The History of Islam


Arabia Before The Prophet

Islam produced one of the greatest civilizations the world has ever known. While Europe wallowed in the mire of the Dark Ages, Islam produced advances in science, mathematics, literature, medicine, architecture, religion as well as many other fields of discipline. Islamic cities such as Baghdad were the premier centers of learning and folks flocked there from all over the world to study. When Europeans first saw Granada and other Moslem cities, they were stunned by the sophistication and beauty. It was Islam's preservation of the great Greco/Roman texts of antiquity, as well as their own advances that allowed Europe to crawl out from the depression it was in. The West owes much to the great civilization of Islam.

"I am not alone, for a delightful garden can be contemplated from this spot. Such a place has never before been seen. This is the palace of crystal, he who looks on it will believe he regards the mighty ocean and will be filled with fear. All this is the work of Iman Ibn Nasar, may God keep his grandeur for other kings. His forebears in ancient time were of the most noble, giving hospitality to the Prophet and his family.-"

Prehistory (c. 3000 BCE-500 CE)

The prehistory of Islamdom is the history of central Afro-Eurasia from Hammurabi of Babylon to the Achaemenid Cyrus II in Persia to Alexander the Great to the Sasanian emperor Nushirvan to Muhammad in Arabia; or, in a Muslim view, from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to Jesus to Muhammad.
The potential for Muslim empire building was established with the rise of the earliest civilizations in western Asia. It was refined with the emergence and spread of what have been called the region's Axial Age religions--Abrahamic, centered on the Hebrew patriarch Abraham, and Mazdean, focused on the Iranian deity Ahura Mazdah--and their later relative, Christianity. It was facilitated by the expansion of trade from eastern Asia to the Mediterranean, and by the political changes thus affected. The Muslims were heirs to the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Hebrews, even the Greeks and Indians; the societies they created bridged time and space, from ancient to modern and from east to west.

The rise of agrarian-based citied societies

In the 7th century CE a coalition of Arab groups, some sedentary and some migratory, inside and outside the Arabian Peninsula, seized political and fiscal control in western Asia, specifically of the lands between the Nile and Oxus (Amu Darya) rivers--territory formerly controlled by the Byzantines in the west and the Sasanians in the east. The factors that surrounded and directed their accomplishment had begun to coalesce long before, with the emergence of agrarian-based citied societies in western Asia in the 4th millennium BCE. The rise of complex agrarian-based societies, such as Sumer, out of a subsistence agricultural and pastoralist environment, involved the founding of cities, the extension of citied power over surrounding villages, and the interaction of both with pastoralists.
This type of social organization offered new possibilities. Agricultural production and intercity trading, particularly in luxury goods, increased. Some individuals were able to take advantage of the manual labor of others to amass enough wealth to patronize a wide range of arts and crafts; of these, a few were able to establish territorial monarchies and foster religious institutions with wider appeal. Gradually the familiar troika of court, temple, and market emerged. The new ruling groups cultivated skills for administering and integrating non-kin-related groups. They benefited from the increased use of writing and, in many cases, from the adoption of a single writing system, such as the cuneiform, for administrative use. New institutions, such as coinage, territorial deities, royal priesthoods, and standing armies, further enhanced their power.
In such town-and-country complexes the pace of change quickened enough so that a well-placed individual might see the effects of his actions in his own lifetime and be stimulated to self-criticism and moral reflection of an unprecedented sort. The religion of these new social entities reflected and supported the new social environments. Unlike the religions of small groups, the religions of complex societies focused on deities, such as Marduk, Isis, or Mithra, whose appeal was not limited to one small area or group and whose powers were much less fragmented. The relationship of earthly existence to the afterlife became more problematic, as evidenced by the elaborate death rites of Pharaonic Egypt. Individual religious action began to compete with communal worship and ritual; sometimes it promised spiritual transformation and transcendence of a new sort, as illustrated in the pan-Mediterranean mystery religions. Yet large-scale organization had introduced social and economic injustices that rulers and religions could address but not resolve. To many, an absolute ruler uniting a plurality of ethnic, religious, and interest groups offered the best hope of justice.

Introduction

Arabia was the birthplace of the Islamic religion; the Arabic language was the "tongue of the angels," since God chose to reveal himself through that vehicle to Muhammad, the founder of the faith. Arabia would become the center of the Islamic world, and the source of renewal and inspiration for the faithful believers throughout an emerging Islamic empire.

Arabia Before The Prophet

Arabia before the birth of Muhammad had been a culturally isolated and economically underdeveloped region. The Arabian peninsula is one-third the size of the continental United States. Most of the land is arid and desert; rainfall is scarce, vegetation scant, and very little of the land is suitable for agriculture. In the north of the region, several Arabic kingdoms were able to establish contacts with the Byzantine and the Persian Sassanian empires as early as the fifth century A.D. To the south, small Arabic kingdoms, including Saba (Sheba), were ancient centers of Arabic civilization. But in the interior, dotted only with occasional oases, the nomadic life was the only successful existence.

The Bedouins

The nomads, or Bedouins, lived according to ancient tribal patterns; at the head of the tribe was the elder, or sheik, elected and advised by the heads of the related families comprising the tribe. Driven from place to place in their search for pastures to sustain their flocks, the Bedouins led a precarious existence. Aside from maintaining their herds, some relied on plunder from raids on settlements, on passing caravans, and on one another. The Bedouins enjoyed a degree of personal freedom unknown in more agrarian and settled societies. Sheiks could not always limit the freedoms of their tribesmen, who often rode off and hired themselves out as herdsmen or warriors if the authority of the tribe became too restrictive. The Bedouins developed a code of ethics represented in the word muru'ah or manly virtue. Far from brutishness and bragging, muru'ah was proven through grace and restraint, loyalty to obligation and duty, a devotion to do that which must be done, and a respect for women. Bedouin women also enjoyed a great degree of independence. They were allowed to engage in business and commerce; they could choose their own lovers, and conduct their lives without great restriction by the control of their husbands. The freedom and independence of Bedouins sprang from the realities of life in the desert, as did the values and ethics of the Arabs. One rule of conduct was unqualified hospitality to strangers. A nomad never knew when the care of a stranger might be necessary to provide the necessary water and shade to save his or her own life.The Bedouins of the seventh century lacked a unifying religious system. Most looked at life as a brief time within which to take full advantage of daily pleasure. Ideas of an afterlife were not well defined or described. The Bedouins worshiped a large number of gods and spirits, many of whom were believed to inhabit trees, wells, and stones. Each tribe had its own gods, generally symbolized by sacred stones, which served as altars where communal sacrifices were offered.Although the Bedouins of the interior led a primitive and largely isolated existence, some parts of Arabia were highly influenced by the neighboring and more highly sophisticated cultures of Byzantium, Persia, and Ethiopia. By the later half of the sixth century Christian and Jewish residents were found throughout the Arabian peninsula; their religious systems and philosophical positions probably had an influence on the Bedouin population.

Early Mecca

On the western side of the Arabian peninsula is a region known as the Hejaz, or "barrier." The Hejaz rises from the western coastal plain from Yemen in the south to the Sinai peninsula in the north. One of the oases in the Hejaz is Mecca, set among the barren hills fifty miles inland from the sea. This site had several advantages: Mecca possessed a well (the Zemzem) of great depth, and two ancient caravan routes met there. An east-to-west route ran from Africa through the peninsula to Iran and Central Asia, and a northwest-southeast route brought the spices of India to the Mediterranean world. Another significant advantage of Mecca was its importance as a religious sanctuary. An ancient temple, an almost square structure built of granite blocks, stood near the well of Mecca. Known as the Kaaba (cube), this square temple contained the sacred Black Stone, which was said to have been brought to Abraham and his son Ishmael by the Angel Gabriel. According to tradition, the stone, probably a meteorite, was originally white but had become blackened by the sins of those touching it.For centuries the Kaaba had been a holy place of annual pilgrimage for the Arabic tribes and a focal point of Arabic cultural and linguistic unity. The Kaaba itself was draped with the pelts of sacrificial animals, and supposedly held the images and shrines of 360 gods and goddesses.By the sixth century, Mecca was controlled by the Koraysh tribe, whose rulers organized themselves into syndicates of merchants and wealthy businessmen. The Koraysh held lucrative trading agreements with Byzantine and Persian contacts, as well as with the southern Arabian tribes and the Abyssinians (Ethiopians) across the Red Sea. In addition, a number of neighboring merchant fairs, such as one usually held at Ukaz, were taken over by the Koraysh to extend the economic influence of Mecca. The Koraysh were also concerned with protecting the religious shrine of the Kaaba, in addition to ensuring that the annual pilgrimage of tribes to the holy place would continue as a source of revenue for the merchants of the city.

Muhammad, Prophet Of Islam

Into this environment at Mecca was born a man who would change completelythe religious, political, and social organization of his people. Muhammad (c.570-632) came from a family belonging to the Koraysh. His early years weredifficult because of the deaths of both his parents and his grandfather whocared for him after his parents' loss. He was raised by his uncle, Abu Talib,a prominent merchant of Mecca. His early years were spent helping his uncle inthe caravan trade. Even as a young man, Muhammad came to be admired by hisfellow Meccans as a sincere and honest person, and earned the nicknameal-Amin, "the trustworthy." When he was about twenty years old, he acceptedemployment by a wealthy widow, Khadija, whose caravans traded with Syria. Helater married Khadija and took his place as a leading influential citizen ofthe city. Muhammad's marriage to Khadija was a long and happy one, andproduced two sons, who both died as infants, and two daughters, of whom theyounger, Fatima, is best known.A description of Muhammad, and probably a very accurate one, has beenpreserved in the Sira, the traditional biography of the Prophet. He isdescribed as a handsome, large man with broad shoulders, black, shining eyesflecked with brown, and a fair complexion. His personality was reserved andgentle, but he was a man of impressive energy. He walked quickly, and alwaysseemed to make it difficult for his friends to keep up with him. Although hewas a popular companion, an energetic businessman, and a responsible husbandand father, Muhammad was a very introspective man. Often he would escape fromthe society, which he considered too materialistic and irreligious, and spendlong hours alone in a cave on nearby Mount Hira. In these hours of meditationMuhammad searched for answers to the metaphysical questions that manythoughtful Arabs were beginning to explore. Muhammad's meditations many timesproduced nearly total mental and physical exhaustion. During one such solitarymeditation, Muhammad heard a call that was to alter the history of the world.Muhammad's first communication from heaven came in the form of a command:Recite! In the name of your Lord, who created all things,who created man from a clot (of blood).Recite! And your Lord is Most BounteousWho teaches by the Pen,teaches man that which he would nothave otherwise known (Koran 96:1-5)The Arabic word for "recitation" or "reading" is qur'an, and thecollected revelations given to Muhammad are known to us as the Koran. Therevelations that continued to come over the next twenty years were sometimesterse and short, at other times elaborate and poetic. The early revelationsdid not immediately convince Muhammad that he was a messenger of God. In fact,his first reaction was fear and self-doubt. During his depressions brought onby fears over the source and nature of his revelations, he sought the comfortand advice of Khadija. As the revelations continued, Muhammad finally becameconvinced that the message he was receiving was the truth, and that he hadbeen called to be a messenger of divine revelation. He came to think ofhimself and his mission as one similar to prophets and messengers who hadpreceded him in announcing the existence of the one God, Allah. Allah, "theGod," was the same God worshiped by the Christians and Jews, but Allah had nowchosen Muhammad to be his last and greatest prophet to perfect the religionrevealed earlier to Abraham, Moses, the Hebrew prophets, and Jesus. Thereligion Muhammad preached is called Islam, which means surrender orsubmission to the will of God. The followers of Islam are called Muslims. Theterm Muslim refers to one who submits to God's law.Muhammad's Message And Early FollowersAt first Muhammad had little success in attracting followers in Mecca.The early message Muhammad brought to the Arabs was one of sternness andstrength: that Allah was one and majestic, all-powerful and demanding of thefaith of his followers. Furthermore, Allah demanded that his followers becompassionate, ethical, and just in all their dealings:In the name of Allah, the most Beneficent, theMost Mercifulby the night as it enshroudsby the day as it illuminatesby Him Who created the male and femaleindeed your affairs lead to various ends.For who gives (of himself) and acts righteously,and conforms to goodness,We will give him ease.But as for him who is niggardly cleaning himself,self-sufficient and rejects goodness,We will indeed ease his path to adversity.Nor shall his wealth save him as he perishesfor Guidance is from Usand to Us belongs the Last and First (92:1-14)Muhammad was able to win the early support of some of his relatives andclose friends. His first converts were his wife, his cousin Ali, and Abu Bakr,a leading merchant of the Koraysh tribe who was highly respected for hisintegrity. Abu Bakr remained the constant companion of the Prophet during hispersecution and exile and later became the first caliph (leader) of Islam. Butopposition to Muhammad's message was very strong, especially from Mecca'sleading citizens. Many thought Muhammad was a poor poet attempting to pass onhis own literary creations as the word of God. Others believed him to bepossessed by demons. Muhammad's strong monotheism worried those residents ofMecca who obtained their income from the pilgrims to the Kaaba. Most ofMuhammad's early converts were among the poorest of the city's residents, andMecca's leading citizens feared social revolution.Since Muhammad was himself a member of the Koraysh tribe, its leadersfirst tried to convince Abu Talib to persuade his nephew to stop preaching.Next they tried to bribe Muhammad himself with the promise of a lucrativeposition in tribal affairs. When such offers were rejected, actual persecutionof Muhammad's converts began, and a commercial and social boycott of theProphet's family was attempted. During this time Abu Talib and Khadija bothdied, and Muhammad's faith and resolution was greatly tested. But inspired bythe spirit and example of earlier prophets such as Abraham and Moses, who werealso tested and persecuted, Muhammad persevered in his faith and continued hispreaching.The HijrahTo the north of Mecca is the city of Medina, which was then calledYathrib. The residents of Medina were more familiar with monotheistic beliefs,perhaps because of the Jewish community in residence there. They also had nodependence on the revenues from a pagan site of pilgrimage, as the Meccanshad. Some pilgrims from Medina saw in Muhammad a powerful and influentialleader and invited him to come to Medina to settle differences among rivalfactions. Muhammad sent some of his followers from Mecca to take up residencein Medina in order to escape persecution. Muhammad and Abu Bakr were the lastto leave when it became known that the Koraysh intended to kill the Prophet.They were followed, but escaped, the story goes, by hiding in a narrow cavewhose entrance was quickly covered by a spider's web. The web convincedKoraysh that the cave had been abandoned for a long while.The Hijrah, or "migration" from Mecca to Medina (often transliterated asHegira), took place in September 622. The event was such a turning point inthe history of Islam that the year is counted as Year One of the Islamiccalendar. In Medina, the Prophet met with entirely different circumstance thanin his birthplace. His leadership turned Medina (Madinat al Nali, or the Cityof the Prophet) into the leading center of power in the Arabian peninsula.The Community At MedinaMuhammad was received in Medina as a leader and a spiritual visionary. Heand his followers set about the establishment of a genuine community, orUmmah, free of pressure and persecution. The community at Medina included anumber of Jewish and Christian families, whom Muhammad tried to convert. Hisefforts were successful with some Jewish residents, but the Jews who did notchoose to accept Muhammad's faith were allowed to continue their way of life,since they were also held to be "people of the Book" to whom Allah had madehimself known through earlier prophets.The care of the community at Medina was of grave concern to Muhammad.Many of those who followed the prophet to Medina were without work, andnecessary food was sometimes obtained by plundering the caravans passingMedina on the way to Mecca. Also, Muhammad and his followers became steadilymore agressive in their attempts to win converts to Islam. The word jihad,meaning struggle, was applied to the early efforts of the Ummah to winconverts and strengthen its own recruiting. Military encounters with the paganopponents of Islam began in 624, with the battle of Bedr. Muhammad defeatedthe stronger Koraysh army of Mecca, and the victory reinforced the resolve ofthe new religion's followers. Succeeding battles established the Muslims asthe dominant force in Arabia, and finally a truce with Mecca was arranged,under which the Muslims could visit the holy shrines in the city.Return To MeccaIn 629 Muhammad returned with his followers to take control of the cityof Mecca and to cleanse the Kaaba of pagan idols. The temple itself, togetherwith the Black Stone, was preserved as the supreme religious center of Islamthe "Mecca" to which all devout Muslims are to attempt to make a pilgrimageduring their lifetimes. Muhammad urged his old enemies and unbelievers toaccept Islam and become part of the Ummah. By 632, almost all of the Arabianpeninsula had accepted Islam, and Muhammad had even sent ambassadors to theneighboring Byzantine and Persian empires to announce the new religion andencourage converts. Clearly Muhammad did not look upon Islam as only areligion of the Arabs, and certainly sought converts other than the residentsof the Arabian peninsula.The Death Of MuhammadMuhammad died on June 8, 632 in Medina. He succumbed to a fever, probablyinduced by the great strains brought on by constant campaigns for new convertsand the unrelenting demands for his attention. Muslims at first refused toaccept his death, but were reassured by Abu Bakr, who recited this verse fromthe Koran:Muhammad is only a messenger: many are the messengerswho have died before him; if he dies, or is slain, willyou turn back on your heels? (3: 144)On the day of Muhammad's death, the question of leadership of thefaithful was solved by the democratic election of Abu Bakr, who became theProphet's first successor or caliph (from the Arabic khalifa). Abu Bakr wasnot looked upon as a prophet; Muhammad was seen as the last and the greatestof Allah's messengers. The caliph was regarded as the head of the IslamicUmmah.The significance of Muhammad to the birth and growth of Islam isimpossible to overestimate. The Prophet and his message inspired his followersto create and work for the betterment of a society united by the Islamicfaith. Tribal loyalties were replaced by faith in the One God, who chose tospeak to his people in their own language through a messenger who was also oneof their own.Soon after Muhammad's death, his followers and companions, many of whomwere scholars and teachers, began to collect and codify his teachings andactions. The result of their efforts was the hadith, or reports of theactivities and sayings of Muhammad. The hadith has become an important sourceof values and ethical paths of behavior for the Islamic world. The Sunnah, thecustom or practice of the Prophet, is grounded in the hadith and serves as apattern for a model way of life to be imitated by the faithful. Sunni Islam isthus based on imitation of the Prophet's behavior as a proper goal for ameaningful life; 85 percent of the modern world's Muslims are Sunni.

