ABSTRACT
Ever since the tenth-eleventh centuries (with the exception of the Ismaili Fatimid state in Egypt) Islam has been divorced from state politics, from the arrangements and exercise of state power. Its revealed Sacred Law, the sharia, has been confined to the regulation of personal status and social matters. Rulers -caliphs, sultans, minor local dynasts, despots and satrapslegitimized their authority in the eyes of the faithful by allowing religious teachers and jurisconsults free rein to guide and adjudicate the private life of the believers in the community and the social order. They also legitimized it by defending the community of the faithful against external - infidel - threats and attacks. Otherwise, their authority rested on their secular power - the sword - and they governed, albeit theoretically, whenever and wherever possible within the purview of the religious law, mainly by decree, ordinance and plain dispensation, often in flagrant violation of the Sacred Law.
