ABSTRACT
The authors have seen how often the doctrine of Islam experienced, in the course of the Middle Ages, successive and rival expressions, as controversies and opposing views caused it to define itself gradually in sometimes differing directions. This chapter explores doctrinal questions which confronted the earliest Muslim community and more especially envisages their effect on the ties which were then established between Islam and the political order. It examines the relation between Islam and political order, particularly the concepts of power and the organisation of government. If the organisation of the Islamic states in the Middle Ages was in some way ordered by Islam, the ideas which governed this organisation derived less from Koranic prescription than from an imitation of the attitude adopted by Muhammad himself when he had directed the Muslim community. This attitude inspired the attitude of his successors when they in their turn exercised authority.
