Download Week 1- The Muslim World An Overview-12 Aug

10
The IslamIc
Wo r ld
Byzantine artists installed the
mosaics in the mihrab dome in
the Córdoba mosque, but the
decorative patterns formed by
the crisscrossing ribs and the
multilobed arches are distinctly
Islamic.
The Rise and spRead of islam
A
f r a min g T H E E r a
t the time
of Muhammad’s birth around 570, the Arabian peninsula was peripheral to the
Byzantine and Sasanian empires. The Arabs, nomadic herders and caravan merchants who worshiped many gods, resisted the Prophet’s teachings of Islam, an Arabic word meaning “submission
to the one God (Allah in Arabic).” Within a decade of Muhammad’s death in 632, however, Muslims
(“those who submit”) ruled Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and northern Egypt. From there, the new
religion spread rapidly both eastward and westward.
With the rise of Islam also came the birth of a compelling new worldwide tradition of art and
architecture. In the Middle East and North Africa, Islamic art largely replaced Late Antique art. In
India, the establishment of Muslim rule at Delhi in the early 13th century brought Islamic art and
architecture to South Asia. In fact, perhaps the most famous building in Asia, the Taj Mahal at Agra,
is an Islamic mausoleum. At the opposite end of the then-known world, Abd al-Rahman I (r. 756–788)
founded a Spanish Muslim dynasty at Córdoba, which became the center of a brilliant court culture
that profoundly influenced medieval Europe.
The jewel of the capital at Córdoba was its Great Mosque (fig. 10-1), begun in 784 and enlarged
several times during the 9th and 10th centuries until it eventually became one of the largest mosques
in the Islamic West. In 1236, the Christians rededicated and remodeled the shrine as a church (the tallest part of the complex, at the center of the aerial view, is Córdoba’s cathedral) after they recaptured the
city from the Muslims.
A visual feast greets all visitors to the mosque. Its Muslim designers used overlapping horseshoeshaped arches (which became synonymous with Islamic architecture in Europe) in the uppermost zone
of the eastern and western gates to the complex. Double rows of arches surmount the more than 500
columns in the mosque’s huge prayer hall. Even more elaborate multilobed arches on slender columns
form dazzling frames for other areas of the mosque, especially in the maqsura, the hall reserved for the
ruler, which at Córdoba connects the mosque to the palace. Crisscrossing ribs form intricate decorative
patterns in the complex’s largest dome.
The Córdoba Mezquita (Spanish, “mosque”) typifies Islamic architecture both in its conformity to
the basic principles of mosque design and in its incorporation of distinctive regional forms.
Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
E a r ly isl a mic a rT
Islamic influence and power end in Iberia. That year the army of King
Ferdinand II of Aragon (r. 1479–1516) and Queen Isabella, the sponsors of Columbus’s voyage to the New World, overthrew the caliphs
of Granada. In the East, the Muslims reached the Indus River by 751.
Only in Anatolia did stubborn Byzantine resistance slow their advance. Relentless Muslim pressure against the shrinking Byzantine
Empire eventually brought about its collapse in 1453, when the Ottoman Turks entered Constantinople (see Chapter 9).
Military might alone cannot, however, account for the irresistible and far-ranging sweep of Islam from Arabia to India to North
Africa and Spain (map 10-1). That Islam endured in the lands
Muhammad’s successors conquered can be explained only by the
nature of the Islamic faith and its appeal to millions of converts.
Islam remains today one of the world’s great religions, with adherents on all continents. Its sophisticated culture has had a major
influence around the globe. Arab scholars laid the foundations of
arithmetic and algebra and made significant contributions to astronomy, medicine, and the natural sciences. During the 12th and
13th centuries, Christian scholars in the West eagerly studied Arabic translations of Aristotle and other ancient Greek writers. Arabic love lyrics and poetic descriptions of nature inspired the early
French troubadours.
The religion of Islam arose in Arabia early in the seventh century,
after the Prophet Muhammad began to receive God’s revelations (see
“Muhammad and Islam,” page 285). At that time, the Arabs were
not major players on the world stage. Yet within little more than a
century, the eastern Mediterranean, which Byzantium once ringed
and ruled, had become an Islamic lake, and the armies of Muhammad’s successors had subdued the Middle East, long the seat of Persian dominance and influence. The swiftness of the Islamic advance
is among the wonders of history. By 640, Muslims ruled Syria, Palestine, and Iraq. In 642, the Byzantine army abandoned Alexandria, marking the Muslim conquest of Lower (northern) Egypt. In
651, Islamic forces ended more than 400 years of Sasanian rule in
Iran (see Chapter 2). All of North Africa was under Muslim control
by 710. A victory at Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain in 711
seemed to open all of western Europe to the Muslims. By 732, they
had advanced north to Poitiers in France. There, however, an army of
Franks under Charles Martel (r. 714–741), the grandfather of Charlemagne, opposed them successfully (see Chapter 11), halting Islamic
expansion at the Pyrenees. In Spain, in contrast, the Muslim rulers
of Córdoba (fig. 10-1) flourished until 1031, and not until 1492 did
ee s
Constantinople
(Istanbul)
Tig Tabriz
r
Ardabil
Eup
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Kairouan
S Y RI A
t es R Samarra
Cyprus
T UN ISIA Me d i t e rranean Se a
. Baghdad
Damascus
Kashan
I RAQ Ctesiphon
Jerusalem
Isfahan
Babylon
Alexandria
Kufa
Mshatta
I RAN
Cairo
TURKEY
Córdoba
Granada
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Strait of
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Ni
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Herat
Kirman
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Medina
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Mecca
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1000 kilometers
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Samarqand
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IT A LY
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Ca
Poitiers Ravenna
P y ren
In
Toul
FR A N CE
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
R.
ine
Rh
GER M A N Y
I N DI A
a
The Islamic world after the capture of
Constantinople from Byzantium in 1453 and
the fall of Granada to the Christians in 1492
Former Muslim territories
Arabian
Sea
n
f Ade
Gulf o
ger R.
Ni
Map 10-1 The Islamic world around 1500.
WCL1 14 Map 13-1
The Islamic World around 1500
Second proof
T h e I s l a m I c Wo r ld
622
756
❙❙ Muhammad abandons Mecca for
Medina, 622
❙❙ Abbasids produce earliest Korans with
Kufic calligraphy
❙❙ Umayyads (r. 661–750), the first Islamic
dynasty, build Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem
and Great Mosque in Damascus
❙❙ Spanish Umayyad dynasty builds Great
Mosque in capital of Córdoba
❙❙ Nasrids embellish Alhambra with
magnificent palaces
❙❙ Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk dynasties
in Egypt are lavish art patrons
1453
1924
❙❙ Ottomans capture Byzantine Constantinople
in 1453 and develop the domed centralplan mosque
❙❙ Flowering of Timurid book illumination
under Shah Tahmasp
❙❙ Safavid artisans perfect the manufacture
of cuerda seca and mosaic tiles
Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
.
religion and mythology
muhammad and islam
m
uhammad, revered by Muslims as the Final Prophet in the
line including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, was a native of
Mecca on the west coast of Arabia. Born around 570 into a family
of merchants in the great Arabian caravan trade, Muhammad was
critical of the polytheistic religion of his fellow Arabs. In 610, he
began to receive the revelations of God through the archangel Gabriel. Opposition to Muhammad’s message among the Arabs was
strong and led to persecution. In 622, the Prophet and his followers abandoned Mecca for a desert oasis eventually called Medina
(“City of the Prophet”). Islam dates its beginnings from this flight,
known as the Hijra (emigration).* Barely eight years later, in 630,
Muhammad returned to Mecca with 10,000 soldiers. He took control of the city, converted the population to Islam, and destroyed
all the idols. But he preserved as the Islamic world’s symbolic center the small cubical building that had housed the idols, the Kaaba
(from the Arabic for “cube”). The Arabs associated the Kaaba with
the era of Abraham and Ishmael, the common ancestors of Jews
and Arabs. Muhammad died in Medina in 632.
