AN INTRODUCTION TO THE METHODOLOGY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE MIDDLE ERA OF ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION

Methodology is an instrumental science, which, because of its conditions of existence, has two types of limitations: (1) its relationship with epistemology, (2) its relationship with the nature of the subject matter. Thus, once can say that epistemologies, worldviews and, in general, regimes of knowledge in any civilization form the foundation of a nation’s thought and life in general and their political thought in specific. The political knowledge of the Islamic midieval age, too, follows from a specific epistemological regime on which is founded the thought over the political in the Islamic world as well. This knowledge is characterized by human nature (fitrat), the necessity of revelation and prophethood (nabowwat), the religious foundation of reason and philosophy, the rational and philosophical foundation of shariá, the world of text (nass), the priority of text and the expansion of political fiqh. This paper briefly deals with the relationship of the methodology of the Islamic midieval age political thought and epistemology on the one hand and the nature of the politics on the other hand, trying to analyze the logical implications of this type of relationship in the political acts of the Muslims in the middle era.