Table of Contents

Part 1 Sublime analogies pagan and monotheistic: kings and gods - ubiquitous regalia, figures of the sacred; kings in the world - royal cosmography, monotheistic types, virtue and order; an interregnum - the early Muslim polity. Part 2 Muslim polities: writing power - a corpus of universal wisdom, topics of power, power Islamized; the absolutist imperative - power enunciated, power manifest; absolutism sublime - the sacral caliphate, caliphal kingship, the sultanic shadow of God; political soteriology - hierocratic saviours, logocratic sages?.

About the Author

Aziz Al-Azmeh is a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, Berlin.