Case Studies in Sahaba Treaty Practice and Territorial Integration
Keywords:
Sahaba, siyar, Treaty continuity, Sulh, Aman, Dhimmah, Legal pluralismAbstract
This article examines how the Companions of the Prophet (Sahaba), especially during the Rightly Guided Caliphate, translated Quranic and Prophetic norms into concrete legal instruments for foreign affairs and territorial integration. Focusing on treaty continuity, capitulation agreements, safe conduct (aman),and the selective recognition of local custom (urf), it argues that early Islamic external governance was neither improvised nor purely driven by military expediency. Rather, it was structured around covenant fidelity, procedural fairness, and protection of life, property, and worship for non-Muslim populations incorporated into the Islamic polity. First, the article analyses how post Prophetic leadership treated the Prophet’s covenants as binding obligations of the political community, thereby grounding later doctrines of treaty continuity and principled termination. Second, it studies capitulation agreements in Syria and Iraq as jurisprudential texts that regulated security, taxation, religious institutions, and mobility, while limiting predation and incentivizing stability. Third, it explores aman as a morally weighty guarantee enabling envoys, merchants, and vulnerable populations to move across borders under enforceable protection. Finally, it shows how administrative continuity and legal pluralism emerged through conditional recognition of urf, allowing diverse communities to preserve internal norms under overarching Islamic sovereignty. These case studies illuminate a formative Sahaba based model of international conduct whose ethical core remains relevant to modern discussions of treaty obligation, minority protection, and lawful governance in plural societies.
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