The traditional interpretation of this passage, which I give in M. Blacbere's translation, is: "Fight those who do not believe ... until they pay the jizya, directly,(?)1 while at the same time they are humili- ated."2 This interpretation is linked to that of the majority of the late commentators (and some of the early ones), which extract from the sacred text the obligation to inflict humiliation upon the dhimmis in the procedure of payment of the jizya, that they must in particular carry it out by their own hand, that is to say, in person and in cash.3 In reality, it is far from the case that all the medieval commentators, not to mention the modern ones, were happy with this interpretation; they proposed several others, which proves above all that none of them understood the text naturally starting only with a knowledge of Arabic.4 Keeping to the prevailing interpretation for the moment, it presents, it seems, two provisional defects: on the one hand, neither the word jizya here, nor the expression an yadin, nor finally the expression wa-hum saghiruna possess a perfectly clear and precise meaning; on the other hand, they are translated without bringing out the clear interconnection between the three neighboring expressions. I do not pretend, unfortunately, to provide a totally satisfying solution, either; I should like, however, to request permission to join, very exceptionally, the erudite cohort of mufassirun (commentators), to propose reflections, liable perhaps all the same, to direct research in a more rigorous fashion.
We know that the word jizya, to which the later usage of the figh (Islamic jurisprudence) has gradually given the special sense of a personal tax on non-Muslims, in contrast to the land tax kharaj, is not always taken, above all not in the early texts, in such a precisely defined fiscal sense, since one finds it even sometimes used where one would expect kharaj.5 However there is no doubt that, in all the texts that refer to the conditions of agreement between the conquering Muslims and the conquered non-Muslims, the word jizya, which is almost the only name used for the tax, designates, whatever be the the fiscal contents, a payment characteristic of the submission of the conquered to the conqueror.6 It involves, thus, a certain stigma, the idea of a tax that can only affect men not enjoying to the full their human rights. In Byzantium and among the Sassanians, in the two societies Islam inherited, this stigma was attached to a poll tax in the strict sense of the word;7 but among the Arabs, who had never paid any tax before Islam, and still only paid an alms tax (zakat) regarded in a different manner, the simple fact of paying a tax strictly speaking seemed to imply a sort of indignity, degradation. For the rest, before the conversions of the indigenous population, the kharaj also only afflicted the non-Muslims. Still in the period during which the hadith were developing, several traditions established thus that to put oneself in a situation of having to pay the tax is to confess that one is in or is about to enter into the social class of an inferior, igrar bi-l-saghar.8 It is for this reason that more specifically the Taghlibites refused to pay the jizya, because, although Christian, they had their pride of the Arabs, and that `Umar had to impose on them a zakat (alms tax) simply doubled, that is to say, a tax established in another way but above all seen as not really being a tax.9 It is for the same reason that the prince of the Ghassanids, also an Arab, and prince, was indignant at the thought of paying "the jizya of the peasants, jizyat al- `ul7j."1 ° On the other hand, apart from minute textual variants, the treaties of submission of the Christian or Mazdean [Zoroastrian] towns stipulate on their share igrar al jizya wa-l-saghar, which is obviously a reference to the Koranic text, but all the same must be understood as signifying, with the acceptance of the jizya, the recognition of the status of saghir.1' That does not imply humiliation, I mean to say that it does not add to the recognition of an inferior status some or other humiliating procedure; the authorities reviewed on this subject by Tabarl in his Ikhtilaf 12 are unanimous on this point, and Shafi1l, undoubt edly reacting against the opposite opinion that was emerging, makes the explicit point that the dhimmis paying the jizya were not to be maltreated either by acts or by words, and that the condition of saghar signified only that they were entering under the law (hukm) of Islam.13 In the light of these explanations, it seems to me that one must translate the Koranic text thus: "(Fight those who do not believe) until they pay the jizya as [or: in position of] (or: in recognition of their rank as) inferiors (as subjects?)." 14
It is now a question, which is more difficult, of finding for the words ,an yadin a meaning that goes well with the above translation. The expression is not met with anywhere else, either in the Koran,15 or in the ancient literature outside the passages inspired by the Koran, we have no means of cross-checking in order to interpret it, and the solutions proposed all have something gratuitous about them. Without worrying about the late and theoretical explanations of the jurists, keeping to the texts that give an account, authentic or otherwise, of the conditions of capitulation of the conquered, it is clear that the formula was already understood in a varied manner, that is to say, already nobody was any more certain of understanding it.16 They understood it in the following way: "out of the hand," which is rather feeble as a rendering of the preposition an, and as if the word yad was accompanied by the article or the possessive; they explain that it means "personally," because the authors were writing at a moment when the differentiation of the personal jizya was taking form in the general complex of taxation, and particularly in the face of the tax on land. Naturally, the physical gesture could mean something different, and, although referring to a different rite, another text suggests that it expresses submission, when we are told that the Persian equivalent is khak ber ser, "earth on head." 17 Another gloss on it is "cash," 18 because the later authors well knew that in their day the jizya was characterized as a fixed tax in cash, in contrast to others, variable and sometimes paid in kind; but why would the Koran have insisted on this particular detail, besides contrary to what we had learned of the capitulations of Khaybar or Najran? Another meaning, which is not explicitly mentioned, I believe, by anyone, but which seems to be implied in certain discussions between jurists is the following: children, women, and monks (this is a controversial point) do not have to pay the jizya, since the latter is a redemption of blood, and that these people, in war, should be spared;19 thus, one must understand the word jizya as having a meaning very close to the Arabic root "compensa tion," and, as in a verbal form, construed normally with an, leading to "compensation of hand" (struck on the conquered in order to kill him, or if necessary to reduce him to slavery, like the Latin manus). Still others understand by it "according to their means," and it is a fact that in some texts of treaties, next to or in place of the formula can yadin, we find: "`ald qadri tdgati kulli halimin" or something close to that, which refers to the discussions as to what is legally required of the non-Muslim subjects.20 One further finds, "of their work," which technically corresponds however to the prestations of the kind of those of the people of Najran.21 Is it necessary to say that all that is equally flimsy and that, historically, it is in any case interesting to note the diverse interpretations that the social climate could have suggested? In the context of the Koran, perhaps we never had, and never shall have any more than our predecessors the true elements for a discussion. Logically, I should simply say that of all these meanings the only one that seemed to me to lead organically to the consequential explanation wa-hum saghirun is that which sees in can yadin the indication of a gesture of submission, not understood, as by the later hardliners, as a form of personal, humiliating procedure, but the recognition of the status of saghar. Only, to put forward this solution, which has never been done, we would still have to find in the pre- and peri-Islamic Semitic East some trace of such a rite: I am not sure that one can do it; simply, all the same, I should like to verify it, and I pose the question to those who are in a position to respond to it, on the basis of pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions or some Semitic document or something else ancient.
