The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

bureaucracy

The term “bureaucracy” refers to a system of administrative departments known as bureaus (dawāwīn, sing. dīwān) that function as an extension of the ruler’s political authority for managing the affairs of the realm. The bureaucratic concept is not elaborated in the Qur’an or sunna but was adopted by early Muslim rulers from Byzantine and Persian practices. A complex bureaucratic structure developed under the Umayyads (661–750) and Abbasids (750–1258) and became the administrative model for subsequent dynasties: a system of administrative norms, embodied in bureaucratic departments, for managing soldiers’ salaries and rations, tax revenues, official correspondence, court attendants and provisions, subjects’ complaints, lands possessed by the ruling dynasty and those parceled out as grants to military commanders, monies confiscated from disgraced officials, and a whole host of other governmental interests. Bureaucratic structures existed at the caliphal (or sultanic) center, and in the provinces, and in the borderlands (thughūr); at the summit of the bureaucratic hierarchy stood such offices as that of vizier and chief comptroller (zimām al-azimma), two posts created in the early Abbasid period.

Bureaucracy, at its heart, is the craft of writing (kitāba) in the service of governance (siyāsa), and the bureaucratic corps was known simply as “writers” or “scribes” (kuttāb, sing. kātib) or “people of the pen” (ahl al-qalam; qalamiyya in the Ottoman context) in contrast to the military corps, known as “people of the sword” (ahl al-sayf; ‘askariyya in the Ottoman context), which formed the second pillar of rule. Letters, registries, documents, and records—written material—constituted the professional substance and occupation of the bureaucratic corps of the various dynasties ruling in the name of Islam, whether Sunni or Shi‘i. Writing, in this bureaucratic form, was understood to exist for the sake of political coherency. Bureaucratic manuals commonly warned against the political breakdown that would occur as a result of deficiencies in written communication, and bureaucratic circles saw administrative order as a product of written order, known as the art of writing (ṣinā‘at al-kitāba). This association of writing with bureaucracy left its mark on Muslim intellectual life. For example, a tenth-century work on different methods of communication, al-Burhan fi Wujuh al-Bayan (Proof of the means of communication) by Abu al-Husayn b. Wahb, secretary in the employ of ‘Ali b. ‘Isa, celebrated vizier during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Muqtadir, identifies written communication wholly with the bureaucratic profession. Also, Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) recognized the political significance of bureaucracy, suggesting that a dynasty that had lost its clan solidarity (‘aṣabiyya), once it had become accustomed to the luxuries of settled life, could still hope to preserve its rule—and thus the political coherency of the realm—by maintaining a strong and well-run bureaucracy.

The dīwān—that is, the administrative bureau—was conceived as the written repository of information of import to the state. This information, recorded in official documents, embodied rules and regulations that, along with the ruler’s edicts, set expectations of governance. In this sense, the diwān represented an authority in its own right to which recourse could be had for managing public affairs. In the Ottoman context, the diwān also referred to the cabinet of administrators who constituted the highest authorities of the realm both at the imperial center and in the provincial governorates. In this sense, the existence of a bureaucratic system as a recognized feature of Islamic rule, as articulated in such works as al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya (The ordinances of government) by Mawardi (d. 1058; an influential scholar in the employ of the Abbasid caliphs of his day), lent itself to a notion of “rational rule” in Islam—that is, governance by intelligible and predictable norms and not simply by personal decisions made in potentially whimsical fashion by a dynastic ruler or a coterie of figures close to him. The ruler’s judgment (ra’y) was, to be sure, the origin of political authority, and dynasties—as well as leading bureaucratic departments and ministries—were not above nepotism. Still, the expansion of bureaucratic institutions set the expectation of regular administrative order against which the conduct of dynastic officials, such as tax collectors, could be measured.

Muslim appreciation for bureaucracy arose in the wake of the first conquests, when figures such as ‘Umar b. al-Khattab (r. 634–44), the second Rightly Guided Caliph in succession to Muhammad, recognized the necessity of bureaucratic organization for administering conquered lands and peoples. There was need for a repository (dīwān) of administrative information—a written record to preserve, for example, the fiscal terms of treaties made with the various towns and cities that fell to the Muslim conquerors, including the nature of capitulation (with or without fighting), which was a key criterion for determining the amount of money and goods to be extracted by the political center as a land tax (kharāj). Adjustments could be and were made in fiscal policies, but important precedents were set for the bureaucratic practice by the dynamic of conquest, as seen, for example, in the work of the historian Ahmad b. Yahya al-Baladhuri (d. ca. 892) on the first conquests (Futuh al-Buldan) and also in Ottoman taxation policies, which were ultimately grounded in the imperial edict (qanun-nama) issued at the time of conquest.

At the same time, bureaucratic structures and norms used by Muslims, even if legitimized by conquest, were generally based on customs used by previous rule. The Qur’an and sunna offered little guidance when it came to the constitution and details of bureaucratic administration, and dynastic servitors were quite aware that they were building on a past heritage. Not only did they tend to see the Islamic dispensation in light of the conquests and decisions of earlier Muslims, but they also idealized the Persian past, especially as a model of competent administration, as seen in a tenth-century work on bureaucratic history, Kitab al-Wuzara’ wa-l-Kuttab (The book of ministers and secretaries) by Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad al-Jahshiyari (d. 942), servitor to a number of viziers in the Abbasid dynasty of his day. Features unique to Muslim administration gradually disappeared, such as the Umayyad practice of registering soldiers by tribe, which, in the early Abbasid period, was changed to registration by village. Greek, Persian, and Coptic continued as bureaucratic languages until the fifth Umayyad caliph, ‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan (r. 685–705), made Arabic the language of Islamic rule, as it was already the language of Islamic religion. This too did not last, and other languages, notably Persian and then Turkish (under the Ottomans), were used for bureaucratic purposes by later dynasties. However, ‘Abd al-Malik’s cultural policy did play a role in encouraging the rise of Arabic prose, a development in which leading members of the bureaucratic establishment—namely, ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Katib and Ibn al-Muqaffa‘—had a hand.

The bureaucratic corps embodied a distinct culture within Muslim society, identifiable not only in terms of standards of language and writing but also in dress, etiquette, and a sense of hierarchy and authority, symbolized in the governing seal (khatam; tughra in the Ottoman context) by which bureaucratic writing was imprinted (quite literally) with political authority. To this end, a genre of administrative literature arose, beginning in the early Abbasid period: manuals defining bureaucratic writing and procedures as well as the general ethos of bureaucratic culture. This literature, composed in Arabic at first, invariably drew on the language of the religious heritage for standards of communication, working to integrate rule and religion together in a singe cultural framework. Indeed, in some works, bureaucracy—that is, written communication—was classified as a branch of shari‘a. Bureaucracy would thus become something of an ideological battleground between those who would align it with the language and standards of eloquence of the first Muslims and those who would recognize its “linguistic autonomy”—that is, its own set of terms and nomenclature. However, it is best to see shari‘a and bureaucratic administration as symbiotic realms, mutually reinforcing each other in shaping the public order of Muslim society—a synthesis noticeable in many administrative works, such as the bureaucratic “encyclopedia” Subh al-A‘sha fi Sina‘at al-Insha’ (Morning for the night-blind in the art of composition) of Abu l-‘Abbas Ahmad al-Qalqashandi (d. 1418), an Egyptian scholar and administrative servitor during the reign of the Mamluks, and also in the Ottoman policy of integrating circles of the religiously learned (‘ilmiyya) into the bureaucratic ranks of the empire.