Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma is a book of regulations about Christian and Jewish subjects of Islamic rule, written by the Ḥanbalī jurist and theologian Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350). It is an important resource for historical studies of non-Muslim minorities in the Mamluk period and is often cited as a normative text in present-day Muslim discussions about Muslim-non-Muslim relations. This article gives an insight into the history of the only surviving manuscript of Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma and the unusual process by which the first printed edition was compiled. It shows that the movement of the manuscript was largely a result of Ibn Taymiyya’s and Ibn al-Qayyim’s more general popularity in specific geographic regions than the authority of the text itself, and that individuals’ religious-intellectual interests were decisive for the publication of a printed edition in 1961. It also shows that the unusual editing process impacted on the reliability of the printed editions available today, the majority of which are financed by Saudi institutions.

This article reviews the changing reception of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s (d. 751/1350) Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma between the fourteenth century and modern times. I argue that the book had little influence on legal discourse about Christian and Jewish subjects under Muslim rule when it was written and during the following centuries. However, after the publication of a printed edition in 1961 and particularly from the 1990s, Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma has become an important resource for discussions of non-Muslim minorities in a Muslim state. I attribute the altered reception to a number of factors, including the now changed status of the author and the Ḥanbalite school to which he belonged, and the new relationship between the character of the book and the expectations of its readers. Consideration of the trajectory of Aḥkām ahl al-dhimma from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century is revealing for the insights that it offers into the changing status of Ibn al-Qayyim and the Ḥanbalite legal tradition, and the approach to non-Muslim subjecthood in Islamic legal discourse. It should also encourage caution when using this book as a source for understanding the social or legal history of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the fourteenth century.

This article examines the integration of Ifrīqiya into the Umayyad Empire from the conquest of Carthage in 78/698 until the ʿAbbāsid revolution in 132/750. It compares the province of Ifrīqiya with the province of Egypt and argues that, although Ifrīqiya and Egypt were both directly subordinated to caliphal control from 86/705 and therefore equal in a formal administrative sense, Ifrīqiya was a less prestigious province than Egypt within the caliphal hierarchy. This argument is based on a prosopographical comparison of the governors of the two provinces and a comparison of the factors affecting their selection. It is supported by a consideration of the reasons why Ifrīqiya was a less prestigious province than Egypt. Among these reasons, an important role is attributed to Egypt’s role as a transit province between North Africa and Syria. This gave Egypt an informal dominance over Ifrīqiya, which was a disadvantage for a governorship over this province.

In 122/740 an uprising in the Far Maghrib triggered a series of rebellions that eventually ended Arab rule over the Islamic West. The event is not of key importance for the historians of the Islamic Empire, and when it is discussed, the focus tends to lie on the uprising’s significance for Arab rule in al-Andalus rather than the Maghrib.This study compares the most detailed accounts of the Uprising of 122 by early imperial historians such as al-Ṭabarī and Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam with those of later historians writing in the heartland of the Islamic Empire, such as Ibn al-Athīr and al-Dhahabī, and of historians situated further west, in al-Andalus and the Maghrib. It finds that the presentation of the Uprising of 122 varies depending on the histor-ical context of and the source tradition used by the author in question. It also finds that while the Umayyad and Khārijite actors tend to be presented with a degree of differentiation and from a variety of perspectives, the portrayal of the rebels is more uniform. The rebels, referred to as Berbers in all accounts, are depicted as a monolithic entity displaying a stereotypical set of characteristics that sets them apart from notions of order and propriety that the authors associate with the Islamic Empire. Although its consequences for Arab rule in the West are not explic-itly acknowledged by the historians, this comparison of how they depict its actors reveals the Uprising’s impact on the historical consciousness, particularly in regard to the inhabitants of the seceded region.