NOTES
1. [The question mark is Blachere's.]
2. [R.Blachere, Le Coran (Paris, 1951), vol. 2, pp. 1082-83: "Combattez ceux qui ne croient point ... jusqu'a it paient la jizya, directement (?), et alors qu'ils sont humilies."]
3. A. Fattal, Le statut legal des non-musulmans en pays d'Islam (Beyrouth, 1958), pp. 17, 286-88; see below, n. 13.
4. See, for example, Tabari, Tafsir, vol. 10, p. 7; Zamakhsharl, Kashshaf, vol. 2, p. 147; Abu 'Ubayd b.Sallam, Amwal, p. 19; Mawardt, Ahkam, p. 247 (trans. Fagnan, p. 300).
5. D. C. Dennett, Conversion and the Poll Tax (Harvard, 1950), with the utilization and discussion of the previous works of Becker etc., Fr. Lokkegaard, Islamic taxation in the Classic Period (Copenhagen, 1950), chap. 6; Fattal, Le statut legal des non-musulmans en pays d'Islam, p. 265; Claude Cahen, "Djizya," in E12.
6. Besides the Koran itself, see, above all, Baladhuri, Futah, ed. de Goeje, passim; for the other references to treaties, see the analysis and notes of Fattal, Le statut legal des non-musulmans en pays d'Islam, pp. 34-57.
7. Which only afflicted the socially inferior (smallholders) and perhaps, religiously, in Byzantium (Jews?).
8. Yahya b.Adam, K.al-Kharaj, ed. Juynboll, p. 39 (trans. Ben Shemesh, p. 48); Abu Ubayd b.Sallam, Amwal, pp. 77-78. On the contrary, Shafi`i, quoted in Tabari, Ikhtilaf, ed. J. Schacht, p. 226, if he affirms the jizya, denies the kharaj, since it is not the substitute for blood shed (see below, n. 18): In fact, in his time, there had been many conversions of men on whom the kharaj had been maintained, but who obviously would not have thought that it was, like the jizva from which they were exempt, a mark of inferiority.
9. Abu'Ubayd b. Sallam, Amwal, pp. 28-29, 540-44; cf. Abu Yusuf, p. 68 (trans. p. 184), Yahya, p. 47, (trans., p. 50).
10. Ya`qubi, Histoire, vol. 2, p. 161; cf. Baladhuri, Futah, p.136. In the version of the letter of the Prophet to Heraclius given by Abu Ubayd, Amwal, p. 22, those subjugated to the jizya are called fallahan (peasant, farmer), which Abu `Ubayd explains as comprising in fact all non-Muslims.
11. Esp. Tabari, History, vol. 1, p. 2674.
12. Tabari, Ikhtilaf, pp. 199, 201, 225-27, 231.
13. Ibid., p. 231.
14. In French: "(Combattez ceux qui ne croient pas) jusqu'a ce qui'ils paient la jizya en qualite (ou: en reconnaissance de leur qualite) d'infdrieurs (de sujets)?"
15. In the Koran, the word yad, used on its own or with the preposition bi is taken in general, either in its real sense or in its current figurative sense, to mean "power."
16. One also finds it in the plural jiza'an an aydihim (Tabari, History, pp. 2044-45).
17. Abu `Ubayd b.Sallam, Amwal, p. 25, on the faith of Salman the Persian.
18. Ibid., p. 19.
19. See ibid., p. 31; Shafi`i, quoted in Tabari, Ikhtilaf, p. 226 (see above, n. 6), then, for example, Zamakhshari, Kashshaf, vol. 2, p. 206.
20. Taban, History, pp. 2655-59; cf. Kister, in JESHO 3 (1960): 326 sq.
21. Cf. Hamidullah, Le Prophete de l'Islam, vol. 2, p.616, and the lexicon of his Wathaiq.