The Theory of Justly War and Ethics among Muslims (Based on? d?b al-Harbs)

The military training texts and works (Ȃdȃb al-Ḥarbs), have not yet been amongst the investigations related to the history of war and violence in the Islamic Middle Ages. In addition to the especial data about wars, those texts contain of the valuable information about the war peripheral issues. So, they are highly fruitful for the historical studies on the ethics of war. By considering this category, one can also study the ethics of war and warfare in Islamic civilization. Nowadays, at least since the last decades, some theoretical attempts have been made to justify and explain how and why the wars have taken place. The birth of the theories such as “just war theory” is the result of those efforts. In this article, focusing on Adab al-Harb texts, while introducing the “just war theory”, its compatibility with the moral dilemmas of the war from the perspective of the writers of those texts have been examined. According to this historical survey, it seems that the just war has had Islamic backgrounds as well. In addition, this research has been dealt with some aspects of the ethics of war in Islamic military training texts which are addressed to commanders and fighters in the form of moral advices.