Encyclopedia of Islam

authority

---

See also a

bbasid

 c

aliphate

; 

ahl

 

al

-

bayt

; a

llah

; 

caliph

; 

imam

; s

hiism

.

Further reading: Arthur F. Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the 

Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the 

Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Columbia: University of South 

Carolina Press, 1998); Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, 

God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of 

Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); 

Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); 

Carl W. Ernst, The Shambhala Guide to Sufism (Boston: 

Shambhala, 1997); Ann K. S. Lambton, State and Gov-

ernment in Medieval Islam: An Introduction to the Study 

of Islamic Political Theory: The Jurists (Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 1981); Max Weber, The Theory of 

Social and Economic Organization (New York: Macmil-

lan Company, 1964).