Najm al-Din Yousefi, "Islam without Fuqahāʾ: Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and His Perso-Islamic Solution to the Caliphate's Crisis of Legitimacy (70–142 AH/690–760 CE)"
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00210862.2015.1073912This paper seeks to advance the existing scholarship on Persian secretary and belles-lettrist, ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 139/757) and his Risāla fī ’l-Ṣaḥāba (Epistle Concerning the Entourage). It argues that the Risāla, addressed to the second Abbasid caliph al-Manṣūr, set out to tackle the political ills of the caliphate, especially the crisis of political legitimacy. As the first documented articulation of the Islamic polity, the Risāla made a series of recommendations, including a proposal for legal codification that attempted to reinvent the caliphate by reuniting the institution's political and legal authority at the expense of private jurists (fuqahāʾ). The paper illustrates how Ibn Muqaffaʿ’s solution relied on a creative integration of Iranian and Islamic ideas of statecraft and legitimate rule. Ironically, this creative integration may have played a part in the Risāla’s failure to garner necessary support to effect change.
Several fuqahāʾ had - earlier - supported the lawfulness of the "nāṣirate" of Ibn al-Ashʿath; Saʿid bin Jubayr was foremost among these. (At any rate, so al-Ḥajjāj thought - because al-Ḥajjāj had Saʿid killed.)
Under the ʿAbbāsids, pro-Umayyad diehards like Awzaʿi and Sufyān al-Thawri had insisted on Umayyad precedent in Syria and Iraq, respectively. Also Malik in the Madina was doing the same for the ʿUmarids (which included ʿUmar II). As before, the jurists were proposing a rule of law; such a rule would render the caliphs irrelevant.
The ʿAbbāsids needed a counter-argument. Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ gave them that. [Schacht,
Origins, 95, 102-3.] Yousefi notes that the ʿulamāʾ rejected this, but Schacht had implied and I tend to agree that the caliph had accepted it first: Imām Malik resisted that caliph's arrogation (restoration?) of power, which earned him a public beating. Also later Muslims complained about Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ's popularity in royal courts.
And attempts by later ʿAbbāsids to insist upon a "created Qur'an", I think, might stem from the same royal drive to assert their caliphate as final arbiters of Islamic fiqh. Yousefi notes that Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ is further credited with a
Muʿāraḍat ’l-Qurʾān.
It's interesting that we don't seem to own so detailed a policy-prescription from the Umayyads. All I see in Crone & Hinds,
God's Caliph, is bald declarations of divine-right monarchy - for one side or another. Sometimes I see helpful guidance for kings in Ibn ʿAbdi Rabbih,
Iqd al-Farid - Yousefi sees these as forerunners to this text, especially ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd. What I
don't see, is an Umayyad courtier like Zuhri defining the full scope of caliphal rule. And if Ibn al-Ashʿath had delivered a reasoned argument for his own position, this doesn't survive either.
As far as I know. Allahu aʿlam.
Topic: Constitutio Abbasidorum