Perso-Indian Statecraft, Greek Political Science and the Muslim Idea of Government

Abstract

The conditions of civilizational borrowing, the principles of selectivity and the emergent qualities of civilizational synthesis are examined with reference to medieval Muslim conceptions of state and society. The article highlights the features of pristine Islam which invited the political thought of other civilizations, or more precisely, the Indian science of government and Greek political science. With the cultural integration of Iran into the Muslim caliphate, especially after the `Abbasid revolution in the mideighth century, the Indian borrowing via the Middle Persian translation emerged as an integral part of the Arabic and Persian literature on statecraft. The reception of Greek political science was a part of the translation of Greek philosophy and medicine into Arabic a century later, and was developed into the discipline of practical philosophy or political science. Through the mutual accommodation of the shari`a and a political culture derived from Greek and Perso-Indian sources, the civilizational encounters under consideration introduced an unmistakable element of pluralism - or at any rate, dualism - in the normative order of medieval Islam.