Ibn Taymiyyah’s “Mardin Fatwa” and the Mongols: An Analysis

. The so-called “Mardin Fatwa” is Ibn Taymiyyah’s (d. 728/1328) description of Mardin city’s status as an Islamic state and its Islamic population. Yahya Michot (b. 1952) and ‘Abd Allah Bayyah’s (b. 1935) modern day readings of this fatwa emphasise different attitudes towards Mongols: Michot emphasised the word yuqātal (should be fought) in his reading of the text while Bayyah emphasised the word yu’āmal (should be justly treated). This seemingly small difference has had a large impact on Muslims’ understanding of fatwa . For instance, these two readings might alter readers’ perceptions of fatwa as either a literal or metaphorical spiritual battle. This article is grounded in a multidisciplinary approach that combines the selection, translation and critical reading of the selected sources with historical research. The overall approach followed in this article is best described as inductive. This article analyses Michot and Bayyah’s readings through a close reading of the fatwa itself. It concludes by deducing that the Mardin Fatwa text really does represent Ibn Taymiyyah’s opinion and that Yahya Michot’s reading of the text is the correct one .


Introduction
Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728/1328), a famous Syrian Muslim scholar, conceptually divided the world into two categories-the dār al-Islām (house of Islam) and the dār al-ḥarb (house of war)-using various criteria, for instance, dār al-Islām comprising Islamic and non-Islamic communities that had accepted Islamic sovereignty; and the region surrounding dār al-Islām, composed of all other territories that had not been brought under its rule was known as dār al-ḥarb (Mohd Farid 2011, 32). Although Mohd Farid's (2011) work details some of Ibn Taymiyyah's important works and his concept of qitāl (actual combat) jihad, 1 Mohd Farid does not discuss whether Ibn Taymiyyah considered Mardin city to be under the house of Islam or of war. Mardin features heavily in one of Ibn Taymiyyah's works, his so-called "Mardin Fatwa". Located in the foothills of southeast Turkey, Mardin was governed by the Mongols during Ibn Taymiyyah's time (Robinson 1994, 79;Bosworth 2004, 93). The Mongol empires was a powerful one, became the chief Muslim power in the central Islamic heartlands. The main ideology of their states was "Mongolism" (i.e., glorify the imperial and military might of the Mongols and the platform of this ideology mythologised memory of the medieval history of Mongolia, the modern symbol of which is the image of Genghis Khan (see Rodionov et al. 2018, 3). Only Egypt and Syria escaped the Mongol conquest of the Muslim empire and eventually, the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt successfully resisted the Mongols and ruled until 16th century CE. It would be superfluous to repeat here those details which have been described by others (e.g., Watt 1985;Hourani 1991;Esposito 1994;Hillenbrand 1999;Sanders 2010;Mohd Farid 2011). This article fills the gap left by previous works by discussing Ibn Taymiyyah's sophisticated views on Mardin city and whether he felt that the city was located in the house of Islam or the house of war.

Literature Review
According to the authors' reading of the previous works, when the phrase "Mardin city" was coupled with "Ibn Taymiyyah", the results included a few modern works of literature that used the phrase "Mardin Fatwa". For example, Abd al-Wahhab al-Turayri (2010), Yahya Michot (2011) and Rahimullah, Larmar and Abdalla (2013) used the phrase to refer to the answer or legal advice written by Ibn Taymiyyah regarding the status of the Islamic population in the city of Mardin. The writings of Barclay (2010), Bori (2017) and Muhammad Haniff (2017) all used the phrase "Ibn Taymiyyah's Mardin Fatwa", which refers to the content of the same fatwa (i.e., an authoritative legal opinion given by a legal scholar in response to a question posed by an individual or a court of law) (Kamali 2019, 407).
