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