The word
mawla, which was used by the Islamic prophet
Muhammad about
Ali in the
Ghadir Khumm speech, is derived from the
root w-l-y, meaning "to be close to" or "to have power over".
Mawla can have reciprocal meanings, depending on whether it is used in the active or passive voice: "master" Originally,
mawāli were clients of an Arab people, but with the advent of Islam, the term came to refer to non-Arab Muslims and other allies. [needs editing]. Under the
Abbasid rulers of the 9th century, the non-Arab converts comprised an important part of the army. The institution of wala' as a requirement to enter Muslim society ceased to exist after the fall of the Umayyads, as the Abbasids favoured a universal interpretation of Islam that was not the exclusive religion of the Arab elite. However, throughout the centuries, the rise of political power of regional Arab dynasties and non-Arab ethnic groups eventually restricted the power of the Abbasid
caliph in
Baghdad, as Persian, Turkic and
Berber Muslims began to form independent and autonomous
sultanates.
Abu Hanifa was the founder of the
Hanafi school of
jurisprudence within
Sunni Islam and lived through the Abbasid Revolution. He famously stated in one of his sayings: "The belief of a newly converted
Turk is the same as that of an Arab from
Hejaz." This institution continued in the Abbasid period on a much smaller scale when the 8th Abbasid Caliph,
al-Mu'tasim, formed private corps entirely composed of non-Arabs in the service of the Caliph. These men were the mawali of the Caliph and were thus considered to be more loyal to the Caliph. This practice persisted throughout Islamic history through to the
Ottoman period. == Ghadir Khumm ==