Even the most powerful sultans never challenged the Shariʿa’s supremacy.

Evidence

Nor were all segments of the population inclined toward Shariʿa norms: the Bedouins in particular had their own powerful customs, often conflicting with these norms. Like any social groupings, Muslim society from North Africa and Muslim Spain to Java and Samarkand had its share of misery. It obviously had its own invaders and conquerors, its rebels, larcenists, petty thieves, and highway robbers, and even the occasional corrupt judge. Nonetheless, the Shariʿa was the normative system and the law of the land, its paradigmatic discourses and practices persisting in the continual re-creation of a particular order and, more importantly, a particular subject. With their military might and often unmatched power, sultans in Islam, the heads of the executive, came and went, one after the other, without as little as a murmur about an ambition to challenge the Shariʿa. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 154 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Another charge is that of tyranny. Certainly the Sultan was no democrat; but after all, democracy, as we know and practise it, has flourished in only a few places, and in most of them is recent and precarious. The Sultan was not a true despot, but the supreme custodian of the God-given Holy Law of Islam, to which he himself was subject. It is true that the Holy Law granted him almost despotic power, and that it did not provide for its own enforcement against him. But ultimately the Holy Law remained the basis of the social and political structure of the Empire, and was observed by the Sultans, whose sovereignty was accepted and respected by the people, both Muslims and Christian, as right and inevitable. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 639 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Islamic rulers never challenged Shariʿa supremacy despite their military power — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 154; The Shariʿa subordinated all political power to itself, unlike the modern state — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 163; Ottoman sultans ruled subject to Islamic Holy Law they could not alter — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 639

Broader Connections

• Islamic rulers never challenged Shariʿa supremacy despite their military power #corroborates (0.98) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 154
• Ottoman sultans ruled subject to Islamic Holy Law they could not alter #exemplifies (0.92) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 639