center, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. And thanks to Christian Rodriguez for the logistics.

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I want let me see if I can share my PowerPoint.

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Yes, good.

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So it's towards the end of the 15th century and the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, a Muslim asked the city's Qadi Abu Abdullah AB bin al Azraq if he could accept the mat says that his Jewish neighbor offered him as a gift at Passover. In his response, the jurist displayed his unease. He recognized that was not prohibited for a Muslim to accept gifts from a Jew or Christian on the occasion of one of their holidays.

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He even acknowledged that the Prophet Muhammad had said, quote, give gifts to each other, you will become friends, and animosity between you will disappear. Yet he judged that such gifts, though not prohibited, were reprehensible,

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because a Muslim should keep his distance from infidels, since he is socially and religiously superior to them, yet he regretted, quote, many ignorant people among the Muslims accept such gifts. The fatwa that preserves this judgment was written by a Muslim in 15th century, Granada, but it echoes similar expressions of ambivalence and unease provoked by inter religious contact on the part of many Jewish Christian and Muslim authorities in the middle ages, from Baghdad to Barcelona, different religious communities intermingled in cities, towns and rural areas, Jews and Christians lived as dimis, protected but subordinate minorities in areas ruled by Muslims, particularly from Iraq westward, while Jews and to lesser extent, Muslims, resided in numerous places in Byzantium and Latin Europe, 1000s of normative texts emanating from diverse Jewish Christian and Muslim authorities reflect attempts to Define and police borders between these faith communities. A number of these texts, such as the fatwa of

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Ibn Al Azraq, reflect attempts to discourage, in some cases, to prohibit the faithful from participating in the festivities of infidels. So this is a good example of the ambivalence of of these texts, these legal texts dealing with inter religious relations, we have a Muslim legal authority

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saying that it's unfortunate these contexts Have take place. There seems to be an

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unclear border between what is permitted and what is not. And this flies in the face of assertions that there's some sort of Vimy or Vimal system that is set in stone. So my title for the talk today is rethinking the VIM a system.

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Them

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were in fact, going to ask if there is, if there is a vim system, and if so,

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when does it involve evolve and on what basis?

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And of course, this is part of a wider debate among scholars and

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and beyond. Beyond scholars, there's a polemical debate between people like polemicist, but your who wrote dimitude about how, for her, the Dimi system was an exploitative system in which Jews and Christian lives almost as a little better than slaves, and on the other hand, there's the celebration of convivencia model in which Jews, Christians and Muslims got along in harmony, and that the Dhimmi system was rather mild way to regulate those relations. So obviously, the the reality, as we can see, it is more complex and more interesting. But what are the bases? Now, often we say that it's based on the Quran in particular,

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this locus classicus, Quran 929. Fight those who believe not in God in the last day. Do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden. Who follow not the religion of Truth among those who are given the Book till they pay the Jizya with a willing hand, being humbled so the jizya

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here. What does Jizya mean in the Quran, the most basic meaning seems to be compensation. So this is something compensation that the Jews and Christians

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have to pay to the Muslims. Pay it with a willing hand and to be humbled. And of course, Jizya will become

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in by a century after the composition of the Quran, and probably earlier, a regular payment that Jews and Christians and then eventually others, such as Zoroastrians, will make to Muslims of Muslim authorities. But of course, nothing indicates that in the Quran, it is already that precise meaning. On the contrary,

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there, as we'll see, Jizya can mean different things in to different people.

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And in the Quran, the words the me and Dima do not appear, although people of the Book AHL Kitab frequently appears, but nothing explicitly in the Qur'an describes what will later be the

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system. Now often the dimah system is dated to another locus classicus, the Pact of Umar,

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Umar ibn Al Khattab, of course, the second Caliph

