Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29 (2021): 360-365

Book Review

As its title points out, this book by Alejandro García Sanjuán, professor of medieval history at the Univer-
s i t y  o f  H u e l v a  a n d  o n e  o f  t h e  m o s t 
prominent scholars of the history of al- 
Andalus, deals with jihād in classical Islam 
from a very specific angle: the legal-doc-
trinal one.1 This perspective is already 
evident in the introduction, where García 
Sanjuán defines jihād as “legitimate war 
from the Islamic perspective” (p. 17).2 
And indeed, the sources on which García 
Sanjuán bases his book are predominantly 
legal and doctrinal treatises. In the intro-
duction, the author also makes clear his 
position on the link between violence and 
religion—namely, that the latter has been 
an essential factor in the legitimation of 
the former, another important element  

1.  The book is thus in dialog with works such as Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islām 
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) and A. M. Al-Dawoody, The Islamic Law of War: Justifications 
and Regulations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

2.  The English translations of the quoted passages are mine.

of the idea of jihād. This point introduces 
one of the vitally important topics treated 
in the book: the significance of not including 
the idea of jihād within the concept of  
holy war.

In addition to outlining his selection 
of sources, García Sanjuán specifies in 
the introduction how he will address 
the study of jihād. Compared to other 
approaches, especially those adopted by 
nonspecialists who “proclaim themselves 
ʿulamāʾ and determine the meaning of 
these texts by establishing whether the 
Quran is belligerent or not, and whether 
Muḥammad promoted war or peace”  
(p. 22), García Sanjuán sets out to let the 
sources speak for themselves. In this 
way, he complies with a principle that 
is consciously present throughout his 

Alejandro García Sanjuán. Yihad: La regulación de la 
guerra en la doctrina islámica clásica (Madrid: Marcial 
Pons Historia, 2020), 366 pp. ISBN 978-84-17945-10-7. 

Price: €26.60 (paper).

Javier Albarrán 
RomanIslam, Universität Hamburg

(j.albarran.iruela@gmail.com)

© 2021 Javier Albarrán. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 
License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and 
only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.

mailto:j.albarran.iruela%40gmail.com?subject=


Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29 (2021)

361  •  Javier albarrán

work: “Islam belongs to its believers, who 
are responsible for defining the meaning 
of their own beliefs” (p. 22). As we will 
see later, despite its utility as a maxim 
with which to establish the meaning of a 
concept in the sources, this is a somewhat 
risky statement.

The first chapter, titled “Las bases 
textuales” (The textual bases), constitutes 
an excellent analysis not only of the 
concept of jihād in the Quran, the Sunna, 
and the biography of the Prophet but also 
of the main works of Islamic law. After 
a careful examination of the Quranic 
vocabulary related to combat, violence, 
and warfare, García Sanjuán addresses 
the complex question of whether there 
is a Quranic doctrine on war, understood 
as a set of clear, systematic, and well-
articulated norms. His answer, derived 
from the study of the Quranic text itself 
as well as of the opinions of various 
specialists such as Patricia Crone3 and 
Asma Afsaruddin,4 is that the more warlike 
readings of the Holy Book emerged after 
the establishment of the Quranic text. 
By analyzing the opinions of medieval 
scholars, García Sanjuán illustrates in 
a simple but forceful way how classical 
thinkers took into account the ambiguous 
meaning of many Quranic verses, thus 
giving voice, as the author has proposed to 
do, to the sources themselves.

Also of great interest is the section 
devoted to the deeds of Muḥammad and 
the formation of the prophetic tradition, 
w h e r e  G a r c í a  S a n j u á n  a n a l y z e s  t h e 
importance of ḥadīth, but also that of the 
sīra and the maghāzī, for the establishment 

3.  Patricia Crone, “Jihad: Idea and History,” Open Democracy (2007).
4.  Asma Afsaruddin, Striving in the Path of God: Jihād and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2013).

of the doctrine of jihād. Like his discussion 
of the Quranic text, this part includes 
a brilliant introduction to these genres 
and the debates around them. The same 
can be said of the section devoted to the 
elaboration of fiqh, which also serves as 
an introduction to the sources used by  
the author.