The Islamic Faith And Law

Islam places great emphasis on the necessity of obedience to God's law inaddition to faith. The Koran is the fundamental and ultimate source ofknowledge about Allah and the proper actions of his followers. This holy bookcontains the theology of Islam, in addition to the patterns of ethical andproper conduct to which a Muslim must subscribe. Among the beliefs outlined inthe Koran, there are some basic concepts which are held in common by theIslamic community as fundamental to the faith.The KoranMuslims believe that the Koran contains the actual word of God as it wasrevealed to Muhammad through divine inspiration. The revelations to theProphet took place over a period of more than twenty years. Before Muhammad'sdeath, many of these messages had been written down in order to be preserved.Muhammad himself began the work of preservation, and Abu Bakr, the firstcaliph, continued the process by compiling revelations which up to that timehad been memorized by the followers and passed on by word of mouth. A completewritten text of the Koran was produced shortly after Muhammad's death, withparticular care taken to eliminate discrepancies and record only one standardversion. This version was then transmitted to various parts of the new Islamicempire and used to assist in the conversion of unbelievers. The text of theKoran has existed virtually unchanged for fourteen centuries.The Koran was intended to be recited aloud; much of the power of theKoran comes from the experience of reciting, listening, and feeling themessage. It was in this manner that Muhammad converted his followers. TheKoran is never to be translated from the Arabic for worship. Because thefollowers of Islam had to learn the Koran in Arabic, the spread of Islamcreated a great amount of linguistic unity. Arabic replaced many locallanguages as the language of daily use, and the great majority of the Muslimworld from Morocco to Iraq is still Arabic-speaking. In addition, the Koranremains the basic document for the study of Islamic theology, law, socialinstitutions, and ethics. The study of the Koran remains at the heart of allMuslim scholarship, from linquistics and grammatical inquiry to scientific andtechnical investigation.The Tenets Of Islamic FaithMonotheism is the central principle of Islam. Tahwid means the unity oroneness of God; there is no other God but Allah, and this belief is proclaimedfive times daily as the believers are called to prayer with these words:God is most great. I testify that there is noGod but Allah. I testify that Muhammad is theMessenger of Allah. Come to prayer, come torevelation, God is most great! There is no Godbut Allah.Allah is the one and only god, unapproached by other divinities andunlike all others in the strength of his creative power. All life, in fact allcreation, is the responsibility of Allah alone. His nature is described inmany ways and by many names, one of the most beautiful as "light."Allah is the light of the heaven and the earth ....His light is as a niche wherein is a lamp. The lampis in a glass. The glass is as it were a shining star.(The lamp is) kindled from a blessed tree, an oliveneither of the East or the West, whose oil would almostglow forth (of itself) though no fire touched it. Lightupon light, Allah guided unto His light whom He will. AndAllah speaketh to mankind in allegories, for Allah isKnower of all things.(This lamp is found) in houses which Allah hath allowedto be exalted and that His name shall be remembered therein.Therein do offer praise to Him at noon and evening. (24:35)Islam also recognize the significance and contributions of prophets whopreceded Muhammad. From the beginnings of human history, Allah hascommunicated with his people either by the way of the prophets, or by writtenscriptures:Lo! We inspire thee as We inspired Noah and the Prophetsafter him, as We inspired Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac andJacob and the tribes, and Jesus and Job and Jonah and Aaronand Solomon and as We imparted unto David the Psalms. (4:164)Twenty-eight such prophets are mentioned in the Koran as the predecessorsof Muhammad, who is believed to have been the last and greatest of all ofAllah's messengers. Muhammad is given no divine status by Muslims, even thoughhe was the one chosen to proclaim Allah's message of salvation in itsperfected form and final revelation; in fact, Muhammad took great care to seethat he was not worshiped as a god.The creation of the universe and all living creatures within it is thework of Allah; harmony and balance in all of creation was ensured by God. Inaddition to humans and other creatures on the earth, angels exist to protecthumans and to pray for forgiveness for the faithful. Jinn are spirits who maybe good or bad, and forces known as "the unseen" exist on a level unknown tohumans.Men and women are given a special status in the pattern of the universe,since Allah has endowed them with the ability to know and react to him betterthan any living creatures. They can choose to obey, or to reject Allah's willand deny him. Allah's message includes the belief in a Day of Resurrectionwhen people will be held responsible for their actions and rewarded orpunished accordingly for eternity.Geographic imagery played an important role in the Prophet's descriptionof heaven and hell: both are depicted in a manner that calls forth animmediate reaction from people living in the desert. Those who have submittedto Allah's law - the charitable, humble, and forgiving - and those who havepreserved his faith, shall dwell in a Garden of Paradise, resting in coolshades, eating delectable foods, attended by "fair ones with wide, lovely eyeslike unto hidden pearls," and hearing no vain speech or recrimination but only"Peace! Peace!" This veritable oasis is far different from the agonies of thedesert hell that awaits the unbelievers, the covetous, and the erring. Castinto a pit with its "scorching wind and shadow of black smoke," they willdrink boiling water and suffer forever.The Five PillarsIslam is united in the observance of the Five Pillars, or five essentialduties which all Muslims are required to perform as they are able. Theseobligations are accepted by Muslims everywhere and thus serve to further unitethe Islamic world. The first obligation is a simple profession of faith, bywhich a believer becomes a Muslim. The simple proclamation (shahada) isrepeated in daily prayers. Belief in the one God and emulation of theexemplary life led by his Prophet are combined in the profession of faith.Prayer (salat) is said five times a day, when Muslims are called toworship by the muezzin (caller to prayer) who leads the recitation of thefaithful from atop the minaret of the mosque (masjid, or place ofprostration). During prayer, Muslims face Mecca, and in so doing giverecognition to the birthplace of Islam and the unity of the Islamic community.Prayer can be given alone, at work, at home, or in the mosque.A Muslim is required to give alms (zakat) to the poor, orphans, andwidows, and to assist the spread of Islam. The payment of alms is notconsidered to be a charitable activity, but rather a social and religiousobligation to provide for the welfare of the Ummah. Muslims are generallyexpected to contribute a percentage (usually 2.5 percent) of their totalwealth and assets annually in alms.Muslims are requested to fast (siyam) during the holy month of Ramadan,the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. From sunrise to sunset, adult Muslimsin good health are to avoid food, drink, and sexual activity. Finally Muslimsare called to make a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca at least once in his or herlifetime, in the twelfth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. The focus of thepilgrimage is the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque of Mecca. The hajj once againemphasizes the unity of the Islamic world community and the adherence toIslamic law no matter where a Muslim may reside.Islamic LawIt is not possible to separate Islam from its law, because law in theMuslim community is religious by its nature. Islam is a way of life as well asa religion, and at its heart is the Sharia, or path, the law provided by Allahas a guide for a proper life. The Sharia gives the believers a perfect patternof human conduct and regulates every aspect of a person's activities. Islamiclaw is considered to be established by God, and therefore unquestionablycorrect; God's decrees must be obeyed even if humans are incapable ofunderstanding, since the Sharia is greater than human reason.Islamic law, then, permeates all aspects of human conduct and all levelsof activity - from private and personal concerns to those involving thewelfare of the whole state. Family law is set forth in the Koran and is basedon much earlier Arabic tribal patterns of development. Islamic law emphasizesthe patriarchal nature of the family and society. Marriage is expected ofevery Muslim man and woman unless physical infirmity or financial inabilityprohibits it. Muslim men can marry non-Muslim women, preferably Christians orJews, since they too are "People of the Book," but Muslim women are forbiddento marry non-Muslim men. The Koran had the effect of improving the status andopportunities of women in Islam, as opposed to the older and traditionalArabic patterns of conduct. Women can contract their own marriages, keep andmaintain their own dowries, and manage and inherit property.The Koran allows Muslim men to marry up to four wives, but polygamy isnot required. Co-wives must be treated with equal support and affection. Manymodern-day Muslims interpret the Koran as encouraging monogamy; the practiceof polygamy may have arisen in order to provide protection and security inearly Islamic society, when women outnumbered men because of the toll ofconstant warfare.For Islamic society as a whole, the law is considered to be universal andequally applied. Islamic law is considered to be God's law for all humankind,not only for the followers of Islam. In addition to its theology, Islam offersto its believers a system of government, a legal foundation, and a pattern ofsocial organization. The Islamic Ummah was and is an excellent example of atheocratic state, one in which all power resides in God, in whose behalfpolitical, religious, and other forms of authority are exercised. In fact,there is not even the combination of church and state in Islam, because thereis no "church" or religious organization. The role of the state is to serve asthe guardian of religious law. Also a characteristic of Islam is the principleof religious equality. There is no priesthood - no intermediaries betweenpeople and God. There are leaders of worship in the mosques as well as theulema, a class of learned experts in the interpretation of the Koran, but theyare all members of the secular community.

The Spread Of Islam

The Islamic state expanded very rapidly after the death of Muhammadthrough remarkable successes both at converting unbelievers to Islam and bymilitary conquests of the Islamic community's opponents. Expansion of theIslamic state was an understandable development, since Muhammad himself hadsuccessfully established the new faith through conversion and conquest ofthose who stood against him. Immediately after the Prophet's death in 632, AbuBakr, as the first Caliph, continued the effort to abolish paganism among theArab tribes, and also to incorporate Arabia into a region controlled by thepolitical power of Medina. United by their faith in God and a commitment topolitical consolidation, the merchant elite of Arabia succeeded inconsolidating their power throughout the Arabian peninsula and began to launchsome exploratory offensives north toward Syria.Expansion Under The First Four CaliphsDuring the reigns of the first four caliphs (632-661), Islam spreadrapidly. The wars of expansion were also advanced by the devotion of thefaithful to the concept of jihad. Muslims are obliged to extend the faith tounbelievers and to defend Islam from attack. The original concept of jihad didnot include agressive warfare against non-Muslims, but "holy war" wassometimes waged by Muslims whose interpretation of the Koran allowed them suchlatitude. Jihad was directly responsible for some of the early conquests ofIslam outside of the Arabian peninsula.The Islamic cause was also aided by political upheavals occurring outsideof Arabia. The Muslim triumphs in the Near East can be partly accounted for bythe long series of wars between the Byzantine and Persian empires. EarlierByzantine victories had left both sides exhausted and open to conquest.Moreover, the inhabitants of Syria and Egypt, alienated by religious dissentand resenting the attempts of the Byzantine Empire to impose Christianity onthe population, were eager to be free of Byzantine rule. In 636, Arab armiesconquered Syria. The Muslims then won Iraq from the Persians and, within tenyears after Muhammad's death, subdued Persia itself. The greater part of Egyptfell with little resistance in 640 and the rest shortly afterward. By the endof the reigns of the first four caliphs, Islam had vastly increased itsterritory in the Near East and Africa.The new conquests of Islam were governed with remarkable efficiency andflexibility. The centralization of authority typical of military organizationaided in the incorporation of new peoples. Unbelievers in the conqueredterritories became increasingly interested in the new religion and acceptedIslam in great numbers. In addition to the obvious power of the religiousmessage of Islam, the imposition of a personal tax on all non-Muslimsencouraged many to become converts. Contrary to exaggerated accounts inwestern Europe of the forceful imposition of Islam upon conquered peoples,Jews and Christians outside of Arabia enjoyed toleration because theyworshiped the same God as the Muslims; many non-Muslims participated in theIslamic state and prospered financially and socially.Islam was and remains one the most effective religions in removingbarriers of race and nationality. Apart from a certain privileged positionallowed Arabs, distinctions were mostly those of economic rank in the earlydays of conquest. The new religion converted and embraced peoples of manycolors and cultures. This egalitarian feature of Islam undoubtedy aided itsexpansion.Arab Domination Under The UmayyadsThe first three caliphs of Islam were chosen in consultation with theelders and leaders of the Islamic community, and a pattern was established forselecting the caliph from the Karaysh tribe of Mecca. The fourth caliph, Ali,who was the son-in-law of Muhammad, was devoted to Islam and convinced thatleadership of the Islamic community should remain in the family of theProphet. The followers of Ali were later called Shii or Shiites (afterShiat-u-Ali, or "party of Ali"), and believed that the first three caliphs hadbeen usurpers to legitimate power. Ali and his followers were opposed first byMuslims under the leadership of Muhammad's widow Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr,and later by the forces of Muawiyah, the governor of Syria and a relative ofthe third caliph. In 661 Muawiyah proclaimed himself caliph, made Damascus hiscapital, and founded the Umayyad Dynasty, which lasted until 750. Thus thecaliphate became in fact, although never in law, a hereditary office, not, aspreviously, a position filled by election.Umayyad military campaigns of conquest for the most part were highlysuccessful. The Umayyad navy held Cyprus, Rhodes, and number of Aegeanislands, which served as bases for annual seaborne attacks on Constantinoplefrom 674 to 678. With the aid of Greek fire Constantinople was successfullydefended, and the Arab advance was checked for the first time. Westward acrossNorth Africa, however, the Umayyad armies had much greater success. TheBerbers, a warlike nomadic people inhabiting the land between theMediterranean and the Sahara, resisted stubbornly but eventually converted toIslam. The next logical expansion for Islam was across the Strait of Gibraltarinto the weak kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain. The governor of Muslim NorthAfrica sent his general, Tarik, and an army across the Strait into Spain in711. Seven years later the kingdom of the Visigoths completely crumbled. TheMuslims advanced across the Pyrenees and gained a strong foothold in southwestFrance, where they carried out a major raid to explore the possibility of afurther northward advance. However, they were defeated by Charles Martel nearTours in 732, in a battle which, together with their defeat by the Byzantineemperor Leo III in 718, proved decisive in halting their northward expansioninto Europe. Meanwhile the Muslims had been expanding eastward into CentralAsia, and by the eighth century they could claim lands as far as Turkestan andthe Indus valley.The mainstay of Umayyad dynastic power was the ruling class consisting ofan Arab military aristocracy, who formed a privileged class greatlyoutnumbered by non-Arabic converts to Islam - Egyptians, Syrians, Persians,Berbers, and others. Many of these converted peoples possessed cultures muchmore advanced than that of the Arabs, and the economic and cultural life ofthe Arab empire came to be controlled by these non-Arab Muslims (mawali).Because they were not Arab by birth, they were treated as second-classcitizens. High government positions were closed to them. They paid highertaxes than Arabs, and as soldiers they received less pay and loot than theArabs. Resentment grew among the non-Arabic Muslims who objected to theirlesser status as a violation of the Islamic laws of equality. Eventually theresentment of the mawali helped bring about the downfall of the Umayyads.[See Expansion Of Islam: The expansion of Islam to 750 AD]Shia Movement Against The Ruling GroupThis resentment also found expression in the religious sphere, wherelarge numbers of non-Arabic Muslims joined the sect known as the Shia, whichhad been forced from power on the accession of the Umayyads. The Shiacontinued to regard Ali and his descendants as the rightful rulers of theIslamic community, and believed that in every age a messiah-like leader wouldappear and that he must be obeyed. The Shia also rejected the Sunna, the bodyof later tradition concerning Muhammad that was not contained in the Koran;they insisted on the Koran as the sole and unquestioned authority on the lifeand teachings of the Prophet. Though originally an Arab party, the Shia intime became a general Islamic movement that stood in opposition to the rulingArabic dynasty. The Shia evolved into one of the two major groups in Islam.The majority, called Sunni because they were the "orthodox" perpetrators ofMuhammad's Sunna, or tradition, upheld the principle that the caliph owed hisposition to the consent of the Islamic community. The numerical superiority ofthe Sunni Muslims has continued to this day.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have examined the origins and meteoric development ofIslam - both the religion and the community. The great power of Muhammad'steachings enabled the creative but fragmented Arab tribes to unify and expandacross three continents in an astoundingly brief period.During the reigns of the first four caliphs and the century of theUmayyad Dynasty (661-750), great strides were made in annexing new territoriesand peoples. But the Umayyad Dynasty was based on a ruling hierarchy of Arabs,and the resentment that set the Abbasid Dynasty (750-1258) on a new throne inBaghdad.During the early Abbasid period Islam reached the high point of itsgeographical expansion and cultural achievements, extending from Spain acrossthree continents to east Asia. Unparalleled prosperity evolved from acombination of successful trade, industry, and agriculture. But the Muslimswere not able to maintain an integrated empire; despite a religious unity -which still exists - politically the empire broke up into smaller Muslimstates.The Muslims were especially gifted in science, literature, andphilosophy. Muslim intellectual life was in large part the product of a geniusfor synthesizing varying cultures, and the diffusion of this knowledge was atremendous factor in the revival of classical learning and the coming of theRenaissance in Europe.Ironically, while the arts and learning were beginning to thrive in theWest, Islamic civilization itself declined. Various reasons have been advancedfor this phenomenon, including the influx of semibarbarous peoples intoIslamic lands, intellectual inflexibility resulting from rigid adherence tothe Koran's sacred law, and the despotic and eventually corrupt rule of suchMuslim dynasties as the Ottomans in Turkey, who destroyed most progressivepolitical and economic movements.Islam remains a powerful force in the world today. Its believersencompass the most highly educated scholars and unscholared peasants. TheIslamic community likewise is made up of leading industrialized societies aswell as nations just emerging from colonialism. The message of faith and theunity of communalism under Islam are powerful influences which will continueto play a part in world politics. Islam has begun its fifteenth century as oneof the world's most influential religious and social forces. Present-day Islamstill derives great meaning from the teachings of Muhammad and the communityhe and his disciples constructed. The power of the ancient message still playsa dominant role in the modern world.