In general, the Islamic concept of dividing the world into dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb was inspired by the Islamic country of Medina (Mohd Farid 2011, 41;Albrecht 2018, 45). According to Hillenbrand (1999, 94) andal-Zuḥaylī (1962, 85) after the hegira event (i.e., the Prophet Muhammad's migration on 622 CE from Mecca to Medina upon invitation in order to escape persecution, symbolises the willingness to suffer for faith and the refusal to lose hope in the face of persecution; see Esposito 2003, 112), which involved the migration of the Islamic community from Mecca to Medina, they established a political unit to keep peace and arrange their affairs there. Medina began as a city-state (Hillenbrand 1999, 94;Black 2001, 69;Enayat 2005, 57) and expanded into an empire or a sovereign state through military conquest. Thus, a few regions outside of Medina city started to indirectly come under the leadership of the Islamic country of Medina and were given a few jurisdictional rights (Hillenbrand 1999, 94). Given the largescale expansion of Medina, Islamic thinkers began to differentiate between dār al-Islām, regions inhabited and governed by Muslims and dār al-ḥarb, which were inhabited and governed by non-Muslims.
Ibn Taymiyyah was also involved in debating the issue of dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb. However, he did not restrict himself to dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb in the so-called Mardin Fatwa (the passage of the fatwa quoted at length in the next sentence). He suggested the existence a third house, murakkab (more than two elements):  Michot's (2011) reading of this passage emphasises the word yuqātal (should be fought). However, Bayyah (2011), 3 a Muslim scholar at al-Muwatta Centre, Abu Dhabi, emphasised the word yu'āmal (should be justly treated) in this passage. This difference in emphasis grounds different interpretations of Ibn Taymiyyah's attitude towards fatwa and the Mongols. This article analyses Michot's and Bayyah's readings of the text by comparing their readings and versions of the original text with other editions and versions and attempts to determine which reading is more accurate. 4 This article is grounded in a multidisciplinary approach that reflects the characteristic of the field of Islamic Studies. In particular, it combines the selection, translation and critical reading of the sources outlined earlier with historical research. As the idea of exploring this topic in contemporary Islamic thought was born out of one of the authors' previous study of the discourse on jihad, the overall approach followed in this article is best described as inductive. This article will attempt to clarify the modern day reading of the fatwa, this small difference has often caused confusion among the public and among researchers. It is also worth noting that, the aim of the analysis is to make the fatwa available to the non-Arabic readers in order to avoid unnecessary generalisation or non-accurate reading of the fatwa from the perspective of the extremist. Such a clarification is essential to demonstrate how the followers of some radical Islamic movements who have little knowledge of the religion conceal their fanatical beliefs by calling themselves followers of Ibn Taymiyyah (al-Turayri 2010, 10;Zulkarnain and Nordin 2013, 17). The general public, who do not understand the background of the fatwa, may easily recognise the struggle of these radical Islamic movements in establishing an Islamic state. This is what the article hoping to find out by way of comparison and expecting the reader to take away from this study.

Dār al-Islām and Dār al-Ḥarb: An Overview
This section discusses two main points: first, the opinions of a group of modern scholars regarding dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb and second, their opinions about the so-called Mardin Fatwa. As mentioned previously, discussions about dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb in modern literature have been made by a few scholars. Through those writings, a few opinions have been presented about the theory of dividing the world's countries to dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb. Abū Yūsuf (1979, 54) andal-Shāfi'ī (1904, 258) suggested that the Quran and hadith do not detail the distinction between dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb and that this distinction was derived by Islamic legal scholars through ijtihād. In other words, they believe that classical Islamic scholars were more influenced by current affairs than religious texts when writing legal decisions regarding citizenship and political administration. Indeed, some contemporary scholars have suggested that this distinction is bound up in the military expansion of the city-state of Medina and that it is a purely historical distinction. For instance, according to Abū Zahrah (1995, 58), naming of countries of the world to dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb by classical scholars was more tinged by the agenda of expanding political power and war. This same opinion was also presented by 'Audah (2012,118) and Ali Nadwi (1977, 31). Abū Zahrah (1995, 58) explained that war was the foundation of the relations amongst countries in the classical era, while today, countries want to avoid war and prioritise peace. The three scholars agreed that this is the principle that has become the landscape of international relations of modern countries. Based on this premise, they saw naming dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb to the world's countries as no longer relevant to today's world.
