The subject's duty of obedience remained...

The subject's duty of obedience remained, and was indeed reinforced; the Caliph's obligation to meet the requirements of eligibility and fulfill the conditions of incumbency was emptied of most of its content.

This disparity between theory and practice – between the noble precepts of the law and the brutal facts of government - has led some scholars to dismiss the whole political and constitutional system of the classical Muslim jurists as an abstract and artificial construction, as little related to reality as the civil liberties enshrined in the constitutions of modern dictatorships. The comparison is exaggerated and unjust.

The great jurists of medieval Islam were neither stupid nor corrupt – neither ignorant of reality, nor…