The second chapter aims to answer 
the question posed by its title: “¿Qué es el 
yihad?” (What is jihād?). García Sanjuán’s 
answer is clear and accurate: despite the 
diversity of concepts and practices, there 
is a hegemonic vision within the Muslim 
tradition of how to engage in jihād, and 
this centers on its connection with war. 
As García Sanjuán says, “there are justified 
reasons to speak of an intense sacralization 
of the martial dimension of jihad, which 
allow us to place it [jihād] within the 
framework of the concept of holy war”  
(p. 106). One of the main reasons is the 
direct relationship between the practice 
of jihād and the salvation of the soul. 
This does not prevent the author from 
also discussing, in detail, the nonviolent 
forms of jihād, which are mainly related to 
Sufism. However, as García Sanjuán states, 
it is not possible to establish a dichotomy 
between the warlike jihād of the ʿulamāʾ 
and the spiritual jihād of the Sufis, since 
war remained, in works such as that of Ibn 
al-Mubārak, conceptualized as a form of 
asceticism (pp. 109–10).

T h i s  c h a p t e r  a l s o  d i s c u s s e s  t h e 
important relationship between ḥisba 
and jihād through the practice of takfīr. 
Here, García Sanjuán studies what he 
calls “sectarian jihād,” jihād carried out 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29 (2021)

Alejandro García Sanjuán’s Yihad: La regulación de la guerra  •  362

against other Muslims. He illustrates this 
section with examples from the Islamic 
West, such as the case of the Almohads, 
and compares this reality with that of the 
crusades launched against Christians who 
were considered heretics. This interesting 
cross-cultural perspective could have been 
developed by the author also in other 
cases.

N e x t ,  G a r c í a  S a n j u á n  a n a l y z e s  a 
recurring but necessary theme in this type 
of work: that of the place of jihād in the 
hierarchy of Islamic beliefs, and what type 
of duty it is. He also addresses another key 
issue, which is that the notion of holy war 
in Islam should not be limited to the idea 
of jihād but should also encompass other 
concepts, such as ribāṭ, fatḥ, and shahāda. 
This point is relevant for future research 
on the idea of holy war in the Islamic 
world from a holistic perspective. García 
Sanjuán concludes that the notion of fatḥ 
(divinely sanctioned conquest) constitutes 
the highest expression of the sacralization 
of war in Islam, even more so than jihād, 
since this notion casts God as the subject of 
the action. However, and despite agreeing 
with the author on the importance of fatḥ 
to the sacralization of war in Islam, one 
may object that the agent of fatḥ is not 
always God. As just one example, Ibn Abī 
Zarʿ, in his Rawḍ al-qirṭās, reports that the 
Almohad caliph ʿAbd al-Muʾmin conquered 
(fataḥa) all of the Maghrib.5 Conversely, 
God appears as the subject of warfare 
also in other concepts, such as naṣr  

5.   Ibn Abī Zarʿ, Kitāb al-anīs al-muṭrib rawḍ al-qirṭās fī akhbār mulūk al-Maghrib wa-taʾrīkh madīnat Fās 
(Rabat: Dār al-Manṣūr, 1972), 204.

6.  See, for example, M. A. Makki, “Wathāʾiq taʾrījiyya yadīda ʿ an ʿ aṣr al-murābiṭīn (Documentos inéditos de la 
época almorávide),” Revista del Instituto de Estudios Islámicos 7/8 (1959–60): 109–98 (letter no. 2).

7.  See, for example, Dominique Urvoy, “The Question of Divine Help in the Jihād,” in Violence in Islamic 
Thought from the Qurʾān to the Mongols, ed. Robert Gleave and István Kristó-Nagy, 27–32 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh 
University Press, 2015).