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who under whose rule much of the early Muslim conquests took place, and particularly Syria, which interests us here. And the Pact of Umar is supposedly a letter addressed by Syrian Christians to the Caliph who submit to his authority and who obtain his protection, and they accept a certain number of restrictions. And down below, I have the link to the database, or real men database, where you have the text of this with translation and analysis. But among other things, the Syrian Christians promise that they will not build new churches. They will not proselytize Muslims or prevent their relatives from converting to Islam. They will not ride upon saddles or carry weapons. There are a number of other stipulations that they will show their social inferiority to Muslims, show respect to Muslims. They'll wear distinctive dress. They won't try to dress like Muslims, but they will wear, among other things, a zunar, a special belt that marks them off as Christian, and they will accept limits on the public expression of their religion, no loud masses, no public processions, noisy celebrations, bell ringing, et cetera. Now

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this is often seen, as I said, as a locus classicus for the dhimma system. But in fact, there is,

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there is little chance that this is an authentic document from Uber, from Umar ibn Al Khattab. The extent versions are much later. The most widely known one are.

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Are is by Abu Bakr atut turshi, an Andalusian polymath from late 11th, early 12th centuries. Now we do know that some of these measures were indeed proclaimed by Umayyad caliphs, caliphs in the late seventh or early eighth century. And we know this among other things because we have letters, for example, from Egyptian Christians who complain about these new prohibitions, new restrictions, and fight against them, resist them. So we

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so the fact of Umar is not authentic is nevertheless an important document, because it was seen as authentic by later medieval Muslim jurists who would use it as a standard against which other rulers should be judged for their often for their lack of application of these stipulations. Now, one of the things that's interesting in this first of all, most of these restrictions are very sporadically enforced at best. And you also see, there's no mention of the jizya, which we saw in the Quran, and which is often seen as fundamental part, of course, of this Vima system. And there's no mention all either of the haraj,

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the tax on land that was also an important part of the of the

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later Dima system,

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now calling into question

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this supposed Dima system, affirming that the Dima system isn't part of

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part of Islam from the beginning, is part of a broader historical trend about the gradual

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emergence of Islam as a distinct religion. And of course, one of the fundamental works is that of Fred donner, Muhammad and the believers for donner,

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he called he and others have called into question the standard narrative that Islam is a new religion founded by Muhammad. His close reading the Quran suggests that while the word Islam submission and Muslim, one who is submitted, do indeed exist in the Quran. They do not bear their later meaning of a discrete religious community distinct from others and notably distinct from Jews and Christians. A much more frequent term in the Quran is mumin believers, which, for donner, is a much broader and more open community, including Jews, Christians and those in Muhammad Al Raj who had abandoned idolatry. So when we read the Quran and we come across words that seem familiar to us, whether it's Muslim and Islam, whether it's Jizya or Masjid mosque, we tend to read back into those words the later institutions of Muslim societies, when in fact, there is no guarantee that they meant those things. Often quite to the contrary. So for Donna, it's only with the rule of the Umayyads, in particular, Abd Al Malik, Caliph from 685, to 705, that Islam becomes a distinct religion that vinis are defined as religiously and socially inferior to Muslims.

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Now, other recent works, and obviously I could cite, as we saw in the beginning, you look yarbrough's work. Two other works I want to mention that are interesting in looking at the gradual emergence of Islamic justice and of the legal restrictions are books by Matthew Tilly and Lev Weitz. Now mathia Tilly shows how Muslim legal systems evolved over the first Muslim centuries. His title is lavender, the invention of the qadi. Because, as he shows, we think of the qadi as the center of the Muslim legal system, the Muslim judge, but in fact, he only becomes a central figure in the Abbasid Abbas said period, what gradually evolves as a recognizably Muslim legal system isn't based on Quran or Hadith, nor is it merely a copy of earlier legal legal systems, Roman or Sassanid, but it's a complex mix of elements from different systems during the late Umayyad and early Abbasid period. He shows rulers and jurists seem to have deliberately reshaped legal systems in order to create something distinctively Islamic. He compares this with Abd Al Malik's reform of coinage in 690

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Six earlier models are set aside, and a new Islamic model is put forward.

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Now, Levitz and his work is really a complementary study based on different evidence, particularly documentation from East Syrian and West Syrian churches, the Christian authors of the legal texts and letters he analyzes were neither the simple perpetrators,

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perpetuators, excuse me, of ecclesiastical tradition, nor the passive beneficiaries of a preconceived dhimma system. He shows how they were, actors and builders of the dhimma system,

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a complex network of confessional communities with overlapping jurisdictions. So Muslim law did not and like Muslim theology, did not, spring like Athena, fully grown, clothed and armed from the head of Zeus,

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as the last several decades of research have amply shown but evolved together. So these Christians did not, were not passive recipients of the themes system, but they helped define and create this themes system in constant negotiation with Muslim authorities.

