Public Execution in the Umayyad Period: Early Islamic Punitive Practice and Its Late Antique Context

Executions can be understood as symbolic events and part of wider
political culture. Recent commentators on early Islamic execution have
observed that Umayyad punishment of apostates, rebels and brigands was
‘pre-classical’. There is less agreement about the extent to which ‘Islam’
affected Umayyad practice. Epistles and poetry provide a more secure basis
for understanding Umayyad public capital punishment than the problematic
anecdotal evidence of other sources. Umayyad punitive practice was indeed
not ‘classical’, and its justification does not seem to have explicitly invoked
the Qurʾān, and in particular with reference to ideas about violation of Prophetic precedent. However, it was sometimes justified with reference to
God’s covenant (nakth) and public violence (khurūj and fasād fī l-arḍ).
Furthermore, when the supposed forms of punishment are considered in their late antique context, features of Umayyad-era penal culture that
appear to have been shaped by the wider, monotheist context can be
identified.