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Daryoush Mohammad Poor: Authority without Territory: The Aga Khan

Development Network and the Ismaili Imamate. (Literatures and
Cultures of the Islamic World.) xix, 258 pp. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014. £56.50. ISBN 978 1 137 42879 0.

Francis Robinson

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 79 / Issue 01 / February 2016, pp
178 - 179
DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X15001123, Published online: 07 March 2016

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X15001123

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Francis Robinson (2016). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 79, pp
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 178 REVIEWS

Hadith to the status of revealed source, there is a limited pool of Hadiths that are of
use to a jurist. (For example, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī only includes 1,235 legal
Hadiths in his popular collection, Bulūgh al-marām.) The stubborn fact remains
that the overwhelming majority of rulings in Islamic law are not based on the
revealed sources, which means “tradition” and personal opinions have always
been of tremendous significance. Second, it is unclear how much of an impact
al-Shāfiʿī’s elevation of Hadith had on the actual positions of the Mālikī and
Ḥanafī schools of law, which, to this day, valorize the Muwattaʿ ̣ ̣ of Mālik and
Mudawwana of Sah ̣nūn among the former, and thousands of opinions ascribed to
Abū Ḥanīfa, Abū Yūsuf, and al-Shaybanī preserved in a host of books, among
the latter. Had al-Shāfiʿī had a truly “transformative” (p. 220) impact on these
two schools, we would not have expected Ibn Ḥazm’s (d. 456/1064) sustained cri-
tique, throughout his Muh ̣allā, of all four Sunni madhāhib’s deviations from the
clear teachings of the canonical Hadith collections. Indeed, it may be that the
Ẓāhirīs were the most faithful jurists to al-Shāfiʿī’s canonization project, since
they alone insisted upon grounding all Islamic law on the twin revealed sources
of Islam.
These criticisms of El Shamsy’s assessment of the significance of Hadith in
Muslim jurisprudence in no way detract from the high quality of The Canonization
of Islamic Law. It is very well-written, draws on an impressive array of Arabic
texts, and is the best available guide to al-Shafiʿi’s legal-theoretical writings, in
large part because it engages the arguments expressed in both the Risāla and the
Umm. In short, it is essential reading for all students and scholars of Islamic law.

Scott C. Lucas
University of Arizona (Tucson)

DARYOUSH MOHAMMAD POOR:

Authority without Territory: The Aga Khan Development Network and
the Ismaili Imamate.
(Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World.) xix, 258 pp.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. £56.50. ISBN 978 1 137 42879 0.
doi:10.1017/S0041977X15001123

Poor sets out to examine the development of the institutions of the Nizari Ismaili
imamate in the time of the present Imam, Aga Khan IV, the forty-ninth hereditary
Imam. He focuses in particular on the development of the Aga Khan Development
Network. The heart of the book begins with a discussion of the Nizari Ismaili
Imamate and the issue of authority in a Muslim and a Shii context. The issue is
first of all examined up to the mid-twentieth century, after which Poor moves to
the key development, the institutionalization of the Imamate in the second half of
the twentieth century. “The person of the Imam”, he declares, “is transcended
[sic] into the institution and his authority is the very source giving legitimacy to
the organizations that function to ensure that the Imam has the necessary means
to perform his job”. There follows an examination of Ismaili leadership, the devel-
opment of a constitution for the community for Aga Khan III, and the remarkable
leadership of Aga Khan IV, who has made it clear that his faith is designed not
just for spiritual matters but also to be realized by action on earth, first in the service
of his community but also for the good of all mankind. Here, interestingly, he
echoes the ethos of the worldwide movement of Islamic reform of the past two

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 REVIEWS 179

centuries – the essential need to act on earth in the light of God’s guidance. In this
examination Poor sets out the centrality of architecture to Aga Khan IV’s social
vision. In support he quotes Phillip Jodidio: “Architecture is the only art which is
the direct reflector of poverty . . . In architecture there is an inherent and unavoidable
demonstration of the quality of life, or its absence”. He also sets out the Aga Khan’s
deliberative style of leadership and his willingness to take risks. We are left in no
doubt as to the pluralism and tolerance which animate his worldview and give his
organization an essentially cosmopolitan ethos.
Poor then moves to an overview of the Aga Khan Development Network in oper-
ation. We are given a clear picture of its ethical base, its organizational structure, its
funding and its international partnerships, alongside its work in architecture, educa-
tion, health and economic development, all of which is rounded off by a summary of
the organization’s geographic spread, the scope of its activities, and its impact.
Poor bookends his examination of the Aga Khan Development Network with a
discussion of how Weber’s concepts of authority – traditional, charismatic and bur-
eaucratic – apply to his Ismaili example. Much of Weber’s understanding, he
admits, applied to the Nizari Ismaili Imamate. When it comes to the routinization
of charisma in bureaucratic form, however, he does not accept that this applies to
the Aga Khan Development Network – the authority of the Imam has not been
caught in Weber’s “iron cage”, though some fear there may be a danger of this hap-
pening. Equally, the authority of the Imamate functions beyond the divisions of the
nation state. Here there appears to be the possibility for comparison with the
Ahmadiyya Muslim community, or the Roman Catholic Church, but none is
attempted.
Those who consider buying this book should be aware that Poor is an employee
of the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, a potential conflict of interest about
which he is straightforward. He frequently refers to Weber’s “Protestant Ethics”
as opposed to Ethic. I am, moreover, not entirely convinced by his discussion of
Weber and the limitation of the Imam’s authority. This said, this is the first overview
of the Aga Khan Development Network and its operations, and in this sense of no
small value.

Francis Robinson
Royal Holloway, University of London

GIDEON AVNI:
The Byzantine–Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological
Approach.
(Oxford Studies in Byzantium.) xvi, 424 pp. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014. ISBN 978 0 19 968433 5.
doi:10.1017/S0041977X15001135

Gideon Avni’s book offers a timely and much-needed reappraisal of the archaeo-
logical evidence for the complex and diverse processes of transition in settlement
and society from late Byzantine to early Islamic rule in Palestine and its various
phases (Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, etc.) and short interregnums until the onset
of the Crusader era in the Holy Land in the late eleventh century. As observed on
several occasions by the author, and as exemplified by a growing series of studies
(a number of which are still available only in Hebrew), in the last thirty years or so
archaeological research (systematic excavations, field surveys, etc.) have contributed

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