Kitab Al-Siyar Al-Saghir [The Shorter Book on Muslim International Law]

Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani, Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi

• Publisher: Qadeem Press
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9789366082417
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology
• Index: Social Sciences

Kitāb al-Siyar al-Ṣaghīr (The Shorter Book on International Law) stands as a watershed document in the history of legal thought. Composed in the late eighth century CE by Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybānī, this concise treatise systematically addresses fundamental questions of interstate relations, diplomatic protocol, the conduct of warfare, and the legal status of diverse communities—making it arguably the first independent work on international law in human history. Eight centuries before Hugo Grotius produced his foundational text on European international law, Muslim jurists had developed a sophisticated legal framework for regulating relations between the Islamic community and other political entities.

Shaybānī belonged to the second generation of Muslim legal scholars following Islam's foundational period. As a distinguished disciple of Imam Abū Ḥanīfah (699-767 CE), founder of the Ḥanafī school of jurisprudence, Shaybānī inherited his teacher's analytical methodology and commitment to systematic legal reasoning. While Abū Ḥanīfah taught primarily through oral instruction and case discussion, Shaybānī undertook the monumental task of recording, organizing, and systematizing these teachings. His voluminous output—over thirty works on various aspects of Islamic law—established the documentary foundation for the Ḥanafī legal tradition, which would become the dominant school in the Ottoman Empire, the Indian subcontinent, and Central Asia.

The Siyar (plural of sīrah, meaning "conduct") literature emerged from careful study of the Prophet Muhammad's interactions with surrounding political entities during the formative decades of the Islamic community in seventh-century Arabia. The Prophet negotiated treaties, sent diplomatic missions, granted safe conduct to foreign emissaries, established protocols for warfare, and articulated principles for relations with diverse religious and tribal communities. This historical precedent, combined with Qur'anic injunctions regarding justice, treaty obligations, and the treatment of non-Muslims, provided the textual foundation upon which subsequent jurists built elaborate legal frameworks.

Shaybānī's al-Siyar al-Ṣaghīr represents a distillation of Abū Ḥanīfah's legal opinions as transmitted through his senior disciple Abū Yūsuf. The text's concise format belies its comprehensive scope. Across nine chapters, Shaybānī addresses the Prophetic instructions on warfare, the treatment of enemy populations and property, the recovery of Muslim property captured by adversaries, taxation systems for non-Muslim communities, treaty negotiations and armistice agreements, cross-border marriages and commercial relations, apostasy and its legal implications, internal rebellion, and various subsidiary questions. Each ruling emerges from careful analysis of authoritative sources while demonstrating practical applicability to the diverse situations Muslim authorities might encounter.

The work employs the case method characteristic of early Islamic jurisprudence. Rather than abstract theoretical exposition, Shaybānī presents specific scenarios with their corresponding legal rulings, examining variations and exceptions to establish comprehensive principles. This methodology serves multiple purposes: it grounds abstract legal concepts in concrete applications, demonstrates the flexibility of Islamic law in addressing diverse circumstances, and provides practical guidance for judges, administrators, and military commanders. The hypothetical cases reflect actual challenges faced by the expanding Islamic polity: how to treat prisoners of war, whether safe conduct granted by ordinary Muslims binds state authority, what property rights foreign merchants possess, how to handle apostasy in different circumstances, and when peaceful agreements may be legitimately terminated.

Shaybānī's treatment of warfare demonstrates sophisticated ethical reasoning. While acknowledging warfare as sometimes necessary, the text establishes clear constraints: non-combatants including women, children, the elderly, and religious functionaries receive protected status; agricultural resources should not be destroyed absent military necessity; diplomatic immunity must be honored; and peaceful overtures from adversaries obligate reciprocal consideration. These provisions reflect the Qur'anic emphasis on proportionality and justice even in conflict situations. The text also addresses the distribution of war booty, the status of captives, and the treatment of territories brought under Muslim governance—questions requiring careful balance between military exigency and ethical obligation.

