This chapter discusses the obligation of Muslims to migrate (i.e. hijra) from territories ruled by non-Muslims to those that constitute part of Muslim territory (the Dār al-Islām) in the context of the expansion of the Russian Empire into Caucasia in the late nineteenth century CE. Specifically, it focuses on al-Risāla al-Sharīfa of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Thughūrī (d. 1299/1882), who argues in favour of the obligation to migrate, citing various incidents from the early history of Islam as evidence. The Russian annexation of Dagestan, Chechnya in 1859 and the subsequent conquest of the whole territory of Circassia in 1864 brought large Muslim populations under Russian rule. Faced with changes to the operation of Islamic legal institutions and not inconsiderable persecution, Caucasian Muslim jurists sought to address the question of Muslims’ status as subjects of a powerful non-Muslim state.

The chapter highlights the place of spiritual purification in the Islamic ethos and its relation to physical jihād. Tracing such ideas from early Islam, the chapter considers the jihād in the era of the Crusades and the ways in which pietistic motifs were essential components of jihād preaching and practice.

Postclassical Muslim just war developments focused upon dealing with the twin challenges of the Crusades and the Mongols, both of which occupied substantial sections of the Muslim world as well as constituting religious challenges to Islam. These challenges were overcome by moving away from the earlier heroic manner of Muslim sacral warfare and adopting a more professional, technology-based military that at least attempted to assimilate standard Sunni Muslim norms (in terms of personal morality) into the military methodology. The expansion of Islam from the 13th to the 17th centuries demonstrated that this formula was a success.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between the state, attitudes to warfare as enshrined in Christian theory, and the practice of warfare as exemplified in medieval eastern Roman, or Byzantine, relations with its various enemies, with a short introductory section on violence in non-warfare contexts. While nominally opposed to violent means to achieve its ends, the Christian Byzantine state found ways to justify engaging in warfare against its enemies, primarily based on the notion that it was involved in a perpetual defensive struggle with those who threatened its territorial integrity as well as its moral existence. All warfare could thus be understood by definition as a defensive struggle against those who threatened the empire’s existence. This applied likewise to overtly offensive warfare, which was legitimated within a Christian eschatology as a divinely-approved effort to recover lost territories and restore them to the Christian community. Hence, no theory of ‘holy war’ or ‘crusade’ evolved, because such was irrelevant. Such an ideology offered a constant theoretical basis for fighting the empire’s foes; and it also served the needs of the imperial elite and the court on an opportunistic basis, to justify offensive warfare whenever the empire was in a position to undertake such action. Such an ideology legitimating warfare could also deployed against Christian neighbours, when it suited the interests of the imperial state or its elite.