من مفهوم الأمّة إلى مفهوم الدّولة

Abstract

The establishment of the nation in the early era of the Mohammedan Call (da'wa) passed through two basic stages - the Meccan and the Medinan. The Meccan stage is the stage of establishment of the Spiritual Group (al-Jamaʿah al-Ruḥiyya), whose members are connected with each other by the bond of belief in God, His Messenger and Revelation. The Medinan stage is the period in which the establishment of the State of the Believers was completed by the Emigrants and the Supporters (al-Muhajireen wa al-Ansār), where the concepts of worldly rights and obligations were crystallized. While the different meanings of the term 'nation' (ʾumma) within the space of the Meccan suras emerge from their holistic nature that is reflected in the Call to settle the principles and moral ideals that stem from the fideistic (faith) imagination that is connected with monotheism and the collective soul, the concept of nation (ʾumma) in the Medinan stage takes an organizational nature of a political substance, though it did not have the same meaning of contemporary politics.

This article tries from a historical-epistemological perspective to rebuild the concept of nation (ʾummah) through its revelations and the development of its epistemological components and elements, especially those that were crystallized in Ibn Khaldun's thought and constituted after that the cornerstone of contemporary philosophical and political discourses