Every state is divided up into administrative divisions in order to organise and manage the local affairs of its citizens. The names and sizes of these divisions will vary between different countries, and an Islamic State or caliphate can use any of these administrative divisions from any system which suits its requirements at the time. The underlying principle here is to keep the caliphate united upon the Islamic ‘aqeeda (creed), even if administratively and politically it consists of separate states and entities. The top-level division in a caliphate is the province or state known as a Wiliyah (ولاية) or Emirate (إِمَارَةِ). The head of this province is called a Wali or an Amir. In the latter half of the Abbasid Caliphate, when the provinces became powerful semi-independent ‘empires’ then Sultanate (سَلْطَنَة) was used as in the case of the Seljuks, Mamluks and Ottomans. For the citizens of an Islamic State, their first point of contact with the leadership of the state is the governor of their province or emirate, and their local mayors in the …

“The Arabic word dīwān (دِيوان) refers to a sitting room, where scribes can sit and attend to their work; it can also mean a collection of notebooks, or a ledger, containing the names of those who are registered in the military or who receive grants from the government.”[1] In modern times a dīwān is called a government department (دائِرَة da’ira). Al-Mawardi says, “The dīwān is a place for maintaining what is related to the authorities of the Sultan in terms of public works, finance, and the armies and governors (Al-‘Ummal) who carry them out.”[2] The original term dīwān is from Pahlavi (Middle Persian), because this administration of state bureaucracy was adopted from the Persian empire by Umar ibn Al-Khattab, the second caliph of Islam in the year 20H[3]. Abu Hurayra, who was the governor of al-Bahrain came to Umar with 500,000 dirhams in tax revenue. After Umar’s initial shock at the size of this amount he consulted the sahaba and he was advised to adopt the diwan of the Persians.[4] Administration (إِدارَة idara) can be …

Al-Mawardi describes the Wazir Al-Tanfidh (The Executive Minister) in his model, “As for the wazirate of execution (tanfidh), its rule is weaker and its conditions are fewer as its authority is restricted to the judgement and direction of the Imam: the wazir is a mediator between him and his subjects, carrying out his commands, executing his instructions, enacting what he decides and announcing any governmental appointments or military preparations of the armies; he also informs him about anything of importance which happens and any new developments which come to his notice, so that he may act in accordance with the Imam’s command. He is thus appointed for the execution of affairs but not to organise them -indeed he is not appointed for this purpose. If he shares in making judgements, the name ‘wazir’ is more fitting while if he does not, then the name ‘mediator’ (Al-Wasitah) or ‘ambassador’ (Al-Sifarah) is more applicable.”[1] The Minister of Execution (Wazir Al-Tanfidh) in modern times may be part of the Executive Office or head up an Executive Department. Historically, …

Every state must have an army to protect its interests at home and abroad, and the Islamic State is no different in this regard. Although the word jihad has become a controversial term nowadays due to the west and its media equating it with terrorism, no one can dispute that fighting to make Allah’s word the highest i.e. that the systems and laws in the land are based on sharia is a major part of the Islamic religion, and two billion of the world’s population would not be Muslim today if it wasn’t for these conquests that took place over the centuries. The Prophet ﷺ said,  رَأْسُ الأَمْرِ الإِسْلاَمُ وَعَمُودُهُ الصَّلاَةُ وَذِرْوَةُ سَنَامِهِ الْجِهَادُ “The head of the matter is Islam, and its pillar is the prayer, and its hump[1] is Jihad.”[2] Allah (Most High) says, ٱلَّذِينَ أُخْرِجُوا۟ مِن دِيَـٰرِهِم بِغَيْرِ حَقٍّ إِلَّآ أَن يَقُولُوا۟ رَبُّنَا ٱللَّهُ ۗ وَلَوْلَا دَفْعُ ٱللَّهِ ٱلنَّاسَ بَعْضَهُم بِبَعْضٍۢ لَّهُدِّمَتْ صَوَٰمِعُ وَبِيَعٌۭ وَصَلَوَٰتٌۭ وَمَسَـٰجِدُ يُذْكَرُ فِيهَا ٱسْمُ ٱللَّهِ كَثِيرًۭا ۗ وَلَيَنصُرَنَّ ٱللَّهُ مَن يَنصُرُهُۥٓ ۗ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَقَوِىٌّ عَزِيزٌ ˹They …

