Secularity in the Premodern Islamic World
Neguin Yavari

Sometime between April and September 1300, in a small town inĪlkhānid, Iran, the aristocrat turned Sufi master ‘Alā al-Dawla alSimnānī wrote the Arabic treatise al-Wārid al-shārid al-ṭārid shubhatal-mārid (The inspiration refuting the rebel’s sophistry), ostensibly torefute the philosophical method. In it he wrote:
The sovereignty of every sovereign (salṭanat kull sulṭān) proceedsfrom His authority (ḥukm) and the justice (‘adl) of every king proceeds from His justice (‘adl). He installed them as vicegerents (khalīfa)
among His creatures for the well-being of affairs in the mundane
world (li ṣalāḥ umūr ‘ālam al-shahāda) according to His wisdom(ḥikma); and by means of His wisdom He does what He wishes anddecides what He wants!1

At first glance, the description of kingship in this passage may appear
to be a typical premodern construction, one that establishes a directconnection between kingship and the Divine, wherein sovereignty
is guaranteed by Divine command, and the justice of kings refracts
Divine justice. The sovereignty of God is total and absolute: He wills
what He wishes, and neither are there limits on His will, nor is He
accountable to another party. However, the latter half of the passage
upends the opening as it stipulates that God has installed kings as
His representatives on earth not on account of any religious scruple,
nor for the furtherance of His religion, but instead to promote thewell-being of His creatures in mundane affairs. Unlike God, kings areaccountable for their actions. If a 14th-century Sufi master, echoing a
famous Qur’anic passage, sanctifies kings as God’s representatives on
1

Giovanni Maria Martini, ‘Alā al-Dawla al-Simnānī between Spiritual Authority
and Political Power: A Persian Lord and Intellectual in the Heart of the Īlkhānate,with a Critical Edition and Translation of al-Wārid al-šārid al-ṭārid šubhat almārid and a Critical Edition of its Persian version Zayn al-mu‘taqad li-zayn almu‘taqid (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 414.
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1Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic World

If a 14th-century Sufi
master sanctifies kings
as God’s representatives
on earth, then what was
the place of religion in
the social order, and inpolitical life?

earth, to rule justly and with an eye to the well-being of His subjects,
then what was the place of religion in the social order, and how did
religion make its presence felt in political life?
The absoluteness of Simnānī’s sovereignty echoes Jean Bodin’s
16th-century definition, held as the original articulation of sovereignty
as a political concept in the history of European political thought.
Like Bodin’s sovereign prince, the king in Simnānī’s order is boundby the rules of God. Both sovereignties, Bodin’s and Simnānī’s, are delimited by the unlimited sovereignty of God. Although not an overtly political treatise dedicated to the study of sovereignty, Simnānī’s
language exhibits a clear demarcation between sovereignty (salṭana)and the king (sulṭān) and as such introduces a number of questions.
Can it be read to point to a language of political thought in the premodern Islamic world that exhibits a conceptual taxonomy – even
if not used with perfect consistency? Does it acknowledge a distinct
sphere for political activity separate from other spheres of humansociety, and finally, does it reflect a conscious attempt to discussand categorise the study of politics? Beyond this, why is sovereignty
considered a newcomer on the Islamic scene, inspired to a large extent by contact with the West?2 Attempts at addressing these and attendant questions are entangled in present-day concerns, and in theperpetual assertion of ‘tradition’ at the centre of political life in theIslamic world.
The tension between religious and secular articulations of power,
or politics and religion, is the cornerstone of premodern political langue throughout the globe. In the case of premodern Japan,
Christoph Kleine has shown that “concepts of societal differentiation
were primarily focused on relationship between religious and politicalinstitutions”.3 A cursory examination of medieval and early modern
232Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “The Sovereignty of God in Modern Islamic
Thought,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25, no. 3 (2015); Florian Zemmin,“How (Not) to Take Secularity Beyond the Modern West: Reflections from Islamic Sociology,” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond
the West, Beyond Modernities” 9 (Leipzig University, 2019), and to a lesser extent,
Andrew F. March, “Genealogies of Sovereignty in Islamic Political Thought,” Social Research 80, no. 1 (2013).
Christoph Kleine, “Japan before 1800,” in Companion to the Study of Secularity, ed.
HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” (Leipzig
University 2018), 1. www.multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion/css_
kleine_japan-before-1800.pdf.

