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Worldview, Strategy, and Strategic Principles
Worldview, Strategy, and Strategic Principles
in Three Muslim Military Treatises
u
Muhammad Husni Mohd. Amin
Q
husni@ikim.gov.my
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56389/tafhim.vol16no2.2
Abstract
This study looks into the origins of strategy in Islām and
its development from metaphysical, historiographical,
and textual perspectives. Corresponding “strategy”
with the terms siyāsah, ḥiyal, and tadbīr in Muslim
lexicology, it uses semantic field analysis to examine
how the term and concept have been used by the
Muslims, particularly within the Sunnī-Ashʿarite
metaphysical framework. Historiographical method
is used to examine the development of strategy from
pre-Islamic times, during the Prophetic period, and
in the significant periods of the ʿAbbasid-Ayyūbid
partnership and the beginning of the Timūrid era.
The study also examines the text of three Muslim
military treatises, each representing a different
Muslim era in order to postulate the existence of an
TAFHIM: IKIM Journal of Islam and the Contemporary World 16 No. 2 (Dec 2023): 33–60
u
This short essay is a reworked version of a paper entitled “The Strategic
Mind: Gleaning Wisdom from the Muslim Manuals of Warfare” which
was read the first time alongside the module presentation “The Strategic
Mind” in a 3-day 6-module programme Thinking with Wisdom held
inaugurally on Thursday, 17 November 2022, at IKIM Grand Hall,
Institute of Islamic Understanding Malaysia (IKIM), Kuala Lumpur,
and read the second time the programme was offered in the same venue
on Thursday, 11 May 2023.
Q Ph.D. in Islamic Thought and Civilisation (RZS-CASIS UTM). Currently
a Fellow at Centre for Science and Environment Studies, Institute of
Islamic Understanding Malaysia (IKIM), Malaysia.