( d i v i n e  a i d ) . 6 W h a t  w e  f i n d  i n  t h e 
sources, to return to García Sanjuán’s 
approach, is a concept of the sacralization 
o f  w a r  m a n i f e s t e d  t h r o u g h  v a r i o u s 
complementary terms. Undoubtedly, the 
manifestation of God in the contexts of 
jihād, especially through “His help” (naṣr), 
is one of the main features of holy war.7 
This chapter ends with another interesting 
terminological analysis focused on the 
interruption of hostilities.

The t hird  c hap t er,  t it led  “¿Cu áles 
son los límites de la práctica del yihad?” 
(What are the limits to the practice of 
jihād?), focuses on the significant Islamic 
legal corpus related to ius in bello, that 
is, the behavior of combatants in war. As 
García Sanjuán says, the limits imposed 
on the practice of jihād are a fundamental 
element of the classical notion of jihād. 
The chapter analyzes, in depth and with 
an impeccable use of sources, issues such 
as the distinction between combatants 
and noncombatants, protected groups, the 
treatment of prisoners, the use of weapons 
of indiscriminate destruction, destruction 
of property, and self-harm and martyrdom. 
The extensive elaboration of these issues 
in Islamic legal and doctrinal treatises 
leads García Sanjuán to consider fiqh the 
first great legal system to contain a specific 
doctrine of ius in bello, thus anticipating 
m o d e r n  p u b l i c  i n t e r n a t i o n a l  l a w  b y 
several centuries. Here a brief reference 
to the theory of just war, at the time 
under development and revision in both 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 29 (2021)

363  •  Javier albarrán

the Greco-Roman and Western medieval 
traditions as well as in Islamic thought,8 
would have been of interest to demonstrate 
that just-war theory also developed a ius 
in bello doctrine, even though it did not 
reach the level of normative development 
p r e s e n t  i n  f i q h .  F r e d e r i c k  R u s s e l l ’ s 
definition of this theory highlights the 
overlap: “Content with the achievement of 
more concrete political objectives, the just 
war stops short of countenancing the utter 
destruction of the adversaries and tends to 
limit the incidence of violence by codes of 
right conduct, of non-combatant immunity 
and by other humanitarian restraints.”9

The fourth and final chapter of the 
book is the most innovative of all, at 
least from the point of view of the posed 
question: “¿Por qué el yihad ha sido un 
c o n c e p t o  p o l é m i c o  y  t e r g i v e r s a d o ? ” 
(Why has jihād been a controversial and 
distorted concept?). This chapter—which 
is connected to other seminal works of 
historiographical criticism written by the 
author10—analyzes the different ways in 
which the conceptualization of jihād has 
been adulterated, especially as a result of 
the fall of the Iron Curtain, the appearance 
of the theory of clash of civilizations, 
and the growing accentuation of the role 
of Islamist radicalism in international 
politics. García Sanjuán denounces the 

8.  See, for example, James Turner Johnson and John Kelsay, eds., Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical 
Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), and 
John Kelsay, Arguing the Just War in Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

9.  Frederick Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).
10.  See, for example, Alejandro García Sanjuán, La conquista islámica de la Península Ibérica y la tergiversación 

del pasado: Del catastrofismo al negacionismo (Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2013).
11.  Antonio Elorza, “Anatomía de la yihad en el Corán y los hadices,” in El nuevo terrorismo islamista: Del 

11-S al 11-M, ed. Fernando Reinares and Antonio Elorza, 269–94 (Madrid: Temas de Hoy, 2004).
12.  See, for example, Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in 

Christianity and Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
13.  See, for example, Jan Assmann, Die Mosaische Unterscheidung oder der Preis des Monotheismus 

mainstream media’s identification of Islam 
with terrorism through a manipulation of 
the idea of jihād, evident in the writings of 
nonspecialists who “proclaim themselves 
I s l a m i c  s c h o l a r s , ”  s u c h  a s  A n t o n i o 
Elorza,11 and he traces the genealogy of 
this Islamophobic perspective from the 
medieval polemic tradition, paying special 
attention to the Spanish case—an example 
of great importance due to the Islamic past 
of the Iberian Peninsula.