The concept of territorial jurisdiction (dār) receives detailed treatment. Shaybānī distinguishes between the Territory of Islam (dār al-Islām), where Islamic law prevails; the Territory of War (dār al-ḥarb), comprising polities in active or potential conflict with the Islamic state; and the Territory of Treaty (dār al-ṣulḥ or dār al-'ahd), where non-Muslim political entities maintain autonomy while acknowledging Islamic suzerainty and paying tribute. This framework enabled nuanced classification of international relations beyond simple binary distinctions, acknowledging gradations of political relationship and corresponding legal implications.

Questions of private international law occupy substantial attention. When individuals cross territorial boundaries—whether through migration, commercial activity, diplomatic mission, or captivity—complex legal questions arise regarding applicable law, property rights, marriage validity, inheritance, and contractual obligations. Shaybānī's rulings demonstrate remarkable sophistication in addressing these issues. The text generally recognizes legal relationships established under other systems, applying the principle that persons accepting Islam or Islamic governance retain rights to property and relationships previously recognized under other legal frameworks. This facilitated peaceful transition and demonstrated Islamic law's capacity to accommodate legal pluralism.

The treatment of non-Muslim communities within Islamic governance reflects both theological considerations and practical statecraft. The dhimmī status, granted to certain religious communities (primarily Jews and Christians as "People of the Book"), guaranteed security of life and property, religious freedom within communal bounds, and internal legal autonomy in exchange for paying a special tax (jizyah) and acknowledging Islamic political authority. While this arrangement embedded inequality, it provided protection for religious minorities at a time when European Christendom often violently persecuted religious dissenters. The text details the rights and obligations of dhimmī communities, tax assessment principles, and protocols for resolving disputes involving both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Dr. Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi's English translation makes this foundational text accessible to contemporary scholarship. His extensive introduction provides historical context for Shaybānī's work, examining the development of Siyar as an independent legal discipline, Shaybānī's biography and scholarly contributions, and the relationship between this concise work and his expanded treatise al-Siyar al-Kabīr. The detailed footnotes explain technical legal terminology, identify Prophetic traditions and Qur'anic references, clarify historical circumstances, and connect rulings to broader principles of Islamic jurisprudence. Dr. Ghazi's meticulous work involved comparing multiple manuscript sources across Istanbul libraries to establish an authentic Arabic text before undertaking translation—scholarly rigor that ensures reliability for academic use.

The text's contemporary relevance extends beyond historical interest. As international relations scholarship increasingly acknowledges the limitations of Westphalian models and seeks alternative paradigms for conceptualizing global order, Shaybānī's work offers frameworks developed within a non-Western civilizational context. His emphasis on ethical constraints in warfare, the sanctity of treaty obligations, protection for non-combatants, and provisions for peaceful coexistence among diverse communities addresses questions that remain central to international humanitarian law and just war theory. The sophisticated treatment of legal pluralism and cross-border legal questions anticipates contemporary debates about jurisdiction, choice of law, and transnational legal processes.

For scholars of Islamic law, this text provides essential primary source access to formative jurisprudence. For comparative legal historians, it demonstrates that sophisticated international law discourse developed in multiple civilizations, not solely in post-Westphalian Europe. For students of political thought, it reveals how Islamic civilization conceptualized political community, sovereignty, and interstate relations. For those seeking to understand contemporary Muslim political thought, it offers foundational texts that continue to inform discussions about Islamic governance and international engagement. This translation serves all these audiences while honoring Dr. Ghazi's dedication to Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah, the twentieth-century scholar who recodified Islamic international law for modern contexts—linking past scholarship with present challenges in a continuous tradition of legal reasoning.

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter I : Instructions of the Prophet about the Conduct of War and International Relations
• Chapter II : The army's treatment of the Disbelievers
• Chapter III : Acquisition of Muslim property earlier taken away by non-Muslims as Booty
• Chapter IV: Management of Kharaj
• Chapter V: Peace, Reconciliation and Armistice among Rulers
• Chapter VI: Inter-marriages of the people of war and the entry of the traders in their territory with a permission of security
• Chapter VII : Injunctions about the Apostates
• Chapter VIII : The Rebels
• Chapter IX: Another chapter on Booty
• Notes and references
• Bibliography