Alla ricerca di dar al-islam. Una ricognizione nei testi di giuristi e tradizionisti, lessicografi, geografi e viaggiatori

Dar al-islam is a well known conventional expression which, together with its specular opposite dar al-harb, forms a binomial which is considered to have originated in Muslim juridical thinking of “the classical period”. In the present article this is the object of a study which attempts to reconsider when it was possibly first developed, emphasize differences among Muslim scholars, besides evaluating its reception in other kinds of writings outside the juridical field, particularly in the works of Muslim geographers, or in travel literature, as well as in Arab medieval dictionaries. This preliminary investigation leads us to a less schematic and static picture than that of current definitions, a picture in which the juridical notion of dar al-islam is necessarily combined with that of belonging, with the representation of Muslim collective identity. The theme of the material and mental boundaries of dar al-islam is thus focused in its different expressions, at times explicit and at times hidden between the lines, in different types of texts which give us back a variety of thoughts present in the cultural context in which the idea of dar al-islam was formed and continued to exist.