1970/01/01 by Bernard Lewıs · 8 citations
Social Sciences · #Islamic Studies and History #Education and Islamic Studies #Aristocracy (class) #Orthodoxy #Islam #Subject (documents) #Faith #Hierarchy #Property (philosophy) #Emancipation #Monarchy #Law #History #Sociology #Philosophy #Religious studies #Theology #Politics #Political science #Epistemology
paper · doi:10.2307/1595221
published in Studia Islamica (32), 215 (Brill)
openalex publication_date 1970/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
neither church nor priest, neither orthodoxy nor hierarchy, neither kingship nor aristocracy. There were to be no castes or estates to flaw the unity of the believers; no privileges, save the self-evident superiority of those who accept to those who wilfully reject the true faith-and of course such obvious natural and social facts as the superiority of man to woman and of master to slave. Even these inferiorities were softened by the new dispensation. The slave was no longer a chattel but a human being, with recognized legal and moral rights; woman, though still subject to polygamy and concubinage, acquired property rights not equalled in the West until modern times, and even the non-Muslim enjoyed a tolerance and security in sharp contrast with the lot of non-Christians in mediaeval-and sometimes modern-Christendom.