Political Literature: The Hidden Geometry of Legitimacy during the Abbasid Caliphate

Abstract

Legitimacy, the most fundamental capital of any political system, faced profound challenges during the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258 CE). The Abbasids came to power under the ambiguous slogan al-riḍā min Āl Muḥammad (“the chosen one from the family of Muhammad”); however, after consolidating their rule, they encountered a crisis in justifying their rightful authority. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on the theories of Weber (1922, p. 124) and Bourdieu (1992, p. 53), this article examines the metaphor of the “hidden geometry of legitimacy” in the literature of this period: a geometry that simultaneously reproduced the three pillars of religious, traditional, and rational legitimacy while internally calling these very pillars into question. By examining the history and administrative structure of the caliphate and the transition from a tribal society to an urban civilization, this study demonstrates that the policy of financial patronage created a dialectic of literary dependence and independence. This dialectic was manifested in the formal evolution of poetry and prose and in the emergence of epic, lyrical, mystical, and Shiʿi tendencies. Panegyric poetry placed the caliph within an aura of sanctity, whereas traces of Shiʿi inclination and Shuʿūbiyya, concealed within narratives and lyric poems, challenged the legitimacy of the Abbasid dynasty. Abbasid political literature was therefore not merely an instrument in the hands of power, but rather a multilayered and tension-filled field.