Political Literature: The Hidden Geometry of Legitimacy during the Umayyad Rule

Abstract

The Umayyad rule (661–750 CE) was the first state in Islamic history to transform the caliphate into a hereditary monarchy, thereby confronting a profound crisis of legitimacy. This crisis stemmed, on the one hand, from the gap between Islamic ideals and the realities of political power, and, on the other hand, from the social and cultural reactions of various segments of society. In this context, literature functioned not merely as an artistic phenomenon but as a field of contestation over legitimacy: both as an instrument employed by the ruling authority to justify its power and as a weapon utilized by its opponents to delegitimize that authority. Drawing upon the concept of the “hidden geometry of legitimacy,” the present article seeks to demonstrate how literary currents such as mathālib writing, the Shuʿūbiyyah movement, the epic spirit, asceticism and Sufism, ghazal poetry and political prose, as well as the mechanisms of propaganda and censorship, were each engaged with the question of legitimacy in distinct ways. These currents are analyzed through a four-dimensional model of legitimacy—rightfulness, acceptance, legality, and effectiveness—in order to reveal the complex geometry of power during the Umayyad era.