Other scholars (e.g., Armstrong 2002;Bori 2017;Hamidullah 1977;Zulkarnain and Nordin 2013;Watt 1999) have suggested that although this distinction is rooted in historical politics, it holds some relevance for us today. For example, Armstrong (2002, 26) has suggested that the distinction shows us how Islamic Law provided a religious interpretation of Muslim conquest and how "in practise, Muslims accepted that they had reached the limits of their expansion by this date and coexisted amicably with the non-Muslim world". Even so, the naming of dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb has the potential to be used again by any Islamic community in the world. Bori (2017, 144) has suggested that this distinction continues to inform the ways in which the Islamic community gives meaning to qitāl jihad activities.
Classical and modern scholars have come up with other distinctions besides dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb. For instance, al-Shāfi'ī (1904, 258) andal-Sarakhsī (1992, 8) described countries who reached a political agreement with an Islamic country as being dār al-'ahd (the house of covenant). These countries are under the political supervision of the dār al-Islām and must pay an annual tax known as kharāj (tax on agrarian land owned by non-Muslims; see Muchsin and Manan 2019, 4) to the government of dār al-Islām and follow the content of the covenant. More recently, al-Alwani (1998) suggested that countries should be categorised as dār al-ijābah (countries which abide by the Islamic ruling system) and dār al-da'wah (countries which do not and are being persuaded to). The authors do not believe that al-Alwani rejects the concepts of dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb here; on the contrary, we read him as renaming these two concepts so that they can be more readily applied in the modern era. So far, we have not found any scholars before him who used the word murakkab in this context. Even though Ibn Taymiyyah did not detail what he actually meant with dār al-murakkab, as mentioned in Mardin Fatwa it is certain that dār al-murakkab is neither dār al-Islām nor dār al-ḥarb, but rather a country, region or domain that has the combination of elements of both. This formulation, which is unique to Ibn Taymiyyah, challenges the binary distinction between dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb many centuries before modern scholars have done so. What does the idea of dār al-murakkab have to offer today? It offers us the concept of mīzān (balance) or i'tidāl (equilibrium) as a guide to rational calculation in practical affairs. The verse of the Quran, "We have already sent Our messengers with clear signs and sent down with them the Scripture and the balance (mīzān) that the people may uphold justice" (chapter 57, verse 25), was taken to mean that right must be interpreted and applied through human intelligence. Mīzān referred to the trader's scales; it was the method for calculating the balance of justice. The idea of dār al-murakkab was related to a middle way between extremes, held to be characteristics of the wisdom of Islam. This was exemplified above all by Ibn Taymiyyah. It is the opposite of the spirit of fundamentalism. The idea of dār al-murakkab is quite dynamic with a fundamental unalterable feature: namely, that its guiding light is the Sharī'ah with no man-made law challenging it. This dynamic feature of the idea should embrace the existing modern Muslim states so long as they regard the Sharī'ah as the foundation of their legal system. This seems to be consistent with what we know of Ibn Taymiyyah's personality -he has been described as a pragmatic genius who was not particularly conservative (Michot 2012, 240;Bazzano 2015, 117;Mohd Farid 2017, 57). We are fortunate in possessing much authentic material regarding his position. One of the most brilliant scholars of the Islamic world at the turn of the 14th century CE.  (2011) wrote an article titled "The New Mardin Declaration" and uploaded it on a website. This article will now move on to discussing the differences between Michot's and Bayyah's readings of the fatwa and attempting to determine which is a more accurate reading.

Two Readings of the Mardin Fatwa
In the following pages, we will present the two readings of the Mardin Fatwa. We will begin with Michot. His reading is based off the Majmū'ah al-Fatāwā, edited by Muḥammad 'Abd al-Raḥmān b. Qāsim (hereafter Ibn Qāsim). This work was printed in 1981 in 37 volumes. This text uses the phrase yuqātal (1981, vol. 28, 502-503). 5 We compared the usage of this word in the same passage across several different, popular editions of Majmū'ah al-Fatāwā published by other publishers (as shown in Table 2). Each of these five editions uses the phrase yuqātal in this passage (1980, vol. 4, 279-280; 6 al-Bāz and al-Jazzār 1997, vol. 14, 380; 7 1998, vol. 14, 401; 8 Jundī and Sharqawī 2006, vol. 14, 311; 9 Ibn Qāsim 1978, vol. 28, 240-241 10 ). A few other popular editions also use the same word (1908, vol. 4, 421; 11 al-Bāz and al-Jazzār 2011, vol. 14, 392; 12 Syaikhu 2005, vol. 14, 401 13 ). In short, all of these popular sources, including the ones used by Michot to devise his reading and translation of Ibn Taymiyyah's text, use the phrase yuqātal, which indicates that non-Muslims living outside of the authority of Islamic law should be fought. By contrast, Bayyah used only two sources, neither of which were used by Michot.