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic World

writings on the organisation of politics and techniques of good rulein the Islamic world will produce endless instances in support ofan almost identical conception of premodern secularity, as exemplified in Simnānī’s treatise. The same holds for sovereignty, which
Bodin himself claimed “was a feature of all political communities,
although its precise character had never been fully understood”.4
Yet, the paradigm of a privileged and uniquely European mode ofmodernity persists along with a host of related harbingers and notional sustainers: the Enlightenment, continuity with past thought,
secular politics and the rule of law. Attempts to move beyond
such binaries have met with little success. Among the more debated is a 1988 study by Reinhard Schulze, where he suggests an autochthonous Islamic Enlightenment in the 18th century. Schulze’s
claim “threatened the sacred heart of Western modernity”5, and thus
elicited numerous criticisms. Albrecht Hofheinz has attempted todeflect the criticisms raised at Schulze’s hypothesis, arguing that forthe most part, such defensively tautological arguments can merely
explain Europe’s success by Europe’s success. A serious reconsideration of premodern Islamic history reveals stark similarities in theideational and socio-cultural realms that taken collectively, makeuntenable a comfy connection between the cultural and intellectual
spheres and historical and economic developments, a linkage thatframes all modern narratives of European singularity. If prudent ruleand prioritising the common good as the end goal of political life
are found in the premodern past around the globe, then how can
the current prevailing explanations of the success of Europe and thefailure of Muslim polities in establishing democratic norms and ruleof law, and pursuing the welfare of their citizenry take note of this?
It is in response to this and similar gaps in the explanations of
the evolution of social and political thought that the utility of secularity as a concept is brought to the fore. Accounts of the fusion ofpolitics and religion as the norm of Islamic modus operandi – and the4
5

Similarities in theideational and sociocultural realms undermine modern narrativesof European singularity
Prudent rule and prioritising the common goodare globally held end
goals of political life in
the premodern past

Richard Bourke, “Introduction,” in Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective,
ed. Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2017), 2.
Albrecht Hofheinz, “The Islamic Eighteenth Century: A View from the Edge,” inIslam in der Moderne, Moderne im Islam: Eine Festschrift für Reinhard Schulze,
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Florian Zemmin, Johannes Stephan and Monica Corrado(Leiden: Brill, 2018).
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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic Worldcause of its aversion to modern democratic institutions – begin with
Muhammad, prophet and self-designated ḥakam (judge) in the early
7th century, and end with the pervasive growth of Islamist politics
since the late 19th century. In the interim, the medieval Islamic distinction between the domain of religion and that of politics remained
akin to “that which [was] obtained in medieval Europe, in which
God kept His sword in one institution and His book in another”6.
But the incremental privatisation of religion that began in Europe
in the 12th century, and the subsequent secularisation of the politicalorder, never gained ground in the Islamic world. As a result, whereas
secularism authors the common good in the modern West and religion belongs to the realm of private interests that must be regulated
to protect the good of society, in the Islamic world, where the publicdomain continues to be God’s.7
Such confident assertions become problematic if we approach thequestion from a different angle, shifting our gaze away from secularism and from the differences between the modern history of theWest and that of the Islamic world. Returning instead to Simnānī’s
14th-century words cited at the outset, not only is sovereignty segregated from kingship, as mentioned earlier, but stable rule, while reflecting
divine qualities, is contingent upon government’s ability to procure thecommon good. It is, in other words, a wholly political and secular affair. In fact, an expression of the knots and bolts of divine engagementwith the political order frames the customary overture in most medieval and early modern political treatises penned in the Islamic world.
The opening to the 12th-century Fārsnāma (the anonymous author is conventionally referred to as Ibn al-Balkhī) is one among hundreds of such examples:
When God chooses from among His servants a noble person andplaces in his grasp the reigns of kingship (mulk) and sovereignty(pādishāhī) and gives him to the dominion and protection of theworld, the greatest favor which He can show towards that king inparticular and the world in general is to incline the aspirations of theking of the time towards knowledge and justice, because all virtues
are contained in these two excellent qualities.8
6

4

7
8

Patricia Crone, God’s Rule, Government and Islam: Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 393–96.
Crone, God’s Rule, 393-96.
Ibn al-Balkhī, Fārsnāma, ed. G. Le Strange and R. A. Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1921), 1.

