The metamorphoses peculiar to this concept, its ambiguity and frequently elusive nature suggest to what extent the dynastic political exercise of power has no intrinsic validity or compatibility with the prevalent (Islamic) range of concepts. That is to say that although to this day the word has played an important part in the political life of Islam (as we know, it has become the modern word for "state"), it does not originate in Islam and has had a separate background. It has pre-Islamic roots, and its later variants have not eliminated earlier meanings.2 According to the evidence of the lexicographers3 its basic meaning is "turn of fortune", and that from bad to good, which mostly occurs in a war context.4 This fundamental meaning ("the wheel of fortune", which will always turn in the other direction) is expressed with lapidary terseness by the maxim of Ibn al-Muqaffac: ad-dunyā duwal – "the world is an eternal turn of fate".5 It is only from the cAbbāsid period, and mainly in post-classical texts, that it means "dynasty", occasionally "empire".6 The patrimonial dynastic exercise of power that took shape from the cAbbāsids onwards, which united almost indistinguishably in one hand economic, institutional, military and juridical power, has prevented our projecting back to the form of classical Islamic rule the interpretation of dawla as "state" that has developed over the past century in individual Islamic countries. In this case, we simply have to think negatively about the "state": the dynasty meshed inextricably with the formation of the empire, which cannot be described by (political) territoriality;7 in this there are no civic corporations, groups with independent legal status, and the concept of the legal person is completely absent, which is the natural consequence of the lack of independent branches of authority; the exercise of power does not function in Weberian "businesslike fashion", that is, tasks are not performed on a basis of expertise or by inheritance but by means of delegation for a definite length of time (tafwīdh, taqlīd, niyāba), and this applies not only to the leaders of the army but also to officers of the dīwāns, that is, to representatives of sayf and qalam alike. The characteristics of the modern state have not maintained the classical inheritance, but have of necessity met the demands of Western influence, that is, the dawla that meant "dynasty" has only become "state" under external influence. Likewise, there is no (direct) way from the classical dawla to the "nation", since the raison d'être of the dynasty is empire, which is indifferent or hostile to distinction on national grounds. The nationalities that seceded from the Ottoman empire were only able to exist by the overthrow of the dynasty, and made no attempts to create new dynasties. In the classical period the cAbbasids, and after their fall every dynasty of significance (the Fātimids etc.), tried to assert their universal sovereignty over the dār al-islām. This fundamental definition was naturally opposed to every ethnic and territorial distinction. Even after more than a century of increasingly independent movements in the Near East, the formation of nation states is still in its infancy and we cannot speak of Jordanian, Iraqi, Syrian etc. nations; the most significant point of reference is still belonging to Islam and the umma – although the latter now exists without dynasties.