Friends of the Devil: Rebellion and the Construction of Early Islamic Caliphal Sovereignty

29 May, 2025

We are deeply honoured to welcome Dr Mohammed Allehbi, Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, to lead the Philosophy in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group session.

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Here are the details of this fascinating event.

Title: Friends of the Devil: Rebellion and the Construction of Early Islamic Caliphal Sovereignty

Abstract: Between the eighth and tenth centuries, Muslim caliphs deemed rebellions against their rule as the work of Satan. In the Umayyad (661-750 C.E.) and Abbasid eras (750-1256), several government letters referred to any group who challenged caliphal authority as awliyā ʾ Iblīs (friends of the Devil). Government officials adapted qurʾānic conceptions of the Devil to legitimize the caliphs’ authority as God’s deputies. However, this political-religious conception of the Devil has continuity with the political theology of late antique Christian Roman emperors who used similar language for those who threatened their rule. In this talk, I trace this genealogy of the Devil and his supposed human allies as the caliphate’s archenemies in government letters written for the Umayyad caliphs Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik, and Marwān II (r. 744-750), and the Abbasid caliphs, al-Maʾmūn’s (r. 813-833), and al-Radī’ (r. 934–40). By closely examining these official letters, I will reveal in this talk how understanding this political framing of the Devil offers us key insight into the tense construction of early Islamic sovereignty.

Speaker’s Biography: Dr Mohammed Allehbi is a Mohammed Noah Research Fellow at the Oxford Center of Islamic Studies. He was a PIL-LC Research Fellow at the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and the Library of Congress for the 2023–2024 academic year. He specializes in law and governance in the Islamic Near East and the Mediterranean during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. After earning his master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Chicago in 2014, he received his doctorate in history from Vanderbilt University in 2021, where he was a senior lecturer in the Department of Classical and Mediterranean Studies. His first article, “It is Permitted for the Amīr but not the Qāḍī’: The Military-Administrative Genealogy of Coercion in Abbasid Criminal Justice,” was published in Islamic Law and Society in the Autumn of 2022. It explores the emergence and rationalization of coercive interrogations in late antique and early medieval Islamic criminal justice. Currently, he is working on his first monograph about the formation of Islamic criminal justice and policing in the Near East and the Mediterranean between the eighth and twelfth centuries.

Chair: TBA

Date: 29 May, 2025

Time: 18:00-19:00 BST | 19:00-20:00 CEST | 10:00-11:00 PST | 13:00-14:00 EST

Venue: online

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Philosophy MAY 2025_MA Download