The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

‘Abd al-Hamid al-Katib b. Yahya al-‘Amiri (d. 750)

An early epistolographer credited from medieval times with founding Arabic literary prose, ‘Abd al-Hamid was a third-generation non-Arab Muslim born around 688, probably in al-Anbar in Iraq. He studied most likely in Kufa, where he later worked as a teacher and a peripatetic tutor. He then became a secretary in the Umayyad administration in Damascus, taking up a career that he kept until the end of his life. His work allowed him to be close to at least two influential Umayyad caliphs: Hisham b. ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 724–43) and Marwan b. Muhammad (Marwan II; r. 744–50). This closeness allowed him to write letters on their behalf, to espouse fervently their political cause, and to be their mouthpiece in expressing their ideology. He paid the ultimate price for his loyalty to them when agents of the Abbasid rebels, successfully overthrowing the Umayyads, killed him in 750.

‘Abd al-Hamid’s letters were transmitted and studied by his students and descendants, many of whom served as secretaries in the Abbasid and Tulunid administrations. These and later secretaries and litterateurs praised ‘Abd al-Hamid’s style, crediting him with introducing several innovations into Arabic prose. Combining talent with memorization of fine literature and secretarial training in the chancery, he created a recognizable style that manipulated the possibilities of language and sound and made extensive and creative use of Qur’anic citations and allusions.

‘Abd al-Hamid’s letters filled about 1,000 folios in the late tenth century, but only about 100 pages of them survived. This corpus consists of about 62 complete or fragmentary letters or extracts of letters, 37 of which are major, in addition to several signatory notes and oral sayings. Some of the major letters are descriptive or personal, and one of them is his famous “Letter to the Secretaries,” in which ‘Abd al-Hamid counseled his peers on their education and their behavior toward superiors and colleagues. Most of those letters, however, are official, dealing by and large with public matters and often written on behalf of identified or unidentified Umayyad caliphs. Some of them address gubernatorial issues, others describe major caliphal activities, and still others hail the victories of the Muslims over the non-Muslims. They analyze potential dissent or actual rebellions, describe the suppression of rebels, or warn rebels or other groups engaged in illegitimate civil activities. Several also examine the issues of obedience, disobedience, and civil discord (fitna), and one of them, ‘Abd al-Hamid’s longest work (about 40 pages), is his famous “Testament to the Crown Prince,” in which he counsels the heir apparent of Marwan II on matters moral, religious, political, and military in a manner reminiscent of the Mirrors for Princes political advice genre that was to develop later in Islamic political literature.

‘Abd al-Hamid’s main contribution to Islamic political thought in his official letters lies in constructing a theoretical framework for Umayyad ideology and in presenting the Umayyads as pious guardians of religion. Theoretically, ‘Abd al-Hamid places the Umayyads in a universal historical context: God chose Islam to be his own religion; he sent the Prophet Muhammad at a moment of darkness in human history; and after Muhammad’s demise, God created a new institution, the caliphate, which inherited prophethood. The caliphs are thus God’s caliphs, whom he mandated to rule and to whom absolute obedience is due, just as it is to God. Therefore, obedience is the means of salvation for all Muslims in this world and the next; any engagement in disobedience or civil strife is fatal.

On the practical level, ‘Abd al-Hamid painted a highly religious picture of the Umayyad caliphs. He described them as pious, God-fearing, and utterly helpless without God, and he highlighted several of their activities that had a religious context, such as performing the pilgrimage and fasting during the month of Ramadan. His victory letters hail each triumph as indicative of God’s support of the Umayyad caliphs and their being his rightful appointees to the guardianship of the Muslim community. Although almost all of ‘Abd al-Hamid’s letters use Qur’anic citations and allusions, this use is particularly frequent in his ideologically oriented letters, where the support of God’s word acts as the ultimate proof of the rightfulness of the Umayyads’ cause.