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The Rise of Islam 570-1350 A.D.
In the early seventh century a vital new religion, Islam, burst out of the Arabian
Peninsula and onto the stage of world history. Islam united the nomadic tribes of
Arabia and inspired the development of a vibrant civilization. By the 700s the
followers of Islam had spread their religion and culture throughout much of
Southwest Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe.
[Timeline]
Birth of Muhammad c.570 ; 622 the hijra, migration to Mecca, marks the
beginning of the Muslim calendar; 632 Muhammad's death and the beginning of
the Caliphate; 661the Umayyad dynasty begins with new capital at Damascus;
711-716 Muslim Arabs and Berbers conquer Spain; 732 defeat in the battle of
Tours marked the end of the Arab advance into northern Europe; 750 "revolution"
ushers in Abbasid dynasty which moves the capital to newly built Baghdad; 786809 reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid the height of Abbasid empire; 1253 Mongol
invasion destroys Baghdad and puts an end to the Caliphate.
God is great! God is great! Come to salvation, come to prayer! There is no God
but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God! Five times a day in countries
throughout the world, these words ring out, summoning people to pray. An
estimated 950 million people1 answer the call, including more than 4 million in
the United States.2 These are the followers of the Prophet Muhammad, an Arab
merchant who began to preach a message of religious renewal to the people of the
Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century. He called it Islam, which means
"submission" to the Will of God. Muhammad taught his followers to worship the
one true God, or Allah in Arabic, and to treat each other as brothers and sisters in
a new community of believers. Muhammad converted many Arabs to Islam before
his death in 632. After his death, his followers, known as Muslims, carried Islam
with them out of Arabia as they created a new world empire. In less than 200
years, Islamic civilization stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of
China, and from southern Europe to the middle of Africa. Throughout this vast
expanse of territory, Islam brought together the cultural achievements of all its
diverse peoples in a burst of creativity. Under the inspiration of Islam, a brilliant
new civilization flourished for over a thousand years.
1
Statistical Abstract of the United States 1992 (p. 60) lists 950,726,000
Muslims around the world in 1991. However, it gives a figure of
2,642,000 for the number of Muslims in "Northern America." See next
footnote. (It lists its source as 1992 Brittanica Yearbook, which is the
source for the next fact.)
2 1992 Brittanica Book of the Year (p. 725) lists Muslims as 1.9% of the
U.S. population in 1990. Statistical Abstracts (p. 8) lists the 1990 U.S.
population as 248,709,873. (248,709,873)(.019) = 4,725,487.
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Section 1
The Development of Islam
In 610 A.D. the prophet Muhammad began to receive a series of revelations that
would become the foundation of the faith of Islam. Renowned for his piety and
wisdom, for the remainder of his life Muhammad spread his message to the
Arabs. By the time of his death in 632, virtually every tribe in the Arabian
Peninsula had enlisted under the banners of Islam and given their allegiance to
its prophet.
GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
The Arabian Peninsula—a vast plain of deserts and small mountains—lies across
the Red Sea from the northeastern coast of Africa. It stretches about 1,400 miles
from the Syrian Desert in the north to the Arabian Sea in the south and about
1,200 miles from the Red Sea on the west to the Persian Gulf on the east. While
the majority of the peninsula is desert, the southwest corner, known as Yemen,
has fertile mountain lands and good ports.
Agriculture and trade in the southwest. As early as the twelfth century B.C.
people in Yemen created wealthy kingdoms based on agriculture and trade. They
built great dams and irrigation networks to grow wheat and other crops. The
Yemeni also extracted tree sap to get frankincense and myrrh, resins used for
incense. Traders grew wealthy exporting myrrh, frankincense, and spices such as
cinnamon, which were valued in Africa, Southwest Asia, and Europe.
Over time, the merchants and rulers of Yemen also came to control the
trade in spices and silks between Asia, India, and the Mediterranean. This trade
made them fabulously wealthy. Such wealth attracted the attention of other
kingdoms. The country was invaded at various times by Ethiopians, Romans,
Persians, and Byzantines. Both trade and conquest exposed Yemen to many new
ideas and cultures. It became home to many religions, each with its own temples
and priests. These influences made Yemen a center of great cultural diversity from
which new ideas spread along the trade routes.
Oases, towns, and deserts. In much of the rest of the peninsula, the merciless
glare of the desert sun and the lack of water prevented people from growing crops.
In this harsh environment, most people survived by herding animals. Called
Bedouin, they lived in tents and moved from place to place, herding sheep, goats,
and camels. Since struggle over water rights and livestock was a way of life in the
harsh conditions of the desert, the Bedouin were mobile, armed, and used to
fighting.
Some Bedouin settled in oases, shady areas with water sources, where they
could grow crops such as grain and dates. In some oases, especially along trade
routes, towns sprang up. The northwestern Arabian town of Yathrib, for example,
was located in an oasis with fertile soil that produced large date crops. Within the
oasis lived farmers and herders. In the town lived merchants and craftsmen
serving the caravan trade between Yemen and the Mediterranean.
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Some Bedouin came to depend entirely on the caravan trade for their
living. South of Yathrib, in a rocky valley about 30 miles from the Red Sea, local
Bedouins and immigrants from Yemen turned the town of Mecca into a major
caravan center. Although Mecca had not been built in a fertile oasis, it was located
near the intersection of two trade routes and controlled the well of Zamzam. It was
also the site of an area that many surrounding peoples believed to be sacred.
Meccans lived by supplying the caravan trade and the pilgrims who came to pray
at the sacred site. 1
Relations between the nomadic Bedouin and the people of the towns and
oases could be uneasy-- the nomads were likely to raid both. Often, however,
merchants and Bedouin would reach an agreement. Merchants would pay for
"protection" and market the Bedouin’s fine leather goods, rugs, and woven cloth.
ARAB SOCIETY AND CULTURE
Bedouin culture influenced the political and social organization of Arabia. Like
the Bedouin, all Arabs organized themselves into clans and tribes. They cherished
family relationships because people depended on families for survival. "Take for
thy brother whom thou wilt in the days of peace," went one Arab verse, "But
know that when fighting comes thy kinsman alone is near."2 Arab society was
also paternalistic. Fathers made important decisions within the family and took
part in politics. Male clan leaders advised the shaykh, the leader of the tribe, but
all the men of the tribe often made major decisions in a kind of tribal democracy.
Women rarely took part in politics although their advice was often sought
on important community issues. Women's primary role was that of mother. They
also contributed to the group through such activities as spinning and weaving.
Although Arab society was paternalistic, women had considerable freedom. In
towns they could own property and businesses. In the desert, some tribes allowed
women to have more than one husband, just as men could have more than one
wife.
Arab values reflected their struggle for survival in a harsh environment.
They prized above all loyalty, honor, courage and generosity. Arab leaders
displayed loyalty and generosity by giving feasts and presents to their followers.
For poorer members of society, such generosity in times of want could mean the
difference between life and death. Hospitality to guests was also a matter of honor
and sacred obligation.
As Arabs settled down in the relative security of towns and oases, tightly
knit tribal organization became less essential for survival. Tribal loyalties began to
give way to those of immediate family and clan. Growing wealth and the
accumulation of private property that was part of merchant life also caused
1
On pre-Islamic Mecca see Mahmood Ibrahim, "Social and Economic
Conditions in Pre-Islamic Mecca," International Journal of Middle East
Studies (IJMES), vol. 14 no. 3, August 1982, pp. 343-358. Also see
article in Gibb and KJramers, eds., Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam,
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, and E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1965.
2R.A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, p. 84.
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changes. Inheritance disputes could cause conflict within families. As clans vied
for power, tribal loyalties were often forgotten.
In Mecca, for example, strife among the different clans of the ruling
Quraish tribe became particularly intense in the last half of the sixth century. The
Umayyad clan displaced others as its members sought to control trade and town
government. Such rivalry, however, increased people's sense of insecurity. As they
struggled to recover a sense of personal security, new ideas began to circulate.
THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD
In 613, Muhammad, a member of a relatively poor clan of the ruling tribe, began
to preach an especially powerful set of new ideas in Mecca. Muhammad had been
born in Mecca around 570. His early life was not easy. His merchant father died
before he was born, and his mother died when he was six. His grandfather, and an
uncle, Abu Talib, raised him. As a young man, Muhammad became the manager
of a caravan business owned by Khadija, a wealthy widow. At the age of 25, he
married Khadija, who was 15 years older. They had three sons and four daughters,
but experienced tragedy as all but one daughter, Fatima, died young.
In his early years, Muhammad may have practiced the religious traditions
of his city. Although some wandering Arab holy men had already begun to preach
the existence of only one god, most people in Arabia were polytheists. They
worshipped their gods and goddesses at special shrines. One of the most important
shrines, the Kaaba, was in Mecca. Many people journeyed there every year, even
setting aside blood feuds to trade and worship. As a caravan manager traveling the
trade routes, Muhammad also probably became familiar with Jewish and Christian
ideas. Perhaps around the campfires at night, with the stars shining brilliantly
above in the desert sky, Muhammad heard Jewish and Christian merchants telling
stories from the Torah and the Gospels.
From the time he was young, Muhammad often escaped the crowded life
of Mecca by going to the nearby hills to pray and meditate. One day, when he was
about 40, he went to meditate in a cave among the hills. Suddenly, in the silence
of the cave, according to the Muslim tradition, he heard a voice commanding him,
"Recite! Recite!" Startled, Muhammad asked what he was to recite. The voice
answered:
"Recite: in the name of thy Lord who
created,
created man of a blood-clot.
Recite: and thy Lord is the most
bountiful,
who taught by the pen,
taught man what he knew not."3
After arguing a bit with the voice, which identified itself as the angel Gabriel,
Muhammad agreed to carry the message to others. Over the next twenty-two
3
Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples. Warner Books, New
York, 1991. From the Qur'an, 96: 1-8.
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years, he received many more revelations, which became the Qur'an, the holy
book of Islam.
Muhammad's message. Muhammad's earliest revelations contained two simple
messages. First, there was only one God: "Say God is One; God the Eternal: He
did not beget and is not begotten, and no one is equal to Him." Second, those who
accepted God's message must obey his will. In doing so they formed a special
community, the umma, in which all believers were equals. They must look out for
each other, especially the weak or needy.
To the Arabs who worshipped many gods, Muhammad's message was
radical. Although called Allah, the name of one of the Arabs' most important
gods, Muhammad 's God was the God of the Christians and Jews. Muhammad
believed that just as God had sent his divine message to humanity through
prophets, including Abraham and Jesus, God was sending new revelations through
him.
The flight from Mecca. As Muhammad preached these revolutionary ideas of
social equality and monotheism, the merchant rulers of Mecca became alarmed.
Muhammad’s claim that all the faithful belonged to a single Islamic community
seemed to threaten tribal and clan authority. His rejection of polytheism also
seemed to a threat to those who profited from the annual pilgrimages to the Ka`ba.
The rulers of Mecca soon began to harass the prophet and his small band of
followers.
Meanwhile, however, Muhammad's reputation for both piety and justice
spread beyond Mecca. Nearly 10 years after he had begun preaching in Mecca, a
delegation of tribesmen from Yathrib asked him to settle in their city and serve as
a kind of arbitrator or referee among the feuding tribes of the oasis. With the
Meccan leaders growing increasingly hostile to the umma, in 622, Muhammad
accepted the offer and traveled to Yathrib with many of his followers. This
journey became known in Islamic history as the hijra, the flight, or migration.
Muhammad's arrival in Yathrib marked an important milestone in Islamic
history. In Yathrib, he governed as both a spiritual and a political leader. Yathrib
itself was renamed Medina, or Medinat al-Nabi, the City of the Prophet. Later,
Muslims marked the year of the hijra as the beginning of the Islamic calendar. In
Mecca, Muhammad had emphasized that he was continuing the tradition of
Jewish and Christian prophecy. When Jewish tribes in Medina refused to
acknowledge him as a prophet, however, he moved away from Jewish and
Christian practices. Instead of facing their holy city of Jerusalem while praying,
for example, in Medina a new revelation commanded the Muslims to face Mecca
and the Kaaba instead.
From Medina, Muhammad began to convert the desert tribes. With their
help, the Muslims also began to raid the Meccans’ caravans. In 630, after several
years of warfare, Mecca gave in and opened its gates to the prophet. The Meccans
too now accepted the new faith. Muhammad destroyed the pagan idols in the
Kaaba so that Muslims could make the pilgrimage to worship God there as
commanded by the revelations. After this victory, most of the Arabian tribes
acknowledged Muhammad's leadership and the power of Islam. By the time of his
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death, in 632 at his home in Medina, the Prophet had laid the groundwork for a
new religion that would soon spread from Arabia to the rest of the world.
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Section 2
The Expansion of Islam
United under the banner of the prophet Muhammad and his message of religious
renewal, the Muslims spread out from their Arabian homeland into surrounding
regions. Byzantium, Persia, parts of Europe and India all felt the effects of the
sword of Islam. By the early eighth century, the Islamic empire stretched from the
Atlantic Ocean to the Indus River and from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.
THE CALIPHATE
Muhammad's death created a crisis. In addition to the question of choosing a
successor, his followers in Medina had to deal with the potential collapse of the
fledgling Islamic state. Many of the desert tribes had converted to Islam only out
of a personal sense of loyalty to Muhammad. Such arrangements made sense
under the Bedouin code of honor. His death, they believed, released them from
their allegiance. As the tribes fell away from Islam, the Faithful in Medina had to
decide what to do.
The search for Muhammad's successor caused rifts among his followers. In
keeping with traditional Arab views on hereditary leadership, some preferred his
cousin, Ali, Muhammad’s closest male heir who had also married the Prophet’s
daughter Fatima. Ali was still relatively young, however, and some older leaders
feared he was too hot-headed and impetuous to lead the community wisely. Many
also argued that the egalitarian nature of Islam and the umma did not support the
concept of a dynastic leadership. In the end, they chose Abu Bakr, Muhammad's
oldest friend and one of his first converts.
Since the Qur’an had said that Muhammad would be the last prophet, Abu
Bakr could not rule as Muhammad had by receiving divine revelations. He and all
subsequent leaders of the umma were not prophets, but caliphs, or "deputies" of
the Prophet. They ruled according to the Qur’an and Muhammad’s example.
Spiritual and secular authority, though no longer identical as they had been under
Muhammad, remained close, as this Muslim saying demonstrates:
Islam, the government, and the people are like the tent, the pole, the ropes,
and the pegs. The tent is Islam; the pole is the government; the ropes and
pegs are the people. None will do without the others.
As caliph, Abu Bakr moved quickly to force the wayward bedouin tribes
back to Islam. In a series of campaigns over the next year, he brought all of Arabia
back under the Prophet's standard. In the process he forged several strong new
armies under experienced amirs, or military commanders.
As the tribes returned to Islam, Abu Bakr needed some way to channel
them away from their traditional habits of fighting one another. Muslims were not
supposed to fight fellow Muslims. He also needed to give them something to do
before they revolted against Medina's rule again. A remedy lay close at hand. As
the rebellions in Arabia came to an end, the caliph sent his armies, which now
included the reconverted tribesmen, north into Iraq and Syria against the Persians
and Byzantines.
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ISLAMIC EXPANSION
Weakness in the Persian and Byzantine empires aided Muslim expansion. Both
empires were exhausted from years of fighting one other. In addition, people in
Syria and Iraq were culturally and ethnically related to the Arabs themselves.
Although mostly Christian, they had more in common with the invading Muslims
than with their own rulers. In fact, the Byzantine emperors considered most
Syrians to be heretics. The imperial government had recently raised taxes in Syria
and abolished an old tax exemption for southern border tribes protecting the
frontier. These tribes promptly joined the Muslims.
Umar. By Abu Bakr's death in 634, his armies had conquered most of Syria, Iraq,
and southern Persia. On his deathbed Abu Bakr chose Umar, another of
Muhammad's closest companions, to succeed him. According to Islamic tradition,
Umar was the perfect example of what a caliph should be, devout and personally
modest. Visitors to his capital were sometimes astonished at the state in which
they found the caliph of all Islam at the height of his power: "a man clad only in a
loin-cloth and a short cloak, in which he had wrapped his head, driving the camels
into the enclosure." 3
Umar continued Abu Bakr's policy of military expansion. In doing so he
laid the foundations for the new state. Signifying his military intent, he assumed
the title Amir al-Mu'minin, or Commander of the Faithful. He established a
national register, listing every man, woman, and child of Arabia. Each person was
assigned a specified share in the wealth of the umma as they or members of their
families enlisted in the armies and joined the conquests. Thousands of Arabs
flocked to the armies to qualify for the new military allowances.
Military conquests and government. Umar's policies led to the rapid expansion
of the Islamic empire. After an initial setback, in 636 an Arab army defeated
Persian forces at Kadisiya in southern Iraq. Shortly thereafter the Arabs captured
the winter capital of the Persian Empire and with it all of Iraq. After a further
series of battles, in 642 the armies of Islam achieved a devastating blow, which
the Arabs called the Victory of Victories, against the Persian army. Soon all Persia
had been overrun.
To the west the story was the same. The great imperial armies of the
Byzantine emperor Heraclius proved no match for the highly mobile Bedouin
forces. In 635 the Byzantines surrendered Damascus, the capital of Syria, to the
victorious warriors of Islam. In 638 the Arabs took Jerusalem, the third holy city
of Islam, after Mecca and Medina. In 639 another Arab army invaded the
Byzantine province of Egypt. By 642 Islam had added the Nile Valley to its list of
conquests. In little more than a decade, the Arab warriors had carved out a new
empire for themselves and their new religion.4
3
al-Tabari, quoted by Nicholson, Literary History of the Arabs,
Cambridge university Press, Cambridge, 1969, p. 185. For the
4 Ibid, passim.
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Throughout the conquered lands the Arabs became a new warrior elite. To
keep themselves separate from their new subjects, they built huge military camps.
Eventually these camps became the foundations for new Islamic cities. The most
famous were Kufa and Basra in Iraq and Cairo in Egypt.
Booty and taxes from the conquered peoples were sent back to Medina.
All Muslims should have shared equally in the wealth, but Umar decreed that the
earlier a family had converted, the greater their share should be. Those who had
migrated with Muhammad from Mecca to Medina and the prophet’s own family
and descendants got the most. A new Islamic aristocracy thus began to emerge.
The conquests of Islam represented a mass movement of the newly united
Arabs out of the relative poverty of Arabia into the wealthier surrounding
civilizations. In these early years of expansion, religious conversion was not a
major priority. In fact, both religious and administrative factors may actually have
discouraged the conversion of conquered peoples.
The Qur'an had given special recognition to Jews, Christians, and other
peoples with a written scripture, calling them ahl al-kitab, or “People of the
Book.” Once conquered, they were to be "protected peoples," called dhimmis.
They paid for this protection, however. Where Muslims paid the zakat, or alms for
the poor, dhimmis paid a larger tax called the jizya. Dhimmis also had to continue
paying the old Byzantine and Persian taxes, which Umar had redirected into the
Islamic treasury. As converts they would have to pay only the zakat, thus reducing
the umma's revenues. Consequently, conversion was not encouraged.5
DIVISIONS WITHIN ISLAM
In 644, a Persian slave stabbed Umar to settle a vendetta. As he lay dying, the
caliph appointed a small group of men to choose his successor. Bypassing Ali
once again, they decided on another of Muhammad's earliest converts, Uthman.
Known for his piety, Uthman was also a member of the powerful
Umayyad clan of the Meccan ruling tribe of Quraish. The Umayyads had been
among Muhammad's worst enemies in Mecca. They had converted to Islam, but
only under pressure. Uthman, an old man, became a tool in the hands of his more
ambitious clan members. Soon the old ruling elite of Mecca had reasserted
themselves in the new Islamic empire.
After Uthman's election as caliph tensions began to build among the
Muslims. Many accused Uthman of favoring his own family and clan members.
The Umayyads themselves began to act like the pre-Islamic Arab aristocracy,
emphasizing old bedouin values of personal and family honor. As dissatisfaction
grew, rebellious forces from the army in Egypt marched against Medina and
assassinated Uthman in 656. In reaction against the Umayyads, Ali was at last
chosen as caliph.
5
For the status of people of the book and dhimmis see articles in
H.A.R.Gibb and J.H.Kramers, eds., Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam,
Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1965. For Umar's role in e4stablishing
the foundations of the new system see any of the above texts dealing
with the caliphate.
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The Umayyads did not give up power easily. On Uthman's death, his
cousin Mu'awiyah, the governor of Syria, became head of the clan. Mu'awiyah
claimed that Ali had taken part in the plot to assassinate Uthman and was
therefore unfit to guide the umma. Supported by Syrian Arab tribes, Mu'awiyah
claimed the caliphate for himself. Civil war engulfed Islam. By 657 the tide of
battle had turned in Ali's favor. Mu'awiyah called for a negotiated peace. Ali
agreed, but many of his own followers turned against him for failing to finish off
the rebels. The war dragged on until 661 when Ali was assassinated by one of his
own former supporters. Mu'awiyah assumed sole power.
Although most Muslims accepted Mu’awiyah and remained Sunni,
meaning followers of the Sunna, or way of the Prophet, Ali's supporters did not.
They became known as Shi'ites, from the term Shi'at Ali, or Party of Ali. Shi’ites
believed that Ali's descendants were specially blessed by God because they were
the true heirs of the Prophet Muhammad. The Shi'ites called Ali's successors
imams, a term that had been used to mean the leader of the Friday prayers. For
Shi'ites, the imams were the only ones who could interpret the Qur'an. Although
they never ruled, for Shi'ites they remained the legitimate authority in Islam. Some
extreme Shi'ites even believed that the imams received divine revelations that
overrode the Qur'an.
THE UMAYYAD DYNASTY
Mu'awiya's reign as caliph marked the beginning of the Umayyad dynasty and the
resurgence of the older Arab society over the new Islamic society. Early Umayyad
caliphs ruled more like desert chieftains than religious leaders. Because power
meant more to the Umayyads than piety, they moved their capital from Medina to
Damascus, which was closer to their supporters among the Syrian Arab tribes.
Damascus was also a more convenient location from which to rule their
expanding empire.
Despite their power, however, in Damascus many Umayyads at first
longed for the freedom of life in Arabia. One of Mu'awiya's wives, a bedouin
named Maysun, lamented the change in verse:
"A tent with rustling breezes cool
Delights me more than palaces high,
And more the cloak of simple wool
Than robes in which I learned to sigh.
The crust I ate beside my tent
Was more than this fine bread to me;
The wind's voice where the hill-path went
Was more than tambourine can be."6
Over time, however, the Umayyads could not escape being influenced by
Byzantine civilization in Syria, particularly as they adopted the old Byzantine
bureaucracy to rule their empire.
6
Quoted in Nicholson, Literary History of the Arabs, p. 195.
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Umayyad expansion. With power and wealth as their primary goal, the
Umayyads continued to expand the empire. In the east their armies reached deep
into central Asia. They conquered many Turkish tribes and eventually came into
contact with the T'ang Empire of China. They also conquered the kingdoms of
northwestern India. From Syria the Umayyads took to the sea and soon dominated
the eastern Mediterranean with its important trade routes. Sicily became a major
Islamic center, as did most of the other islands of the Mediterranean. Umayyad
forces even besieged Constantinople, though without success. However, they also
sent armies west, conquering the Byzantine provinces in North Africa.
Beyond Tunisia they were temporarily halted by the Berbers, a North
African people much like the pre-Islamic Bedouin. In 682, however, Muslim
forces reached the Atlantic Ocean. Eventually the Berbers converted to Islam, and
in 711 a combined Arab and Berber army began the rapid conquest of Spain. By
732 they had swept across the Pyrenees into France, where Frankish forces near
the city of Tours stopped a small Muslim raiding force.
Although later European accounts would mark this as a major defeat for
the Muslims, in fact it was only a minor engagement from their perspective.
Islamic forces remained in southern France for many years. However, the
Muslims were used to the deserts and high plains of the Middle East, Africa, and
Spain. They found central and northern France too cold, wet, and dark. The
landscape did not favor their methods of warfare, which depended on the use of
light cavalry. Camels died from the cold and the light, wiry horses of Arabia were
not bred for the muddy fields or forests of northern Europe. Nor did these regions
favor the agricultural techniques and crops with which the Muslim world was
familiar. Eventually the Muslims withdrew behind the Pyrenees into the friendlier
sunlit plains of Spain.
The fall of the Umayyads. As Umayyad power grew, many of the newly
conquered peoples began to see advantages in converting to Islam. The
Umayyads, however, were determined to maintain the separate status of the Arabs
themselves as a ruling elite. So they insisted that non-Arab converts must become
clients, or mawalis, of Arab tribes. Soon, Islamic society consisted of two classes:
Arab conquerors and second-class mawalis. Below both Arabs and mawalis were
Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Zoroastrians who had chosen not to convert.
The mawalis resented their second-class status. They expected to be
treated equally according to the teachings of the Qur'an. Arab opponents of the
Umayyads used this discontent and that of the Shi'ites to foster a revolution. In
750 a new dynasty came to power: the Abbasids, who claimed descent from the
prophet's uncle Abbas.
THE ABBASID CALIPHATE
To overthrow the Umayyads, the Abbasids had relied upon the discontented
mawalis and the Shi'ites. The main source of power for both groups lay in
southern Iraq and in Persia, especially the province of Khorasan in northeastern
Iran. The Shi'ites had expected a descendant of Ali to assume the caliphate. But
soon the Abbasids turned on their Shi'ite supporters and drove them into
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opposition again. To be close to their supporters and keep an eye on their new
enemies, the Abbasids moved the capital. On the banks of the Tigris River they
built a great new imperial city, Baghdad.
The move to Baghdad marked the end of Arab dominance of the Islamic
empire and the beginning of Persian influence. The caliphs no longer sat in tribal
council as they had done even under the early Umayyads. Instead, they adopted
the Persian style and ruled as semi-divine leaders. They were enthroned in
majesty, generally behind a magnificently carved screen or embroidered curtain so
that their subjects could not see them. Nearby stood the official executioner with
sword and a circle of leather for those condemned by the caliph to kneel on. A
new official title proclaimed the caliph's status as the "Shadow of God on Earth".
Distrusting the Arab tribes, the Abbasids resurrected the old Persian
bureaucracy and relied increasingly on non-Arabs and even non-Muslims.
Specialized government departments headed by viziers, or “deputies”, oversaw
affairs of state. To keep in touch with the empire, the Abbasids repaired the major
roads. Rejecting the Umayyad emphasis on the Arab nature of Islam, the Abbasids
appealed to all members of the umma for support. From an elite religion of the
Arabian conquerors, they now worked to make Islam truly universal, the basis of
their rule as caliphs.
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Section 3
The Development of Islamic Civilization
The rule of the Abbasids marked a high point of Islamic learning and culture.
Beginning in 750, the Abbasids turned Islam into a truly universal creed. NonArabs began to be treated as full members of the umma. During these years
Muslim philosophy, science, and mathematics outshone the scholarship of other
empires. Inspired by Islam and funded by the empire's wealth, architecture, the
arts, and literature reached new heights. Although the Abbasids were unable to
maintain the political unity of the Islamic world Islamic culture continued to
flourish and to spread through trade and commerce.
DEVELOPMENTS IN ISLAM
As early as Umar's reign as caliph, the Muslim community had struggled to
understand what exactly their religious duties should be. Although Muhammad
had received revelations, he had not made any effort to codify them or to develop
a systematic religious practice for all Muslims to follow. In fact, many revelations
were received as answers to particular problems that arose in the umma.
Consequently, during Muhammad's lifetime Islamic practices remained fairly
fluid. With the prophet's death, however, revelation ceased. His successors
therefore tried to codify existing Islamic practices and make them more uniform.
Five pillars of Islam. The most important duties expected of Muslims had been
laid down in the Quran and were practiced by the prophet himself. They became
known as the Five Pillars of Islam. They commanded Muslims: (1) to say the
shahadah, the confession of faith, "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is
the Messenger of God"; (2) to pray five times a day; (3) to pay a special tax, the
zakat, to support poor members of the umma; (4) to fast during the holy month of
Ramadan; and (5) to make the hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca at least once if
possible.
There were other requirements as well. For example, Muslims were
forbidden to eat certain kinds of food, like pork. They could not drink wine or
other alcoholic beverages. They were encouraged to free their slaves, and required
to treat them humanely if they did not. No Muslim could be enslaved, and the
children of slaves who had converted to Islam were therefore free.
Islam also established a new ethical and moral standard for relations
between men and women. Men could have no more than four wives, but only on
the condition that they treated each one exactly equally with the others. Women
on the other hand were restricted to one husband. Reinforcing the stability of the
extended family, the Qur'an laid down specific rules of inheritance, as well as
women's right to own property.
One important requirement, sometimes called the sixth pillar of Islam, was
jihad. Europeans who were threatened by the advancing Islamic armies later
translated this term as "holy war", but a more correct translation might be
"struggle for the faith." This could mean fighting and dying for Islam, in which
case the Muslim warrior would achieve immediate salvation. However, it could
also mean the constant inner struggle people experienced in their efforts to obey
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God's will. Some early Muslim scholars distinguished between the two ideas,
calling the physical struggle the lesser jihad and the inner struggle the greater
jihad. Other scholars, however, disputed such an inner emphasis and insisted that
jihad referred to the fight to continually extend the area under Islamic rule.
The object of obeying God's will was to attain eternal salvation. Like
Judaism and Christianity, Islam saw the history of humanity and the world as
having a definite beginning and a definite end. Muhammad had preached his
message as a warning that the end was close at hand. On that final day, God would
judge all human beings. Those who had faithfully tried to obey his
commandments would be bodily resurrected and granted eternal life in paradise.
The Qur'an described paradise as a beautiful garden full of earthly delights such as
fine food and drink. Those who did not obey God, however, would suffer in a
place of eternal fire.
The ulama and Islamic law. With eternal salvation at stake, it was extremely
important for Muslims to understand exactly what God wanted them to do. Often,
however, neither the Qur'an nor Muhammad's own actions and sayings covered all
the situations in which people found themselves. After Muhammad's death,
Muslims naturally looked to the caliphs to instruct them in the faith. Under the
Umayyads, however, many devout Muslims came to distrust the caliphs' motives
and religious sincerity.
As distrust of the spiritual authority of the caliphs grew, a body of experts
gradually emerged to whom people looked instead for guidance in religious
matters. These men, known as the ulama, were not priests but religious scholars.
They specialized in studying and interpreting the Qur'an and the sayings and deeds
of the prophet. Under their guidance Islamic theology and religious practice began
to take definite shape. After the overthrow of the Umayyads, the Abbasids
patronized the ulama in an effort to make the empire more truly Islamic. At the
heart of the ulama's work was the codification of Islamic law, which was seen as
the embodiment of God's will for human beings.
Where the Umayyads had relied heavily on local and customary law to rule
their empire, the Abbasids endorsed the ulama's efforts to establish a
comprehensive and truly Islamic law code. Drawing on the Qur'an and the hadith,
a collection of sayings and actions attributed to Muhammad, the ulama developed
a full Islamic legal system, called shari'ah, to rule all Muslims. Adherence to
shari'ah soon became one of the most important elements of the Muslims' sense of
identity.
Shari'ah guided every aspect of life for Muslims. It included laws
governing religious observances, marriage, divorce, business, inheritance, and
slavery. It also defined the role and legitimacy of the state itself. Muhammad had
been both a religious and a political leader – consequently, following his example,
the Muslim community made no distinction between religion and state. Indeed,
the whole reason for the state to exist, according to the ulama, was the
enforcement of shari’ah, the holy law. Lands where it was applied became known
as Dar al-Islam, or the Abode of Islam. All other lands were known as Dar alHarb, or the Abode of War. Enforcing shari'ah thus became the hallmark of
legitimate government: for pious Muslims, any state that did not enforce shari’ah
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had to be considered illegitimate and must eventually be transformed or
overthrown.
Al-Shafi'i and the Islamic worldview. While developing the shari'ah, Muslim
scholars dealt with both theological and philosophical questions. They debated
many of the same questions that had affected Christianity. For example, scholars
disagreed over the status of the Qur'an. Eventually, most accepted it as being the
literal, divine Word of God that had existed as long as He had. One of the greatest
controversies concerned the question of free will. If God were all-knowing and
all-powerful, some scholars asked, then how could human beings do anything that
he had not already ordained? As in Christianity, such debates led to many
different conclusions.
Like Christianity too, Greek philosophy influenced the search for answers.
Muslim theologians tried to reconcile the teachings of Plato and Aristotle with the
Qur'an. The major question that arose out of these efforts was how much weight
Muslims should give to human reason to solve problems that the Qur'an and
traditions did not cover. In the early days of Islamic development, scholars
allowed for a considerable amount of human reason and interpretation. As the
Islamic world splintered, however, and political unity under a single caliph
disappeared, people found themselves uneasy about relying on their own reason to
answer major questions of life, death, and salvation.
By the 10th century, a rising sense of insecurity led many scholars to rely
primarily on a literal interpretation of the Qur'an to guide them. In cases not
covered directly by the scripture, they tried to draw analogies with cases that were.
Still, many continued to disagree on how much weight should be given to the
Qur'an, the traditions, or human reason. Eventually, most of the disputes were
resolved by the scholar al-Shafi'i.
Under al-Shafi'i, Islamic theology and law took on a distinctive shape.
Above all, he emphasized the importance of modelling human activity on the
example of the Prophet Muhammad. Human reason was allowed, but limited. The
precedents set by Muhammad, as recorded in the hadith, and the rules established
by the Qur'an thus came to dominate all Islamic thought.
Not all Muslims accepted al-Shafi'i’s practical compromise between
divine revelation and human reason, but most accepted his basic description of the
elements on which Islamic law must be founded: the Qur'an and the hadith were
the most important, followed by analogy, the consensus of the community, and
only lastly human reason. As different scholars gave a different emphasis to each
of these sources of law, four major schools of law emerged. No longer looking
forward for answers, most Muslim scholars began to look back to an imagined
golden era of early Islam.
Sufism. Where al-Shafi’i had been influenced by Greek rationalism, some
Muslims were more heavily influenced by Hindu philosophy, especially ideas
concerning meditation and contemplation of the divine. These Muslims tended to
be concerned about the growing materialism of Islamic civilization. Many of them
sought refuge in a life of simplicity and devotion to God. Greek and JudeaoChristian mystical traditions that emphasized spiritual rather than earthly
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attainment also appealed to them. All these traditions contributed to a new
movement in Islam, sufism.
Early sufism resembled the monasticism of early Christianity. Many sufis
pursued an ascetic life. Under Greek and Indian influences they soon developed a
whole new vocabulary for Islam. Many declared that their goal was union with
God. They emphasized loving God, calling him their Beloved. Some wrote
beautiful poems of devotion.
BIO One of the most famous of the early sufis was Rabi'a al-Adawiyya.
Rabi'a was born in Basra between 719 and 724. She was stolen from her parents
while still an infant and sold into slavery. According to tradition she was so
saintly and devout even as a child that her master soon freed her. She then retired
to a life of seclusion and contemplation, but her reputation caused many disciples
to seek her out. She died in Basra in 801. Rabi'a expressed her love for God in
magnificent devotional verses. 7
"In two ways have I loved Thee, selfishly,
And with a love that is worthy of Thee.
In selfish love my joy in Thee I find,
Whilst to all else, and others, I am blind.
But in that love which seeks Thee worthily,
The veil is raised that I may look on Thee.
Yet is the praise in that or this not mine,
In this and that the praise is wholly Thine."
Like other sufis, Rabi'a sought union with God: "My hope is for union with Thee,
for that is the goal of my desire....I have ceased to exist and have passed out of
self. I have become one with God and am altogether His."
At first Sufis were persecuted by more orthodox muslims. As time went
on, however, Sufism itself underwent changes. Islamic society too became ever
more diversified and consequently less hostile to the personal emphasis that
Sufism placed on religion. Finally, in the 11th century the scholar al-Ghazzali
achieved a synthesis between Sufism and Sunni Islam comparable to al-Shafi'i's
achievement in the law. Thereafter, many Sunni muslims felt free to practice
Sufism as a private and personal expression of their faith. Organized around Sufi
saints, or shaykhs, numerous sects, or tariqas, sprang up that functioned rather
like modern social or religious clubs.
SCIENCE AND LEARNING
In the ninth century, as Islamic philosophers tried to reconcile the works of Plato,
Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers with the teachings of the Qur'an, they also
became fascinated by Greek scientific works. In 830, the caliph al-Ma'mun
established a great library, known as the "House of Wisdom." The library also
7
On Rabi'a see Margaret Smith, Rabi'a the Mystic and her Fellow-saints
in Islam, Cambridge, 1928. Also see entry in Shorter Encyclopedia of
Islam, Cornell University Press. Quotations are taken from the latter, pp.
462-463.
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housed a school and a bureau of translation. Here the works of Aristotle, Plato,
Hippocrates, Galen, and others were systematically translated from Greek into
Arabic. Indian works were also translated, though less methodically. 8
Islamic scholars combined ideas from both Greek and Indian science, as
well as making their own contributions. In the 8th century they introduced the
Indian number system, including the concept of zero, into the Greek science of
mathematics. Later, they also imported the decimal system from India. The
Muslim mathematician, al-Khwarizmi, used these new tools to write a textbook
on arithmetic and what he called al-jabr, or algebra. This book became the
standard mathematics text in Europe until the 16th century. Europeans called the
new numbers it introduced "Arabic" numerals.
Muslim scientists also made great advances in astronomy. They
rediscovered the astrolabe, an instrument invented by the Greeks that allowed
observers to chart the positions of the stars, and thereby calculate their own
position on earth. Al-Ma'mun established permanent observatories outside
Baghdad and Damascus. As they learned to navigate by the stars, Muslim
merchants and explorers traveled more widely than ever. To aid them Muslim
geographers made new maps and developed more accurate ways of calculating
distances.
Perhaps the greatest Islamic contributions came in medicine. As early as
the 9th century, Muslim doctors in Baghdad had to pass rigorous medical
examinations in order to practice. They established the first school of pharmacy
and the first pharmacopoeia, a list and description of known drugs and their
effects. The caliph Harun al-Rashid founded the first public hospital in Islam, on
an old Persian model. The physician al-Razi, who became head of the Baghdad
hospital, discovered how to diagnose and treat smallpox. Another doctor, ibn-Sina
(known as Avicenna in Europe), wrote a medical encyclopedia that became the
standard text in Europe until the 17th century.
LITERATURE AND THE ARTS
Islamic rulers became great patrons of the arts, as each court tried to outdo its
rivals. Poets composed elegant poetry in both Arabic and Persian. Short stories
were also a favorite. Set in the court of Harun ar-Rashid, for example, the
folktales told by the fabled Scheherezade about Sinbad the Sailor, Aladdin, and
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves were brought together under the title The
Thousand and One Nights. The introduction of paper manufacturing from China
allowed such literary masterpieces to be published for a growing audience.
By the 9th century, a new body of literature had appeared in the form of
history. Earlier histories had chronicled events from the Prophet's life, or listed the
genealogies of the Arab tribes. The History of India, written by al-Biruni
sometime around 1000, marked a new approach. He explained his purpose in the
preface:
This is not a book of controversy and debate, putting forward the
arguments of an opponent and distinguishing what is false in them from
8
This section is drawn primarily from Hitti, The Arabs .
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what is true. It is a straightforward account, giving the statements of
Hindus and adding to them what the Greeks have said on similar subjects,
so as to make a comparison between them.9
While secular literature and poetry flourished, the Qur'an influenced other
forms of Islamic art. To prevent idol worship, the Qur'an had forbidden the
creation of images of either human beings or animals. Consequently, calligraphy,
the art of decorative writing, became a high art form. Verses from the Qur'an itself
were written down and transformed into magnificent works of art. Muslim artists
created special scripts to decorate mosques and other buildings. Qur'anic verses
were carved in stunning calligraphy on glazed tiles that shone like jewels, woven
into intricately designed carpets, and hammered into finely decorated steel blades.
Most other Islamic art avoided depicting animals or people by using only
geometric shapes or complex floral patterns. Apart from some painting and
sculpture found in the palaces of the early Umayyads, who had paid little attention
to Islamic prohibitions, the only exceptions appeared in Persia. There the preIslamic tradition of miniature paintings remained strong. Persian artists painted
legendary beasts, hunters, warriors, and historical figures in such delicate detail
that often the vibrant colors could only be applied with a single hair.
One of the most important Islamic art forms was architecture. From the
days of the Umayyads, Muslim rulers began to express their power, and their
devotion to Islam, in stone. The most important buildings at first were mosques,
places where the Muslim community gathered to pray. Soon, however, Muslim
architects were building palaces, market places, libraries, and a host of other
buildings for secular purposes.
The first mosques resembled the courtyard of Muhammad's house in
Medina, where he had led the umma in prayer. In Syria, the Umayyads had built
more elaborate structures. Perhaps the most famous, and one of the most
beautiful, is the Dome of the Rock, which they built on the sight of Solomon's
Temple in Jerusalem. The Abbasids adopted their own style, even more elaborate
than the Umayyads. They also built great palaces, set in magnificent Persian-style
gardens.
ANDALUSIA: ISLAMIC SPAIN 10
While the Abbasids were creating a great Islamic civilization from Syria to India
and Central Asia on a Persian model, to the west another pattern emerged. Spain,
or al-Andalus as the Muslims called it, had never acknowledged the rule of
Baghdad. Under a survivor of the Umayyad family, a new empire developed that
rivalled that of the Abbasids. From their capital at Cordova, the Spanish
Umayyads ruled an elegant and courtly domain. Cordova itself had piped water,
and at night the city was lit with a public lighting system.
9
Quoted in Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, the Belknap
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, p. 54.
10 For Islamic Spain see Hitti, The Arabs, pp. 136 to 161; and especially
W. Montgomery Watt, A History of Islamic Spain, Edinburgh University
Press, Edinburgh, 1965.
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Umayyad Spain reached its height under the eighth amir, Abd al-Rahman
III, in the middle of the 10th century. His reign was so brilliant that he eventually
assumed the title of caliph, something his predecessors had not done since the
revolution of 750. In the first 20 years of his reign, Abd al-Rahman established a
unified and centralized government. Religious tolerance was his watchword.
Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together in peace and harmony under his rule.
With Spain largely unified and at peace, Abd al-Rahman presided over a
flowering of Islamic culture.
A strong economy supported Islamic civilization in Spain. The Arabs had
brought with them many of the techniques and skills they had learned in Iran and
Iraq. In southern Spain, for example, they built irrigation systems, even using the
underground canals they had seen in Iran. They also introduced new crops, such as
oranges, rice, sugarcane, and cotton, all of which had been brought from India,
China, and Southeast Asia. Spain once again produced fine steel, as well as
magnificent textiles of silk, cotton, and wool.
Umayyad Spain became a center of great learning. As in other Islamic
countries, education, based on learning to read and write the Qur'an, began at an
early age. The University of Cordova attracted scholars from throughout the
Islamic world, as well as from Europe. Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars
translated the Greek classics. They also studied, debated, and translated the new
works on mathematics, medicine, astronomy, geography, and history being
produced in the Islamic world. From Spain these works reached the rest of
Europe. Students at the university took courses in all these subjects as well as
theology and law. Women were included in such studies in Spain, and some even
possessed their own extensive libraries.
EXPANSION THROUGH TRADE
The basis for Islamic cultural development was the growing wealth of the Islamic
world. While the Umayyads had expanded the empire by military conquest, during
the Abbasid period expansion by trade and commerce became more common. To
a considerable extent, this development was a function of geography. Islam had
emerged into the heart of a great world trade network linking three continents.
Baghdad itself set the pace. Located at the hub of both overland and sea
routes between east and west and north and south, it became a major meeting
place, or entrepot, for trade from China, India, Africa, and Europe. While Arab
ships set sail for eastern ports, Chinese ships docked at wharves along the Tigris
River, unloading shimmering silks, spices, and jewelled treasures from India and
Asia.
Following both overland trade routes through central Asia and sea routes
through the Indian Ocean and the waters of Southeast Asia, Muslim merchants
established trading colonies as far away as China. They brought ivory, slaves,
rhinoceros horn, tortoise-shell, and gold from Africa and southern Arabia. In
exchange they carried silks and porcelains back to Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo,
and the Mediterranean world. Drawn by the message of Islam carried by these
merchants, in some places, like Malaya, local rulers adopted the new faith.
In India, where Islam initially made little headway beyond the province of
Sind, Muslim traders were also a primary means of spreading both the religion
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and culture of Islam. Although the interior kingdoms remained Hindu, coastal
cities and trading centers soon had large Muslim communities. From these bases
and the Islamic lands of southern Arabia, Muslim merchants dominated the Indian
Ocean trade.
In East Africa, Islamic trading communities set up business next to
African market towns. Gold, ivory, and slaves were the primary goods sought
from Africa, and later on cloves grown on the coastal islands of Zanzibar and
Pemba. In return merchants brought porcelain from China, cloth goods from
India, and iron from the Middle East and Europe. Soon a kind of hybrid society
emerged that displayed both African and Islamic influences. Arabic combined
with local African languages to produce a new language that gave its name,
Swahili, to the new culture of the east African coast.
In West Africa, too, merchants proved the most effective transmitters of
Islamic culture and civilization. Muslim merchants traveled south across the
Sahara desert in search of gold from the African empire of Ghana. In exchange,
they carried salt, which was scarce south of the desert. With the salt, Muslim
merchants also spread the word of Islam. As in Southeast Asia, many of the rulers
of the African grasslands below the Sahara became Muslims.
While merchants spread Islam along with their wares, they brought back to
the Islamic heartland enormous wealth. This new prosperity caused a tremendous
expansion of the Islamic economy. With the gold of Africa, the Abbasids minted
their own coins. Coinage in turn allowed the expansion of an economy based on
money rather than barter and trade. The Abbasid dinar became a standard for
other currencies from Spain to China.
As Muslim merchants traveled and traded in many lands, they also needed
some means of exchanging the different kinds of money with which they were
paid for their goods. They began to set up money exchanges. These exchanges
soon became banks, which issued letters of credit to those who deposited their
cash. The letters of credit could be exchanged almost anywhere in the Islamic
world, even across political boundaries like those between the Abbasids and the
Spanish Umayyads. Thus began the first checking system.
DECLINE OF THE ABBASIDS
The Abbasid Empire reached its height under the caliph Harun al-Rashid. Harun
had come to the throne largely through the intrigues of his Persian mother and his
father's grand vizier. As caliph, Harun followed a policy of trying to unite the
Arab and Persian peoples within the empire into a single Islamic identity. When
Harun died, however, two of his sons, one representing the Persian faction and the
other the Arab faction, plunged the empire into civil war. The Persian side
triumphed, but the conflict heralded the beginning of Abbasid decline.
By the late 800s the Abbasid caliphs had begun to lose political control of
their empire. Viziers, responsible for the daily tasks of government, began to use
their positions to their own advantage. Some used imperial revenues to build
palaces that rivaled those of the caliphs they served. Often, they interfered in the
succession. The vast size of the empire also made it difficult to govern. Sultans,
local military rulers of outlying provinces, began to run their territories as they
liked.
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Under Harun's son, al-Ma'mun, the empire began to fragment. One of alMa'mun's generals established his own dynasty in Khorasan, the former seat of
Abbasid strength. Deprived of their best warriors, al-Ma'mun's successors began
to recruit their bodyguards from Turkish tribesmen brought as military slaves, or
mamluks, from Central Asia. Soon, like the Praetorian Guard in Rome, the
Turkish bodyguard held the real power in Baghdad.
Perhaps the greatest threat to the empire, however, was continuing
opposition from Shi'ites. In the 9th century the Abbasids lost their western
provinces to a Shi’ite dynasty, which claimed descent from Ali and Fatima.
Eventually these Fatimids, as they came to be known, captured Egypt.
Establishing Cairo as their new capital, they directly challenged Abbasid
legitimacy and proclaimed themselves the true caliphs of Islam. While Fatimid
armies soon attacked Syria, Fatimid agents and missionaries also secretly
infiltrated Abbasid territory to win converts for their cause.
Shi'ites also launched rebellions in Persia. In 945 a Shi'ite dynasty from
Persia, the Buwayhids, took control of Baghdad and "rescued" the caliph from his
mamluks. Instead of deposing the Abbasids, the Buwayhids too used them as
figureheads. With such Shi'ite "protectors," Abbasid prestige plummeted.
Meanwhile, nomadic groups from central Asia, newly converted to Islam,
began to encroach on the empire's frontiers. These were the Turks. In 1055 a
Turkish dynasty, the Saljuqs, overthrew the Shi'ite Buwayhids and "liberated" the
Abbasid caliph. Although Sunni Muslims like the Abbasids, the Saljuqs too ruled
the empire while using the caliphs only as figureheads. The Abbasids never fully
regained their former power or authority. By 1258, when new invaders swept out
of Asia and finally destroyed Baghdad, the Abbasid Empire was long past its days
of glory. The civilization it had done so much to create and foster, however,
continued to flourish and grow.
COMMENTARY
It used to be fashionable among western historians to describe the early Abbasid
caliphate as the Golden Age of Islam, the height of Islamic civilization. After this,
they argued, Islamic civilization went into a period of permanent decline. In
adopting this interpretation, western scholars largely reflected their sources, the
Muslim historians and political theorists of the 8th-11th centuries. These Muslim
scholars worried about the decline of the power of the caliphs in their own times,
and the rise of independent sultans. Such a division between political power and
spiritual authority seemed to them incompatible with Muhammad's example; they
equated political disunity with spiritual decline.
Modern scholars, however, have begun to broaden their perspective
beyond the political sphere, and to rely on more varied sources. Using non-Islamic
accounts that were contemporary with Islamic expansion, such as those of
Nestorian Christians in 7th century Iraq and non-literary sources such as tax rolls
and census records, modern scholars have begun to re-examine the whole pattern
of Islamic civilization. From this new perspective, Islamic civilization after the
early Abbasids seems to have been more fruitful and creative than ever.
As it spread, Islamic civilization brought all the regions of Eurasia into
direct contact with each other for the first time in world history. Moreover, Islam
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acted as a kind of translator between cultures. The English language stands as
testimony. Words like algebra, alchemy, sofa, and many others were derived from
Arabic to describe ideas or products that Muslims picked up in other parts of the
world, then developed and carried into Europe.
Not least, Islamic dominance of the central Eurasian trade routes caused
Europeans to go out in search of cheaper access to goods carried by Muslim
traders. Islamic civilization thus acted as a great catalyst for material and cultural
development. In short, the decline of political unity in Islam only seems to have
released an even greater vitality and creativity in Islamic civilization, which in
turn stimulated developments in other civilizations. In the process, the world
became smaller than ever before.
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Section 4
The Coming of the Turks
By the year 1000, substantial numbers of Turkish speaking peoples, often nomads
who had converted to Islam and were known as Turkomans, had begun to move
from Central Asia into the Middle East. Their military power soon enabled them
to found their own dynasties. The rulers of these dynasties, usually called sultans,
tended to follow policies aimed at legitimizing their right to govern Muslim
societies. These included support for religious wars to expand Muslim territory,
encouragement of the social institutions and high culture previously developed in
Islamic Persia, promotion of the Abbasid caliphate and the Shari’a oriented
civilization of Sunni Islam, and patronage of Sufism. These policies had many farreaching consequences in expanding the political boundaries of the Islamic world
and laying the foundations for a mature Turko-Persian civilization that would
dominate the central Islamic lands for centuries.
The First Turkish Dynasties
The conversion of Turks to Islam and their movement into the Middle East led to
a renewed surge of energy and creativity in Islamic civilization. One significant
change that resulted was simply demographic, namely the diffusion of Turkish
speaking peoples over a broad area. At the same time, new territories came to be
incorporated into the Muslim domain, new political structures were formed, new
social institutions spread throughout the region, the Persian language and Persian
culture acquired greater importance among the Muslim elites, and new attitudes
towards religion and religious practice began to develop. This important chapter
in the development of Islamic civilization ended with the outbreak of the Crusades
and the Mongol invasions.
Turks and the Islamic World
The Muslim encounter with Turks began as the wars of expansion moved into the
Caucasus and Central Asia. Many Turkic tribes had been dispersed across this
area as a result of the rise and fall of the two Turkish kaghanates. At first, there
were mere skirmishes between the Turks and the Muslims. The campaigns of
Qutayba b. Muslim across the Oxus (705-715), the Turkish counterattack, and the
decisive victories of the Abbasid forces in Central Asia under Abu Muslim, Abu
Dawud, and Ziyad b. Salih (notably the Battle of Talas in 751) all led to more
extensive contacts. In their battles with the Turks, the Muslims came to appreciate
the valor and skillful horsemanship of their opponents and soon began to find
ways to incorporate Turks into their own military forces. The early Abbasid
caliphs began to acquire Turkish slaves in considerable numbers, and al-Mu‘tasim
(833-842) used them to form the backbone of his army. It was not long before
these Turkish mamluks, or “slave-soldiers,” became the true masters. They made
and unmade caliphs and some, such as Ahmad b. Tulun in Egypt (868-884),
established themselves as the de facto rulers of provinces they were sent to
govern.
Although the Turkish mamluks in the Arab world were thus of
considerable military importance, they were too few in number and too isolated in
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society to produce much more than limited political change. The rise of Turkish
dynasties in eastern Iran and Central Asia, however, did lead to more dramatic
changes in the character of Islamic civilization. This process also started with the
use of Turks as slave soldiers.
One of the most important sources of Turkish slaves was from the
northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, which was then governed by the
Samanid dynasty (819-1005). The Samanids successfully attacked the Turkish
steppe nomads on their frontiers and captured or acquired many Turks in the
process. Since the Turks were not yet Muslims, they could legally be enslaved.
The Samanids controlled and regulated the lucrative trade in such slaves to meet
the demand from purchasers such as the Abbasid caliphs.
Eventually, the Samanids began to use the Turks in their own court and
military service. They also devised a system for the year-by-year training of their
Turkish ghulams or “pages” to prepare them for military command and
administration of a province. As was the case with the Abbasids, some of the
Samanid Turkish commanders, or amirs, soon began to take personal control of
areas to which they were sent. One of these was the general Alptigin, who used
his own contingent of slave-soldiers to conquer Ghazna, in the eastern part of
what is now Afghanistan, around 961. The Turkish garrison at Ghazna, although
technically still servants of the Samanids, continued to choose its own
commanders and was largely self-governing. Eventually, one of the commanders
founded a truly independent dynasty of rulers known as the Ghaznavids (9771186).
Meanwhile, many of the free Turkish tribesmen in Inner Asia had
converted to Islam11 and began to found their own states. (Scholars generally
refer to these Muslim Turkish converts as Turkomans, to distinguish them from
other Turks.) The first of these Turkoman states was ruled by the Qarakhanid
dynasty (992-1211). The Qarakhanids brought an end to the Samanid dynasty and
partitioned its territory with the Ghaznavids. They thus came to rule an area
reaching from Bukhara to Kashgar. Although the Qarakhanids were Muslims and
regarded themselves as legitimate Islamic rulers, their society and culture
remained essentially Turkish and rather isolated from the rest of the Muslim
world.
The Saljuqs (1038-1194) were by far the most important of the new
Turkish dynasties. Saljuq, the clan chief from whom the dynasty took its name,
apparently broke away from the Khazar Turkish confederation and established
himself in the area of a market town named Jand, near where the Syr Darya flows
into the Aral Sea. Having converted to Islam, Saljuq and the followers he attracted
became ghazis, or warriors for the faith, fighting against the pagan Turks and
offering their assistance as volunteer soldiers at various times to the Samanids,
Qarakhanids, and Ghaznavids. At the same time, they cultivated good relations
with the populace, and especially the religious leaders, of the cities in the region.
As the numbers of their confederation grew, and under pressure from rival groups,
The Turkish tribes which converted to Islam are
often referred to as Turkomans (Türkmen) to distinguish
them from the non-Muslim Turks.
11
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the Saljuqs sought to move into Khurasan and even Azerbayjan; this eventually
brought them into conflict with the Ghaznavids.
Under the leadership of two brothers, Chagri and Tughril, the Saljuqs
occupied Nishapur and proclaimed an independent sultanate, or principality, in
1038. They then attacked and destroyed the Ghaznavid army at the Battle of
Dandanqan (1040). Chagri took control of the territory in eastern Iran, and Tughril
began to annex new areas to the west. In 1055, Tughril reached and occupied
Baghdad. His very capable successors, Alp Arslan (1063-72) and Malik Shah
(1072-92), both guided by the exceptionally gifted Persian vizier, Nizam al-Mulk,
made the Saljuq sultanate one of the most powerful states in the region,
dominating an area from Syria to Central Asia.
Characteristics of Turkish Rule
Turkish dynasties such as the Ghaznavids and especially the Saljuqs had to deal
with a number of problems and challenges. They were the ruling elite, but they
were still an ethnic minority in the lands they governed. Although they were
Muslims, many of their Muslim subjects would have regarded them as crude
barbarians. They were sensitive about their own servile or humble origins and
quite conscious of the more sophisticated culture and civilization of the people
over whom they now ruled. One of their greatest concerns, therefore, was to
legitimize their power and win acceptance as good Muslim rulers from the subject
population. The interests of the sedentary inhabitants of the cities and countryside,
however, were not identical with those of the Turkoman warriors, particularly the
nomadic and tribal elements on whom the Saljuqs depended for their power. The
Ghaznavids or Saljuqs thus needed to pursue policies that would produce
accommodation with the subject population while maintaining control over their
military retainers. This would have far-reaching consequences.
One of the most obvious ways to pursue these dual goals was for the
Turkish rulers to encourage warfare aimed at expanding the amount of territory
under Muslim rule. Loosely connected to the Islamic concept of jihad, or striving
for the faith, this typically took the form of what was known as ghazw, or raids
against the infidels, and those who participated in them were known as ghazis, or
warriors for Islam. Initially, this had been a rather haphazard activity by bands of
individuals motivated as much by mercenary as religious concerns. The
Ghaznavids and Saljuqs transformed ghazw into a large scale and relatively
organized, disciplined and systematic enterprise aimed at the permanent
acquisition of non-Muslim territory as well as spoils and booty for the ghazis.
The Ghaznavids directed their raids towards the Punjab and Ganges plain,
carrying out at least 17 expeditions into India. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (9981030) was particularly famous for his wars in India, but he was more interesting in
filling his treasury than annexing territory. During his raids, his armies
demolished many Buddhist and Hindu religious sites and carried off vast
quantities of slaves, jewels, and precious metals as spoils of war.
The Saljuqs also undertook raids against Christians in the Caucasus and
Asia Minor. In 1071, Alp Arslan inflicted a major defeat on the Byzantines at the
Battle of Manzikert. Although the Saljuq sultans were not interested in following
up on this victory themselves, they did encourage tribal groups of ghazis, which
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might otherwise have proved troublesome, to move into Anatolia. Led by junior
members of the Saljuq family, these ghazis eventually established a separate
branch of the dynasty in Anatolia, the Saljuq sultanate of Rum (1077-1307).
When they first came to power and built up large empires, the Turkish
dynasties had to confront the problem of how to govern and administer the
territories they acquired. Not surprisingly, they elected to model their government
after that of the Persian dynasties they replaced, the Samanids in particular. Of
necessity, they relied heavily on the existing Persian bureaucracy for their
officials, administrators, and advisors. Under the influence of the Persian
statesmen, the greatest of whom was the Saljuq vizier Nizam al-Mulk (1019-92),
they adopted the concepts and values of traditional Persian theories of kingship
and justice. They expanded and professionalized their military, and introduced the
practice of policing major cities by a garrison of the standing army under a
commander known as the shihna. Probably following the example of the Buyids,
they also began to finance their regular army and other government posts through
the institution of iqta’ (grants of land or its tax revenue to soldiers and officials in
lieu of salary). These and other social institutions would spread from Persia to
other areas under Turkish control.
At the same time, the Turkish rulers became enthusiastic supporters of the
Perso-Islamic culture of eastern Iran and eventually carried it throughout the
region from India to Anatolia. Arts, literature and the sciences all flourished under
their patronage. Mahmud of Ghazna was notoriously determined to project the
image of an enlightened ruler, even going so far as to kidnap scholars he could not
otherwise persuade to come to his capital. The scientist al-Biruni, who used
knowledge gained during the Ghaznavid operations in India to write famous
books about India and Indian civilization, was perhaps the greatest of the men of
learning patronized by the Ghaznavid court. In literature, the Turkish rulers
especially encouraged the production of Persian poetry. A galaxy of talented
Persian poets thrived during the Ghaznavid period, including Farrukhi,
Manuchehri, Anvari, Mu’izzi and above all Firdausi, author of the magnificent
epic poem of Iran, the Shahnameh. The greatest poet of Saljuq times was
undoubtedly Jalal al-Din al-Rumi, author of a masterpiece of Sufi poetical
literature, the Masnavi.
Ghaznavid and Saljuq Religious Policies
In addition to administrative and cultural policies, the influence of the Persian
ministers from eastern Iran can also be detected in the religious policies followed
by the Ghaznavids and Saljuqs. While proving themselves as warriors for Islam,
the Turkish rulers also positioned themselves as champions of the Abbasid
caliphate, defenders of Sunni Islam, and patrons of the Sufis. The ramifications of
these policies make them very important to understand.
The Ghaznavids quickly realized that recognition of their position by the
Abbasid caliph would help camouflage what was really their usurpation of power
and would provide a useful weapon against potential rivals. Rulers like Mahmud
were careful to have the caliph blessed in the Friday sermons, to put his name on
coins, and to persecute or destroy the pro-Fatimid Ismai’ilis who were his
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enemies. In return, the caliph confirmed the Ghaznavid ruler as the caliph’s
“deputy,” as the “right hand of the state,” and “protector of God’s religion.”
Very early in their history, the Saljuqs had also claimed to be servants of
the caliph, and the ostensible reason for Tughril’s advance to Baghdad was to
liberate the Caliph al-Qa’im (1031-75) from the oppression of the Buyid amirs.
Once that had been done, the Saljuqs also made the defeat of the Fatimid caliphs
and suppression of all forms of Batini (“esoteric”) Shi’ism one of their prime
objectives. In return, the caliph was more or less obliged to confirm Tughril’s
legitimate authority as sultan and have him mentioned in public sermons. Tughril
was thus in a position to style himself as “Emperor of Emperors, King of the East
and the West, Reviver of Islam, Lieutenant of the Imam, and Right Hand of the
Caliph of God.”12
In the new political theory that developed during the Saljuq era, the notion
that the caliph was the ruler of the entire Muslim world (which had long been a
fiction) was finally abandoned. Now authority was recognized as being divided
between caliph and sultan, with the caliph being essentially a symbolic religious
leader and the sultan in charge of secular affairs. Despite the ritual profession of
loyalty to the caliphs, there was little doubt as to who was really in control—when
Tughril wanted to marry al-Qa’im’s daughter, for example, he did not hesitate to
coerce the reluctant caliph by threatening to withhold his income.
It was not just to receive recognition from the caliphs that the Ghaznavids
or Saljuqs adopted their publicly pro-Abbasid and anti-Shi’ite stance; the larger
objective was to win the support of the Sunni legal establishment and the Sunni
religious scholars, the ulama, and through them the allegiance of the urban
population to which they were so closely linked. Consequently, the Turkish
sultans also put their full support behind the revival of traditionalist religious
scholarship and orthodox Sunni jurisprudence, which had been developing in
reaction to the rise of Fatimid power and the influence of Isma’ili Shi’ite
missionaries.
At much the same time that the Fatimids were establishing al-Azhar, a
large mosque and official center for the study of Isma’ili law in Cairo, a similar
Sunni institution was appearing in the east, particularly at Nishapur. This was the
madrasa, a kind of college devoted specifically to the advanced formal study of
Sunni law. The Saljuqs encouraged the establishment of madrasas throughout
their empire. The madrasas were supported financially by charitable endowments
of real property, known as waqf, the revenue from which was used to maintain the
buildings, pay teachers, and accommodate the students. The madrasas would
come to dominate higher education in the Sunni world, being the institution of
learning responsible not only for training the members of the ulama but also the
judges and bureaucrats on whom the governments depended.
A third important element in the religious policies of the Turkish rulers
was the promotion of Sufism. It is fairly clear that wandering Sufi missionaries
Recorded by Ibn al-Jawzi in the Muntazam fi tarikh
al-muluk as translated in J. A. Boyle (ed.), The Cambridge
History of Iran, Volume 5, The Saljuk and Mongol Period
(Cambridge, 1968), p. 48.
12
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had played a significant role in the conversion of Turks in Central Asia to Islam.
Sufi mysticism had some similarities to the shamanistic religion of the pagan
Turks, and the Sufi holy men were not radically different from the shamans with
whom the Turks were familiar. Historically speaking, the affinities of Sufism and
Turkish culture have always been deep and strong. On a more pragmatic level, the
Sufi “friends of God” no less than the ulama enjoyed tremendous popularity and
respect among the Muslim masses. Patronizing them was another way in which
the Turkish rulers could cultivate the support and loyalty of their subjects. Finally,
Sufism and Shi’ism were bitter enemies and rivals during this period, so
encouraging Sufism was a weapon the Saljuqs could use in their assault on the
Fatimids and their supporters.
Sufism clearly flourished during the early Turkish period, but it also
underwent two fundamental changes: It was integrated more closely into
conventional Sunni Islam, and it was institutionalized. Early Sufism had been a
highly personalized and emotional form of religion which would often manifest
itself in ways far removed from the norms of behavior envisaged in the Shari’a—
singing, dancing, or celebration of drunkenness or erotic love as symbols of
mystical experience at one extreme and excessive fasting, devotional exercises,
asceticism and celibacy at the other. This had aroused the suspicion and
sometimes the hostility of the more conservative religious scholars. By Saljuq
times, however, either many members of the ulama had become Sufis or many
Sufis had become members of the ulama. The man most often cited as a leading
example of the reconciliation of Sunnism and Sufism was al-Ghazzali (10581111).
Al-Ghazzali was a respected scholar of Shafi’i law who became a Sufi. He
was highly critical of Shi’ism, philosophy, and speculative theology. In the
interest of social order, he also argued for acceptance of the authority of the
sultanate. Most importantly, he championed the cause of a liberalized and
spiritualized approach to the law that would tolerate many Sufi practices and of a
“sober” Sufism, which would keep its practitioners within the general boundaries
of the Shari’ah. This synthesis of ideas would be characteristic of the new SunniSufi mainstream of Islam.
About the same time, Sufism ceased being a highly individualistic activity
and took on a collective and institutional form. Students of Sufism attracted to a
charismatic Sufi master (the shaykh or pir) began to group together in an
association known as a tariqa (“path” or “way”). These tariqa orders had their
own particular initiation rites, and the members followed the rules of behavior,
rituals, and spiritual exercises established by the master. They typically
maintained monasteries or hospices in which the followers could reside during
spiritual retreats; these would often be built around the tomb of the founder of the
order or the tombs of prominent disciples of the order. The first of these orders
was probably the Qadiriyya, founded in Baghdad by the Hanbali scholar and Sufi
’Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166). Dozens of others soon followed, and they spread
throughout the Muslim world.
The End of the Saljuq Era
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In 1092, the powerful vizier Nizam al-Mulk was murdered, supposedly by one of
the Nizari Isma’ili Assassins. Malik Shah died the same year, and the Saljuq
Empire began to disintegrate. One reason for this was internal disputes over the
succession that sometimes amounted to virtual civil war. In addition, young
Saljuq princes were sent out to act as nominal governors of the provinces. Each
was assigned an atabeg or guardian chosen from the commanders of the slave
soldiers in the Saljuq army. Some of the atabegs in fact took over the provinces
for themselves and founded their own petty dynasties. Another element of
instability came from a new influx of nomadic Turkomans into Saljuq territory.
They were very difficult to control, and wrought considerable havoc in the
countryside. In 1157, they killed Sanjar, the Saljuq sultan, and proceeded to
overrun much of the Saljuq Empire.
It was external forces, however, that really put an end to this period of
Islamic history and civilization. In 1097, the Crusaders defeated the Saljuqs of
Rum and went on to capture Antioch, Edessa, and Jerusalem (1099). Although the
Crusader states occupied only a small portion of the Islamic world for a relatively
short time, they did produce some important changes. One of the most important
was the fall of the ineffective Fatimid caliphate and thus the further decline of the
Isma’ili Shi’ite cause. Syria and Egypt emerged as the new center of Sunni power
under the Ayyubid dynasty (1169-1250) and subsequently a dynasty of mostly
Turkish slave soldiers, the Mamluk Dynasty (1250-1517).
The Crusades
The rise of the Saljuq Turks seriously threatened the Byzantine Empire. When the
Byzantine emperor appealed to Pope Urban II for help in recovering his lost
provinces from the Turks in the 1090s, Urban urged men of all ranks to wage a
great war, or Crusade, to recover the Holy Land for Christ. Throughout Europe
people heeded the call. Some were inspired by faith and the hope of being
cleansed of sin. Many knights sought more earthly rewards like land13 or
plundered wealth. Merchants saw a chance to improve their profitable trade with
Byzantium.14 Some simply wanted the adventure.
The Early Crusades
On November 27, 109515, Pope Urban II assembled a group of church leaders
and nobles at Clermont, France. In an impassioned speech he described how the
Turks had "seized more and more of the lands of the Christians . . . killed or
captured many people, destroyed churches, and devastated the kingdom of
God."16 Urban's pleas fired his listeners with enthusiasm, and they spread the
13Maurice
Keen, The Penguin History of Medieval Europe (London: Penguin Books,
1968): 123.
14Keen, 123.
15Keen, p. 117.
16Patrick J. Geary, Readings in Medieval History. Vloume Two: The Later Middle Ages
(Broadview, NY: Broadview Press, 1992): 72.
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word throughout France. Those that joined the cause sewed a cross on their
clothes and thus became crusaders, from the Latin word cruciata, "marked with a
cross."
The first crusaders—bands of undisciplined and untrained peasants—left
for the Holy Land in 1096. As they traveled, they attacked all whom they
considered enemies of Christ. They ravaged many Jewish communities. Solomon
Bar Simson, a Jewish chronicler, described one attack:
“The steppe-wolves . . . pillaged men, women, and infants, children and
old people. They pulled down the stairways and destroyed the houses,
looting and plundering; and they took the Torah Scroll, trampled it in the
mud, and tore and burned it.”17
Thousands of Jews died at the hands of these peasant crusaders.18 As destructive
as the peasants were, however, they were no match for trained warriors. Most died
quickly in battle against the Turks.19
The forces led by French and Norman nobles had better luck. In three
organized armies, they marched across Europe to Constantinople. Fearing the
strength of the crusader armies, the Byzantine emperor, Alexius I, at first refused
to admit them. “He dreaded their arrival,” wrote his daughter Anna Comnena,
“knowing as he did their uncontrollable passion, their erratic character and . . .
their greed for money.”20 Eventually, however, Alexius let them pass through the
city on their way to the Holy Land.
The journey was strenuous. Wearing wool and leather and heavy armor,
the crusaders suffered severely from the heat. Food and water ran short. As
Fulcher of Chartres, an eyewitness, recorded:
“The people for the love of God endured cold, heat, and torrents of rain. Their
tents became old and torn and rotten from the continuous rains. . . . Many
people had no cover but the sky. . . .
The elect were tried by the Lord and by such suffering were cleansed of
their sins. . . . When they struggled against the pagans they labored for God. . .
.
I feel that at the cost of suffering to the Christians He wills that the pagans
shall be destroyed, they who have so many times foully trod underfoot all
which belongs to God.”21
17Patrick
J. Geary, ed. Readings in Medieval History, Volume Two: The Later MIddle
Ages. (Lewiston, NY: Broadview Press), 1992, p. 82.
18Robert S. Hoyt and Stanley Chodorow, Europe in the Middle Ages, 3e (San Diego, CA:
HBJ, 1976): 320.
19Hoyt/Chodorow, 320.
20Geary, Readings in Medieval History, Vol. II, p. 93
21Geary, Readings in Medieval History, Vol. II, pp. 76-77
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Despite the crusaders’ suffering, they took the city of Antioch, then marched on
Jerusalem, which they quickly captured.22 The inhabitants paid a fearful price in
blood. One Muslim chronicler recorded that the crusaders killed more than 70,000
people.23
The victorious crusaders set up four small states in the newly captured
Holy Land: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of
Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem.24 They subdivided the land into fiefs
controlled by lords and vassals.25 A steady stream of pilgrims came to the Holy
Land. European trade, with goods carried mostly in Italian ships, was brisk.26
Catholicism was the official religion, but because Europeans were a minority,
other religions were tolerated.27 The crusader states ruled the Holy Land for
almost a century.
The First Crusade had succeeded only because the Turks were disunited.
As the Muslims recovered from their initial defeat, they counterattacked,
recapturing the city of Edessa in 1144. A new call for troops went out in
Christendom.28 The Second Crusade, however, which began in 1147, was a
miserable failure. After only two years, the armies of King Louis VII of France
and the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad III returned home having achieved nothing
but the loss of thousands of lives.
Then, word reached Europe that the Muslims had recaptured Jerusalem in
1187. Across Europe knights sharpened their swords and spearpoints, and
polished their chain mail shirts. Richard the Lion Heart of England, Philip
Augustus of France, and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa each
commanded an army headed to the Holy Land. Once again the crusaders failed.
Barbarossa drowned on his way to the Holy Land.29 Philip and Richard
quarreled,30 and Philip took his army home to seize English lands in France.31
Richard and his army fought on, but were unable to capture Jerusalem. In the end,
Richard had to settle for a truce that gave him control of a few coastal towns and
the right for Europeans to travel to Jerusalem.32 Thus the Third Crusade left the
crusaders only a small foothold in the Holy Land.
Later Crusades.
22Keen,
124.
vol 2, page 91
24Davis, 272.
25Keen, 127.
26RHC Davis, A History of Medieval Europe From Constnatine to Saint Louis, 2e
(London: Longman, 1988): 271.
27Davis, 275.
28Davis, 276.
29Davis, 280.
30Davis, 280.
31Davis, 280.
32Hayes, 188.
23Geary,
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Despite these failures, the crusading spirit died slowly. In 1202, for example, Pope
Innocent III persuaded a group of French knights to embark on the Fourth Crusade
to reestablish the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The crusaders did not have the money to
pay for their travel, however. When merchants from Venice persuaded them to
attack the Christian city of Zara, a commercial rival, as partial payment for their
transportation,33 the outraged pope excommunicated the entire army for attacking
a Christian city. He soon lifted the ban, however, and the undeterred Venetians
and the crusaders turned their attention to Constantinople. The Venetians hoped to
take control of the entire eastern Mediterranean, which the Byzantines still
dominated. In 1204 the crusaders breached the great walls of Constantinople.
Savagely, they looted the city. Gold and treasure, even sacred icons and holy
relics, flooded back into Western Europe.
The Fourth Crusade so intensified the distrust of Orthodox and Catholic
Christians for one another that they never again joined forces to fight the
Muslims. Later crusades in the Holy Land were also ineffective. The Children's
Crusade of 1212 resulted only in many children being sold into slavery. By 1291
Muslims had recaptured the last Christian stronghold at Acre.
The Mongol Invasions
While the Crusaders brought havoc to the western parts of the Islamic world, the
eastern areas were devastated by the Mongol invasions, which began with the
campaigns of Genghis Khan against Khwarizm in 1219. In 1243, the Mongols
destroyed the armies of the Saljuqs of Rum at the Battle of Kose Dag. From 12551260, Mongol armies under Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulegu swept across Iran,
Iraq, and Syria. Hulegu exterminated the Isma’ili Shi’ite enclaves in Iran and then
went on to capture and sack Baghdad in 1258, killing the Abbasid caliph and
bringing that most important of Muslim offices, the caliphate, to an effective end.
The Mongol dynasty established in Iran by Hulegu, the Ilkhanate (1256-1353),
was openly hostile to Islam for much of its history.
The Il-Khanids of Persia
Hulagu Khan and his successors, the Il-Khans, ruthlessly conquered the old
Abbasid and Saljuq territories. The extent of the Mongol terror was vividly
described by a Muslim historian of the day:
“The luck-forsaken land lay desolate. . . .
In heaps on every side the corpses lay,
Alike on lonely path and broad high-way.
Uncounted bodies cumbered every street:
Scarce might one find a place to set one’s feet.”34
In 1258, Hulagu’s forces sacked Baghdad, killing the last Abbasid caliph
and as many of the family as they could find. Pressing on into Syria they also
captured Damascus. As they moved further south, however, the Mongols
33Hayes.
34Quoted
189.
in Browne, Literary History of Persia, p. 98.
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encountered a hastily gathered Islamic force led by the Mamluks of Egypt. At Ayn
Jalut, the Mamluks defeated Hulagu’s army.
Ayn Jalut might have proved little more than a setback had it not been for
an event far off in Asia—the death of the Grand Khan Mongke. Indeed, the
Mongol defeat may have been due to Hulagu’s absence from the army—he had
been summoned back to Mongolia for the election of a new Grand Khan. By the
time he returned to Iran, the Mamluks had learned Mongol battle tactics and were
too formidable to defeat. An uneasy border emerged between the two powers in
Syria and Iraq.
Although Hulagu himself apparently despised the Islamic religion, and did
his best to destroy Islamic culture in his domains, eventually his successors
converted to Islam. In addition, the Mongols relied on local Persian officials of the
old bureaucracy to rule their new domains. Such officials, however, often died
violent deaths at the hands of their suspicious masters. For a time in the late
1200s, the Il-Khan Argun relied heavily on Jewish advisors and officials. When
he fell ill sometime in early 1291, however, his enemies instigated a major
massacre of Jews throughout the empire.
In 1295, the Il-Khan Ghazan assumed the throne. A convinced believer,
Ghazan restored Islam as the official religion of the state and did his best to rule
as a legitimate Islamic ruler. It was Ghazan, for example, who finally repudiated
the allegiance of the Il-Khanids to the Grand Khan in China. By the 1340s,
however, internal struggle among Mongol princes had so weakened Il-Khanid rule
that it finally collapsed and the empire fell into the hands of local dynasties.
The calamities of the Crusades and the Mongol invasions thus had the
effect of remaking the political map of the Muslim world, shifting its centers of
power, badly damaging or destroying some of its major cultural centers in the east,
and driving still larger numbers of Turks further to the west. In combination with
the political, social, cultural, and religious transformation brought about by the
early Turks this would set the stage for radically new developments within Islamic
civilization.
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