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic WorldThe Persian word pādishāhī, incidentally, is an apt translation of
the Arabic salṭanat used in Simnānī’s text. The cornerstone of theking’s sovereignty comprises two God-given and secular qualities,
knowledge and justice. The same construct is found in iterations of
the wheel of fortune trope, wherein God selects kings, but it is theirown propensity for justice that assures longevity in office. In Niẓām
al-Mulk’s (d. 1092) Siyar al-mulūk, God chooses a king in every age
and time, endows him with the well-being of the world and His servants, and instills in him sufficient majesty for his subjects to want
his reign to continue. The prominent vizier suggests that while theselection of the king is a divine prerogative, it is the wisdom of theking that protects kingship.9 The same view is held by Al-Ghazzālī(d. 1111), Islam’s preeminent medieval theologian, who wrote on therelationship between kings and their subjects in unambiguous terms.
Every man who has received the gift of religion from God must obey
and cherish kings, for their kingship is granted by God, and it is given
by Him to whom He wills. God’s favour is manifested in a long reign,and the rule of the unjust sultan will be short, for the Prophet has said
that sovereignty (mulk) will endure even when there is unbelief, but
not when there is injustice.10
In these and countless similar passages from premodern Islamic
meditations on power, God’s sovereignty is legal fiction that spawns
political rule, for while the selection of the king can be conceived asstrictly a divine prerogative, the craft of ruling is an altogether humanaffair.11 Although good kings are ipso facto pious, their success in thisworld is measured not by their piety but by their ability to rule withwisdom and discernment. These latter traits are acquired skills and not
innate virtues, and are purveyed by others, usually well-chosen counsellors. A king’s demise is brought about by bad judgment and not by
fortune. The imbricated nature of religion and kingship in premodern
Islamic political thought points not to the latter’s reliance on the former,

Cornerstone of theking’s sovereignty
comprises God-given
and secular qualities:
knowledge and justiceGod’s sovereignty islegal fiction that spawns
political rule

Nizām al-Mulk, The Book of Government or Rules for Kings, tr. and ed. Hubert
Darke (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960, 2nd ed. 1978), 9–11; and for more
on reason as the guarantor of good rule, see Neguin Yavari, Advice for the Sultan:
Prophetic Voices and Secular Politics in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 81–94.
10 Abū Hāmid Muhammad al-Ghazālī, Naṣīḥat al-mulūk, ed. Jalal al-Din Huma’i(Tehran: Anjuman Athar Milli, 1972), 82.
11 Compare with March, “Genealogies of Sovereignty.”
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5Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic World

Imbricated nature of
religion and kingshipin premodern Islamic
political thought upholds
strong secular rule

Al-Fārābī: the relationship between madīna
and milla is the purview
of the philosophy ofsociety

as much as to its very opposite, that is strong secular rule. It also emphatically bounds them as two functionally differentiated and autonomous spheres that share valences of interdependence. This is seen inal-Māwardī’s (d. 1058) influential treatise on governance, which specifies the job of a ruler as safeguarding religion (ḥirāsa al-milla) and theproper administration of the community’s affairs (siyāsa al-’umma); oron another occasion, safeguarding religion (ḥirāsa al-dīn) and the administration of the mundane world (siyāsa al-dunyā).12
Furthermore, premodern thinkers themselves considered thescience of politics in the light of an underlying overlap with religious discourse and the religious infrastructure of authority. Al-Fārābī’s (d. 950)
Book of Religion13 is a particularly celebrated specimen that establishes
the relationship between the city (madīna) and religion (milla) as theproper subject matter for the philosophy of society (falsafa madaniyya
in al-Fārābī’s text). It crafts a highly differentiated account of the properly ordained society, in which citizens are guided towards individual
perfection and happiness by emulating the normative order of natural organisms and the cosmos. Religion in this account is an instrument that may be used to guide individuals to civic virtues. In effect,al-Fārābī establishes a philosophy of religion based on both Aristotelian and Platonic political philosophy to study the establishment of revealed religions and societies founded by them.14
In his study on premodern (precolonial in his terminology) Islamic societies, Armando Salvatore has pointed to the soft distinctions that differentiated social norms – collectively represented inadab literature – from those enshrined in the sharia. Salvatore posits
that the binary spheres of adab and sharia engaged
in a continuous mutual accommodation through which each could
be conducted as the internal limit of the other: while devotion to
the shari‘a and its implementation require the civilizing restraint ofadab, adab in turn cannot openly contravene shari‘a.

