Islamic central power tolerated urban untrusting populations but opposed coherent rural groups

Evidence

In the Islamic model the central authorities were not positively hostile to trust on any theological principle, but were simply intolerant, within the very considerable limits of their capacity, of the emergence of coherent trust-engendering groups which would pose a threat to them. They would keep such groups at bay, but they could not destroy them. The central power enjoyed a symbiotic relation with urban populations which /acked this cohesion and trust, and was in opposition to rural populations which had it. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2062

Categorization

• XREF: This is a concrete historical instance of the reading’s core claim that trust requires observable constraints: states suppress trusting groups precisely because cohesive trust is observable and thus threatening.