Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Marshall G. Hodgson, “How Did the 

Early Shia Become Sectarian?” Journal of the American 

Oriental Society 75 (1955): 1–13; Moojan Momen, An 

Introduction to Shii Islam (New Haven, Conn.: Yale 

University Press, 1985), 37–39, 154–156; Michael 

Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Quran, Miraj, Poetic, 

and Theological Writings (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 

1996), 75–88; Liyakat M. Takim, The Heirs of the 

Prophet: Charisma and Religious Authority in Shiite Islam

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006).

Jahiliyya

 

(Arabic: era of ignorance, 

barbarism)

The state of affairs in Arabia and much of the rest 

of the world before the rise of Islam in the sev-

enth century is known to Islamic tradition as the 

Jahiliyya era, or the time of ignorance. Beginning 

in the 13th century, some Muslims came to apply 

this term to non-Muslims of later times.

The term has often been used to connote the 

pagan polytheism of the Arabian Peninsula before 

the revelation of the q

Uran

. Muslims view this 

period with particular disdain because polythe-

ism, or assigning partners to God (

shirk

), is 

viewed as absolutely contradictory to Islam’s own 

strict 

monotheism

 (

tawhid

). They believe that 

Islam brought humanity true and ultimate knowl-

edge through the Quran and 

hadith

, founded on 

the recognition that there is one God and m

Uham

-

mad

 is his prophet. In contrast, Muslims associate 

Jahiliyya with total spiritual darkness.

A significant figure who developed the Muslim 

understanding of the term Jahiliyya was the 13th- 

and 14th-century Muslim intellectual t

aqi

 

al

-d

in

a

hmad

  i

bn

  t

aymiyya

 (d. 1328). As the Mongol 

armies swept westward toward the central lands 

of Islam, including Syria and Egypt, and as they 

became Sunni Muslims over time, many people 

living in those and other central lands faced a 

dilemma. If the Muslims living in these regions 

fought the Mongols, they would have been in 

violation of the 

sharia

’s injunctions forbidding 

Muslims from killing each other. If those Muslims 

did not engage in battle against the Mongols, their 

regions would be conquered by this foreign group. 

Supporting the Mamluk rulers of Egypt and Syria 

against the Mongols, Ibn Taymiyya wrote that any 

professed Sunni Muslim ceases to be one—and 

automatically becomes part of jahili culture—

when he, among other things, breaks major 

Islamic injunctions concerning life, limb, and 

property. For Ibn Taymiyya, their offensive war 

against other Muslims clearly made the Mongols 

part of jahili culture, and as such the Muslims of 

Syria and Egypt were justified—even obliged—to 

wage war against them, even though they may 

have adhered to other aspects of the sharia.

In the 20th century, certain Islamists, such as 

s

ayyid

 q

Utb

 (d. 1966), a Muslim intellectual who