The Sovereignty of the Scholar-Sultan: An ʾ Ayyūbid Prince's Defence of Abū Ḥanīfa

The ʾAyyūbid Prince al-Malik al-Muʿaẓẓam ʿĪsā (d. 624/1227) expressed his scholarly idiom of sovereignty through Islamic scholarship. Other ʾAyyūbids were Shāfiʿīs who occasionally wrote poetry and history but more commonly and more conventionally provided patronage for scholars and scholarly institutions. By contrast, al-Muʿaẓẓam converted to Ḥanafism and became one of the scholar-jurists himself. This article argues that al-Muʿaẓẓam's little-known defence of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) is a crucial part of his particular idiom of sovereignty, in which he bolstered his legitimacy through his participation and intervention in the Islamic scholarly tradition. In addition to his scholarly training, his patronage programme represents a mode of experimentation that set him apart from his fellow ʾAyyūbids. Indeed, al-Muʿaẓẓam's idiom of sovereignty was an experiment in establishing the Scholar-Sultan as the exceptional figure who could transcend the boundary between the men of the pen and the men of the sword.