Dhimmī (Arabic: ذمي ḏimmī, IPA: [ˈðimmiː], collectively أهل الذمة ʾahl aḏ-ḏimmah/dhimmah "the people of the covenant") or muʿāhid (معاهد) is a historical term for non-Muslims living in an Islamic state with legal protection and certain restrictions. The word literally means "protected person", referring to the state's obligation under sharia to protect the individual's life, property, as well as freedom of religion, in exchange for loyalty to the state and payment of the jizya tax, in contrast to the zakat, or obligatory alms, paid by the Muslim subjects. Dhimmi were exempt from military service and other duties assigned specifically to Muslims if they paid the poll tax (jizya) but were otherwise equal under the laws of property, contract, and obligation. Dhimmis were subject to specific restrictions as well, which were codified in agreements like the Pact of ʿUmar. These included prohibitions on building new places of worship, repairing existing ones in areas where Muslims lived, teaching children the Qurʾān, and preventing relatives from converting to Islam. They were also required to wear distinctive clothing, refrain from carrying weapons, and avoid riding on saddles.
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👉 Dhimma in the context of Algerian Jews
The history of Jews in Algeria goes back to Antiquity, although it is not possible to trace with any certainty the time and circumstances of the arrival of the first Jews in what is now Algeria. In any case, several waves of immigration helped to increase the population. There may have been Jews in Carthage and present-day Algeria before the Roman conquest, but the development of Jewish communities is linked to the Roman presence. Jewish revolts in Israel and Cyrenaica in the 1st and 2nd centuries certainly led to the arrival of Jewish immigrants from these regions. The vast majority of scholarly sources reject the notion that there were any large-scale conversions of Berbers to Judaism.
The Muslim conquest of North Africa, which was completed in Algeria in the 8th century, brought North Africa into the realm of Islamic civilization and had a lasting impact on the identity of local Jewish communities, whose status was henceforth governed by the dhimma.
Dhimma in the context of Jizya
Jizya (Arabic: جِزْيَة, romanized: jizya), or jizyah, is a type of taxation levied on non-Muslim subjects of a state governed by Islamic law. The Quran and hadiths mention jizya without specifying its rate or amount, and the application of jizya varied in the course of Islamic history. However, scholars largely agree that early Muslim rulers adapted some of the existing systems of taxation and modified them according to Islamic religious law.
Historically, the jizya tax has been understood in Islam as a fee for protection provided by the Muslim ruler to non-Muslims, for the exemption from military service for non-Muslims, for the permission to practice a non-Muslim faith with some communal autonomy in a Muslim state, and as material proof of the non-Muslims' allegiance to the Muslim state and its laws. The majority of Muslim jurists required adult, free, sane males among the dhimma community to pay the jizya, while exempting women, children, elders, handicapped, the ill, the insane, monks, hermits, slaves, and musta'mins—non-Muslim foreigners who only temporarily reside in Muslim lands. However, some jurists, such as Ibn Hazm, required that anyone who had reached puberty pay jizya. Islamic Regimes allowed dhimmis to serve in Muslim armies. Those who chose to join military service were also exempted from payment; some Muslim scholars claim that some Islamic rulers exempted those who could not afford to pay from the Jizya.
Dhimma in the context of Sabians
The Sabians, sometimes also spelled Sabaeans or Sabeans, are a religious group mentioned three times in the Quran (as الصابئون al-Ṣābiʾūn, in later sources الصابئة al-Ṣābiʾa), where it is implied that they belonged to the 'People of the Book' (ahl al-kitāb). Their original identity, which seems to have been forgotten at an early date, has been called an "unsolved Quranic problem". Modern scholars have variously identified them as Mandaeans, Manichaeans, Sabaeans, Elchasaites, Archontics, ḥunafāʾ (either as a type of Gnostics or as "sectarians"), or as adherents of the astral religion of Harran. Some scholars believe that it is impossible to establish their original identity with any degree of certainty.
At least from the ninth century on, the Quranic epithet 'Sabian' was claimed by various religious groups who sought recognition by the Muslim authorities as a People of the Book deserving of legal protection (dhimma). Among those are the Sabians of Harran, adherents of a poorly understood ancient Semitic religion centered in the upper Mesopotamian city of Harran, who were described by Syriac Christian heresiographers as star worshippers. These Harranian Sabians practiced an old Semitic form of polytheism, combined with a significant amount of Hellenistic elements. Most of the historical figures known in the ninth–eleventh centuries as al-Ṣābiʼ were probably either members of this Harranian religion or descendants of such members, most notably the Harranian astronomers and mathematicians Thabit ibn Qurra (died 901) and al-Battani (died 929).