The first was a manuscript that, according to Bayyah, was the earliest edition of the Mardin Fatwa, in the "Damsyik Manuscript" located in the National Library of Syria (Maktabah al-Asad al-Waṭaniyyah). Figure 1 presents the final line of the fatwa: has been inaccessible. The question as to how Bayyah had come to acquire this manuscript is difficult for us to answer as we have no knowledge of that. This makes it is impossible to determine whether this manuscript was really copied from Ibn Taymiyyah's original and if it was, whether it was copied faithfully. Nonetheless, as Bayyah used this source to ground his reading of Ibn Taymiyyah's text, we must examine it. Figure 1 shows the sentence as it appears in the manuscript. There are two words that are written in a similar way: the fifth word from the top right corner and the word situated in the top left corner; they both lack diacritic signs. The similarity between them led Bayyah to read these two words as yu'āmal (they should be treated We have examined an edition of the al-Ādāb (Ibn Mufliḥ 1999) and found that it did contain the text of the Mardin Fatwa with the phrase yu'āmal. This scripture helps fuel a difference in Bayyah's reading. He has challenged Michot's reading, arguing that the word without diacritic signs found in the "Damsyik Manuscript" could be read as yu'āmal (Bayyah 2011). However, Bayyah does not fully explain why he relies too heavily on the Ibn Mufliḥ's al-Ādāb. The study would have been far more interesting if he had included further investigation.
As can be seen, editions of Majmū'ah al-Fatāwā published in five different countries and edited by five different editors are all consistent in their use of the phrase yuqātal and only the Damsyik Manuscript and the al-Ādāb used the phrase yu'āmal. There have been no editions of the Majmū'ah al-Fatāwā from 1908 until 2011 that mention the phrase yu'āmal. There are two possibilities as to why this is so. First, none of the five editors were aware of the "Damsyik Manuscript" or the al-Ādāb. Second, they might have known about these sources and employed the phrase yuqātal anyway as they felt that it was the most valid term. We are of the opinion that the second possibility is most likely true. It is probably true that Bayyah was the first scholar to report on the "Damsyik Manuscript" and the al-Ādāb, given that no other publications or commentaries mention these documents or the phrase yu'āmal -even those which cover Ibn Taymiyyah's work in detail (e.g., Kokoschka and Krawietz 2013;Mohd Farid 2017). In addition, because there have been no recent efforts to rephrase yuqātal as yu'āmal, we can deduce that Bayyah's reading has not been accepted in the literature. This section has analysed the readings of the Mardin Fatwa and has argued that Bayyah's reading is unlikely the correct one. The next section addresses why this is the case by situating both the original text and Bayyah's interpretation in historical context.

The Mardin Fatwa and the Mongols
Hillenbrand (1999) Taymiyyah 1993, 28;1955, 123). Here, the authors suggest that we can look at Ibn Taymiyyah's other works to get a sense of his opinion of the Mongols and that this can give us some clues as to whether yuqātal or yu'āmal is the proper term to use in the previously quoted passage.
