<![CDATA[This article examines Abu Hasan Al-Mawardi's Al-Ahkam al-Sulthaniyyah through a legal politics perspective to understand the relationship between the configuration of power, Al-Mawardi's social position, and the construction of legal norms in the context of the legitimacy crisis of the Abbasid Caliphate. This research departs from the tendency of previous studies that separate normative, historical, and theoretical analysis, including studies that position Al-Mawardi's work as a normative text of fiqh siyasah, as a reference for modern governance, or as a product of historical responses to the Abbasid crisis. Different from these approaches, this article offers a reading that sees Al-Ahkam al-Sulthaniyyah as a legal politics discourse that functions in the production and reproduction of the legitimacy of power. This research is a literature study with a qualitative approach. Data were obtained from primary sources of the book Al-Ahkam al-Sulthaniyyah and relevant secondary sources, then analyzed using content analysis and historical-contextual analysis. The research findings demonstrate that the concept of imamate, leadership criteria, delegation of power, and state administration mechanisms are not only normative-theological in nature, but also serve as instruments of political legitimacy in response to the weakening authority of the caliph and the strengthening of the de facto power of the Buyid dynasty. Thus, Al-Ahkam al-Sulthaniyyah is understood as a compromising form of political jurisprudence, in which law mediates between ideals and political reality. This research confirms that law in the classical Islamic political tradition is not neutral, but rather the result of a dynamic interaction between power and legal knowledge. ]]>