Following the approaches laid out in the 
introduction, García Sanjuán emphasizes 
that “the role of religious texts in the 
analysis of violence should not be placed 
on the level of causes, but rather on 
that of its justification or legitimation”  
(p. 294), a point that serves as a preamble to 
a refutation of what he calls “the fallacy of 
Islamic exceptionalism” (pp. 294–95), that 
is, the erroneous idea that Islam is a violent 
religion per se. However, it would have 
been interesting if, when dismantling this 
fallacy, the author had referred to some of 
the studies that have tried to contextualize 
the rise of Islam within the framework of 
Late Antiquity and the ideas of religious 
violence that were circulating at the 
time.12 Likewise, inserting García Sanjuán’s 
considerations into the broader debate 
on the relationship between violence and 
religion would have been fruitful.13 Within 



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Alejandro García Sanjuán’s Yihad: La regulación de la guerra  •  364

his discussion of the misrepresentation of 
jihād, García Sanjuán also rightly includes 
those authors who, from a confessional 
and apologetic perspective, have tried to 
separate the “historical” idea of jihād from 
any warlike vision.14

This book is, therefore, an exceptional 
exercise in close reading, scholarship, and 
historiographical practice. As such, it raises 
a series of questions for the interested 
reader that, more by way of dialogue than 
minor criticism, I would now like to point 
out. In the first place, although García 
Sanjuán reiterates throughout the book the 
conclusion that the historically hegemonic 
aspect of jihād is undoubtedly that of 
holy war, sometimes it seems that he is 
reluctant to use this notion of sacralized 
violence, preferring to employ definitions 
such as the abovementioned “legitimate 
w a r  f r o m  t h e  I s l a m i c  p e r s p e c t i v e ”  
(p. 17). Without being wrong, this framing 
is, in the view of the present reviewer, 
not entirely clear, since jihād is not the 
only “legitimate” war within the Islamic 
tradition.15 More precisely, within the 
Islamic tradition it is the sacralization of 
jihād that differentiates it from other types 

(Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 2003) and William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology 
and the Roots of Modern Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

14.  A clear example is the work of Louay Fatoohi, who analyzes the Quran exclusively, highlighting the 
spiritual vision of jihād and ignoring the fact that it was the medieval ʿulamāʾ themselves who interpreted the 
idea within a warlike framework: L. Fatoohi, Jihad in the Qur’an: The Truth from the Source (Birmingham: Luna 
Plena, 2009).

15.  See, for example, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 2001).

16.  On the other hand, Afsaruddin’s work, focused on Quranic exegesis, could be used as another example 
of studies that have misrepresented the notion of jihād, in this case to downplay its warlike character. See 
Christopher Melchert’s review of Afsaruddin’s book in Review of Middle East Studies 49, no. 2 (2015): 175–78. As 
Melchert states, “a natural concern of an historian is what Islam has been like, of a theologian what Islam ought 
to be like. This book tries to enlist an historical survey in aid of a theological argument. Perhaps theologians 
will find it unusually scholarly. As an historian, I find it disappointingly unrigorous.” On the early Quranic 
exegetical sources regarding jihād, see Andrew Rippin, “Reading the Qurʾān on Jihād: Two Early Exegetical 
Texts,” in Gleave and Kristó-Nagy, Violence in Islamic Thought, 33–48.

of legitimate wars (such as those waged 
against rebels), through, for example, its 
salvific character, as García Sanjuán rightly 
establishes.

Second, as noted earlier, the principle 
established by García Sanjuán in the 
introduction—that Islam belongs to its 
believers, who ought to be the ones to 
define their beliefs—is somewhat risky. 
I believe that the interpretation, for 
example, of the Quran in its historical 
context is not incompatible with the 
analysis of what the medieval ʿulamāʾ 
said about the Quranic text, even though 
such interpretation can yield results that 
differ from those enunciated by Muslim 
believers. Following García Sanjuán’s 
premise, many of the studies on early and 
medieval Islam that he quotes would be 
invalid. For example, reaching a conclusion 
such as Afsaruddin’s, when she says that 
the warlike reading of jihād constitutes 
a  “ c o n s i d e r a b l e  d e v i a t i o n ”  f r o m  i t s 
Quranic meaning, could not be deemed 
methodologically valid. 16 How can she 
correct and judge the medieval ʿulamāʾ? 
The problem with authors such as Elorza 
is not their “self-proclamation” as ʿulamāʾ 