The Coming Of Islam To South Asia

The pattern of political fragmentation that had left the much-reducedAbbasid caliphate vulnerable to nomadic invasions was also found in theregions of South Asia to which Islam spread during the centuries of Abbasiddecline. As in the Islamic heartland, internal political rivalries leftopenings for nomadic warrior bands to raid the towns and villages on the outerfrontiers of the subcontinent. When the indigenous Indian lords failed topatch up their differences in order to effectively repel these incursions,more powerful foreign rulers and ever larger armies descended upon thesubcontinent, first to raid and pillage but soon with the intention ofconquering and settling. As they had been since ancient times, the fertile andheavily populated river valleys and irrigated plains of west and central Indiawere tempting targets for nomadic chiefs in search of booty or displaced lordsin search of a strong base on which to anchor their kingdoms.All through the millennia when a succession of civilizations from Harappato the Brahmanic Empire of the Guptas developed in the subcontinent,foreigners had entered India in waves of nomadic invaders or as small bands ofdisplaced peoples seeking refuge. Invariably, those who chose to remain wereassimilated into the civilizations they encountered in the lowland areas. Theyconverted to the Hindu or Buddhist religion, found a place in the castehierarchv, and adopted the dress, foods, and life-styles of the farming andcity-dwelling peoples of the subcontinent. This capacity to absorb peoplesmoving into the area owed much to both the strength and flexibility of India'scivilizations and the fact that they usually enjoyed a higher level ofmaterial culture than peoples entering the subcontinent. As a result, thepersistent failure of Indian rulers to unite in the face of aggression on thepart of outsiders meant periodic disruptions and localized destruction, butnot fundamental challenges to the existing order. All of this changed with thearrival of the Muslims in the last years of the 7th century A.D.With the coming of the Muslims, the peoples of India encountered for thefirst time a large-scale influx of bearers of a civilization as sophisticated,if not as ancient, as their own. They were also confronted by a religioussystem that was in many ways the very opposite of their own. Hinduism (thepredominant Indian religion at that time) was open, tolerant, and inclusive ofwidely varying forms of religious devotion - from idol worship to meditation -in search of union with the supernatural source of all creation. Islam wasdoctrinaire, proselytizing, and committed to the exclusive worship of asingle, transcendent God.In contrast to the egalitarianism of Islam, which proclaimed allbelievers equal in the sight of God, Hindu beliefs did much to validate thecaste hierarchy, which rested on the acceptance of inborn differences betweenindividuals and groups and the widely varying levels of material wealth,status, and religious purity these differences produced. Thus, where the faithof the invading Muslims was religiously more rigid than that of the absorptiveand adaptive Hindus, the caste-based social system of the great majority ofthe indigenous peoples was much more compartmentalized and closed than thoseof the Muslim invaders, with their emphasis on mobility and the community ofbelievers.Because growing numbers of Muslim warriors, traders, holy men, andordinary farmers and herders were able to enter and settle in thesubcontinent, extensive interaction between invaders and the indigenouspeoples was inevitable. In the early centuries of the Muslim influx, conflict,often involving violent clashes between the two, predominated. But there wasalso a good deal of trade and even religious interchange between them. As timepassed, peaceful (if wary) interaction became the norm. Muslim rulers employedlarge numbers of Hindus to govern the largely non-Muslim populations theyruled; mosques and temples dominated different quarters within Indian cities;and Hindu and Muslim holy men strove to find areas of agreement between theirtwo faiths. Tensions remained, and periodically they erupted into communalrioting or sustained warfare between Hindu and Muslim lords. From the 11thcentury, aowever, Islam became a major force in Indian history. Islam addedfurther layers of richness and complexity to Indian civilization and some ofits most enduring channels to the peoples and cultures of neighboring lands.North India On The Eve Of The Muslim InvasionsIn the years after the collapse of the Gupta Empire at the end of the 5thcentury, the heads of numerous regional dynasties aspired to restore imperialunity in North India. But until Harsha in the early 7th century, all imperialambitions were frustrated by timely alliances of rival lords that checked therise of a single and unifying power center. Harsha was the second son of oneof these rival kings, who through a series of wars had carved out a modestdomain in the Panjab region to the southeast of the Indus River system. Uponhis father's death in 604, Harsha's elder brother ascended the throne. He wassoon killed - some accounts say treacherously murdered by the agents of arival confederation of kings centered in Bengal. Although still a youth,Harsha agreed to accept the imperiled throne and was soon at war with thekingdoms of Bengal. The young king proved skillful at forging alliances withother rulers who were the enemies of those in the Bengali confederation; healso was a talented military commander. Soon after ascending the throne, hewon a series of battles that both revenged the murder of his brother and ledto a great increase in the territories under his control. Within a matter ofyears he had pieced together the largest empire India had seen since the fallof the Gupta dynasty over a century earlier.Harsha's EmpireAt the height of his power Harsha ruled much of the central and easternGangetic plain, but his "empire" was a good deal smaller than that of theGuptas. He beat the Bengali lords in battle but was unable to control theirlands on a sustained basis, and his attempts to expand into southern Indiawere unsuccessful. Harsha also never conquered most of the Indus valley to thenorthwest of his original kingdom or the region to the south, calledRajputana, which was divided into a patchwork of tiny kingdoms, dominated by aproud and fierce warrior elite. Thus, though he was one of the most powerfulrulers India was to know from the time of the Guptas until the establishmentof the Delhi sultanate in the 13th century, Harsha's conquests fell far shortof uniting even the northern regions of the Indian subcontinent.The wars that dominated the early years of Harsha's reign gave way to along period of peace and prosperity for his empire. Content with his earlyconquests and too greatly feared by rival rulers to be attacked, Harsha turnedhis considerable energies to promoting the welfare of his subjects. LikeAshoka, he built roads and numerous rest houses for weary travelers,established hospitals, and endowed temples and Buddhist monasteries. In manycases, Harsha personally supervised the building of these public worksprojects, and he frequently toured the provinces of his empire to inquireabout the condition and needs of his subjects. A Chinese pilgrim named XuanZang, who visited the Buddhist shrines of India during Harsha's reign, wrotethat as the king toured the provinces he would hold audiences for the commonpeople in a special pavilion that was set up alongside the main roads. Judgingfrom Xuan Zang's account, the prosperity of the Gupta age had been largelyrestored during Harsha's reign. This was particularly the case in large townssuch as the capital, Kanauj, which had formidable walls, palatial homes, andbeautiful gardens with man-made tanks or pools. Some of the artisticcreativity of the Gupta age was also revived during Harsha's long reign. Theruler was an author of some talent who wrote at least three Sanskrit plays,and he befriended and generously patronized philosophers, poets, artists, andhistorians.Though he was probably a Hindu devotee of the god Shiva in his earlyyears, Harsha was tolerant of all faiths and increasingly attracted toBuddhism. His generous patronage of Buddhist monasteries and the Buddhistmonkhood attracted pilgrims like Xuan Zang. If Xuan Zang's account can betrusted, Harsha came close to converting to Buddhism in the last years of hislife. He sponsored great religious assemblies, which were dominated byBuddhist monks and religious rituals, and prohibited eating meat and puttingan end to human life. His lavish patronage of the Buddhists led on oneoccasion to a Brahmin-inspired assassination attempt, which appears only tohave strengthened his preference for Buddhist ceremonies and beliefs. Despitehis favoritism, however, Buddhism was clearly in decline. Monasteries werelarge and wealthy, but monastic discipline was lax and most monks had littlecontact with the populace at large. Much like a Hindu god, the Buddha was theobject of cult veneration, and a variety of corrupt practices had crept intopopular worship. Buddhist centers would prove vulnerable targets for Muslimraiders, and in some areas a substantial portion of the dwindling numbers ofBuddhist lay believers would soon convert to Islam.Political Divisions And The First Muslim InvasionsHarsha died without a successor in 646, and his kingdom was quicklypulled apart by ambitious ministers seeking to found a new dynasty of theirown. Though Hindu culture flourished in both north and south India in thecenturies after Harsha's death - as evidenced by the great temples that wereconstructed and the works of sculpture, literature, and music that wereproduced - no paramount kingdom emerged. Political divisions in the north andwest-central regions of the subcontinent proved the most significant becausethey left openings for a succession of invasions by different Muslim peoples.The first and the least lasting Muslim intrusion, which came in 711,resulted indirectly from the peaceful trading contacts that had initiallybrought Muslims into contact with Indian civilization. Since ancient times,Arab seafarers and traders had been major carriers in the vast trading networkthat stretched from Italy in the Mediterranean to the South China Sea. Afterconverting to Islam, these traders continued to frequent the ports of India,particularly those on the western coast. An attack by pirates sailing fromDebul (in Sind in western India) on ships owned by some of these Arab tradersprompted Hajjaj, the viceroy of the eastern provinces of the Umayyad Empire,to launch a punitive expeditior against the king of Sind. An able Arabgeneral, Muhammad ibn Qasim, who was only 17 years old when the campaignbegan, led over 10,000 horse- and camel-mounted warriors into Sind to avengethe assault on Arab shipping.After victories in several fiercely fought battles and successful siegesof the great stone fortresses that stood guard over various parts of the aridand thinly peopled Sind interior, Muhammad ibn Qasim declared the region, aswell as the Indus valley to the northeast, provinces of the Umayyad Empire.Soon after the territories haddbeen annexed to the Umayyad Empire, a newcaliph, who was a bitter enemy of Hajjaj, came to power in Damascus. He purgedHajjaj and recalled and executed his son-in-law, Muhammad ibn Qasim. Thoughthe personnel of the ruling Arab elite shifted as a result, the basic policiesestablished by Muhammad ibn Qasim were followed by his Umayyad and Abbasidsuccessors for several centuries.In these early centuries, the coming of Islam brought little change formost of the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. In fact, in many areaslocal leaders and the mass of the populace had surrendered towns and districtswillingly to the conquerors, who offered the promise of lighter taxation andgreater religious tolerance. The Arab overlords decided to treat both Hindusand Buddhists as protected "people of the book," despite the fact that theirfaiths had no connection to the Bible, the book in question. This meant thatthough they were obliged to pay special taxes, non-Muslims enjoyed the freedomto worship as they pleased and to maintain their temples and monasteries.As in other areas conquered by the Arabs, most of the indigenousofficials and functionaries retained their positions, which did much toreconcile them to Muslim rule. The status and privileges of the Brahmin casteswere also respected. Virtually all the Arabs, who made up only a tiny minorityof the population, lived in the cities or special garrison towns. Becauselittle effort was expended in converting the peoples of the conquered areas,they remained overwhelmingly Hindu or Buddhist and, initially at least,displayed scant interest in the beliefs or culture of their new overlords.Indian Influences On Islamic CivilizationThough the impact of Islam on the Indian subcontinent in this period waslimited, the Arab foothold in Sind provided contacts by which Indian learningcould be transmitted to the Muslim heartlands in the Middle East. As a result,Islamic civilization was enriched by the skills and discoveries of yet anothergreat civilization. Of particular importance was Indian scientific learning,which rivaled that of the Greeks as the most advanced of the ancient world.Hindu mathematicians and astronomers traveled to Baghdad after the Abbasidscame to power in the mid-8th century. Their works on algebra and geometry weretranslated into Arabic, and their instruments for celestial observation werecopied and improved upon by Arab astronomers. Most critically, Arab thinkersin all fields began to use the numerals that Hindu scholars had devisedcenturies earlier. Because these numbers were passed on to the Europeansthrough contacts with the Arabs in the early Middle Ages, we call them Arabicnumerals today, but they originated in India. Because of the linkages betweencivilized centers established by the spread of Islam, this system of numericalnotation has proved central to two scientific revolutions: the first in theMiddle East, which was discussed previously, and a second, more sustained andfundamental transformation first in Europe and subsequently in much of therest of the world from the 16th century onward.In addition to science and mathematics, Indian treatises on subjectsranging from medicine to music were translated and studied by Arab scholars.Indian physicians were brought to Baghdad to run the well-endowed hospitalsthat the Christian Crusaders found a source of wonderment and a cause forenvy. On a number of occasions, Indian doctors were able to cure Arab rulersand high officials whom Greek physicians had pronounced beyond help. Indianworks on statecraft, alchemy, and palmistry were also translated into Arabic,and it is believed that some of the tales in the Arabian Nights were based onancient Indian stories. Indian musical instruments and melodies made their wayinto the repertoires of Arab performers, and the Indian game of chess became afavorite of both princes and ordinary townspeople. Arabs who emigrated to Sindand other Muslim-ruled areas often adopted Indian dress and hairstyles, ateIndian foods, and rode on elephants as the Hindu rajas (kings) did. In thisera additional Arab colonies were established in coastal areas, such asMalabar to the south and Bengal in the east. These trading enclaves wouldlater provide the staging areas from which Islam was transmitted to island andmainland Southeast Asia.[See Tomb At Agra: Built in 1626 at Agra, this exquisite tomb of white marbleencrusted with semiprecious stones provides a superb example of the blendingof Islamic and Hindu architectural forms and artistic motifs.]Muslim Invasions: The Second WaveAfter the initial conquests by Muhammad ibn Qasim's armies, littleterritory was added to the Muslim foothold on the subcontinent. In fact,disputes between the Arabs occupying Sind and quarrels with first the Umayyadand later the Abbasid caliphs gradually weakened the Muslim hold on the areaand led to the reconquest of parts of the lower Indus valley by Hindu rulers.The slow Muslim retreat was dramatically reversed by a new series of militaryinvasions, this time launched by a Turkish slave dynasty that in 962 hadseized power in Afghanistan to the north of the Indus valley. The third rulerof this dynasty, Mahmud of Ghazni, led a series of expeditions that initiatednearly two centuries of Muslim raiding and conquest in northern India. Drawnby the legendary wealth of the subcontinent and a zeal to spread the Muslimfaith, Mahmud repeatedly raided northwest India in the first decades of the11th century. He defeated one confederation of Hindu princes after another anddrove deeper and deeper into the subcontinent in the quest of ever richertemples to sack and loot.Mahmud's raids and those of his successors became a lasting source ofenmity between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia. After capturing and looting arich Hindu temple in 1008, he became obsessed with the promise of treasure andthe chance to strike a blow at the infidel Hindu faith, which the great templecomplexes provided. His most spectacular raid was directed in 1024 at themassive Somanth temple in Gujarat. The temple was served by more than 1,000Hindu priests and hundreds of temple dancers and singers, supported by 10,000villages, and defended by nearly 50,000 warriors. Its capture marked the highpoint of Mahmud's career as general and religious zealot. After stripping thecaptured shrine of its legendary jewels and golden decorations, Mahmud orderedhis followers to smash its idols and destroy the intricate complex of shrinesand passageways that housed them. The main idol of the temple was cut intomany pieces, and the parts were placed in the floors and stairways at theentrances to Muslim mosques, where the faithful would regularly trod on themwhen going to prayer. The persecution of both Hindus and Buddhists byinvaders, such as Mahmud, gave the Muslims a reputation among the Indianpeoples for intolerance and aggression that would greatly hinder the effortsof later and more tolerant Muslim potentates to reconcile Hindu subjects totheir rule.From Booty To EmpireThe raids mounted by Mahmud of Ghazni and his successors, which weredevoted primarily to pillaging, gave way in the last decades of the 12thcentury to sustained campaigns aimed at seizing political control in NorthIndia. The key figure in this transition was a tenacious military commander ofPersian extraction, Muhammad of Ghur. The breakup of the Ghazni Empire as aresult of the ceaseless quarrels of Mahmud's successors made it possible forthe small mountain kingdom of Ghur, near Herat in western Afghanistan, toemerge as a formidable regional power center. Vendettas to avenge the death ofrelatives in the protracted struggle with the Ghaznis and the support of hiselder brother prepared Muhammad for ambitious military expeditions into India,which began in 1178. After barely surviving several severe defeats at thehands of Hindu rulers, Muhammad put together a string of military victoriesthat brought the Indus valley, Sind, and much of north-central India under hiscontrol.Muhammad's conquests were extended in the following years by several ofhis most gifted subordinate commanders, who, as was quite common in Muslimkingdoms, were slaves who had risen to positions of power on the basis oftheir military skills. These commanders established Muslim rule in theGangetic plain as far as Bengal and throughout Rajputana to the south andwest. After Muhammad of Ghur was assassinated in 1206, Qutb-ud-din Aibak, oneof his slave lieutenants, formed a separate kingdom in the Indian portions ofthe Ghuri Empire.Significantly the capital of the new kingdom was at Delhi along the JumnaRiver on the Gangetic plain. Delhi's location in the very center of northernIndia graphically proclaimed that a Muslim dynasty rooted in the subcontinentitself, not an extension of a central Asian empire, had been founded. For thenext 300 years a succession of dynasties would rule much of north and centralIndia. Alternatively of Persian, Afghan, Turkic, and mixed descent, the rulersof these imperial houses, who proclaimed themselves the sultans of Delhi,fought each other, Mongol and Turkic invaders, and the indigenous Hinduprinces for control of the Indus and Gangetic heartlands of Indiancivilization.All the dynasties that laid claim to the sultanate based their power onlarge military machines, which were anchored on massive contingents of cavalryand, increasingly, on corps of war elephants patterned after those thatindigenous rulers had used for centuries. The support of their armies andsumptuous court establishments became the main objectives of the extensivebureaucracies that each of the rulers at Delhi sought to maintain. Though somerulers patronized public works projects, the arts, and charitable relief, mostrulers concentrated on maximizing the revenues they could collect from thepeasants and townspeople in their domains. Throughout the Delhi sultanate era,however, factional struggles among the ruling Muslims and their dependence onHindu lords and village notables in administration at the local level greatlylimited the actual control exercised by any of the dynasties that emerged.Through the collusion and cheating of lower-level officials, who had no senseof loyalty to the Muslim overlords, much of what the peasants produced wasretained by the villagers or appropriated by local and regional elite groups.ConversionThough the Muslims literally fought their way into India, theirinteraction with the indigenous peoples soon came to be dominated byaccommodation and peaceful exchanges. Over the centuries when much of thenorth was ruled by dynasties centered at Delhi, sizeable Muslim communitiesdeveloped in different areas of the subcontinent, particularly in Bengal tothe east and in the northwestern provinces in the Indus valley that were thepoints of entry for most of the Muslim peoples who migrated into India. Few ofthese converts were won by forcible conversion. The main carriers of the newfaith were traders, who played a growing role in both coastal and inlandtrade, and Sufi mystics, whom in both style and message shared much withIndian holy people and wandering ascetics. Belief in their magical and healingpowers did much to enhance the stature and increase the following of theSufis, whose mosques and schools often became centers of regional politicalpower. Sufis organized their devotees in militias to fend off bandits or thedepredations of rival princes, oversaw the clearing of forests for farming andsettlement, and welcomed low and outcaste Hindu groups into the Muslimbrotherhood. After their deaths, the tombs of Sufi holy men became objects ofveneration for Hindus and Buddhists as well as for Muslims. They were sites ofpilgrimage, where travelers from many regions congregated and from whichIslamic teachings were further spread throughout the subcontinent.Most of the indigenous converts, who came to form a majority of theMuslims living in India, were drawn from specific regions and social groups.Surprisingly small numbers of converts were found in the Indo-Gangetic centersof Muslim political power, a fact that suggests the very limited importance offorced conversions. Most Indians who converted to Islam were from Buddhist orlow-caste groups. In areas such as western India and Bengal, where Buddhismhad survived as a popular religion until the era of the Muslim invasions,esoteric rituals and corrupt practices had debased Buddhist teachings andundermined the morale of the monastic orders. This decline was accelerated byMuslim raids on Buddhist temples and monasteries, which provided vulnerableand lucrative targets for the early invaders. Without monastic supervision,local congregations sank further into orgies and experiments with magic, andin some areas into practices, such as human sacrifice, that also disregardedthe Buddha's social concerns and religious message. Disorganized andmisdirected, Buddhism proved no match for the confident and vigorous newreligion the Muslim invaders carried into the subcontinent, particularly whenthose who sought to spread the new faith possessed the charisma and organizingskills of the Sufi holy men.Though Buddhist converts probably made up the larger portion of theIndians who converted to Islam, untouchables and low-caste Hindus, as well asanimistic tribal peoples, were also attracted to the more egalitarian socialarrangements promoted by the new faith. As was the case with the Buddhists,group conversions were essential since those who remained in the Hindu castesystem would have little to do with those who converted. Some conversions werealso prompted by the desire of Hindus or Buddhists to escape the hated headtax the Muslim rulers levied on unbelievers and by intermarriage between theindigenous peoples and Muslim migrants, whose communities usually included farfewer women than men. The migrants themselves also increased the size of theMuslim population in the subcontinent. This was particularly true in periodsof crisis in central Asia, as in the 13th and 14th centuries when Turkic,Persian, and Afghan peoples retreated to the comparative sanctuary of India inthe face of the Mongol and Timurid conquests.AccommodationAlthough Islam won large numbers of converts in certain areas andcommunities, it initially made little impression on the Hindu community as awhole. Despite military reverses and the imposition of Muslim political ruleover large areas of the subcontinent, high-caste Hindus in particularpersisted in regarding the invaders as the bearers of an upstart religion andas polluting outcastes. Al-Biruni, one of the chief chroniclers of the Muslimconquests, complained openly about the prevailing Indian disdain for thenewcomers:The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation liketaeirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science liketheirs. They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited and stolid.Many Hindus were quite willing to take positions as administrators in thebureaucracies of Muslim overlords or as soldiers in their armies and to tradewith Muslim merchants, but they remained socially aloof from their conquerors.Separate living quarters in both cities and rural villages were establishedeverywhere Muslim communities developed; genuine friendships between membersof high-caste groups and Muslims were rare and sexual liaisons between themwere severely restricted.During the early centuries of the Muslim influx, the Hindus wereconvinced that, like so many of the peoples who had entered the subcontinentin the preceding millennia, the Muslims would soon be absorbed by the superiorreligions and more sophisticated cultures of India. Many signs pointed to thatoutcome. Hindus staffed the bureaucracies and made up a good portion of thearmies of Muslim rulers. In addition, Muslim princes adopted regal styles andpractices that were Hindu-inspired and contrary to the Quran. Some Hindusproclaimed themselves to be of divine descent, while others minted coinsdecorated with Hindu images such as Nandi, the bull associated with a majorHindu god, Shiva.More broadly, Muslim communities became socially divided along castelines. Recently arrived Muslims were generally on top of the hierarchies thatdeveloped, and even they were divided depending on whether they were Arab,Turk, or Persian. High-caste Hindu converts came next, followed by "clean"artisan and merchant groups. Lower caste and untouchable converts remained atthe bottom of the social hierarchy, which may well explain why conversions bythese groups were not as numerous as one would expect, given the originalegalitarian thrust of Islam. Muslims also adopted Indian foods and styles ofdress and took to chewing pan, or betel leaves. Their intrusion hadunfortunate consequences for women in both Muslim and Hindu communities. Theinvaders increasingly adopted the lower age of women at the time of theirmarriage and the prohibitions against widow remarriage found especially at thehigh-caste levels of Indian society. Some upper "caste" Muslim groups evenperformed the ritual of sati, the immolation of widows with the bodies oftheir deceased husbands.Islamic Challenge And Hindu RevivalDespite a significant degree of acculturation to Hindu life-styles andsocial organization, Muslim migrants to the subcontinent held to their own,quite distinctive religious beliefs and rituals. The Hindus found Islamimpossible to absorb and soon realized that they were confronted by anactively proselytizing religion that had great appeal to substantial segmentsof the Indian population. Partly in response to this challenge, the Hindusplaced ever greater emphasis on the devotional cults of gods and goddessesthat had earlier proved so effective in neutralizing the challenge of Buddhismand other indigenous religious rivals. Membership in these devotional, orbhaktic, cult groups was open to all, including women and untouchables. Infact, some of the most celebrated writers of religious poetry and songs ofworship were women, such as Mira Bai. Saints from low-caste origins wererevered by warriors and Brahmins as well as by farmers, merchants, andoutcastes. Because many songs and poems were composed in regional languages,such as Bengali, Marathi, and Tamil, they were more accessiblr to the commonpeople and became prominent expressions of popular culture in many areas.Bhaktic holy people and gurus stressed the importance of a strongemotional bond between devotee and the god or goddess who was their object ofveneration. Chants, dances, and in some settings drugs were used to reach thestate of spiritual intoxication that was the key to individual salvation. Onceone had achieved the state of ecstasy that came through intense emotionalattachment to a god or goddess, all past sins were removed and castedistinctions rendered meaningless. The divine objects of these devotionalcults varied not only by region and social group but also by the holy personfollowed. The most widely worshipped divine objects, however, were the godsShiva and Vishnu - particularly in the guise of Krishna the goatherd - and thegoddess Kali in any one of several manifestations. By increasing popularinvolvement in Hindu worship and enriching and extending modes of prayer andritual, the bhaktic movement may have done much to stem the flow of convertsto Islam, particularly at the level of low-caste groups. Once again, the Hindutradition demonstrated its remarkable adaptability and tolerance for widelyvarying modes of divine worship.Attempts To Bridge The Differences Between Hinduism And IslamThe similarities in style and religious message between the Sufis, whosought to spread Islam to the Indian masses, and the gurus, who championedbhaktic devotion to the Hindu gods and goddesses, led to a number of attemptsto find common ground between the two communities. One of these attempts canbe traced in the teachings, recorded in the form of religious poems, of the15th century mystic Kabir. A man of humble origins who was raised by Muslimweavers in Banaras, one of the most sacred Hindu cities, Kabir played down theimportance of ritual differences between Hinduism and Islam. He declared:O servant, where doest thou seek Me?Lo! I am beside thee.I am neither in temple nor in mosque:Neither am I in rites and ceremonies, nor in Yoga and renunciation.Though he saw both religions as valid paths to God, Kabir taught that theultimate truths transcended Hinduism and Islam. Sheer devotion, not prayers orsacrifices, he argued, would lead the devotee to divine bliss:If you have not drunk of the nectar of that One Love, what does it matterthat you purge yourself of all sins?The Kazi [judge] is searching the words of the Koran [Quran], andinstructing others but if his heart is not steeped in that love, whatdoes it avail, though he be a teacher of men? The Yogi dyes his garmentswith red: but if he knows nothing of the color of love, what does itavail though his garments be tinted?Kabir says: "Whether I be in the temple or the balcony, in the camp or inthe flower garden, I tell you truly that every moment my Lord is takingHis delight in me."The attempts of mystics like Kabir to minimize the differences betweenHindu and Islamic beliefs and worship influenced only small numbers of thefollowers of either faith. They were also strongly repudiated by the guardiansof orthodoxy in each religious community. Sensing the long-term threat toHinduism posed by Muslim political dominance and conversion efforts, theBrahmins denounced the Muslims as infidel destroyers of Hindu temples andpolluted meat eaters. Later Hindu mystics, such as the 15th-century holy manChaitanya, composed songs that focused on love for Hindu deities and set outto convince Indian Muslims to renounce Islam in favor of Hinduism.For their part, Muslim ulama, or religious experts, grew increasinglyaware of the dangers that Hinduism posed for Islam. Attempts to fuse the twofaiths, such as that by Kabir, were rejected on the grounds that though Hindusmight argue that specific rituals and beliefs were not essential, they werefundamental for Islam. If one played down the teachings of the Quran, prayer,and the pilgrimage, one was no longer a true Muslim. Thus, the ulama and evensome Sufi mystics stressed the teachings of Islam that separated it fromHinduism. They worked to promote unity within the Indian Muslim community andto strengthen its contacts with Muslims in neighboring lands and the MiddleEastern centers of the faith.Stand-off: The Muslim Presence In India At The End Of The Sultanate PeriodAfter centuries of invasion and migration, a sizeable Muslim communityhad been established in the Indian subcontinent. Converts had been won,political control had been established throughout much of the area, and stronglinks had been forged with Muslims in other lands such as Persia andAfghanistan. But non-Muslims, particularly Hindus, remained the overwhelmingmajority of the population ofethe vast and diverse lands south of theHimalayas. Unlike the Zoroastrians in Persia or the animistic peoples of theMaghrib and the Sudan, most of the Indians showed little inclination toconvert to the religion of the Muslim conquerors. On the contrary, despitetheir subjugation, they remained convinced that they possessed a superiorreligion and civilization and that the Muslims would eventually be absorbedinto the expansive Hindu fold. The Muslim adoption of Hindu social forms andIndian customs certainly pointed in this direction. The teachings of Hindu andMuslim holy persons threatened to blur the religious boundaries between thetwo faiths, a process that favored the ascendancy of the more amorphous faithof the Hindu majority. Thus, though Muslim conquests and migration had carriedIslam into the heart of one of the most ancient and populous centers ofcivilization, after centuries of political dominance and missionary activity,India remained one of the least converted and integrated of all the areas towhich the message of Muhammad had spread.

