FUNCTION OF HADITH IN POLITICS: ANALYSING YŪSUF AL-NABHĀNĪ’S FORTY HADITHS ON THE OBLIGATION TO OBEY THE RULER

Abstract

This study examines the political theology of Ḥadīth in the
writings of the Palestinian-Ottoman scholar Yūsuf al-Nabhānī
(1849–1932), focusing on his tract al­Aḥādīth al­Arbaʿīn fī
Wujūb Ṭāʿat Amīr al­Muʾminīn (Forty Hadiths on the
Obligation to Obey the Ruler), composed in 1312/1895.
Situated in the political turbulence of the late Ottoman
Caliphate, the work reasserts traditional Sunni doctrines of
obedience and political unity at a time when reformist, Salafi,
and colonial forces threatened both the caliphate and its moral
authority. Through a close reading of the collection, this article
argues that al-Nabhānī deployed the Prophetic tradition as a
medium of political legitimacy, constructing a theological
defense of Sultan ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd II’s rule and the Ottoman
Caliphate as divinely sanctioned institutions. His work also
represents a religious counter-discourse to modernist
reinterpretations of Islam and to secular nationalism advanced
by the Young Turks. The analysis reveals how Hadith—beyond
its devotional and legal dimensions—functioned as a living
source of political thought, moral order, and social cohesion in
the late nineteenth-century Muslim world.