Bibliographical Essay

The Qur'an - the earliest recorded text we have dating from the first century of Islam or the seventh century ce - is the point of departure for discussion of the earliest diverse meanings of the concept of jihad.

Key Qur'anic verses that deal with jihad were interpreted in multiple ways by succeeding generations of Muslim scholars. These diverse interpretations become very evident in Qur'an commentaries produced in different historical circumstances. The exegetical works consulted in this study include the very early ones by Mujahid ibn Jabr (d. 722) composed during the Umayyad period and Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 767) from the early Abbasid period; the acclaimed classical commentary of Muhammad ibn Jarir al­Tabari (d. 923) and of al-Zamakhshari (d. 1144), both from the height of the Abbasid period; the commentary of the formidable polymath Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1210) from the Seljuq period, and of the Andalusian exegete al-Qurtubi (d. 1273) in the thirteenth century. The exegesis of the popular commentator from the Mamluk period, Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), is also a highly important source for understanding both the symbolic and the concrete roles of the military jihad during this fraught period when the Muslim world was under attack by ferocious enemies. For an overview of some of these commentaries in English in reference to select Qur'anic verses concerning jihad, the recently published The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: HarperOne, 2015) is to be highly recommended.

Hadith works containing sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad also preserve a variety of perspectives on jihad as well as on the related concept of martyrdom. The early Hadith work al-Musannaf of Abd al-Razzaq (d.

A number of influential jurists during the Abbasid period approached the topic of the military jihad from the perspective of the state and interpreted relevant religious texts in accordance with their primary objective of guaranteeing its security against the encroachment of external enemies. This perspective is quite evident in the classical legal texts of the master jurist al-Shafi‘i (d. 820) titled Kitab al-umm and al-Risala. The latter work is available in a new translation by Joseph E.

Modern studies that shed extensive light on how the understanding of jihad as both a legal and an ethical term evolved through variegated historical circumstances include Majid Khadduri's War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955); Ahmad Mohsen al-Dawoody's The Islamic Law of War: Justifications and Regulations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) and my own Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). The essay by Roy Mottahedeh and Ridwan al-Sayyid titled ‘The Idea of the Jihad in Islam before the Crusades', in Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (eds.), The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001), pp. 23-9, also provides a valuable synopsis of multiple interpretations of jihad in the early period. Khaled Abou El Fadl's Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Sherman Jackson's ‘Domestic Terrorism in the Islamic Legal Tradition', Muslim World 91 (2001), 293-310, are particularly helpful for understanding how internal political rebellion and domestic terrorism respectively were dealt with by Muslim jurists in the premodern period.