The Spread Of Islam To Southeast Asia

The spread of Islam to various parts of coastal India set the stage forits further expansion to island Southeast Asia. As we have seen, Arab tradersand sailors regularly visited the ports of Southeast Asia long before theyconverted to Islam. Initially the region was little more than a middle ground,where the Chinese segment of the great Euroasian trading complex met theIndian Ocean trading zone to the west. At ports on the coast of the Malayanpeninsula, east Sumatra, and somewhat later north Java, goods from China weretransferred from East Asian vessels to Arab or Indian ships, and products fromas far west as Rome were loaded into the emptied Chinese ships to be carriedto East Asia. By the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., sailors and ships from areaswithin Southeast Asia - particularly Sumatra and Malaya - had become active inthe seaborne trade of the region. Southeast Asian products, especially luxuryitems, such as aromatic woods from the rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra, andspices, such as cloves, nutmeg, and mace from the far end of the Indonesianarchipelago, had also become important exports to both China in the east andIndia and the Mediterranean area in the west. These trading links were toprove even more critical to the expansion of Islam in Southeast Asia than theyhad earlier been to the spread of Buddhism and Hinduism.As the coastal trade and shipping of India came to be controlled (fromthe 8th century onward) increasingly by Muslims from such regions as Gujaratand various parts of south India, elements of Islamic culture began to filterinto island Southeast Asia. But only in the 13th century after the collapse ofthe far-flung trading empire of Shrivijaya, which was centered on the Straitsof Malacca between Malaya and the north tip of Sumatra, was the way open forthe widespread proselytization of Islam. With its great war fleets, Shrivijayacontrolled trade in much of the area and was at times so powerful that itcould launch attacks on rival empires in south India. Indian traders, Muslimor otherwise, were welcome to trade in the chain of ports controlled byShrivijaya. Since the rulers and officials of Shrivijaya were devoutBuddhists, however, there was little incentive for the traders and sailors ofSoutheast Asian ports to convert to Islam, the religion of growing numbers ofthe merchants and sailors from India. With the fall of Shrivijaya, the way wasopen for the establishment of Muslim trading centers and efforts to preach thefaith to the coastal peoples. Muslim conquests in areas such as Gujarat andBengal, which separated Southeast Asia from Buddhist centers in India from the11th century onward, also played a role in opening the way for Muslimconversion.The Pattern Of ConversionAs was the case in most of the areas to which Islam spread, peaceful andvoluntary conversion was far more important than conquest and force inspreading the faith in Southeast Asia. Almost everywhere in the islands of theregion, trading contacts paved the way for conversion. Muslim merchants andsailors introduced local peoples to the ideas and rituals of the new faith andimpressed on them how much of the known world had already been converted.Muslim ships also carried Sufis to various parts of Southeast Asia, where theywere destined to play as vital a role in conversion as they had in India. Thefirst areas to be won to Islam in the last decades of the 13th century wereseveral small port centers on the northern coast of Sumatra. From these ports,the religion spread in the following centuries across the Strait of Malacca toMalaya.On the mainland the key to widespread conversion was the powerful tradingcity of Malacca, whose smaller trading empire had replaced the fallenShrivijaya. From the capital at Malacca, Islam spread down the east coast ofSumatra, up the east and west coasts of Malaya, to the island of Borneo, andto the trading center of Demak on the north coast of Java. From Demak, themost powerful of the trading states on north Java, the Muslim faith wasdisseminated to other Javanese ports and, after a long struggle with aHindu-Buddhist kingdom in the interior, to the rest of the island. From Demak,Islam was also carried to the Celebes, tha spice islands in the easternarchipelago, and from there to Mindanao in the southern Philippines.This progress of Islamic conversion shows that port cities in coastalareas were particularly receptive to the new faith. Here the trading linkswere critical. Once one of the key cities in a trading cluster converted, itwas in the best interest of others to follow suit in order to enhance personalties and provide a common basis in Muslim law to regulate business deals.Conversion to Islam also linked these centers, culturally as well aseconomically, to the merchants and ports of India, the Middle East, and theMediterranean. Islam made slow progress in areas such as central Java, whereHindu-Buddhist dynasties contested its spread. But the fact that the earlierconversion to these Indian religions had been confined mainly to the rulingelites in Java and other island areas left openings for mass conversions toIslam that the Sufis eventually exploited. The island of Bali, where Hinduismhad taken deep root at the popular level, remained largely impervious to thespread of Islam. The same was true of most of mainland Southeast Asia, wherecenturies before the coming of Islam, Theravada Buddhism had spread from Indiaand Ceylon and won the fervent adherence of both the ruling elites and thepeasant masses.Sufi Mystics And The Nature Of Southeast Asian IslamThe fact that Islam came to Southeast Asia primarily from India and thatit was spread in many areas by Sufis had much to do with the mystical qualityof the religion and its tolerance for coexistence with earlier animist, Hindu,and Buddhist beliefs and rituals. Just as they had in the Middle East andIndia, the Sufis who spread Islam in Southeast Asia varied widely inpersonality and approach. Most were believed by those who followed them tohave magical powers, and virtually all Sufis established mosque and schoolcenters from which they traveled in neighboring regions to preach the faith.In winning converts, the Sufis were willing to allow the inhabitants ofisland Southeast Asia to retain pre-Islamic beliefs and practices thatorthodox scholars would clearly have found contrary to Islamic doctrine.Pre-Islamic customary law remained important in regulating social interaction,while Islamic law was confined to specific sorts of agreements and exchanges.Women retained a much stronger position, both within the family and insociety, than they had in the Middle East and India. Local and regionalmarkets, for example, continued to be dominated by the trading of small-scalefemale buyers and sellers. In such areas as western Sumatra, lineage andinheritance continued to be traced through the female line after the coming ofIslam, despite its tendency to promote male dominance and descent through themale line. Perhaps most tellingly, pre-Muslim religious beliefs and ritualswere incorporated into Muslim ceremonies. Indigenous cultural staples, such asthe brilliant Javanese shadow plays that were based on the Indian epics of theBrahmanic age, were refined, and they became even more central to popular andelite belief and practice than they had been in the pre-Muslim era.

Spread Into Africa

The spread of Islam, from its heartland in the Middle East and NorthAfrica to India and Southeast Asia, revealed the power of the religion and itscommercial and sometimes military attributes. Civilizations were alteredwithout being fully drawn into a single Islamic statement. A similar patterndeveloped in sub-Saharan Africa, as Islam provided new influences and contactswithout amalgamating African culture as a whole to the Middle Eastern core.New religious, economic, and political patterns developed in relation to theIslamic surge, but great diversity remained.Africa below the Sahara was never totally isolated from the centers ofcivilization in Egypt, west Asia, or the Mediterranean, but for long periodsthe contacts were difficult and intermittent. During the ascendancy of Rome,sub-Saharan Africa like northern Europe was on the periphery of the majorcenters of civilization. After the fall of Rome, the civilizations ofByzantium and the Islamic world provided a link between the civilizations ofthe Middle East and the Mediterranean as well as the areas, such as northernEurope and Africa, on their frontiers. In Africa, between roughly A.D. 800 and1500, the frequency and intensity of contact with the outside world increasedas part of the growing international network. A number of social, religious,and technological changes took place that influenced many of the differentpeoples throughout the vast and varied continent. Chief among these changeswas the arrival of the followers of the Prophet Muhammad.The spread of Islam across much of the northern third of Africa producedprofound effects on both those who converted and those who resisted the newfaith. Islamization also served to link Muslim Africa even more closely to theoutside world through trade, religion, and politics. Trade and long-distancecommerce, in fact, was carried out in many parts of the continent and linkedregions beyond the orbit of Muslim penetration. Until about 1450, however,Islam provided the major external contact between sub-Saharan Africa and theworld.State building took place in many areas of the continent under a varietyof conditions. West Africa, for example, experienced both the culturalinfluence of Islam and its own internal dynamic of state building andcivilizational developments that produced, in some places, great artisticaccomplishments. The formation of some powerful states, such as Mali andSonghay, depended more on military power and dynastic alliances than on ethnicor cultural unity. In this aspect and in the process of state formationitself, Africa paralleled the roughly contemporaneous developments of westernEurope. The development of city-states, with strong merchant communities inWest Africa and on the Indian Ocean coast of East Africa, bore certainsimilarities to the urban developments of Italy and Germany in this period.However, disparities between the technologies and ideologies of Europeans andAfricans by the end of this period also created marked differences in the wayin which their societies developed. The arrival of western Europeans - thePortuguese - in the 15th century set in motion a series of exchanges thatwould draw Africans increasingly into the world economy and create a new setof relationships that would characterize African development for centuries tocome.Several emphases thus highlight the history of Africa in thepostclassical centuries. Northern Africa and the East African coast becameincreasingly incorporated into the Arab Muslim world, but even other parts ofthe continent reflected the power of Islamic thought and institutions. Newcenters of civilization and political power arose in several parts ofsub-Saharan Africa, illustrating the geographical diffusion of civilization.African civilizations, however, built somewhat less clearly on prior precedentthan was the case in other postclassical societies. Some earlier themes, suchas the Bantu migration and the formation of large states in the western Sudan,persisted. Overall, sub-Saharan Africa remained a varied and distinctivesetting, parts of it drawn into new contacts with the growing world network,but much of it retaining a certain isolation.

The Abbasids, Zenith Of Islamic Civilization

In 750 the Umayyad Dynasty was removed from power by rebels, and a newdynasty, the Abbasid, ruled most of the Muslim world from 750 to 1258. Thecity of Baghdad was built in 762 as the capital of the new caliph,Abu-al-Abbas, a descendant of the Prophet's uncle. The Abbasids owed theirinitial success to the discontent of the non-Arabic Muslims, who were theprimary leaders in the towns and in the Shia.The fall of the Umayyad Dynasty marked the end of Arab domination withinIslam; the Abbasid caliph made great effort to establish equalitariantreatment of all Muslims. The Arab aristocracy had led the forces of conquestduring the great period of Islamic expansion, but with the advent of morestable political conditions, the important status previously held only by theArab soldier was given to non-Arab administrators, merchants, and scholars.The traditional Arabic patterns of nomadism and warfare gave way beforeeconomic prosperity, the growth of town life, and the rise of a merchantclass. Caliph Abu-al-Abbas forecast that Baghdad would become the "mostflourishing city in the world"; and indeed it rivaled Constantinople for thathonor, situated as it was on the trade routes linking West and East.Furthermore, Abbasid patronage of scholarship and the arts produced a rich andcomplex culture far surpassing that then existing in western Europe.The location of a new capital at Baghdad shifted Islam's center ofgravity to the province of Iraq, whose soil, watered by the Tigris andEuphrates, had nurtured the earliest human civilization. Here the Abbasidcaliphs set themselves up as potentates in the traditional style of theancient East (more particularly of Persia) so that they were surrounded by alavish court that contrasted sharply with the simplicity of the lifestyle ofthe Prophet.The Abbasid Dynasty marked the high point of Islamic power andcivilization. The empire ruled by these caliphs was greater in size than thedomain of the Roman Caesars; it was the product of an expansion during whichthe Muslims assimilated peoples, customs, cultures, and inventions on anunprecedented scale. This Islamic state, in fact, drew from the resources ofthe entire known world.[See Abbasid Dynasty: The Islamic world under the Abbasid Dynasty.]Trade, Industry, And AgricultureFrom the eighth to the twelfth century the Muslim world enjoyed enormousprosperity. In close contact with three continents, the Muslims could shuttlegoods back and forth from China to western Europe and from Russia to centralAfrica. The absence of tariff barriers within the empire and the tolerance ofthe caliphs, who allowed non-Muslim merchants and craftsmen to reside in theirterritories and carry on commerce with their home countries, furtherfacilitated trade. The presence of such important urban centers as Baghdad,Cairo and Cordova stimulated trade and industry throughout the Muslim world.The cosmopolitan nature of Baghdad was evident in its bazaars, whichcontained goods from all over the known world. There were spices, minerals,and dyes from India; gems and fabrics from Central Asia; honey and wax fromScandinavia and Russia; and ivory and gold dust from Africa. One bazaar in thecity specialized in goods from China, including silks, musk, and porcelain. Inthe slave markets Muslim traders bought and sold Scandinavians, Mongoliansfrom Central Asia, and Africans. Joint-stock companies flourished along withbranch banking organizations, and checks (an Arabic word) drawn on one bankcould be cashed elsewhere in the empire.Muslim textile industries turned out excellent cottons (muslins) andsilks. The steel of Damascus and Toledo, the leather of Cordova, and the glassof Syria became internationally famous. Notable also was the art ofpapermaking, learned from the Chinese. Under the Abbasids, vast irrigationprojects in Iraq increased cultivable land, which yielded large crops offruits and grains. Wheat came from the Nile valley, cotton from North Africa,olives and wine from Spain, wool from eastern Asia Minor, and horses fromPersia.The Spectacular Reign Of Harun Al-RashidJust as the Abbasid Caliphate was the most impressive Islamic dynasty, sothe rule of Harun al-Rashid (786-809) was the most spectacular of the Abbasidreigns. A contemporary of Charlemagne, who had revived the idea of a RomanEmpire in the West (see ch. 9) there can be no doubt that Harun was the morepowerful of the two and ruler of the more highly advanced culture. The twomonarchs were on friendly terms, based on self-interest. Charlemagne wanted toexert pressure on the Byzantine emperor to recognize his new imperial title.Harun, on the other hand, saw Charlemagne as an ally against the Umayyadrulers of Spain, who had broken away from Abbasid domination. The two emperorsexchanged embassies and presents. The Muslim sent the Christian rich fabrics,aromatics, and even an elephant named Abu-Lababah, meaning "the father ofintelligence." An intricate water clock from Baghdad seems to have been lookedupon as a miracle in the West.Relations between the Abbasid caliphate and the Byzantine Empire werenever very cordial, and conflicts often broke out along the constantlyshifting border that separated Christian and Muslim territories. Harunal-Rashid once replied to a communique from the Byzantine emperor in thefollowing terms:In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.From Harun, Commander of the Faithful, to Nicephorus,the dog of the Greeks, I have read your letter, you sonof a she-infidel, and you shall see the answer beforeyou hear it.Whereupon the irate caliph sent forth expeditions to ravage Asia Minor.In the days of Harun al-Rashid, Baghdad's wealth and splendor equaledthat of Constantinople, and its chief glory was the royal palace. With itsannexes for eunuchs, officials, and a harem, the caliph's residence occupied athird of Baghdad. The caliph's audience chamber was the setting for anelaborate ceremonial, which imitated that of the Byzantines and Persians.Disintegration Of The Abbasid EmpireIn some ways, the opulent reign of Harun al-Rashid marked the highpointof Abbasid achievement. In others it exhibited the warning signs of weakness.Despite the unprecedented prosperity of the far-flung Abbasid Empire, thepolitical unity of Islam began to crumble soon after the accession of theAbbasid caliphs. The first sign of political disintegration appeared in 756when a member of the deposed Umayyad family founded his own dynasty at Cordovain Spain; in 929 his decendant assumed the title of caliph. Also in the tenthcentury the Fatimids - Shiites who claimed descent from Muhammad's daughterFatima who had married Ali, the fourth caliph - proclaimed themselves the truecaliphs of all Islam. From their capital at Cairo, which they founded, theirrule eventually extended from Morocco to northern Mesopotamia.Meanwhile, in the latter part of the tenth century Turkish nomads, calledSeljuks, had migrated from Central Asia into the Abbasid lands, where theyaccepted Islam. After annexing most of Persia, the Seljuks gained control ofBaghdad in 1055 and subjugated Iraq. Subsequently they conquered Syria andPalestine at the expense of the Fatimids and proceeded to annex most of AsiaMinor from the Byzantines. It was the Seljuks' advance that prompted the FirstCrusade in 1095. The Seljuks permitted the Abbasids to retain nominal rule,but a new and powerful enemy now appeared and overran Abbasid lands.Early in the thirteenth century Genghis Khan succeeded in uniting thenomads of Mongolia, and conquering much of China and Russia; he and hissuccessors moved on to eastern and central Asia (see ch. 8) and swept intoPersia and Iraq. In 1258 a grandson of Genghis Khan captured Baghdad and hadthe caliph put in a sack and trampled to death. Not only did the AbbasidDynasty come to an end, but so did most of the vast irrigation system that hadsupported the land since the beginning of civilization; Iraq was not torecover until modern times. The dynasty established by the Mongols survivedfor only a short time, and the Mongol ruling class was eventually absorbedinto the native populations of Persia and Iraq.Muslim Egypt was saved from the Mongol advance by the Mamluks ("the ownedones"), captured Turkish slaves trained to become Muslims and soldiers.Serving as a elite guard for their Fatimid masters, the Mamluks rebelled,seized power in Egypt, and eventually took over Palestine and Syria, ejectingthe last of the crusaders in 1291. Ultimately they fell before the onslaughtof another Turkish force, the Ottomans, in 1517.The Ottoman TurksHaving settled in northwestern Asia Minor in the thirteenth century asvassals of the Seljuks, the Ottoman Turks had organized their own aggressivestate by the end of that century. The name Ottoman is derived from Osman I (d.1324), founding chieftan of the dynasty, who organized Muslim volunteerfighters against the Byzantines on the western borders. These fighterscommitted themselves to ghaza, or Islamic holy war, in order to eliminate theunbelievers surrounding the Turkish homeland. The Ottomans pitted theirconsiderable strength against the crumbling power of the Byzantines, pressedon into southeastern Europe, and finally captured Constantinople in 1453.Driving as far as Vienna, they were turned back with tremendous difficulty in1529 and again in 1683. Meanwhile, in 1517, the Ottomans had conquered theMamluk territories, and within a few years they added Iraq, much of Arabia,and all of the North African coastal belt to the borders of Morocco.