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12 ‘Alī b. Muhammad al-Māwardī, Al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya wa al-wilāya al-dīniyya,
ed. Aḥmad Mubarak al-Baghdadi (Kuwait: Dar Ibn Qutayba, 1989), 3, 22.
13 Abu Naṣr al-Fārābī, Kitāb al-Millah, wa nuṣūṣ ukhrā, ed. Muhsin Mahdi (Beirut:
Dar al-Mashriq, 1968).
14 Nadja Germann, “Al-Farabi’s Philosophy of Society and Religion,” in The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://
plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/al-farabi-soc-rel/; Muhsin S. Mahdi,
Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001).
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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic World

Adab works developed “a non-religious (and in this sense
secular) source of normativity of human conduct,” and although
in conversation with shar‘ī norms, they nevertheless “created nonreligious or secular spaces, discourses and institutions”.15 However, headds, religion was never banished from the social sphere, but rather
continued operating in the background. Whether or not Salvatore’s
sharia “operating in the background” may be considered anotherfiction, upheld to facilitate non-religious artistic and intellectual output, remains to be explored in future research.
Secularity – as distinct from secularisation – is gaining tractionin academic circles. While as a concept, its purchase is thoroughly
different in the premodern period, in modern sociological literature
it has been defined as “institutionally as well as symbolically embedded forms and arrangements for distinguishing between religion andother societal areas, practices and interpretations.”16 In the context
of premodern history, it is the multifarious overtures of religion to
the conduct of politics, and the etiquette of the required concomitantconcessions that have attracted scholarly attention. It is clear fromthe outset that an investigation focused on secularity does not seek tochart incremental secularisation, or the withdrawal of religion fromthe public sphere. Instead, it takes for granted that premodern political analysis does not distinguish between normative and empirical
study of politics, that different national contexts conjunct in different ways with changing historical circumstances, and that national
contexts themselves are very much defined by prevailing religious
traditions. If the relationship between religious authority and political power is altered in the modern world, it is instigated by long term
religious change, and authored differently in various religious traditions and across national divides.17
15 Armando Salvatore, “The Islamicate Adab Tradition vs. the Islamic Shari‘a, from
Pre-Colonial to Colonial,” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities:
Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” 3 (Leipzig University, 2018); Charles-Henride Fouchécour, Moralia: Les notions morales dans la littérature persane du 3e/9e au
7e/13e siècle (Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1986).
16 Monika Wohlrab-Sahr and Marian Burchhardt, “Revisiting the Secular: Multiple
Secularities and Pathways to Modernity,” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” 2 (Leipzig University, 2017).
17 Ashis Nandy, “The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism, andOther Masks of Deculturation,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 22, no. 2 (1997);
Jonathan Sheehan, “Enlightenment, Religion and the Enigma of Secularization:
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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic World

Islamist politics itself isbest understood as an
instance of secularity

8

Focusing on religious change rather than prolonging the quest fora non-existent secularisation, for example, will show that rather than
torpor and decline, the 18th century witnessed the rise of Sufi reformmovements, which spawned a reconfiguration of religiosity that extended beyond Sufi movements to the Islamic world at large.18 The
influence of the new Sufi religiosity on contemporary expressions ofIslam cannot be overstated. Examples include modern Islam’s primaryreliance on scripture (the Qur’an and Prophetic Tradition) at the expense of other normative texts that had come to establish a canonover the centuries; the emergence of the individual as the interpreterof Islamic authority, ending the ‘ulama’s historic monopoly on thatfront; access to new media for the dissemination of Islamic beliefs;
and the prominence of Muhammad as a role model and a source ofemulation for all individual Muslims, which has led to a growing internalisation of normative Islamic principles.19 None of the above canbe read as indicative of secularisation; every single one can be taken
to point to an autochthonous Islamic Enlightenment marked by a
new piety that supplants the premodern order. In fact, the impregnable division of modern Islam into Sunni and Shi‘i camps is itself ahistorical novelty, and an example of the modern conception of religious identity that arose in the wake of the Sufi reform movements.20
Islamist politics itself is best understood as an instance of secularity – a changed conception of religion that offers a variety of new
trajectories for encounters with the political sphere, as it plays out
differently across Muslim nations. Considered in this manner, it will
become clear that even the hijab – a wholly and explicitly ‘religious’drama, and the single most explicit site and metaphor for piety – isa thoroughly secular affair, in the same way that Islamism, or the
A Review Essay,” American Historical Review 108, no. 4 (2003); Gert Pickel, “Secularization – an Empirically Consolidated Narrative in the Face of an Increasing
Influence of Religion on Politics,” Politica & Sociedate. Revista de Sociologica Politica 16, no. 36 (2017).
18 Neguin Yavari, “Shifting Modes of Piety in Early Modern Iran and the Persephone
Zone,” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West,
Beyond Modernities” 10 (Leipzig University, 2019).
19 Hofheinz, “The Islamic Eighteenth Century.”
20 Reinhard Schulze, “Islam and the Global History of Secularity,” delivered at theconference on “Secularities – Patterns of Distinction, Paths of Differentiation,” convened by the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities,”
Leipzig University, 4–6 October 2018.

