Torture and Public Executions in the Islamic Middle Period (Eleventh–Fifteenth Centuries)

Abstract

This chapter first reviews the normative bases for penal state violence, in particular for capital punishment and torture, in Islamic law and Islamic political theory. The chapter then moves on to discuss a number of examples of violent punishments, culled from Islamic historiography, first from the reign of the Seljuq sultans of Persia, Iraq and Syria (c. 1040-1194) and then, second, from that of the Mamluk sultans of Egypt and Syria (c. 1250-1517). It argues that a gradual shift took place in this period, supported by changes in the legal doctrine of torture and punishment based on utilitarian considerations of the public interest, towards a proliferation of violent punishment and torture. By the end of the Mamluk period, the law was so underdetermined and so riddled with loopholes that only little opposition could be mounted to check the rising tide of penal violence by the state.