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And just

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this is a very rich book, but just one brief example from Vice's book. Around 680 a West Syrian Mia physic priest refused to give Communion to a woman because she had married a Muslim, so she

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was no longer fit to receive the Eucharist and be part of the considered, part of the church, he judged, but this woman's Muslim husband came to see the priest and said, I'm going to kill you if you don't give Communion to my wife. What to do? So he consulted a certain monk and Bishop, Jacob of Odessa, whose response was cautious, he said, Well, by marrying an infidel, she put herself outside of the church, so she's excommunicated, and the priest was right in refusing her communion. However, if we refuse her completely communion, she's just gonna paste. She's going to become Muslim, whereas we better to try to keep her in the church. So he he urged the priest to find a sort of compromise, where she would need to do penance

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but and make alms, but could still be considered part of the church and still have communion. So the threat of murder made this incident unusual, but it's otherwise a common example of the constantly pouring and porous and shifting nature of confessional boundaries and what the historiography tends to call the Muslim world.

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Now this is just to get back to what

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Luke Yarborough mentioned in his when he in his kind introduction. This is the database that I put together with my team of postdoctoral and doctoral researchers as part of this European project on the legal status of religious minorities in the Euro Mediterranean world, or rel men, we were focusing on the western Mediterranean and Europe. So for the Muslim world, it was mostly Andalus and Maghreb. We have a database of over 600 legal texts in the original language, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew Spanish from medieval Jews, Christians and Muslims. And each time there's text, translation, analysis and bibliography, and the site is consultable in both English and French. So if you end up with a French page and you want to you want it in English, you just click the British flag on the top of the page. So if I had several hours, I would look in detail at a number of these texts. But for the short presentation today, I want to make some more general points.

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And we also, as Luc Yarborough mentioned, we published a series of books with with Brett's

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10 volumes in all. And this is, is volume one, which is the one that's

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without doubt, the that will interest most,

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the the members of this, of your project. It came out of a conference that I organized with Maribel Fierro in Madrid in 2011

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on the legal status of the knees in the Islamic West. And this book, like all the books we did, are available online for free the UCLA.

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Library has a copy, but you can also click on the link and and get it for free online with all of the the other books in the series. So one, there are several articles in this book that are particularly interesting on the questions of what the Vini system is, or if it's even appropriate to speak of a vimous system, because there are it can be quite variable. When one looks closely at the early texts or Chronicles from both the mashreq and the Maghreb, there is little evidence for standard, uniform vim system, but rather a wide variety of local adaptations, even for the jizya, which would be seen as central to the what's presented as a system, often seen as the sort of linchpin of the dim a system. There's no standard model. An article in this book by Alfonso Carmona shows that the classic Jizya model, to the extent one ever existed, was, in fact, a product of the Abbasids

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in the period of Islamic conquest of Spain. Fiscal policy toward conquered Christians was quite varied and often based on practical considerations and respect for local traditions. The jizya could, at five times, be imposed on individuals, but also at other times on groups. Sometimes it was levied on lands, blurring distinctions between Jizya and haraj,

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an article here by an Lee's Nef shows the jizya was not systematically levied either in seventh century Egypt, nor in ninth century, Sicily Marina rusto mentions cases of exemptions from Jizya according to individual limis In Mamluk Egypt. 15th century, Tlemcen,

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Mufti Qassem Al qabani was asked whether the jizya is to be imposed on all Jews or only those who live in the cities, as one might expect. He affirmed that the principle that applied to all male Jews who lived as dimis under the protection of Muslim rulers. But the very fact that the question was raised as these Vogue bogey suggested in her article indicates that rural Jews were often in practice, exempted from paying the jizya. The same wide variance in practice could be shown in other supposed stipulations of the Lima system. The same Tlemcen Mufti affirms that local Jews ride horses and wear turbans just like Muslims, which is supposedly contrary to the Pact of Omar, or take the example of church bells, one frequently reads that Christians were prohibited or discouraged from bell ringing. But here too, practice varied widely. Ibn Abd al bar is 11th century manual al coffee fifik Al Madinah, which is analyzed in an article in this book by Christian Mueller,

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which details restrictions on NIS says nothing about restrictions on bell ringing, nor are the knees prohibited from riding horses for him, Although they may not own own horses. So here in this study of Muslim West,

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meaning Andalus and the Maghreb between the eighth and 15th centuries, there is no standard Vimy system, but a great variety of practices and measures.