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic World

Indian Bharatiya Janata Party are wholly modern secular developments.21 It may also help steer the study of modern Islamic history
away from unsubstantiated and unverifiable assertions that attributeto Muslims a predilection for religion, an affinity for tradition that is
subsequently brought to masquerade as an explanation for the appealof Islamist politics.
Reading the past – the non-European past – through the lens ofsecularity will also pave the way for the inclusion of vast swathes of
the world in contemporary discussions of global history. Because it
establishes a dynamic relationship between religion and politics thatchanges as religion and the political change, and because it rests on
deep-seated emic processes of differentiation, even for the modern
period, secularity accommodates a meaningful comparison of premodern societies, allowing premodern Islamic debates on the subject to emerge as one of the building blocks of a global modernity.
Secularity, in effect, is a disambiguation of secularism (or of democracy) as a good that is possessed, a social order that is theorised
and achieved in certain areas of the globe while remaining a distant
dream in others.22 Unlike its normative cousin, secularity maintains
religion and politics as relational concepts shaped and experienceddifferently in different local settings, and historicises that relationship to forge a permanent dialogue between the past and the present,
and refract a true history of the political in different quarters of theworld at different times.

Focus on secularity
undermines unverifiable
assertions such as a
Muslim predilection for
religion or tradition thatmasquerade as an explanation for the appealof Islamist politics

Secularity, in effect, isa disambiguation of
secularism

21 Ilona Ryser and Janina Sorger-Rachidi, “Interview with Reinhard Schulze,”
Zeitschrift für junge Religionwissenschaft 14 (2019); and Nandy, “The Twilight ofCertitudes.”22 Pierre Rosanvallon, “Democratic Universalism as a Historical Problem,” Constellations 16, no. 4 (2009).
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Quoted and Further Reading

Al-Fārābī, Abū Na ṣr. Kitāb al-millah, wa nuṣūṣ ukhrā. Edited by Muhsin Mahdi.
Beirut: Dar al-Mashriq, 1968.
Alfarabi. The Political Writings, “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts. Translated
and annotated by C. E. Butterworth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Bodin, Jean. On Sovereignty. Translated and edited by Julian H. Franklin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Bourke, Richard. “Introduction.” In Popular Sovereignty in Historical Perspective.
Edited by Richard Bourke and Quentin Skinner, 1–14. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2017.
Crone, Patricia. God’s Rule, Government and Islam: Six Centuries of Medieval
Islamic Political Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Fouchécour, Charles-Henri de. Moralia: Les notions morales dans la littérature persane du 3e/9e au 7e/13e siècle. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1986.
Al-Ghazālī, Abū Hāmid Muhammad. Naṣīḥat al-mulūk. Edited by Jalal al-Din
Huma’i. Tehran: Anjuman Athar Milli, 1972.
Hofheinz, Albrecht. “The Islamic Eighteenth Century: A View from the Edge.”
In Islam in der Moderne, Moderne im Islam: Eine Festschrift für Reinhard
Schulze, zum 65. Geburtstag. Edited by Florian Zemmin, Johannes Stephan
and Monica Corrado, 234–53. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
Ibn al-Balkhī. Fārsnāma. Edited by G. Le Strange and R. A. Nicholson. London:
Luzac, 1921.
Kleine, Christoph, and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. “Research Programme for the
HCAS ‘Multiple Secularities—Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities.’ ”
Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West,
Beyond Modernities” 1. Leipzig University, 2016.
Kleine, Christoph. “Japan before 1800.” In Companion to the Study of Secularity.
Edited by HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities.” Leipzig University 2018. www.multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion/css_kleine_japan-before-1800.pdf.
Germann, Nadja. “Al-Farabi’s Philosophy of Society and Religion.” In The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 edition). Edited by Edward N. Zalta.
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/al-farabi-soc-rel/.
Mahdi, Muhsin S. Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy.
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001.
March, Andrew F. “Genealogies of Sovereignty in Islamic Political Thought,”
Social Research 80, no. 1 (2013): 293–320.
Martini, Giovanni Maria. ‘Alā al-Dawla al-Simnānī between Spiritual Authority and Political Power: A Persian Lord and Intellectual in the Heart of theĪlkhānate, with a Critical Edition and Translation of al-Wārid al-šārid al-ṭārid
šubhat al-mārid and a Critical Edition of its Persian version Zayn al-mu‘taqad
li-zayn al-mu‘taqid. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
A-Māwardī, ‘Alī b. Muhammad. Al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya wa al-wilāyāt al-dīniyya.
Edited by A ḥmad Mubarak al-Baghdadi. Kuwait: Dar Ibn Qutayba, 1989.
Nandy, Ashis. “The Twilight of Certitudes: Secularism, Hindu Nationalism, andOther Masks of Deculturation.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 22, no. 2(1997): 157–76.
Nizām al-Mulk. The Book of Government or Rules for Kings. Translated by Hubert
Darke. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960, 2nd ed. 1978.

