Dhimma som politiskt vapen: en studie i al-Mutawakkils religiopolitiska strategi

Sammanfattning: The reign of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mutawakkil (847-861) is consistently presented in research literature as a milestone in the ups and downs of religious persecution in the early centuries of Islamic civilization. In this bachelor’s thesis I seek to discern what the intentions and motivations of al-Mutawakkil were in institutionalizing his particular brand of state-level discrimination. Research into this particular but critical aspect is something that I found lacking even in literature that pertains to the life of al-Mutawakkil exclusively. This thesis is an effort to redeem this deficiency. I approached the issue using some of the latest research in both Muslim-Dhimmī relations and on the reign of al-Mutawakkil. These corpora mutually illuminate the religious policy of the caliph. Brief analysis of translated source material supplements and enhances this methodology. Al-Mutawakkil inherited a caliphate whose religious and political hegemony had been squandered through the inquisition-fiasco perpetrated by his predecessors. His response to this conundrum was in my analysis to decisively turn coat and attempt to take leadership of the traditionist opposition. In this thesis I make the claim that al-Mutawakkil chose ʿUmar b. al-ʿAzīz as his paragon and that he in fact was very serious about enforcing traditionist orthodoxy. It appears al-Mutawakkil shaped his traditionist persona in mimicry of this Umayyad caliph who was hailed as the fifth rightly guided caliph and the mujaddid (prophesied restorer) of the first century. I propose that al-Mutawakkil aspired to repeat this feat and claim for himself the still vacant seat of the second century mujaddid. This ethos was however only a means to an end. The mujaddid-façade was in practice secondary to the ever exacting demands of court intrigue. The ideological inconsistencies in policy that followed were to compromise the credibility of the caliph among the very traditionist he sought to sway.