Islamic Culture

The attainments of the Muslims in the intellectual and artistic fieldscan be attributed not only to the genius of Arabs, but also to those peopleswho embraced the Islamic faith in Persia, Mesopotamia, Turkey, Syria, Egypt,North Africa, and Spain. Muslim learning benefitted both from Islam's abilityto absorb other cultures and from the native talents of the Islamic peoples.The cosmopolitan spirit permeating the Abbasid Dynasty supplied the tolerancenecessary for a diversity of ideas, so that the science and philosophy ofancient Greece and India alike received a cordial reception in Baghdad. UnderHarun al-Rashid and his successors, the writings of Aristotle, Euclid,Ptolemy, Archimedes, Galen, and other great Greek scientific writers weretranslated into Arabic. This knowledge, together with the teachings of theKoran, formed the basis of Muslim learning, which in turn was latertransmitted to scholars in western Europe. In addition to being invaluabletransmitters of learning, the Muslims made many original contributions toscience and the arts.Advances In MedicineThe years between 900 and 1100 can be called the golden age of Muslimlearning. This period was particularly significant for medical advances.Muslim students of medicine were by all measures far superior to theirEuropean contemporaries. Muslim cities had excellent pharmacies and hospitals,and both pharmacists and physicians had to pass state examinations forlicensure. Physicians received instruction in medical schools and hospitals.Perhaps the greatest Muslim physician was the Persian al-Razi (d. 925),better known in the West as Rhazes. He wrote more than a hundred medicaltreatises in which he summarized Greek medical knowledge and added his ownclinical observations. His most famous work, On Smallpox and Measles, is thefirst clear description of the symptoms and treatment of these diseases. Themost influential Muslim medical treatise is the vast Canon of Medicine of thePersian scholar Avicenna (d. 1037), in which all Greek and Muslim medicallearning is systematically organized. In the twelfth century the Canon wastranslated into Latin and was so much in demand in the West that it was issuedsixteen times in the last half of the fifteenth century and more than twentytimes in the sixteenth. It is still read and used in east Asia today.Progress In Other SciencesMuslim physicists were not just copyists, but highly creative scientistsas well. Alhazen (d. 1039) of Cairo developed optics to a remarkable degreeand challenged the theory of Ptolemy and Euclid that the eye sends visual raysto its object. The chief source of all medieval Western writers on optics,Alhazen interested himself in optic reflections and illusions and examined therefraction of light rays through air and water.Although astronomy continued to be strongly influenced by astrology,Muslim astronomers built observatories, recorded their observations over longperiods, and achieved greater accuracy than the Greeks in measuring the lengthof the solar year and in calculating eclipses. Interest in alchemy - theattempt to change base metals into precious ones and to find the magic elixirfor the preservation of human life - produced the first chemical laboratoriesand caused an emphasis on the value of experimentation. Muslim alchemistsprepared many chemical substances (sulfuric acid, for example) and developedmethods for evaporation, filtration, sublimation, crystallization, anddistillation. The process of distillation, invented around 800, produced whatwas called alkuhl (alcohol), a new liquor that had made Geber, its inventor,an honored name in some circles.In mathematics the Muslims were indebted to the Hindus as well as to theGreeks. From the Greeks came the geometry of Euclid and the fundamentals oftrigonometry, which Ptolemy had worked out. From the Hindus came arithmeticand algebra and the nine signs, known as Arabic numerals. The Muslims probablyinvented the all-important zero, although some scholars assign this honor tothe Indians. Two Persian mathematicians made significant contributions:al-Khwarizmi (d. about 840), whose Arithmetic introduced Arabic numerals andwhose Algebra first employed that mathematical term, and Omar Khayyam (d. c.1123), whose work in algebra went beyond quadratics to cubic equations. Otherscholars developed plane and spherical trigonometry.In an empire that straddled continents, where trade and administrationmade an accurate knowledge of lands imperative, the science of geographyflourished. The Muslims added to the geographical knowledge of the Greeks,whose treatises they translated, by producing detailed descriptions of theclimate, manners, and customs of many parts of the known world.Islamic Literature And ScholarshipTo Westerners, whose literary tastes have been largely modeled after theGraeco-Roman classics, Islamic literature may seem very alien. Whereas we areused to restraint and simplicity, Muslim writers have long enjoyed elegantexpression, subtle combinations of words, and fanciful and even extravagantimagery.Westerners' knowledge of Islamic literature tends to be limited to theArabian Nights and the poetry of Omar Khayyam. The former is a collection ofoften erotic tales told with a wealth of local color; although it professedlycovers different facets of life at the Abbasid capital, it is in fact oftenbased on life in medieval Cairo. The fame of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat is partlydue to the musical (though somewhat free) translation of Edward FitzGerald.The following stanzas indicate the poem's beautiful imagery and gentleresignation:A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness -Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!Some for the Glories of This World; and someSigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum! ...The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,Lift not your hands to It for help - for ItAs impotently moves as you or I. ^1[Footnote 1: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans. by Edward Fitzgerald, Stanzas12, 13, 71, 72.]The same rich imagery characterizes much Islamic prose. As the firstimportant prose work in Arab literature, the Koran set the stylistic patternfor all Arabic writers. The holy book was designed particularly to be recitedaloud; anyone who has listened to the chanting of the Koran can testify to itscadence, melody, and power.Muslim philosophy, essentially Greek in origin, was developed by secularscholars and not, as in the West, by churchmen. Like the medieval Christianphilosophers (see ch. 10), Muslim thinkers were largely concerned withreconciling Aristotelian rationalism and religion. The earlier Muslimthinkers, including Avicenna, the physician with many talents, sought toharmonize Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Islam. Avicenna's work was widelyread in the West, where it was translated in the twelfth century. The lastgreat Islamic philosopher, Averroes (d. 1198), lived in Cordova where he wasthe caliph's personal doctor. In his commentaries on Aristotle's works, whichgave the Christian West its knowledge of Aristotle long before the originalGreek texts were obtained from Constantinople, Averroes rejected the belief inthe ultimate harmony between faith and reason along with all earlier attemptsto reconcile Aristotle and Plato. Faith and reason, he argued, operate ondifferent levels; a proposition can be true philosophically but falsetheologically. On the other hand, Moses Maimonides, Averroes' contemporary whowas also born in Muslim Spain, sought, in his still influential Guide to thePerplexed, to harmonize Judaism and Aristotelian philosophy. St. ThomasAquinas, who in the next century undertook a similar project for Christianity,was influenced by these earlier attempts to reconcile faith and reason.Islamic historiography found its finest expression in the work ofibn-Khaldun of Tunis (d. 1406), who has also been called a "father ofsociology." Despite his busy life in public affairs, he found time to write alarge general history dealing particularly with human social development,which he held to be the result of interaction of society and the physicalenvironment. Ibn-Khaldun defined history thus:It should be known that history, in matter of fact,is information about human social organization, whichitself is identical with world civilization. It dealswith such conditions affecting the nature of civilizationas, for instance, savagery and sociability, group feelings,and the different ways by which one group of human beingsachieves superiority over another. It deals with royalauthority and ... with the different kinds of gainfuloccupations and ways of making a living, with the sciencesand crafts that human beings pursue as part of theiractivities and efforts, and with all the other institutionsthat originate in civilization through its very nature. ^2[Footnote 2: Ibn Khaldun, The Mugaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans.by Franz Rosenthal, Vol. I (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd., 1958), p.71.]Ibn-Kaldun conceived of history as an evolutionary process, in which societiesand institutions change continually.Art And ArchitectureReligious attitudes played an important part in Muslim art. Because theProphet warned against idols and their worship, there was a prohibitionagainst pictorial representation of human and animal figures. The effect ofthis injunction was to encourage the development of stylized and geometricaldesign. Muslim art, like Muslim learning, borrowed from many sources. Islamicartists and craftsmen followed chiefly Byzantine and Persian models andeventually integrated what they had learned into a distinctive and originalstyle.The Muslims excelled in the fields of architecture and the decorativearts. That Islamic architecture can boast of many large and imposingstructures is not surprising, because it drew much of its inspiration from theByzantines and Persians, who were monumental builders. In time an originalstyle of building evolved; the great mosques embody such typical features asdomes, arcades, and minarets, the slender towers from which the faithful aresummoned to prayer. The horseshoe arch is another graceful and familiarfeature of Muslim architecture.On the walls and ceilings of their buildings, the Muslims gave full reinto their love of ornamentation and beauty of detail. The Spanishinterpretation of the Muslim tradition is particularly delicate and elegant.Other outstanding examples of Islamic architecture are to be found in India;the Taj Mahal, for example, is based largely on Persian motifs.Restricted in their subject matter, Muslim craftsmen conceived beautifulpatterns from flowers and geometric figures. Even Arabic script, certainly oneof the most beautiful ever devised, was used as a decorative motif. Muslimdecorative skill also found expression in such fields as carpet and rugweaving, brass work, and the making of steel products inlaid with preciousmetals.

