Jaan S. Islam is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. He completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh as a SGSAH Fellow and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. Dr Islam’s main research interests are comparative political thought, Islamic jurisprudence and decolonial theory. His recent works include Islam and the State in Ibn Taymiyya: Translation and Analysis (Routledge, 2022) and “A Jihadi Critique of the Modern State” published in Political Theory.

For scholars of Islamic law, political theology, Salafism, jihad studies and the history of Sunni thought, this is an indispensable book. Even readers who remain unconvinced by every aspect of its argument will come away with a far deeper appreciation of the complexity of the intellectual traditions that continue to shape contemporary debates. The hallmark of truly important scholarship is not that everyone agrees with it, but that nobody who has read it can continue thinking about the subject in quite the same way. By that standard, The Premodern Origins of Jihadi-Salafism is an outstanding achievement.

• DedicationAcknowledgementsList of FiguresNote on Translation and Transliteration1. Proposing an Alternative History of Jihadi-Salafism2. A Brief History of Global Jihad3. Introducing Salafi Hermeneutics: Questioning the Myth of ‘Jihadi-Salafism’4. ‘Political Jurisprudence’: Theorizing the Early Caliphate (Tenth to Thirteenth Century)5. The Convergence of Legal Theory and Exegesis: Shāfiʿī-Ashʿarism and the Condemnation of Secular Rulers6. The Sharīʿa and Secularism: From the Mamlūks to Modernity7. Sultanate and Sharīʿa in Ottoman Political Thought: From Māturīdite Exegesis to post-Caliphate Nostalgia (17th-13th/14th-20th c.)8. Indian Ḥanafite Origins of Ḥākimiyya as a Decolonial Alternative9. Reinventing Legal Theory: The Salafi Revival of Literalism (18th c.) and Comparative JurisprudenceEpilogue: Retheorizing Islamic Political Thought in the Twenty-First CenturyBibliographyIndex