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And let me just

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look at one of the text from our database in detail, because this is a an early text, if it's authentic, because what as often there's some doubts as the authenticity of texts that are often preserved in much later anthologies or Chronicles.

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And part of the problem of understanding the

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creation and evolution of the Dini system is the lack of early text. So if this is is an authentic text from 713 in Spain. It's quite early and quite interesting. I won't read this text to you, but it's a treaty concluded between Abd Al Aziz ibn Musa, the second governor of the Iberian Peninsula, from 714, to 716, and a Visigothic ruler Teo jumir in or tud Mir, in the Arabic form, who's from the region of Murcia. So he was probably a Visigothic Noble who already had considerable power under the Visigothic kings, and he negotiates with the Muslim conqueror.

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Years, and these are the terms in the negotiation. They reflect the tradition of Arabic conquest whereby conquered populations were granted a certain amount of autonomy by treaty. In this case, the autonomy was rather large.

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Theodemir and his subjects are free from violence or coercion. There's no coercion. Religion guaranteed their churches and sacred objects and to near seems to retain quite a bit of power in this region, underneath Muslim authority. In return, he promises not to help the Muslims enemies, and there seems to be some sort of Jizya. As we see at the bottom, he and his men shall pay one dinar every year together with four measures of wheat, barley, etc, fruit juice, vinegar, honey and olive oil.

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So and slaves have to pay half of the amount. So there's a Jizya,

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but so some elements of what will become Vini status are present, and others are not.

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So in conclusion, because I want to leave a little time for questions and answers.

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We can see how, based on limited textual evidence,

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we have what seems to be a great variety of situations

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concerning the Jiz, the jizya and other elements of of the supposed Dini system

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throughout the Muslim world,

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legal scholars insisted on the the legal and religious inferiority of Venice Jews, Christians and others such as Zoroastrians, but the exact

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stipulations of these restrictions of the supposed Dini system varied widely, even in the theoretic legal texts. And of course, the application of those restrictions varied more widely still. So the principles of

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of these legal authorities, excuse me, of these legal and religious inferiority as seen in the Pact of Umar, were often evoked by jurists and sometimes by rulers,

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but frequently the mention of these restrictions were by authors. Is saying that they were not sufficiently respected, which are always difficult to interpret. Does this mean that these, some of these restrictions, were a dead letter? We know that one of the ways that

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rebels in Muslim Societies sought legitimacy was by criticizing

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the the authorities in place for not sufficiently respecting respecting Muslim law, and among Things that they often used weaponized for to justify revolt was that rulers were giving too much power, too much wealth, too much leeway to the knees. So

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periodic restrictions and then relaxing of these,

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of these Dimi stipulations were quite common.

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So let me leave you with again. This is the the eighth volume of our series, which is the the

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concluding conference that we had here in Nolte in 2015 and there's a very good synthetic article by Andrew Amnon the legal regulation of minorities and modern Islamic law. So thank you again for attending. Thank you very much, Professor Tolan for that extremely

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learned and stimulating talk. But before we close, I want to turn the floor back over to Professor Ali behdad, the director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies. Thank you all for attending.

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Thank you Luke and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor John Tolin, our distinguished speaker, and both my colleagues, Professor Yarborough and boom for moderating and introducing our speaker, moderating the panel and introducing our speaker. And it's been a great opportunity for me to learn from all of you and all the questions, and I hope we can continue the conversation in future.

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Your talks and throughout the year. So I would like to encourage you to check out our website for events on the topic,

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and thank you all for attending and look forward to seeing you in our future programs.

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