AHC/WI: Umayyads adopt less repressive racial policies

[Ursogulos]

They needed it though. It is simply economic and economic necessity mixed with racism.

Not really since it was a cash transfer to the poor and cannot be used by the state to, for instance, pay its employees or building a bridge and other forms of infrastructure. So I would not call it an income tax. Income tax or maqs is illegal and distinct from zakat, of which the state is only the distributor of.

Zakat can be used to pay armies and specifically group of government employees working in zakat distribution, which if allowed lax can cover all employees of bait ul Mal( treasury)

Can a Mujahid be given Zakaat - IslamQA

Question: Can a Mujahid receive Zakaat. Give details Answer: Under the commentary of و ابن السبيل , the author of Al-Badaai'us Sanaai' writes: فهو الغريب المنقطع عن ماله و إن

islamqa.org

 

[HumptyDumpty]

Zakat can be used to pay armies and specifically group of government employees working in zakat distribution, which if allowed lax can cover all employees of bait ul Mal( treasury)

Can a Mujahid be given Zakaat - IslamQA

Question: Can a Mujahid receive Zakaat. Give details Answer: Under the commentary of و ابن السبيل , the author of Al-Badaai'us Sanaai' writes: فهو الغريب المنقطع عن ماله و إن

islamqa.org

Zakat alone cannot be used to pay entire armies since zakat must be distributed to more than just mujahid. Yes, it must be distributed to employees working in zakat distribution and mujahid can technically use zakat (and even then, they can't use it for personal use if they already are above the income threshold which they would if they had any access to loot) but that is only a small part of zakat. Moreover, there is more to funding an army than paying them wages but also buying equipment, rations, etc. There is a reason why, even when applying these rules, the Umayyads did not have enough to pay for their army and had to persist in taxing Islamic converts.

Zakat isn't designed to be a tax. The people who distribute zakat cannot distribute it anyway they want. You can't, for instance, obtain zakat and then put 90% of it into your army's wages (and the vast majority of people during that time did not even have the income levels necessary for that to actually constitute a good set of wages for soldiers anyways). You have to distribute it the way the ulema tell you to and the ulema have to distribute it in accordance to Islamic law.

 

[Madhukar_Shah]

The ottomans and in general all Islamic dynasties post 1200 didn’t feel restricted by this because they consciously and unconsciously operated in the traditions of government and rulership of the Iranian tradition, the Turko-Mongol tradition, and to lesser degrees the eastern Roman and Indic tradition. I’d say a reason the umayyads were limited in this way is because they weren’t able or willing to use the legitimacy offered to extra-Islamic taxes by these traditions because those traditions could justify anyone’s right to rule, as opposed to the Islamic tradition which might have seemed to favour the Umayyad dynasty.

 

[HumptyDumpty]

The ottomans and in general all Islamic dynasties post 1200 didn’t feel restricted by this because they consciously and unconsciously operated in the traditions of government and rulership of the Iranian tradition, the Turko-Mongol tradition, and to lesser degrees the eastern Roman and Indic tradition. I’d say a reason the umayyads were limited in this way is because they weren’t able or willing to use the legitimacy offered to extra-Islamic taxes by these traditions because those traditions could justify anyone’s right to rule, as opposed to the Islamic tradition which might have seemed to favour the Umayyad dynasty.

It should be noted that the Umayyads imitated the Romans in terms of culture due to how deeply respected the Romans were by Peninsular Arabs even during Islam. One need only look at Qusayr 'Amra to find depictions of human figures with clear imitation of East Roman frescos and iconography. However it is true that the Umayyads were more decidedly Arab in their emphases than proceeding Islamic dynasties.

But it should also be noted that this Arabness was not what led them to be so constrained by Islamic law. Rather they were still operating as though they had continuity with the Rashidun and Muhammad's Caliphate. In fact, while we distinguish between the Rashidun and Umayyads in hindsight, the Umayyads themselves based their legitimacy upon being the rightful successors of Muhammad's polity. Moreover, much of the population still had memories from the era of the Rashidun.

Remember that the Umayyads lasted for only 69 years. For much of its reign, it was dealing with people and their families who knew about how the law was applied in the time of the prophet and the Qur'an which discusses taxes, from what I understand, in a negative light. Kids had grandparents who grew up in the Rashidun Caliphate. And the Umayyads were still stuck with the same institutions, structures, and laws that existed during the Rashidun Caliphate. The only difference in terms of political structure, in many respects, was who was in charge. The Abbasids and proceeding Islamic dynasties were more radically different in their political and economic structures to the Rashidun than the Umayyads were.