Mohd Farid stated that Ibn Taymiyyah released a fatwa which decreed that Muslim Mongol soldiers could be battled in qitāl jihad. This was considered one of his biggest achievements at the time: In the first case, Caliph Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddiq argued that those who refused to pay zakāh jeopardised the unity of Muslims and had decided to turn their backs on Islam. In the second case, the Khawārij group held ghulūw (i.e., extreme beliefs) and practised takfīrī (i.e., the word takfīrī is derived from the word takfīr, which means pronouncing someone an unbeliever and no longer Muslim), which justified Caliph 'Alī b. Abī Ṭālib's war against them. Ibn Taymiyyah drew two conclusions from these historical precedents. First, that the Mongols could be considered apostates who posed a danger to the unity of the Muslim community; and second, that the Mongols could be considered to hold ghulūw. Given these premises and Ibn Taymiyyah's other writings on the Mongols, the authors believe that Bayyah's reading of the fatwa and insistence that Ibn Taymiyyah used the phrase yu'āmal is inaccurate.
How, then, can we explain Bayyah's logic? It appears as though his reading was deeply affected by the politics of the contemporary Middle East. Bayyah may have been concerned with the appropriation of the term yuqātal by the extremist 'Abd al-Salām Faraj (hereafter Faraj). Faraj, an Egyptian electrician and the founder of Jama'ah al-Jihad who is suspected to have been involved in the assassination of Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, in 1982, used "the corrupted text of the Mardin Fatwa" (the one using the term yuqātal) has become the basis for the legitimisation of many violent and militant groups within Muslim society. Among those who used the fatwa in this manner was Abdussalam Faraj in his book, al-Farīḍah al-Ghā'ibah, which has become a manifesto for militant groups (al-Turayri 2010, 10). According to Jansen (1986, 45), the text of the Mardin Fatwa was mentioned more than once in Faraj's book. Although we cannot tell whether Bayyah had read Jansen's analysis, he probably knew of Faraj's book. Thus, concerned about the potential for the original text to justify terrorist acts, Bayyah probably opted to seek and argue for a softer, less militaristic and violent interpretation of the original. Indeed, early in his own work Bayyah suggested that "Ibn Taymiyyah's fatwa concerning Mardin can under no circumstances be appropriated and used as evidence for levelling the charge of kufr (unbelief) against fellow Muslims" (Bayyah 2011, 4). As it turns out, his fears were well-grounded; the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has since interpreted the Mardin Fatwa to justify terrorist activities and to legitimise many violent and militant groups within Muslim society (Muhammad Haniff 2017, 5).

Conclusion
Ibn Taymiyyah's discussion in the Mardin Fatwa is a response to the following questions: Ibn Taymiyyah did not limit his responses to those questions. He took the opportunity and reflected further on the status of Mardin city, which had been ruled by Mongols and its inhabitants. These reflections led him to propose a third domain, murakkab, to indicate the nuance of the city's situation, for it combined the characteristics of dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb. If the debate is to be moved forward, a better understanding of dār al-murakkab needs to be developed. Thus, this article may not only be understood as a contribution to the field of Islamic Studies and to the growing body of research on Muslims in the Asian context. As it sets out to offer a new perspective to the study of the history of ideas in Islamic thought.
This article's analysis suggests that the Mardin Fatwa text really does represent Ibn Taymiyyah's opinion and that Michot's (2011) reading of the text is the correct one. So far, we have not found any disputes among scholars about the validity of the fatwa text. Nevertheless, the controversy about the Mardin Fatwa text is only regarding the terms yu'āmal' or yuqātal, especially between Michot and Bayyah. Nine Majmū'ah al-Fatāwā writings from several printed and edited editions, including translations into Malay, were analysed. All writings consistently wrote the phrase yuqātal. So far, we have not found any serious discussions among scholars in Arabic countries, copyists and manuscript experts, especially editors of Ibn Taymiyyah's writing, to correct the available phrase. This article appears to be the first study to compare the difference emphasise of reading in Mardin Fatwa. Next, the Mardin Fatwa text was compared with other relevant texts and it was determined that Ibn Taymiyyah was of the opinion that the status of the Mongols during his time was divided into two, which depended on their actions, whether to become apostates or ghulūw. This approach proves useful in expanding our understanding of how we can get some clues as to whether yuqātal or yu'āmal is the proper term to use in Mardin Fatwa. With those findings, we have determined that Michot's reading using the phrase yuqātal is more precise. Therefore, we suggest that the term yuqātal as read by Michot to be maintained and used in the Mardin Fatwa text.