ABSTRACT
Shūrā means consultation, usually between a person in authority and his subordinates, as in Q. 3:159 (shāwirhum fī ’l-amr), and occasionally between peers sharing power, as perhaps in Q. 42:38 on those “whose affairs are decided by consultation” (1amruhum shūrā baynahum). 1 Either way, it is a procedure leading to a decision by people in charge of government. Shūrā also has a second and more specialized meaning, however. In sources relating to the Rāshidūn and the Umayyads it is normally a procedure for deciding who should be in charge of government. The participants here deliberate in order to elect a ruler, not to convey their advice to one or to act as joint rulers themselves; and al-amr shūrā is a call for the ruler to be elected by this procedure, not for affairs to be decided by consultation in general. Shūrā in this sense is a highly distinctive institution. It was famously adopted by ʿUmar for the choice of his successor, with the result that it figures in Sunnī constitutional law, but precisely wherein did it consist and what was its history?
