ABSTRACT
Since the formative centuries of Islamicate civilisation, ‘the people of the
Way and of the Community’ (ahl al-sunna wa’l-jama’a) has been a contested
category of self-definition, emerging out of broad religious and social trends
among those whom Marshall Hodgson referred to as the ‘Piety-minded’
and deployed toward diverse directions in the communitarian polemics of
Jama’ism during the medieval and early modern periods. The politics of
groups espousing such religious orientations were complex throughout
Muslim history, ranging from scripturalist opposition to Marwanid caliphal rule in the eighth century to anti-revolutionary populist reactions expressed
through ‘pieties of solidarity’ in Abbasid Baghdad. At stake in these conten-
tions were fundamental issues relating the definition of the Sunna, as well as
the role of the religious leadership within turbulent urban class dynamics.1