jamāʿah

…a council of elders, the jamāʿah, who kept the peace by adjudication, rulings on compensation, and determination of punishments. In fact the various societies were not egalitarian. The village and the clan regularly admitted newcomers as inferiors, and the ruling elders came from leading families. If villages or clans went…

…unity of the ummah, or jamāʿah. The circumstances of his accession reconfigured the piety-minded opposition that had helped bring him to power. The party of ʿAlī refused to accept the compromise the ʿAbbāsids offered. Their former fellow opponents did accept membership in the reunified jamāʿah, isolating the People of the…

…appendage “the consolidated majority” (al-jamāʿah). The term clearly indicates that the traditional way is the way of the consolidated majority of the community as against peripheral or “wayward” positions of sectarians, who by definition must be erroneous.