The Arab Empire Of The UmayyadsMuhammad's victory over the Umayyads, his capture of Mecca, and theresulting allegiance of many of the bedouin tribes of Arabia created a whollynew center of power in the Middle Eastern cradle of civilizations. A backward,non-agrarian area outside the core zones of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persiasuddenly emerged as the source of religious and political forces that wouldeventually affect the history of much of the known world. But when the prophetMuhammad died quite suddenly in 632, it appeared that his religion mightaltogether disappear. Many of the bedouin tribes that had converted to Islamrenounced the new faith in the months after Muhammad's death, and hisremaining followers quarreled over who should succeed him. Though thesequarrels were never fully resolved, the community managed to find new leaderswho directed a series of campaigns to force those who had abandoned Islam toreturn to the fold.Having united most of Arabia under the Islamic banner by 633, Muslimmilitary commanders began to mount serious expeditions beyond the peninsula,where only probing attacks had occurred during the lifetime of the prophet andin the period of tribal warfare after his death. The courage, militaryprowess, and religious zeal of the warriors of Islam and the weaknesses of theempires that bordered on Arabia resulted in stunning conquests in Mesopotamia,North Africa, and Persia that dominated the next two decades of Islamichistory. The empire built from these conquests was Arab rather than Islamic.Most of it was ruled by a small Arab-warrior elite, led by the Umayyads andother prominent clans, which had little desire to convert the subjectpopulations, either Arab or otherwise, to the new religion.Unaccustomed wealth and political power, which was reflected in thegrowth of new cities around Arab garrisons and the expansion of older urbancenters, were the Arabs' rewards for these startling victories. The Umayyads,to the dismay of many of the faithful, developed into autocratic rulers whowere more concerned with perpetuating their dynastic power than advancing theinterests of the Islamic faithful as a whole. Their growing arrogance andadoption of a life-style stressing luxury and material gain exacerbateddivisions within the Islamic community that had begun to emerge soon afterMuhammad's death.Consolidation And Division In The Islamic CommunityThe leadership crisis brought on by Muhammad's death in 632 wascompounded by the fact that he had not appointed a successor or evenestablished a procedure by which a new leader might be chosen. Opinion withinthe Muslim community was deeply divided as to who should succeed him. Inaddition, many bedouin tribes broke from the Islamic fold after hearing of theprophet's passing. Several of these tribes produced prophets of their own andsome of the larger ones launched attacks on Mecca.In this moment of extreme danger, there was an urgent need to find a newleader who could rally the faithful and put down the bedouin challenges to thecommunity and the new faith. On the afternoon Muhammad died, one of the loyalclans called a meeting to select a new leader who would be designated as thecaliph, the political and religious successor to Muhammad. Several choiceswere possible, and a deadlock between the clans appeared likely - a deadlockthat would almost certainly have been fatal to a community threatened byenemies on all sides. One of the main candidates, Ali, the cousin andson-in-law of Muhammad, was passed over because he was considered too young toassume a position of such great responsibility. This decision was later toprove a major source of division in the Islamic community. But in 632, itappeared that a difficult reconciliation had been won by the choice of one ofMuhammad's earliest followers and closest friends, Abu Bakr (caliph from 632to 634). In addition to his personal courage, warmth, and wisdom, Abu Bakr waswell versed in the genealogical histories of the bedouin tribes, which meantthat he was well placed to determine which tribes could be turned against eachother and which ones could be enticed into alliances. Initially at least, hismandate was very limited. He received no financial support from the Muslimcommunity. Thus, he had to continue his previous occupation as a merchant on apart-time basis, and he only loosely controlled the better military commandersof the faithful.These commanders turned out to be very able indeed. After turning backattacks on Mecca, the Islamic faithful routed one after another of the bedouintribes. The defeat of rival prophets and some of the larger clans in what wereknown as the Ridda Wars soon brought about the return of one tribe afteranother to the Islamic fold. Emboldened by the proven skills of his generalsand the swelling ranks of the Muslim faithful, Abu Bakr did nothing to stopraids to the north of Arabia into the sedentary zones in present-day Iraq andSyria and eastward into Egypt. There is evidence that Muhammad envisionedexpansion into these areas, but his death left whatever plans he hadunfulfilled.The unified bedouin forces had originally intended merely to raid forbooty and then retreat back into the desert. But their initial probes revealedthe deep-seated rot and vulnerability of the Byzantine and Persian empires,which dominated or ruled directly the territories into which the Muslimwarriors rode. The invaders were also prodded onward by the growing support ofthe Arab bedouin peoples who had migrated to the Fertile Crescent decades andeven centuries earlier. These peoples had long served as the vassals andfrontier guardians of the Byzantine and Persian empires. Now they joined theirArab brethren in a combined assault on the two empires.Motives For ConquestThe Arab warriors were driven by a number of forces. The unity theIslamic faith provided gave them a new sense of common cause and strength.United they could stand up to the non-Arab rulers who had so long played themagainst each other and despised them as unwashed and backward barbarians fromthe desert wastelands. It is also probable that the early leaders of thecommunity saw the wars of conquest as a good way to release the pent-upenergies of the martial bedouin tribes they now sought to lead. Above all, thebedouin warriors were drawn to the campaigns of expansion by the promise of ashare in the booty to be won in the rich farmlands raided and the tribute thatcould be exacted from the towns and cities that came under Arab rule. As anearly Arab writer remarked, the bedouins forsook their life as desert nomadsnot out of a promise of religious rewards, but due to a "yearning after breadand dates."The chance to glorify their new religion may have been a motive for theArab conquests, but they were not driven by a desire to win converts to it. Infact, other than fellow bedouin tribes of Arab descent, the invaders had goodreason to avoid mass conversions. Not only would Arab warriors have to sharethe booty of their military expeditions with ever larger numbers if convertswere made, but Muslims were exempted from some of the more lucrative taxeslevied on Christian and other non-Muslim groups. Thus, the vision of Islamicjihads, or holy wars, launched to forcibly spread the faith, which has beenassociated with Islam, distorts the forces behind the early Arab expansion.Weaknesses Of The Adversary EmpiresOf the two great empires that had once contested for dominance in theFertile Crescent transit zone, the Sasanian Empire of Persia proved the morevulnerable. Power in the extensive Sasanian domains was formally concentratedin the hands of an autocratic emperor. By the time of the Arab explosion, theemperor was manipulated by a landed, aristocratic class that harshly exploitedthe cultivators who made up most of the population of the empire.Zoroastrianism, the official religion of the emperor, lacked popular roots. Bycontrast, the religion of a visionary reformer named Mazdak, which had wonconsiderable support among the peasantry, had been brutally suppressed by theSasanian rulers in the period before the rise of Islam.At first the Sasanian commanders had little more than contempt for theArab invaders and set out against them with poorly prepared forces. By thetime the seriousness of the Islamic threat was made all too clear by decisiveArab victories in the Fertile Crescent region and the defection of the Arabtribes on the frontier, Muslim warriors had broken into the Sasanianheartland. Further Muslim victories brought about the rapid collapse of thevast empire. The Sasanian rulers and their forces retreated eastward in theface of the Muslim advance. The capital was taken, armies were destroyed, andgenerals were slain. When, in 651, the last of the Sasanian rulers wasassassinated, Muslim victory and the destruction of the empire were ensured.[See Persian Prisoners]Despite an equally impressive string of Muslim victories in the provincesof their empire, the Byzantines proved a more resilient adversary. Theirability to resist the Muslim onslaught, however, was impeded both by thedefection of their own frontier Arabs and the support the Muslim invadersreceived from the Christians of Syria and Egypt. Members of the Christiansects dominant in these areas, such as the Copts and Nestorians, had longresented the rule of the Orthodox Byzantines, who taxed them heavily and,periodically, openly persecuted them as heretics. When it became clear thatthe Muslims would not only tolerate the Christians but tax them less heavilythan the Byzantines did, these Christian groups rallied to the Arabs.Weakened from within and exhausted by the long wars fought with Persia inthe decades before the Arab explosion, the Byzantines reeled from the Arabassaults. Syria, western Iraq, and Palestine were quickly taken by the Arabinvaders, and by 640 a series of probes had been made into Egypt, one of therichest provinces of the empire. In the early 640s, the ancient center oflearning and commerce, Alexandria, was taken; most of Egypt was occupied; andArab armies extended their conquests into Libya to the west. Perhaps even moreastounding from the point of view of the Byzantines, by the mid-640s thedesert bedouins were putting together war fleets that increasingly challengedthe long-standing Byzantine mastery of the Mediterranean. The rise of Muslimnaval supremacy in the eastern end of the sea sealed the loss of Byzantium'srich provinces in Syria and Egypt and opened the way to further Muslimconquests in North Africa, the Mediterranean islands, and even southern Italy.For a time the Byzantines managed to rally their forces and stave off furtherinroads into their Balkan and Asia Minor heartlands. But the early triumphs ofthe Arab invaders had greatly reduced the strength and magnificence of theempire. Though it would survive for centuries, it would henceforth be akingdom under siege.The Lingering Problem Of Succession And Sectarian StrifeThe stunning successes of Muslim armies and the sudden rise of an Arabempire covered over for a time continuing divisions within the community. Theold division between the tribes of Mecca and Medina was compounded bydifferences between the tribes of north and south Arabia as well as those whocame to identify Syria as their homeland and those who settled in Iraq. Thoughthese divisions were often generations old and the result of personalanimosities, resentments had also begun to build over how the booty from theconquests ought to be divided among the tribal blocks that made up the Islamiccommunity. In 656, just over two decades after the death of the prophet, thegrowing tensions broke into open violence. The spark that began the conflictwas the murder of the third caliph, Uthman, by mutinous warriors returningfrom Egypt. Uthman's death was the signal for the supporters of Ali toproclaim him as caliph. In part Uthman's unpopularity among many of thetribes, particularly those from Medina and the prophet's earliest followers,arose from the fact that he was the first caliph to be chosen from Muhammad'searly enemies, the Umayyad clan. Already angered by the murder of theirkinsman, the Umayyads rejected Ali's claims and swore revenge when he failedto punish Uthman's assassins. Warfare erupted between the two factions.Ali was a famed warrior and experienced commander, and his deeplycommitted supporters soon gained the upper hand. After his victory at theBattle of the Camel in late 656, most of the Arab garrisons shifted to hisside in opposition to the Umayyads, whose supporters were concentrated in theprovince of Syria and the holy city of Mecca. Just as Ali was on the verge ofrouting the Umayyad forces at the battle of Siffin in 657, he was won over bya plea for mediation of the dispute. His decision to accept arbitration wasfatal to his cause. Some of his most fervent adherents repudiated hisleadership and had to be violently suppressed. While representatives of bothparties sought unsuccessfully to work out a compromise, the Umayyads regroupedtheir forces and added Egypt to the provinces backing their claims. In 660,Mu'awiya, the new leader of the Umayyads, was proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem,thereby directly challenging Ali's position. A year later, Ali wasassassinated, and his son, Hasan, was pressured by the Umayyads intorenouncing his claims to the caliphate.The Sunni-Shi'a DivisionIn the generation after the prophet's death, the question of succession,which has proved to be a persistent problem in Islamic political systems,generated deep divisions within the Muslim community. The Sunnis, who backedthe Umayyads, and the Shi'as, or dissenters who supported Ali, remain to thisday the most fundamental divisions in the Islamic world. Hostility betweenthese two branches of the Islaeic faithful was further heightened in the yearsafter Ali's death by the continuing struggle between the Umayyads and Ali'ssecond son, Husayn. After being abandoned by the clans in southern Iraq, whohad promised to rise in a revolt supporting his claims against the Umayyads,Husayn and a small party were overwhelmed and killed at Karbala in 680. Fromthat point the Shi'as mounted determined and sustained resistance to thecUmayyad caliphate.Over the centuries factional disputes about who had the right to succeedMuhammad, with the Shi'ites recognizing none of the early caliphs except Ali,have been compounded by differences in belief, ritual, and law that havesteadily widened the gap between Sunnis and Shi'as. These divisions have beenfurther complicated by the formation of splinter sects within the Shi'acommunity in particular, beginning with those who defected from Ali when heagreed to arbitration of his and the Umayyads' claims.The Umayyad ImperiumAfter a pause to settle internal disputes over succession, the remarkablesequence of Arab conquest was renewed in the last half of the 7th century.Muslim armies broke into central Asia, thus inaugurating a rivalry withBuddhism in the region that continues to the present day. By the early 8thcentury, the southern prong of this advance had reached into northwest India.Far to the west, Arab armies swept across North Africa and crossed the Straitsof Gibraltar to conquer Spain and threaten France. Though the Muslim advanceinto western Europe was in effect checked by the hard-fought victory ofCharles Martel and the Franks at Poitiers in 732, the Arabs did not fullyretreat beyond the Pyrenees into Spain until decades later. Muslim warriorsand sailors dominated much of the Mediterranean, a position that would besolidified by the conquest of key islands, such as Crete, Sicily, andSardinia, in the early decades of the 9th century. By the early 700s, theUmayyads ruled an empire that extended from Spain in the west to the steppesof central Asia in the east. Not since the Romans had there been an empire tomatch it; never had an empire of its size been built so rapidly.Though Mecca remained the holy city of Islam, under the Umayyads thepolitical center of community shifted to Damascus in Syria, where the Umayyadschose to reside after the murder of Uthman. From Damascus a succession ofUmayyad caliphs strove to build a bureaucracy that would bind together thevast domains they claimed to rule. The empire was very much an Arab conqueststate. Except in the Arabian peninsula and parts of the Fertile Crescent, asmall Arab and Muslim aristocracy ruled over peoples who were neither Arab norMuslim. Only Muslim Arabs were first-class citizens of this great empire. Theymade up the core of the army and imperial administration, and only theyreceived a share of the booty derived from the ongoing conquests. They couldbe taxed only for charity. The Umayyads sought to keep the Muslim warriorelite concentrated in garrison towns and separated from the local population.It was hoped that isolation would keep them from assimilating to thesubjugated cultures, because intermarriage meant conversion and the loss oftaxable subjects.Converts And "Peoples Of The Book"Umayyad attempts to block extensive interaction between the Muslimwarrior elite and the mass of their non-Muslim subjects had little chance ofsucceeding. The citified bedouin tribesmen were soon interacting intensivelyand intermarrying in considerable numbers with the local populations of theareas conquered. Equally critical, increasing numbers of these peoples werevoluntarily converting to Islam, despite the fact that conversion did littleto advance them socially or politically in the Umayyad period. Mawali, orMuslim converts, in this era still had to pay property taxes and in some casesthe jizya, or head tax, levied on nonbelievers. They received no share of thebooty and found it difficult, if not impossible, to acquire importantpositions in the army or bureaucracy. They were not even considered fullmembers of the umma but were accepted only as clients of the powerful Arabclans. As a result, the number of conversions in the Umayyad era was low, andmawali were frequently found in the ranks of the dissident sects generated bythe struggles over succession.By far the greater portion of the population of the empire were dhimmis,or people of the book. As the title suggests, it was originally applied toChristians and Jews who shared the Bible with the Muslims. As Islamicconquests spread to peoples, such as the Zoroastrians of Persia and the Hindusof India, the designation "dhimmi" was necessarily stretched to accommodatethe majority groups within these areas of the empire. The Muslim overlordsgenerally displayed tolerance toward the religions of dhimmi peoples. Thoughthey had to pay the jizya and both commercial and property taxes, theircommunities and legal systems were left intact and they were allowed toworship as they pleased. This approach made it a good deal easier for thesepeoples to accept Arab rule, particularly since many had been oppressed bytheir pre-Muslim rulers.Family And Gender Roles In The Umayyad AgeBroader social changes within the Arab and widening Islamic communitywere accompanied by significant shifts in the position of women, both withinthe family and in society at large. In the first centuries of Arab expansion,the greatly strengthened position of women under Islam prevailed over theseclusion and domination by males that were characteristic features of women'slives through much of the rest of the Middle East. Muhammad's teachings andthe dictates of the Quran stressed the moral and ethical dimensions ofmarriage. The kindness and concern the prophet displayed for his own wives anddaughters did much to strengthen the bonds between husband and wife and thenuclear family in the Islamic community. Muhammad encouraged marriage as areplacement for the casual and often commercial sexual liaisons that had beenwidespread in pre-Islamic Arabia. He vehemently denounced adultery on the partof both husbands and wives, though the punishment he recommended (100 lashes)was a good deal less draconian than the death by stoning later prescribed bysome versions of Islamic law. He forbadr female infanticide, which hadapparently been widely practiced in Arabia in pre-Islamic times.Though men were allowed to take up to four wives, the Quran forbademultiple marriages if the husband was not able to support more than one wifeor treat all of his wives equally. Women could not take more than one husband,but Muhammad gave his own daughters a say as to whom they might marry andgreatly strengthened the legal rights of women regarding inheritance anddivorce. He insisted that the bride-price paid by the husband's family begiven to his future wife, rather than to her father as before. By his ownexample, Muhammad greatly strengthened the position of women within thefamily. Not only were his wives and daughters prominent figures in the earlyIslamic community, but he treated them with great respect and even on occasionwas known to take a hand in the household chores.The prophet's teachings proclaimed the equality of men and women beforeGod and in Islamic worship. Women, such as Kadijah, the prophet's first wife,were some of Muhammad's earliest and bravest followers. They accompanied hisforces to battle (as did the wives of their adversaries) with the Meccans, anda woman was the first martyr for the new faith. Many of the traditions of theprophet, which have played such a critical role in Islamic law afd ritual,were recorded by women, and his wives and daughters played an important rolein the compilation of the Quran. Though women were not allowed to be prayerleaders, they played an active role in the politics of the early community.Muhammad's wife Aisha actively promoted the claims of the Umayyad partyagainst Ali, while Zainab, his daughter by Fatima, went into battle with theill-fated Husayn. Through much of the Umayyad period, little is heard ofveiled Arab women, and they appear to have pursued a wide range ofoccupations, including scholarship, law, and commerce. Perhaps one of Zainab'snieces best epitomizes the independent-mindedness of Muslim women in the earlyIslamic era. When chided for going about without a veil, she replied that Godin His wisdom had chosen to give her a beautiful face and that she intended tomake sure that it was seen in public so that all might appreciate God's grace.Umayyad Decline And FallThe ever-increasing size of the royal harem was just one manifestation ofthe Umayyad caliphs' growing addiction to luxury and soft living. Theirlegitimacy had been disputed by various Muslim factions from the outset oftheir seizure of the caliphate. But the Umayyads further alienated the Muslimfaithful as they became more aloof in the early decades of the 8th century andretreated from the dirty business of war into their pleasure gardens andmarble palaces. Their abandonment of the frugal, simple life-style followed byMuha mad and the earliest caliphs - including Abu Bakr, who made a trip to themarket the day after he was selected to succeed the prophet - enraged thedissenting sects and sparked revolts throughout the empire. The uprising thatwould prove fatal to the short-lived dynasty began among the frontier warriorswho had fought and settled in distant Iran.By the middle decades of the 8th century, more than 50,000 warriors hadsettled near the oasis town of Merv in the eastern Iranian borderlands of theempire. Many of them had married local women, and over time they had come toidentify with the region and to resent the dictates of governors sent fromdistant Damascus. The warrior settlers were also angered by the fact that theywere rarely given the share of the booty, which was now officially tallied inthe account books of the royal treasury, that they had earned by fighting thewars of expansion and defending the frontiers. They were contemptuous of theUmay-yads and the Damascus elite, whom they viewed as corrupt and decadent. Inthe early 740s an attempt by Umayyad palace officials to introduce new troopsinto the Merv area touched off a revolt that soon spread over much of theeastern po tions of the empire.Marching under the black banners of the Abbasid party, which traced itsdescent from Muhammad's uncle, al-Abbas, the frontier warriors were openlychallenging Umayyad armies by 747. Deftly forging alliances with Shi'iterebels and other dissident groups that challenged the Umayyads throughout theempire, their leader, Abu al-Abbas, the great-great-grandson of the prophet'suncle, led his forces from victory to victory. Persia and then Iraq fell tothe rebels. In 750, they met an army led by the Umayyad caliph himself in amassive battle on the river Zab near the Tigris. The Abbasid victory resultedin the conquest of Syria and the capture of the Umayyad capital. Desiring toeliminate the Umayyad family altogether to prevent recurring challenges to hisrule, Abu al-Abbas invited numerous members ofithe clan to w at was styled asa reconciliation banquet in the same year. As the Umay-yads were enjoying thefeast, guards covered them with carpets and they were slaughtered by Abbas'stroops. An effort was then made to hunt down and kill all the remainingmembers of the family throughout the empire. Most were slain, but the grandsonof a former caliph fled to distant Spain, where he founded the Caliphate ofCordoba that was to live on for centuries after the rest of the empire had disappeared.

From Arab To Islamic Empire: The Early Abbasid Era

The sudden shift from Umayyad to Abbasid leadership within the IslamicEmpire reflected a series of even more fundamental transformations withinevolving Islamic civilization. The revolts against the Umayyads had arisen inpart from a lingering hostility toward the Umayyad clan. But they were evenmore a product of growing regional identities and divisions within the Islamicworld. As Islamic civilization spread even farther under the Abbasids, theseregional interests and loyalties made it increasingly difficult to holdtogether the vast areas the Arabs had conquered. They also gave rise to newcleavages in the Islamic community that have sapped its strength from within,from Abbasid times to the present day. The revolts against the Umayyads werealso an expression of the growing displeasure, if not disgust, of the Muslimfaithful with the absolutist pretensions and extravagant life-styles of theUmayyad elite. There was a very strong puritanical thrust to the resistance ofthe Abbasids and their Shi'ite allies. Ironically, as we shall see, thevictory of the Abbasids led to bureaucratic expansion, absolutism, and luxuryon a scale beyond the wildest dreams of the Umayyads.Finally, the coalition of forces that overthrew the Umayyads wasstrengthened by the support of the mawali who were weary of being second-classcitizens in the Muslim world. They saw the Abbasids as champions of a policyof active conversion and their admission as full members of the Islamiccommunity. Of all the major transformations that were marked by the Abbasids'rise to power, the last was the most significant for the development ofIslamic civilization. From the religion of a small, Arab warrior elite, Islambecame a cosmopolitan and genuinely universal faith with tens of millions ofadherents from Spain to the Philippine islands.Abbasid AbsolutismThe rough treatment the Umayyad clan had received at the hands of thevictorious Abbasids ought to have forewarned their Shi'ite and mawali alliesof what was to come. But the Shi'a and other dissenting groups continued thesupport that allowed the Abbasids to level all other centers of politicalrivalry until it was too late. Gradually, the Abbasids rejected many of theirold allies, becoming in the process more and more righteous in their defenseof Sunni Islam and less and less tolerant of what they termed the hereticalviews of the various sects of Shi'ism. With the Umayyads all but eliminatedand their allies brutally suppressed, the way was clear for the Abbasids tobuild a centralized, absolutist imperial order.The fact that they chose to build their new capital, Baghdad, in Iraqnear the ancient Persian capital of Ctesiphon was a clear sign of things tocome. Soon the Abbasid caliphs were perched atop jewel-encrusted thrones,reminiscent of those of the ancient Persian emperors, gazing down on the greatgatherings of courtiers and petitioners who bowed before them in their giltand marbled audience halls. The caliphs' palaces and harems expanded to keeppace with their claims to absolute power over the Islamic faithful as well asthe non-Muslim subjects of their vast empire.The ever expanding corps of bureaucrats, servants, and slaves, who stroveto translate Abbasid political claims into reality, lived and worked withinthe circular walls of the new capital at Baghdad. The bureaucratization of theIslamic Empire was reflected above all in the growing power of the wazir, orchief administrator and head of the caliph's inner councils, and the sinisterfigure of the royal executioner, who stood close to the throne in the publicaudiences of the Abbasid rulers. The wazirs, who were initially recruitedmainly from the Persian provinces of the empire, oversaw the building of anadministrative infrastructure that allowed the Abbasids to project theirdemands for tribute to the most distant provinces of the empire. Sheer size,poor communications, and collusion between Abbasid officials and localnotables meant that the farther the town or village was from the capital, theless effectively royal commands were carried out. But for well over a century,the Abbasid regime was fairly effective at collecting revenue from its subjectpeoples and preserving law and order over much of the empire.The presence of the executioner perhaps most strikingly symbolized theabsolutist pretensions of the Abbasid rulers. With a wave of his hand, acaliph could condemn the highest of Muslim nobles to death. Thus, even inmatters of life and death, the Abbasids claimed a status above the rest of theMuslim faithful and even Islamic law that would have been rejected asheretical by the early community of believers. Though they stopped short ofdeclaring themselves divine, the Abbasid rulers styled themselves the "shadowof God on earth," clearly beings superior to ordinary mortals - Muslim orotherwise. The openness and accessibility of the earlier caliphs, includingthe Umayyads, was increasingly unimaginable. The old days, when members of theMuslim community could request an audience with the caliph merely by ringing abell announcing their presence in the palace, were clearly gone. Now, just toget into the vast and crowded throne room, one had to bribe and petitionnumerous officials, and more often than not the best result would be to win afew minutes with the wazir or one of his assistants. If an official or notablewere lucky enough to buy and beg an audience with the caliph, he had toobserve an elaborate sequence of bowing and prostration in approaching thethrone. Positions at court and throughout the bureaucracy were won and lostdepending on one's standing with powerful officials in the Abbasid hierarchy,and these great men could in turn be elevated or dismissed on the whim of thecaliph.The "Good Life" And Its Enemies In The Abbasid AgeThe luxurious life-style of the Abbasid rulers and their courtiers bothreflected the new wealth of the political and commercial elites of the IslamicEmpire and intensified sectarian and social divisions within the Islamiccommunity. As the compilation of folk tales, The Thousand and One Nights, frommany parts of the empire testifies, life for much of the elite in Baghdad andother major urban centers was luxurious and oriented to the delights of theflesh. Caliphs and wealthy merchants lived in palatial residences of stone andmarble, complete with gurgling fountains and elaborate gardens, which servedas retreats from the glare and heat of the southern Mediterranean climate. Inthe Abbasid palaces luxurious living and ostentation soared to fantasticheights. In the Hall of the Tree, for example, there was a huge artificialtree, made entirely of gold and silver and filled with gold mechanical birdsthat chirped to keep the caliph in good cheer.Sexual enjoyment, which within the confines of marriage had been condonedrather than restricted by the Quran, often degenerated into eroticism for itsown sake. The harem, replete with fierce eunuchs, insatiable sultans, andveiled damsels, provided outside observers with a stereotypic image of theAbbasid world that had little to do with the life of the average citizen ofthe empire - and often even with that of the caliph and high officials. Yet asthe following passage from The Thousand and One Nights describing the interiorof the mansion of a Baghdad notable illustrates, the material delights of theAbbasid era were enjoyed far beyond the confines of the palace:They reached a spacious ground-floor hall, built with admirableskill and beautified with all manner of colors and carvings, withupper balconies and groined arches and galleries and cupboardsand recesses whose curtains hung before them. In the midst stooda great basin full of water surrounding a fine fountain, and atthe upper end on the raised dais was a couch of juniper wood setwith gems and pearls, with a canopy like mosquito curtain of redsatin-silk looped up with pearls as big as filberts and bigger.Since the tales were just that, tall stories, there is some exaggerationof the wealth, as well as the romantic exploits and human excesses, of theworld depicted. But for the free-living members of the elite classes, theluxuries, frivolities, and vices of the Abbasid age were very real indeed.This sort of living was, of course, highly offensive to the pious,particularly those of the dissenting sects, such as the Shi'as. Members ofthese sects also built up an abiding hatred for what they perceived as thearrogance and heresy of the Abbasid rulers and high officials. Thus,throughout their reign, the Abbasid rulers were threatened by periodic revoltson the part of sectarian groups. The leaders of these risings promised tocleanse the Islamic community of the excesses of the court and notables. Inthe centuries of Abbasid decline, when real power passed to a succession ofregional dynasties, there emerged a number of violence-prone sects, such asthe Assassins whose members were devoted to striking down Abbasid officialswhenever the opportunity arose. Even for less-radical Muslims, the excesses ofthe Abbasid court and elite classes made a mockery of their claims to be thereligious successors of Muhammad and the upholders of Islamic law. Theresulting erosion of their legitimacy had much to do with the extended declineof the caliphates' authority, particularly from the middle of the 9th centuryonward.Islamic Conversion And Mawali AcceptancePopular enmity for the political elite was offset to some extent by thefact that the Abbasid era saw the full integration of new converts, both Araband non-Arab, into the Islamic community. In the last decades of the Umayyadperiod there was a growing acceptance of the mawali as equals and some effortto win new converts to the faith, particularly among Arab peoples outside theArabian peninsula. In the Abbasid era, mass conversions to Islam wereencouraged for all peoples of the empire from the Berbers of North Africa inthe west to the Persians and Turkic peoples of Central Asia in the east.Converts were admitted on an equal footing with the first generations ofbelievers, and over time the distinction between mawali and the earlierconverts all but disappeared.Most converts were won over peacefully, due to the great appeal ofIslamic beliefs and to the considerable advantages they enjoyed overnon-Muslim peoples in the empire. Not only were converts exempt from payingthe head tax, but greater opportunities were open to them to get advancedschooling and launch careers as administrators, traders, or judges. No groupdemonstrated the new opportunities open to converts as dramatically as thePersians, who soon came to dominate the upper levels of imperialadministration. In fact, as the Abbasid rulers became more dissolute andconsequently less interested in affairs of state, a number of powerful Persianfamilies close to the throne became the real locus of power within theimperial system.[See Persian School: A Persian school - bastinado for an unruly pupil.]Commercial Boom And Urban GrowthThe rise of the mawali was paralleled in the Abbasid era by the growth inwealth and social status of the commercial and landlord classes of the empire.The Abbasid age was a time of great urban expansion that was linked to arevival of the Afro-Eurasian trading network, which had declined with the fallof the Han dynasty in China in the early 3d century A.D. and the slow collapseof the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries. The Abbasid domains in thewest and the great Tang and Song empires in the east became the pivots of therevived commercial system. From the western Mediterranean to the South ChinaSea, Arab dhows, or sailing vessels with triangular, or lateen, sails thatlater strongly influenced European ship design, carried the goods of onecivilized core to be exchanged with those of another.Muslim merchants, often in joint ventures with Christians and Jews(which, because each merchant had a different Sabbath, meant that the firmcould carry on business all week), grew rich by supplying the cities of theempire with provisions and by taking charge of the long-distance trade thatspecialized in luxury products for the elite classes. The great profits madefrom the trade were reinvested in new commercial enterprises or the purchaseof land and in the construction of the great mansions that dominated thecentral quarters of the political and commercial hubs of the empire. Somewealth also went to charity, as required by the Quran. A good deal of thewealth was spent on building and running mosques and religious schools, bathsand rest houses for weary travelers, and hospitals, which in the numbers ofpatients served and the quality of their medical care surpassed those of anyother civilization to that time.Town and CountryIn addition to the expanding bureaucracy and servant classes and the boomin commerce, the growth of Abbasid cities was fed by a great increase inartisan handicraft production. Both government-run and privately owned artisanworkshops expanded or were established for the production of a wide range ofproducts, from necessities, such as furniture and carpets, to luxury itemssuch as glassware, jewelry, and tapestries. Though the artisans werefrequently poorly paid and some worked in great workshops, they were notslaves or drudge laborers. They owned their own tools and were often highlyvalued for their craft skills. The most skilled of the artisans formedguildlike organizations that negotiated wages and working conditions with themerchant oligarchy and provided support for their members in times offinancial difficulty or personal crisis.In towns and the countryside, much of the unskilled labor was left toslaves, who were frequently attached in considerable numbers to prominentfamilies as domestic servants. Large numbers of slaves were also in theservice of the caliphs and their highest advisors. It was possible for themore clever and ambitious of these to rise to positions of considerable power,and many were able eventually to be granted or to buy their freedom. Lessfortunate were the slaves forced into lives of hard labor under the overseer'swhip on rural estates and government projects, such as those devoted todraining marshlands, or into a lifetime of labor in the nightmare conditionsof the great salt mines in southern Iraq. Most of these drudge laborers, whowere called the Zanj slaves, were non-Muslims captured on slaving raids inEast Africa. With little hope of mobility, much less manumission, they hadlittle reason to convert to Islam, and from the middle of the 9th century theybecame a major source of social unrest.In the countryside a wealthy and deeply entrenched landed elite, referredto as the ayan, emerged in the early decades of Abbasid rule. Many of thelandlords had been long established. Others were newcomers - Arab soldiers whoinvested their share of the booty in land, or merchants and administrators whofunneled their profits and kickbacks into the acquisition of sizeable estates.In many regions, the vast majority of the peasantry did not own the land theyworked. They occupied it as tenants, sharecroppers, or migratory laborers whowere required to give the greater portion of the crops they harvested to theestate owners. In densely populated areas, the bargaining power of theagricultural tenants and laborers was greatly reduced by the ready supply ofextra hands to replace those who would not agree to a division of the harvestthat the landlord found sufficiently to his advantage. The control the ayanexercised over the cultivating classes gave them more and more independencefrom the Abbasid regime. In times of crisis, the ayan readily shifted theirallegiance to regional challengers of the imperial administration or foreigninvaders eager to carve out independent kingdoms within the Abbasid domains.The First Flowering Of Islamic LearningWhen the Arabs first came out of the desert, they were for the most partilliterate and ignorant of the wider world. Their provincialism and culturalbackwardness was no better revealed than at the moment when the victoriousMuslim armi s came within sight of the city of Alexandria in Egypt.Chroniclers of the great conquests record how the veteran Arab warriors haltedand sat on their horses, mouths literally open in wonderment, before the greatwalls of the city that stretched across the horizon from the Pharos lighthousein the north to perhaps the greatest library in the ancient world in thesouth.As this confrontation suggests, hhe Arab conquerors burst quite suddenlyinto some of the most ancient and highly developed centers of civilizationknown to human history. Within the confines of the Islamic domains werelocated the centers of the Hellenistic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian, andMesopotamian civilizations as well as the widely dispersed Christian andJewish traditions of thought and learning. The rather sparse culturaltradition of the Arabs, which one author has fittingly captured with referenceto their "mental virginity," made them highly receptive to influencespercolating from the subject peoples and remarkably tolerant of the greatdiversity of their styles and approaches to thought and artistic creativity.In the first phase of Abbasid rule, the Islamic contribution to humanartistic expression focused on the great mosques and palaces. In addition toadvances in religious, legal, and philosophical discourse, the Islamiccontribution to learning was focused on the sciences and mathematics. In theearly Abbasid period, the main tasks were recovering and preserving thelearning of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean and Middle East.Beyond the works of Plato, for example, much of Greek learning had been lostto the peoples of western Europe. Thanks to Muslim and Jewish scholars in theAbbasid domains, the priceless writings of the Greeks on key subjects such asmedicine, algebra, geometry, astronomy, anatomy, and ethics were saved,recopied in Arabic, and dispersed throughout the empire. From Spain in thewest, Greek writings found their way into Christendom. Among the authorsrescued in this manner, one need only mention Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates,Ptolemy, and Euclid to demonstrate the importance of the preservation effort.In addition, scholars working in Arabic played a role as transmitters ofideas that paralleled the rise of Arab traders and merchants as the carriersof goods and inventions. Indian numbers, for example - which, along with Greekmathematics, would prove critical to the development of scientific thinking inwestern Europe - were learned by Muslim invaders of India, carried to theMiddle Eastern centers of Islamic civilization, and eventually transmittedacross the Mediterranean to Italy and from there to northern Europe. But thebest was yet to come. It is no exaggeration that from the 9th to about the13th century, Arabic was the most important and the first language of scienceand learning that extended across civilizations. In this era, Islamicscientific discoveries and imagination significantly affected the thinking andcreativity of virtually all Old World civilizations from western Europe toChina.