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365  •  Javier albarrán

and their interpretation of the Quran 
despite not being Muslims, but rather the 
decontextualized way in which they carry 
out their interpretation and their lack of 
training and specialization for this task, as 
most of them lack any knowledge of the 
Arabic language or the Islamic exegetical 
tradition.

Third, and given the legal-doctrinal 
a p p r o a c h  o f  t h e  b o o k ,  i t  p r e s e n t s  a 
perspective that could be further nuanced, 
a t  s o m e  p o i n t s ,  b y  t h e  u s e  o f  o t h e r 
sources, such as chronicles or biographical 
dictionaries. A clear example concerns 
the limits to the practice of jihād, which 
are greatly blurred if we depart from the 
purely legal approach. A wide selection 
of sources and different perspectives is 
essential in a study on a broad notion such 
as jihād, and thus brief reference to the 
multidimensional perspective provided by 
other sources could have been helpful to 
the reader. In the same vein, sometimes 
a better contextualization of the authors 
and sources analyzed could have been 
useful for a better understanding of the 
approaches and meanings they propose. 
An illustrative example is that of Ibn Ḥazm, 
whose vision of jihād should, I think, be 
attributed not only to his Ẓāhirism but 
also to the threatening situation that 
al-Andalus was facing in the eleventh 
century. García Sanjuán rightly highlights 

17.  For example, he is one of the creators and editors of the open access online magazine on Andalusi 
history Al-Andalus y la Historia: https://www.alandalusylahistoria.com/. He is also a regular contributor to 
many newspapers; see, for example, https://www.infolibre.es/noticias/opinion/plaza_publica/2021/02/15/
convivencia_invasion_genocidio_pasado_peninsular_116649_2003.html. 

18.  See, for example, Javier Albarrán, Ejércitos benditos: Yihad y memoria en al-Andalus (siglos X–XIII) 
(Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2020) and Josep Suñé, Guerra, ejército y fiscalidad en al-Andalus (ss. VIII–
XII): De la hegemonía musulmana a la decadencia (Madrid: La Ergástula, 2020).

this issue when talking, for example, of 
how pilgrimage and jihād are equated in 
the texts of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd.

These points notwithstanding, this is 
an outstanding book written by one of the 
leading Spanish scholars of Islamic studies 
and Islamic history, and its publication is 
undoubtedly a milestone in the analysis 
of jihād, for three main reasons. The first 
is the book’s indubitable meticulousness 
and accuracy in approaching its sources, 
not an easy task considering the amount 
and complexity of Islamic legal-doctrinal 
literature. In this sense, it is also worth 
mentioning the author’s comprehensive 
use of secondary literature. The second 
reason is that the author adds to his rigor 
a clarity of expression and explanation as 
well as a capacity for synthesis, allowing 
the book to be directed to a wider public, in 
line with the commitment to society that 
García Sanjuán has always exhibited in his 
work as a historian.17 Third, and relatedly, 
this work fills in a rather astonishing 
gap: it is the first academic monograph 
in Spanish to systematically address the 
concept of jihād. Fortunately, in the last 
year other books on the topic, likewise 
written from a historical perspective, have 
been published, thus beginning to fill this 
gap.18 García Sanjuán’s book, therefore, 
has opened a line of research that will 
hopefully be followed in the coming years.

https://www.alandalusylahistoria.com/ 
https://www.infolibre.es/noticias/opinion/plaza_publica/2021/02/15/convivencia_invasion_genocidio_pasado_peninsular_116649_2003.html
https://www.infolibre.es/noticias/opinion/plaza_publica/2021/02/15/convivencia_invasion_genocidio_pasado_peninsular_116649_2003.html