The wazirate (ministry), or wizarah (وِزارَة) is a term that refers to the office of the wazir, a high-ranking government official who serves as the caliph’s deputy, chief minister and advisor who aids him in running the state. Al-Mawardi says, “The ministry of delegation (Wizarah Al-Tafwid) is where the Imam appoints a wazir to whom he delegates authority for the organisation of affairs in accordance with his judgement such that he effects them properly by his own efforts.”[1] The wazirate evolved over the centuries, but it existed in one form or another from the first Islamic State headed by the Prophet ﷺ in Medina, until 1922 when the Ottoman Sultanate was officially abolished[2] and along with it the last Grand Vizier. Willem Gerrit Dedel, Ambassador of the Dutch Republic to the Ottoman Caliphate 1765-1768 during the reign of Mustafa III (r.1757-1774) describes the scene when the Sultan’s no.2 man rode past. “We fetched our horses and waited until all the Sultan’s senior officials had ridden past on their fine horses. This was an extremely lovely …

Imam Al-Mawardi (d.1058) was a jurist, chief justice (Qadi al-Qudah), diplomat and statesman of the Abbasid Caliphate under the caliphs Al-Qadir (r.991-1031CE) and Al-Qa’im (r.1031-1075CE). He wrote his famous book al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyah near the end of his life, drawing on his experiences in government and politics. His book is therefore not theoretical, but a practical guide to ruling which is why it has stood the test of time, and is still used as a reference point to this day. Abdelilah Belkeziz says, “The Medieval classical Islamic fiqh culture was replete with a tremendous legacy of conceptual production in this regard, and perhaps the most important of it was that bequeathed by Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi in his writings, especially his authoritative reference book: al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyah (Sultanate Rules) which was the first Islamic conceptual expose to take the matter of the state from the realm of the kalam (theology) to that of fiqh, subjecting it to a theoretical complexity that would remain an authoritative referential (marja’iyah) for the remainder of subsequent writings on the subject. And it …

The emergence of the first Islamic State in 622CE went unnoticed at first by the Sassanid and Byzantine empires. The Persians and Romans were fighting each other in a major war[1], and so their focus was not on the nomadic Arabs who had never previously posed any type of threat to their empires. John Saunders says, “Once and once only, did the tide of nomadism flow vigorously out of Arabia. Bedouin raids on the towns and villages of Syria and Iraq had been going on since the dawn of history, and, occasionally an Arab tribe would set up a semi-civilized kingdom on the edge of the desert, as the Nabataeans did at Petra or the Palmyrenes at Tadmur, but conquests only occurred at the rise of Islam.”[2] What precipitated these conquests, and the establishment of an empire and civilisation which lasted as a state in one form or another for 1300 years is a miraculous achievement. Within thirty years of the Islamic State’s establishment in Medina, the Persian Empire fell, and the Romans were confined …

The Nomadic Zone Islam emerged in the town of Mecca which was part of the Nomadic Zone in Hejaz, a strip of land in western Arabia running parallel to the Red Sea. A series of tribes lived in this Nomadic Zone, some were settled in towns such as Mecca, Taif and Yathrib, and others lived as Bedouins out in the desert. Fred Donner describes the environment in the Nomadic Zone, “There was, then, no state in northern Arabia to impose its control over the tribes, so that society was dominated by the most powerful tribal groups-which were, as we have seen, those focused around warrior nomads or holy families. Despite the fact that confederations headed by warrior nomads as well as those headed by holy families lacked the administrative and legal features that we associate with the state, however, they did resemble the state in one respect: they functioned as sovereign entities, independent of external political control and desiring to extend their domination over new groups and areas. This meant not only that they acted …

It’s widely accepted in political philosophy that there are three branches of government: 1 Executive implements laws 2 Legislative makes laws 3 Judicial interprets laws and resolves disputes These three branches exist in every ruling system including the Islamic system but differ in their degree of separation. We can classify such a model under the concept of technical terminology (الاِصْطِلاحات istilahiyyat) which are used to teach and understand Islam. Muhammad Hussein Abdullah says, “It is possible for the people of any particular skill, art or expertise, and in any time period to set terminological conventions (istilahiyyat), utilising the worded expressions (أَلْفاظ alfazh) of the language and transfer them to specific meanings associated to their field.”[1] There are many technical terms that scholars and thinkers have used to describe the structure of an Islamic State. Al-Mawardi (d.1058) uses ruling spheres (وِلايات wiliyyat). Rashid Rida (d.1936) and Al-Sanhūrī (d.1971) use councils (مَجالِس majalis). Mohammad Barakatullah (d.1927) uses ministries (وِزارَة wizara), and Taqiuddin an-Nabhani (d.1977) uses institutions (أَجْهِزَة ajhizah). All of these are permissibile as part of the …