The Mosque As A Symbol Of Islamic Civilization

From one end of the Islamic world to the other, Muslim towns and citiescould (and can today) be readily identified by the domes and minarets of themosques where the faithful were (and are) called to prayer five times daily.The following illustrations trace the development of the mosque and therefinement of mosque architecture - the crowning glory of Islamic materialculture - during the early centuries of Muslim expansion. As you look at thesephotos and follow the development of the mosque, consider what the functionsof the mosque aed the evolving style of mosque architecture can tell us aboutMuslim beliefs and values and the impact of earlier religions such as Judaismand Christianity on Islam.Given the low level of material culture in pre-Islamic Arabia, it is notsurprising that the earliest prayer houses were simple in design andconstruction. In fact, these first mosques were laid out along the linessuggested by Muhammad's own house. They were square enclosures with a shadedporch on one side, a columned shelter on the other, and an open courtyard inbetween. The outer perimeter of the earliest mosques were made of reed mats,but soon more permanent stone walls surrounded the courtyard and prayer areas.After Mecca was taken and the Ka'ba became the central shrine of the newfaith, each mosque was oriented to the qibla, or Mecca wall, that always facedin the direction of the holy city.In the last years of the prophet, the place where his chair was locatedwas raised so that the faithful could see and hear him during prayer sessions.During the time of the first caliphs, the raised area became the place fromwhich sermons were delivered. From the middle of the 8th century, this spaceevolved into a genuine pulpit. Somewhat earlier, the practice of building aspecial and often elaborately decorated niche in the qibla had developed.Over time the construction of the mosque became more elaborate. Veryoften the remains of Greek or Roman temples or abandoned Christian churchesformed the core of major mosques, or the ruins of these structures were minedfor stone for mosque construction. In the larger cities, the courtyards of thegreat mosques were surrounded by columns and arches, and eventually they wereenclosed by great domes such as that at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.The first minarets or towers from which the faithful were called toprayer were added in the early 8th century and soon became a key feature ofthe mosque complex. As mosques grew larger and more architecturally refined,elaborate decoration in brightly colored ceramic tiles, semiprecious stones,and gold and silver filigree adorned their sides and domes. Because human andanimal images were forbidden, geometric designs, passages from the Quran inswirling Arabic, and flower and plant motifs were favored. Nowhere were thesedecorations more splendid than in the great mosques of Persia. Thus, in theearly centuries of Islam, these great houses of worship became the focalpoints of Islamic cities, key places of community worship and socialization,and, with the schools that were often attached, vital intellectual andeducational centers of the Islamic world.

An Age Of Learning And Artistic Refinement

The avid interest in Muslim ideas and material culture displayed byEuropean knights and merchants who journeyed to the centers of Islamiccivilization in this era cautions us against placing too great an emphasis onthe political divisions and struggles that were such a prominent feature ofthe later Abbasid era. It also invites comparison with neighboringcivilizations, such as India and western Europe, that were a good deal morefragmented and racked by endless warfare in late-Abbasid times. In the midstof the political turmoil and social tensions of the Abbasid age, Muslimthinkers and craftsmen living in kingdoms from Spain to Persia created,refined, and made discoveries in a remarkable range of fields. Theircollective accomplishments mark one of the great ages of human ingenuity andcreativity. Their thought and techniques influenced their counterparts invirtually all the civilized centers of the Old World from the Sudanic peoplesof Africa to the Iberians and Franks of western Europe, and from the Hindus ofIndia to the distant and relatively isolated Chinese.[See Cordoba Mosque Interior: A forest of graceful arches fills the interiorof the mosque at Cordoba in Spain. Such an architectural feat testifies to thedepth and expansive power of Islamic civilization.]Urban Growth And Continuing ProsperityThough town life became somewhat more dangerous, the rapid growth andincreasing prosperity that had been dominant trends in the first centuries ofMuslim expansion continued until quite late in the Abbasid era. Expandingbureaucracies and caliphal building projects meant that employmentopportunities for the well-educated and for skilled craftsmen remainedsurprisingly abundant. Despite the declining revenue base of the caliphate anddeteriorating conditions in the countryside, there was a great expansion ofthe professional classes, particularly doctors, scholars, and legal andreligious experts. Muslim, Jewish, and in some areas Christian entrepreneursamassed great fortunes supplying the cities of the empire with staples such asgrain and barley, essentials such as cotton and woolen textiles for clothing,and luxury items such as precious gems, citrus fruits, and sugar cane.Long-distance trade with coastal India and island Southeast Asia as well asthe overland caravan trade with China flourished through much of the Abbasidera, despite periodic interruptions due to warfare between rival kingdoms.Trade across the Mediterranean to western Europe, both from North Africa andthe Middle East, also increased. Merchants of Italian towns, such as Veniceand Genoa, expanded their operations in the eastern Mediterranean, ironicallyas a by-product of the Crusades. Nonetheless, the continuing prosperity ofmany urban centers of the Islamic world gave a false impression of theeconomic state of Muslim lands as a whole. In the later centuries of Abbasidrule, the agrarian base on which the townspeople and rulers were ultimatelydependent was rapidly eroding through much of the Middle East.[See Persian City: The Persian of Yezd.]Among the chief beneficiaries of the sustained urban prosperity were theartists and artisans, who continued the great achievements in architecture andthe crafts that had begun in the Umayyad era. Mosques and palaces grew largerand more ornate in most parts of the empire, and even in outlying areas, suchas Cordoba in Spain, Muslim engineers and craftsmen created some of the greatarchitectural treasures of all time. The tapestries and rugs of Muslimpeoples, such as the Persians, were in great demand from Europe to China. Tothis day, Muslim rugs have rarely been matched for their exquisite designs,vivid colors, and the skill with which they are woven. Muslim craftsmen alsoproduced superb ceramics. Particularly stunning were the blue-glazed tiles,which were used to decorate the mosques and palaces of Persia, and thewonderfully designed pitchers and bowls, which were fashioned for everyday usein the Abbasid era but have become museum pieces in our day. Though the greatage of miniature painting still lay ahead, Persian and Arab artists were famedfor their lifelike depictions of plants and animals.The Full Flowering Of Persian LiteratureAs Persian wives, concubines, advisors, bureaucrats, and - after themid-10th century - Persian caliphs came to play central roles in imperialpolitics, Persian gradually replaced Arabic as the primary written language atthe Abbasid court. Arabic remained the language of religion, law, and thenatural sciences, but Persian was favored by Arabs, Turks, and those ofPersian descent as the language of literary expression, administration, andscholarship. In Baghdad and major cities throughout the Abbasid Empire and inneighboring kingdoms, Persian was the chief language of "high culture," thelanguage of polite exchanges between courtiers as well as of history, poeticmusings, and mystical revelations.Written in a modified Arabic script and drawing selectively on Arabicvocabulary, the Persian of the Abbasid age was a supple language as beautifulto look at when drafted by a skilled calligrapher as it was to read aloud.Though catch phrases ("A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and Thou") fromRubiyat of Omar Khayyam are certainly the pieces of Persian literature bestknown in the West, other writers from this period surpassed Khayyam inprofundity of thought and elegance of style. Perhaps the greatest single workwas the lengthy epic poem, Shah-Nama (Book of Kings), written by Firdawsi inthe late 10th and early 11th centuries. The work relates the history of Persiafrom Creation to the Islamic conquests, and it abounds in dramatic details ofbattles, intrigues, and illicit love affairs. Firdawsi's Persian has beenextolled for its grand, yet musical, virtuosity, and portions of the Shah-Namaand other Persian works were actually read aloud to musical accompaniment.Brilliantly illustrated manuscripts of Firdawsi's epic history are among themost exquisite works of Islamic art.In addition to historical epics, Persian writers in the Abbasid era wroteon all manner of subjects, from doomed love affairs and the elements ofstatecraft to incidents from everyday life and mystical striving for communionwith the divine. One of the great poets of the age, Sa'di, fuses an everydayand a religious message in the following relation of a single moment in hisown life:Often I am minded, from the days of my childhood,How once I went out with my father on a festival;In fun I grew preoccupied with all the folk about,Losing touch with my father in the popular confusion;In terror and bewilderment I raised up a cry,Then suddenly my father boxed my ears:"You bold-eyed child, how many times, now,Have I told you not to lose hold of my skirt?"A tiny child cannot walk out alone,For it is difficult to take a way not seen;You too, poor friend, are but a child upon endeavour's way:Go, seize the skirts of those who know the way!This blend of the mystical and commonplace was widely adopted in theliterature of this period. It is epitomized in Rubiyat, whose author is muchmore concerned with finding meaning in life and a path to union with thedivine than with extolling the delights of picnics in the garden withbeautiful women.Achievements In The SciencesFrom the preservers and compilers of the learning of the ancientcivilizations they had conquered in the early centuries of expansion, Muslimpeoples - and the Jewish scholars who lived peacefully in Muslim lands -increasingly became creators and inventors in their own right. For severalcenturies, which spanned much of the period of Abbasid rule, Islamiccivilization outstripped all others in scientific discoveries, devising newtechniques of investigation, and in the innovation and dissemination oftechnology. Their many accomplishments in these areas include majorcorrections to the algebraic and geometric theories of the ancient Greeks andgreat advances in the use of the concepts of the sine, cosine, and tangentthat are basic to trigonometry.Among numerous discoveries in chemistry, two that were fundamental to allsubsequent investigation were the creation of the objective experiment andal-Razi's scheme of classifying all material substances into three categories:animal, vegetable, and mineral. The sophistication of Muslim scientifictechniques is indicated by the fact that in the 11th century al-Biruni wasable to calculate the exact specific weight of 18 major minerals. Thissophistication was also manifested in the astronomical instruments andobservations made through the cooperation of Muslim scholars and skilledcraftsmen. Muslim technicians greatly improved devices, such as the astrolabeand armillary sphere, for measuring and mapping the position of celestialbodies. Muslim astronomers devised the names, which we still use today, ofmany of the constellations and individual stars. Their astronomical tables andmaps of the stars were in great demand among scholars of other civilizations,including those of Europe and China.As these breakthroughs suggest, much of the Muslims' work in scientificinvestigation had very practical applications. This practical bent was evenmore pronounced in a number of other fields. In medicine, for example, Muslimcities, such as Cairo, boasted some of the best hospitals in the world;doctors and pharmacis s had to follow a regular course of study and pass aformal exam before they were allowed to practice; and Muslim scientists didimportant work on optics and bladder ailments. Muslim traders and crafpsmenintroduced into the Islamic world and Europe many basic machines andtechniques - namely, paper making, silk weaving, and ceramic firing - that hadbeen devised earlier in China. Muslim scholars made some of the world's bestmaps, which were envied and copied by geographers from Portugal to Poland.Muslim travelers, such as Ibn Khaldun and al-Biruni, wrote ethnographic andhistorical accounts of the lands they visited, which remain to the present daysome of our fullest and most accurate sources on these regions. The Arab dhowwas one of the finest sailing vessels of its day, and its hull and sail designlater greatly influenced the shipbuilders of Italy and Iberia who wouldpioneer European overseas exploration from the 13th century onward. As theseachievements testify, despite continuing political instability, Islamiccivilization remained vibrant, receptive, and highly creative through much ofthe era of Abbasid decline and the political fragmentation of the Muslimheartlands.Religious Trends And The New Impetus For ExpansionThe contradictory trends in Islamic civilization - social strife andpolitical divisions versus expanding trading links and intellectual creativity- were strongly reflected in divergent trends in religious development in thelater centuries of the caliphate. On the one hand, Sufist mysticism injectedIslam with a new vibrancy and expansiveness; on the other hand, orthodoxreligious scholars, such as the ulama, grew increasingly suspicious of andhostile to non-Islamic ideas and scientific thinking. The Crusades had givengreat impetus to the latter trend, particularly with regard to Muslimborrowing from ancient Greek learning that the ulama associated with theaggressive civilizations of Christian Europe. Many orthodox scholars came tosuspect that the propensity for empirical testing and seemingly endlessquestioning of the Greek tradition posed potential challenges to the absoluteauthority of the Quran, which they insisted was the final, perfect, andcomplete revelation of an all-knowing divinity. Brilliant thinkers likeal-Ghazali, who was perhaps the greatest of Islamic theologians and whoseideas indirectly influenced major European philosophers such as ThomasAquinas, struggled to fuse the Greek and Quranic traditions, achieving mixedsuccess in terms of acceptance by orthodox scholars.Much of the religious vitality in Islam in the later Abbasid period wascentered in the Sufist movement. Like the Buddhist and Hindu holy men earlierin India, Sufis (whose title was derived from the woolen robes they wore) werewandering mystics who sought a personal union with God. In its various guises- including both Sunni and Shi'a manifestations - Sufism was a reactionagainst the impersonal and abstract divinity that many ulama scholars arguedwas the true God of the Quran. Like the Indian mystics, the Sufis and theirfollowers sought to see beyond what they believed to be the illusory existenceof everyday life and to delight in the presence of God in the world. True tothe uncompromising monotheism of Islam, most Sufis insisted on a cleardistinction between God and humans - a distinction Hindu and Buddhist mysticstended to deny or blur. But in some Sufist teachings God permeated theuniverse in ways that appeared to compromise his transcendent status.Some Sufis gained reputations as great healers and workers of miracles;others led militant bands that sought to spread Islam to infidel peoples. Tofind God some Sufis used asceticism or bodily denial; others used meditation,songs, drugs, or (in the case of the famous dervishes) ecstatic dancing. MostSufis built up a sizeable popular following, and the movement as a whole was acentral factor in the continuing expansion of the Muslim religion and Islamiccivilization in the later centuries of the Abbasid caliphate.New Waves Of Nomadic Invasions And The End Of The CaliphateAs we have seen, in the 10th and 11th centuries the Abbasid domains weredivided by ever-growing numbers of rival successor states. Independentkingdoms or empires threatened the Islamic heartlands from Egypt and NorthAfrica, northern Syria, and Persia. Asia Minor was divided between differentbands of Seljuk Turks; much of Arabia was occupied for decades by Shi'arebels; and the Tigris-Euphrates core of the empire was controlled by Turkicsultans who manipulated the caliphs they chose to put on the throne.In the early decades of the 13th century, a new threat arose at theeastern extremities of the original Abbasid domains. Another central Asiannomadic people, the Mongols, united by their great war commander, ChinggisKhan, first raided in the 1220s and then smashed the Turko-Persian kingdomsthat had developed in the regions to the east of Baghdad. Chinggis Khan diedbefore the heartlands of the Muslim world were invaded, but his grandson,Hulegu, renewed the Mongol assault on the rich centers of Islamic civilizationin the 1250s. In 1258, the Abbasid capital at Baghdad was taken by the Mongolsand much of it was sacked. The thirty-seventh and last Abbasid caliph was putto death by the Mongols, who continued westward until they were finallydefeated by the Mamluks, or Turkic slaves, who then ruled Egypt. Baghdad neverrecovered from the Mongol depredations and in 1401 a second capture of thecity and another round of pillaging by the even fiercer forces of Tamerlane.Baghdad shrank from the status of one of the great cities of the world - fromthe cultural, if not the political center of Islamic civilization - to aprovincial backwater, supplanted by Cairo to the west and soon thereafterIstanbul to the north.