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic World

Pickel, Gert. “Secularization – an Empirically Consolidated Narrative in the Face ofan Increasing Influence of Religion on Politics.” Politica & Sociedate. Revista deSociologica Politica 16, no. 36 (2017): 259–94.
Pocock, J. G. A. “On the Unglobality of Contexts: Cambridge Methods and theHistory of Political Thought.” Global Intellectual History 4, no. 1 (2019): 1–14.
Rosanvallon, Pierre. “Democratic Universalism as a Historical Problem.” Constellations 16, no. 4 (2009): 539–49.
Ryser, Ilona, and Janina Sorger-Rachidi. “Interview with Reinhard Schulze.” Zeitschrift für junge Religionwissenschaft 14 (2019). http://journals.openedition.
org/zjr/1203.
Salvatore, Armando. “The Euro-Islamic Roots of Secularity: A Difficult Equation.”
Asian Journal of Social Science 33, no. 3 (2005): 412–37.
Salvatore, Armando. “The Islamicate Adab Tradition vs. the Islamic Shari‘a, from
Pre-Colonial to Colonial.” Working Paper Series of the HCAS “Multiple Secularities: Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” 3 (Leipzig University, 2018).
Schulze, Reinhard. “Is there an Islamic Modernity?” In The Islamic World and theWest: An Introduction to Political Cultures and International Relations. Editedby Kai Hafez, 21–32. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
Schulze, Reinhard. “Islam and the Global History of Secularity,” lecture deliveredat the conference on “Secularities – Patterns of Distinction, Paths of Differentiation,” convened by the HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West,
Beyond Modernities,” Leipzig University, 4–6 October 2018.
Sheehan, Jonathan. “Enlightenment, Religion and the Enigma of Secularization: A
Review Essay.” American Historical Review 108, no. 4 (2003):1061–80.
Smith, Sophie. “The Language of “Political Science” in Early Modern Europe,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 80, no. 2 (2019), pp. 201–26.
Wohlrab-Sahr, Monika and Marian Burchhardt. “Revisiting the Secular: Multiple
Secularities and Pathways to Modernity.” Working Paper Series of the HCAS
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Yavari, Neguin. “Shifting Modes of Piety in Early Modern Iran and the Persephone
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Leipzig University – HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, 2019www.multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion

Companion to the Study of Secularity – Neguin Yavari: Secularity in the Premodern Islamic WorldThis text is part of the Companion to the Study of Secularity. The intent of the Companion is to give scholars interested in the concept of Multiple Secularities, who are
not themselves specialists in particular (historical) regions, an insight into different
regions in which formations of secularity can be observed, as well as into the key
concepts and notions with respect to the study of secularity.
It is published by the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Multiple
Secularities − Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”. For as long as the HCAS
continues to exist, the Companion will be published and further expanded on the
HCAS’ website. Towards the end of Multiple Secularities project, all entries will
be systematised and edited in order to transform the Companion into a completed
Open Access publication.
Please cite as:
Yavari, Neguin. “Towards a History of Secularity in the Pre-Modern Islamic World.”
In Companion to the Study of Secularity. Edited by HCAS “Multiple Secularities –Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities.” Leipzig University, 2019. www.multiplesecularities.de/media/css_yavari_secularitypremodernislam.pdf

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Leipzig University – HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, 2019www.multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion