ABSTRACT
The theoretical elaboration of the concept of “Islamic state” is of relatively recent date. To be sure, competition for power existed from the very outset, even during Muhammad’s lifetime. For the definitive institutionalization of the caliphate a centralized hierarchized administration based on defined norms and precise rules was necessary. The Abbasid caliphate was beset by serious problems caused essentially by the innumerable emirs, sultans, and princes who had established themselves on the territories belonging to the Baghdad caliphate. The dogmatic approach may be regarded, broadly speaking, as a reaction to the two preceding ones. Al-Farabi’s utopianism and Hellenism in general had no further theoretical ammunition to come to the aid of a caliphate in difficulty. The sociological approach, innovative and “revolutionary”, which gave mankind new instruments for scientific study and inquiry, was invented and developed by the unequalled Muslim theoretician, Ibn Khaldun, who was also a preeminent political practitioner in every sense of the word.