Western Intrusions And The Crisis In The Arab Islamic Heartlands

By the early 1800s, the Arab peoples of the Fertile Crescent, Egypt,coastal Arabia and North Afric had lived for centuries under Ottoman-Turkishrule. Though most Arabs resented Turkish domination, they could identify withthe Ottomans as fellow Muslims, who were both ardent defenders of the faithand patrons of Islamic culture. Still, the steadily diminishing capacity ofthe Ottomans to defend the Arab Islamic heartlands left them exposed to thedanger of conquest by the aggressive European powers. The European capture ofoutlying, but highly developed, Islamic states from those in the Indonesianarchipelago and India to Algeria in North Africa engendered a sense of crisisamong the Islamic faithful in the Middle Eastern heartlands. From the terrorof Christendom and the encirclers of its European bastion, the Muslims hadbecome the besieged. Islam had been displaced by Europe as the leadingcivilization in a wide range of endeavors from scientific inquiry tomonumental architecture. Much of the Muslim community was forced to live underinfidel European overlords; what remained was threatened by European conquest.The profound crisis of Islamic confidence brought on by successivereverses and the ever-increasing strength of their old European rivals gaverise to a wide variety of responses in the Islamic world. Islamic thinkersdebated the best way of reversing the decline and driving back the Europeans.Some argued for a return to the Islamic past; others favored a large-scaleadoption of Western ways; while still others sought to find ways to combinethe two approaches. Reformist leaders, such as those in 19th-century Turkey,tried to graft on elements of Western culture while preserving the old stateand society pretty much intact. Religious leaders, sometimes proclaimingthemselves divinely appointed prophets, rose up to lead their followers injihads, or holy wars, against the advancing Europeans. Though it is notpossible to examine all of these responses in each of the Islamic lands, thefollowing sections focus on key responses on the part of Arab peoples in Egyptand the Sudan in the 19th century. In these areas, European involvement wasintense and the growing challenges posed by the West generated importantattempts to find ways of reversing the decline of Islamic civilization andrestoring it to its former glory.French Invasion And Mamluk DefeatThough it did not establish a permanent European presence in the Islamicheartlands, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 sent shock waves across whatremained of the Muslim world. Significantly, Napoleon's motives for launchingthe expedition had little to do with designs for empire in the Middle Eastitself. Rather he saw the Egyptian campaign as the prelude to the destructionof British power in India, where, as we have seen, the French had come out onthe short end of earlier wars for empire. Whatever his calculations, Napoleonmanaged to slip his fleet past the British blockade in the Mediterranean andput ashore his armies in July 1798. There followed one of the most lopsidedmilitary clashes in modern history. As they advanced inland, Napoleon's forceswere met by tens of thousands of cavalrymen bent on defending the Mamlukregime that then ruled Egypt as a vassal of the Ottoman sultans. The termMamluk literally meant slave, and it suggested the Turkic origins of theregime in Egypt. Beginning as slaves who served Muslim overlords, the Mamlukshad centuries earlier risen in the ranks as military commanders to the pointwhere they were able to seize power in their own name. Murad, the head of thecoalition of Mamluk households that shared power in Egypt at the time ofNapoleon's arrival, dismissed the invader as a donkey boy whom he would soondrive from his lands.Murad's contempt for the talented young French commander was symptomaticof the profound ignorance of events in Europe that was characteristic of manyleaders of the Islamic world at that time. Murad's ignorance led to a seriesof crushing defeats, the most famous of which came in a battle fought beneaththe pyramids of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. In the brief but bloody battle,the disciplined firepower of the French legions devastated the ranks of Mamlukhorsemen clad in medieval armor, wielding spears against the artilleryNapoleon used with such devastating effect.Because the Mamluks had long been regarded as fighters of great prowessin the Islamic world, their rout was literally traumatic. It brutally revealedjust how vulnerable even the Muslim core areas were to European aggression andhow far the Muslims had fallen behind the Europeans in the capacity to wagewar. Ironically, the successful invasion of Egypt brought little advantage toNapoleon or the French. The British caught up with the French fleet and sunkmost of it at the Battle of Aboukir in August of 1798. With his supply linecut off, Napoleon was forced to abandon his army and sneak back to Paris,where his enemies were attempting to use his reverses in Egypt to put an endto his rise to power. Thus, Egypt was spared European conquest - for a time.The reprieve brought little consolation, since the British, not Egypt's Muslimdefenders, had been responsible for the French retreat.The Rise Of Muhammad AliIn the chaos that followed the French invasion and eventual withdrawal in1801, the Mamluk survivors fought with local notables for political control.The unexpected winner of these struggles was a young officer of Albanianorigins named Muhammad Ali. He was a member of the Ottoman expeditionary forcethat had been sent to drive the French from Egypt. Having consolidated hisbase in the Cairo area by 1805, Muhammad Ali was master of Egypt after hissoldiers slaughtered 300 Mamluk chieftains in 1811. Deeply impressed by theweapons and discipline of the French armies, the Albanian upstart devoted hisenergies and the resources of the land that he had brought under his rule tobuilding an up-to-date European-style military force. He introducedWestern-style conscription among the Egyptian peasantry, hired French officersto train his troops, imported Western arms, and adopted Western tactics andmodes of organization and supply. Within years he had put together the mosteffective fighting force in the Middle East. With it, he flaunted theauthority of his nominal overlord, the Ottoman sultan, by successfullyinvading Syria and building a modern war fleet that threatened Istanbul on anumber of occasions.By the 1830s Muhammad Ali's armies had been so successful that they werethreatening the Ottoman regime itself. Twice, intervention by European powerswas necessary to rescue the regime at Istanbul and foil Muhammad Ali's dreamsof becoming the paramount lord of the Arab Muslim heartlands. Once again, theEuropeans, not Muslim leaders, emerged as the arbiters of the destiny of theArab world.Though Muhammad Ali's efforts to introduce reforms patterned afterWestern precedents were not confined to the military, they fell far short of afundamental transformation of Egyptian society. To shore up his economic base,he ordered the Egyptian peasantry to expand their production of cotton, hemp,indigo, and other crops that were in growing demand in industrial Europe.Efforts to improve Egyptian harbors and extend irrigation works met with somesuccess and led to modest increases in the revenues that could be devoted tothe continuing modernization of the military. Attempts to reform educationwere ambitious but limited in what was actually achieved. Many of the mostsignificant innovations in schooling were linked to Muhammad Ali's militaryprojects. His frequent schemes to build up an Egyptian industrial sector wereeventually frustrated by the opposition of the European powers and by theintense competition from imported, Western-manufactured goods.To secure his home base, Muhammad Ali also found that he had littlechoice but to ally with the powerful rural landlords, the ayan, to control thepeasantry. He eliminated the tax farmers and claimed all land as stateproperty, but despite these measures within decades a hereditary landlordclass was firmly entrenched in the rural areas. His forcible confiscations ofthe peasants' produce to pay for the rising costs of the militaryestablishment and for his foreign entanglements further impoverished analready hard-pressed rural population.The limited scope of Muhammad Ali's reforms ultimately checked his plansfor territorial expansion and left Egypt open to inroads by the Europeanpowers. He died in 1848, embittered by the European opposition that hadprevented him from mastering the Ottoman sultans and well aware that hisempire beyond Egypt was crumbling. Lacking his ambition and ability, hissuccessors were content to confine their claims to Egypt and the Sudanic landsthat stretched away from the banks of the Upper Nile to the south.Intermarrying with Turkish families that had originally come to Egypt togovern in the name of the Ottoman sultans, Muhammad Ali's descendants provideda succession of rulers, known as khedives after 1867, who were the formalrulers of Egypt until they were overthrown by the military coup that broughtNasser to power in 1952.Bankruptcy, European Intervention, And Strategies Of ResistanceMuhammad Ali's successors made a muddle of his efforts to reform andrevitalize Egyptian society. While cotton production increased and thelandlord class grew fat, the great majority of the peasants went hungry orstarved. The long-term consequences of these developments were equallytroubling. The great expansion of cotton production at the expense of foodgrains and alternative market crops rendered Egypt dependent on a singleexport and vulnerable to fluctuations in demand on the European markets towhich most of it was exported. Some further educational advances were made,mainly at elite schools where French was the language of instruction. But theadvances were too limited to benefit the populace by making government moreefficient or stimulating public works projects and improved health care.Much of the revenue the khedives managed to collect, despite theresistance of the ayan, was wasted on extravagant pastimes and fruitlessmilitary campaigns to assert Egyptian authority over the Sudanic peoples alongthe Upper Nile. The increasing inability of the khedives to balance theirbooks led in the middle decades of the 19th century to their growingindebtedness to European financiers. The latter lent money to the profligatekhedives and members of the Turkish elite because the financiers desired bothcontinued access to Egypt's cheap cotton and, by the 1850s, a share in thepotentially lucrative schemes to build a canal across the Isthmus of Suez thatwould connect the Mediterranean and Red seas. The completion of the Suez Canalin 1869 shortened the distance by sea between Europe and Asia and allowedsteamboats to replace sailing vessels, which had earlier proven better able toweather the rough passage around Africa.The ineptitude of the khedival regime and the Ottoman sultans, who weretheir nominal overlords, prompted a good deal of discussion among Muslimintellectuals and political activists as to how they might find the leadershipand means to ward off the growing European menace. Egypt, and particularlyCairo's ancient Muslim University of al-Azhar, became in the middle decades ofthe 19th century one of the key meeting places of these thinkers fromthroughout the Islamic world. Some prominent Islamic scholars called for ajihad to drive the infidels from Muslim lands. They also argued that theMuslim world could be saved only by a return to the patterns of religiousobservance and social interaction that they believed had existed in the"golden age" of the Prophet.Other thinkers, such as al-Afghani (1839-1897) and his disciple MuhammadAbduh (1849-1905), stressed the need for Muslims to borrow scientific learningand technology from the West and to revive their earlier capacity to innovate.They argued that Islamic civilization had once taught the Europeans much inthe sciences and mathematics, including such critical concepts as the Indiannumerals. Thus, it was fitting that Muslims learn from the advances theEuropeans had made with the help of Islamic borrowings. Those who advocatedthis approach also stressed the importance of the tradition of rational sinquiry in Islamic history. They strongly disputed the views of fundamentalisttheorists who contended that the Quran was the source of all truth and shouldbe interpreted literally.Though both fundamentalists and those who stressed the need for importsfrom the West agreed on the need for Muslim unity in the face of the growingEuropean threat, they could not reconcile their very different approaches toIslamic revival. Their differences and the uncertainties they have injectedinto Islamic efforts to cope with the challenges of the West remain centralproblems in the Muslim world today.The mounting debts of the khedival regime and the strategic importance ofthe canal gave the European powers, particularly Britain and France, a growingstake in the stability and accessibility of Egypt. French and British bankers,who had bought up a good portion of the khedive's shares in the canal, urgedtheir governments to intervene militarily when the khedives proved unable tomeet their loan payments. At the same time, French and British diplomatsquarreled over how much influence their nations should exercise within Egypt.In the early 1880s a genuinely nationalist challenge to both the puppetkhedival regime and the European powers prompted the British to intervenemilitarily to the chagrin of the French, who at that point were in no positionto do likewise.The challenge was mounted by the supporters of a charismatic youngEgyptian officer named Achmad Orabi. The son of a small farmer in lower Egypt,Orabi had attended Quranic school and studied under the reform-minded MuhammadAbduh at al-Azhar. Though a native Egyptian, Orabi had risen in the ranks ofthe khedival army and had become increasingly critical of the fact that theofficer corps was dominated by Turks with strong ties to the khedival regime.An attempt by the khedive to save money by disbanding Egyptian regiments anddismissing Egyptian officers sparked a revolt led by Orabi in the summer of1882. Riots in the city of Alexandria, associated with mutinies in theEgyptian armies, drove the frightened khedive to seek British assistance.After bombarding coastal batteries set up by Orabi's troops, the British sentashore an expeditionary force that crushed Orabi's rebellion and secured theposition of the khedive. Though Egypt was not formally colonized, the Britishintervention began decades of dominance by both British consuls, who ruledthrough the puppet khedives, and British advisors to all high-ranking Egyptianadministrators. British officials controlled Egypt's finances and foreignaffairs, and British troops ensured that their directives were heeded byEgyptian administrators. Direct European control over the Islamic heartlandshad begun.Jihad: The Mahdist Revolt In The SudanAs Egypt fell under British control, the invaders were inevitably drawninto the turmoil and conflict that gripped the Sudanic region to the south inthe last decades of the 19th century. Egyptian efforts to conquer and rule theSudan, beginning in the 1820s, were fiercely resisted, particularly by thecamel and cattle herding nomads who occupied the vast, arid plains thatstretched west and east from the Upper Nile. The sedentary peoples who workedthe narrow strip of fertile land along the river were more easily dominated.Thus, Egyptian authority, insofar as it existed at all, was concentrated inthese areas and in river towns such as Khartoum, which was the center ofEgyptian administration.Even in the riverine areas Egyptian overlordship was greatly resented.The Egyptian regime was notoriously corrupt and its taxes placed a heavyburden on the peasants compelled to pay them. The Egyptians were clearlycarpetbagging outsiders, and the favoritism they showed some of the Sudanictribes was guaranteed to alienate the others. In addition, virtually allgroups in the Muslim areas in the north Sudan were angered by Egyptianattempts in the 1870s to eradicate the slave trade. The trade had long been agreat source of profit for both the merchants of the Nile towns and thenomads, who attacked non-Muslim peoples, such as the Dinka in the south, inorder to capture slaves. British advisors at the khedive's court had stronglypushed for the antislavery effort, and an English commander, George Gordon,had taken charge of the campaign and on occasion employed very heavy-handedmethods to suppress the trade.By the late 1870s Egyptian oppression and British intervention hadaroused deep resentment and hostility, particularly among the Muslim peoplesof the northern Sudan. But a leader was needed to unite the diverse and oftendivided peoples of the region and to provide an ideology that would give focusand meaning to rebellion. The son of a boat builder named Muhammad Achmad, whohad been educated by the holy man head of a local Sufi brotherhood, proved tobe that leader. The fact that his family claimed descent from the Prophet andthat he had the physical signs - a cleft in his teeth and a mole on his rightcheek - that the local people associated with the promised deliverer did muchto advance his reputation. The visions he began to experience, after he hadbroken with his Sufi master and established his own sectarian following, alsosuggested that a remarkable future was in store. What was seen to be amiraculous escape from a bungled Egyptian effort to capture and imprisonMuhammad Achmad soon led to his widespread acceptance as a divinely appointedleader of revolt against the foreign intruders.The jihad that Muhammad Achmad, who was known to his followers as theMahdi (the promised deliverer), proclaimed against both the Egyptian hereticsand British infidels was one of a number of such movements that had sweptsub-Saharan Africa since the 18th century. It represented the most extreme andviolent Islamic response to what was perceived as the dilution of Islam in theAfrican environment and the growing threat of Europe. Muhammad Achmad promisedto purge Islam of what he viewed as superstitious beliefs and degradingpractices that had built up over the centuries and to return Islam to what heclaimed was its original purity. He led his followers in a violent assault onthe Egyptians, whom he believed professed this corrupt version of the faith,and the European infidels. At one point, his successors dreamed of topplingthe Ottoman sultans and invading Europe itself.The Mahdi's skillful use of guerrilla tactics and the confidence hisfollowers placed in his blessings and magical charms earned his forces anumber of stunning victories over the Egyptians. In 1883 the Mahdi'scommanders drew a force of 8000 Egyptians, led by British officers, deep intothe desert wilderness and ambushed and destroyed it in a desolate valleycalled Shaykan. By the end of 1883 the Mahdi's forces controlled most of thenorthern Sudan and were besieging the Egyptians' last major stronghold atKhartoum. In both ignorance and arrogance, the British sent a single officer,General Gordon, who had earlier overseen the suppression of the slave trade,up the Nile to Khartoum to command the Egyptian garrison and put down theMahdist rebellion. Just under a year after Gordon's arrival, the city wastaken and he was killed by the Mahdi's followers. The Mahdists had driven offthe Egyptians, slaughtered their British commanders, and were now the mastersof the Sudan.At the peak of his power, the Mahdi fell ill from typhus and died justmonths after the capture of Khartoum. In contrast to many movements of thistype, which have collapsed rapidly after the death of their prophetic leaders,the Mahdists found a capable successor to Muhammad Achmad in the KhalifaAbdallahi, one of his most skillful military commanders. Under Abdallahi, theMahdists built a strong, expansive state and a closely controlled society,where smoking, dancing, and alcoholic drink were forbidden and theft,prostitution, and adultery were severely punished. For nearly a decade,Mahdist armies attacked or threatened neighboring states on all sides,including the Egyptians to the north, whose territories the Mahdists plannedto invade. But in the fall of 1896, famed British General Kitchener was sentwith an expeditionary force to put an end to what was one of the most seriousthreats to European domination in Africa. The spears and magical garments ofthe Mahdist forces proved no match for the machine guns and artillery ofKitchener's columns, and at the battle of Omdurman in 1898 the bulk of theMahdist cavalry and Abdallahi himself were slaughtered. The Mahdist statecollapsed and British power advanced still farther into the interior ofAfrica.Retreat And Anxiety: Islam ImperiledThe 19th century was a time of severe reverses for the peoples of theIslamic world. Outflanked and outfought by their old European rivals, Islamicleaders either became puppets of European overlords or their lands passedunder the rule of infidel colonial rulers. Diverse forms of resistance, fromthe reformist path taken by the Ottoman sultans to the prophetic rebellions ofleaders such as Muhammad Achmad, slowed but could not halt the Europeanadvance. European products and demands steadily eroded the economic fabric andheightened social tensions in Islamic lands. The stunning military andeconomic successes of the Christian Europeans cast doubts on Muslim claims topossession of the one true faith. By the century's end it was clear thatneither the fundamentalists, who called for a return to a purified Islam freeof Western influences, nor the reformers, who argued that some borrowing fromthe West was essential for survival, had come up with a successful formula fordealing with the powerful challenges posed by the industrial West. Failing tofind adequate responses and deeply divided within, the Islamic community grewincreasingly anxious over the dangers that lay ahead. Islamic civilization wasby no means defeated, but its continued viability was clearly threatened bythe powerful neighbor that had become master of the world.