The essential tenet of Islam is acceptance of and submission to
God’s will. Muslims must live according to the rules laid down in the
collected revelations communicated through Muhammad during
his lifetime. The Koran, Islam’s sacred book, codified by the Muslim
ruler Uthman (r. 644–656), records Muhammad’s revelations. The
word “Koran” means “recitations”—a reference to Gabriel’s instructions to Muhammad in 610 to “recite in the name of God.” The Koran is composed of 114 surahs (chapters) divided into verses.
The profession of faith in the one God is the first of five obligations binding all Muslims. In addition, the faithful must worship
five times daily facing Mecca, give alms to the poor, fast during the
month of Ramadan, and once in a lifetime—if possible—make a
pilgrimage to Mecca. The revelations in the Koran are not the only
guide for Muslims. Muhammad’s words and exemplary ways and
customs, the Hadith, recorded in the Sunnah, offer models to all
Muslims on ethical problems of everyday life. The reward for the
faithful is Paradise.
Islam has much in common with Judaism and Christianity.
Muslims think of their religion as a continuation, a completion,
and in some sense a reformation of those other great monotheisms.
Islam, for example, incorporates many Old Testament teachings,
with their sober ethical standards and rejection of idol worship.
But, unlike Jesus in the New Testament Gospels, Muhammad did
not claim to be divine. Rather, he was God’s messenger, the Final
Prophet, who purified and perfected the common faith of Jews,
Christians, and Muslims in one God. Islam also differs from Judaism and Christianity in its simpler organization. Muslims worship
God directly, without a hierarchy of rabbis, priests, or saints acting
as intermediaries.
In Islam, as Muhammad defined it, the union of religious and
secular authority was even more complete than in Byzantium.
Muhammad established a new social order, replacing the Arabs’
old decentralized tribal one, and took complete charge of his community’s temporal as well as spiritual affairs. After Muhammad’s
death, the caliphs (from the Arabic for “successor”) continued this
practice of uniting religious and political leadership in one ruler.
*Muslims date events beginning with the Hijra in the same way Christians
reckon events from Christ’s birth and the Romans before them began their
calendar with Rome’s founding by Romulus and Remus in 753 bce. The
Muslim year is, however, a 354-day year of 12 lunar months, and thus dates
cannot be converted by simply adding 622 to Christian-era dates.
architecture
During the early centuries of Islamic history, the Muslim world’s
political and cultural center was the Fertile Crescent of ancient
Mesopotamia. The caliphs of Damascus (capital of modern Syria)
and Baghdad (capital of Iraq) appointed provincial governors to
rule the vast territories they controlled. These governors eventually
gained relative independence by setting up dynasties in various territories and provinces, including the Umayyads in Syria (661–750)
and in Spain (756–1031), the Abbasids in Iraq (750–1258, largely
nominal after 945), the Samanids in Uzbekistan (819–1005), the
Fatimids in Egypt (909–1171), and others.
Like other potentates before and after, the Muslim caliphs were
builders on a grand scale. The first Islamic buildings, both religious
and secular, are in the Middle East, but important early examples
of Islamic architecture still stand also in North Africa, Spain, and
Central Asia.
dome of The Rock The first great Islamic building
was the Dome of the Rock (fig. 10-2) in Jerusalem. The Muslims
had taken the city from the Byzantines in 638, and the Umayyad
caliph Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705) erected the monumental shrine
between 687 and 692 as an architectural tribute to the triumph of
Islam. The Dome of the Rock marked the coming of the new religion to the city that had been, and still is, sacred to both Jews and
10-2 Aerial view (looking east) of the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, 687–692.
Abd al-Malik built the Dome of the Rock to mark the triumph of Islam in
Jerusalem on a site sacred to Muslims, Christians, and Jews. The shrine
takes the form of an octagon with a towering dome.
early Islamic art
Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
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