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NATIONALS H E CLARI T T Y Sincerity OF 2015 TOPIC III: THE ABBASID EMPIRE TABLE OF CONTENTS THE ABBASID ERA (750-‐1258) 3 A BRIEF HISTORY 3 THE ART OF THE ABBASID PERIOD 6 THE SPREAD OF SCHOLARSHIP 7 GEOGRAPHY AND TRADE 10 THE SPREAD OF ISLAM 14 BASIC TIMELINE 17 ISLAM: EMPIRE OF FAITH DOCUMENTARY 18 REFERENCES 19 MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 2 THE ABBASID ERA (750-‐1258) The Abbasid Caliphate, which ruled the Islamic world, oversaw the golden age of Islamic culture. The empire ruled the Islamic Caliphate from 750 to 1258 AD, making it one of the longest and most influential Islamic dynasties. For most of its early history, it was the largest empire in the world, and this meant that it had contact with distant neighbors such as the Chinese and Indians in the East, and the Byzantines in the West, allowing it to adopt and synthesize ideas from these cultures. A BRIEF HISTORY The Abbasid Empire overthrew the preceding Umayyad Empire, which was based in Damascus, Syria. The Umayyads had become increasingly unpopular, especially in the eastern territories of the caliphate. The Umayyads favored Syrian Arabs over other Muslims and treated mawali, newly converted Muslims, as second- class citizens. The most numerous group of mawali were the Persians, who lived side- by-side with Arabs in the east who were angry at the favor shown to Syrian Arabs. Together, they were ripe for rebellion. Other Muslims were angry with the Umayyads for turning the caliphate into a hereditary empire. Some believed that a single family should not hold power, while Shiites believed that true authority belonged to the family of the Prophet Muhammad through his sonin-law Ali, and the Umayyads were not part of Muhammad’s family. All these various groups who were angry with the Umayyads united under the Abbasids, who began a rebellion against the Umayyads in Persia. The Abbasids built a coalition of Persian mawali, Eastern Arabs, and Shiites. The Abbasids were able to gain Shiite support because they claimed descent from Muhammad through Muhammad’s uncle Abbas. Their descent from Muhammad was not through Ali, as Shiites would have preferred, but Shiites still considered the Abbasids better than the Umayyads. A Persian general, Abu Muslim, who supported Abbasid claims to power, led the Abbasid armies. His victories allowed the Abbasid leader Abul `Abbas al-Saffah to enter the Shiite-dominated city of Kufa in 748 and declare himself caliph. In 750, the army of Abu Muslim and al-Saffah faced the Umayyad Caliph Marwan II at the Battle of the Zab near the Tigris River. Marwan II was defeated, fled, and was killed. As-Saffah captured Damascus and slaughtered the remaining members of the Umayyad family (except for one, Abd al-Rahman, who escaped to Spain and continued the Umayyad Empire there). The Abbasids were the new rulers of the caliphate. The Abbasids had led a revolution against the unpopular policies of the Umayyads, but those who expected major change were disappointed. Under the second Abbasid Caliph, al-Mansur (r. 754–775), it became clear that much of the Umayyad past would be continued. The Abbasids maintained the hereditary control of the caliphate, forming a new empire. The alliance with the Shiites was short lived. Even Abu Muslim, the brilliant Persian general who engineered the rise of the Abbasids, was deemed a threat and executed. However, the Abbasids did prove loyal to their Persian mawali allies. In fact, Abbasid culture would come to be dominated by the legacy of Persian civilization. The Abbasid court was heavily influenced by Persian customs, and members of the powerful Persian Barmakid family acted as the advisers of the caliphs and rivaled them in wealth and power. MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 3 One of the earliest, and most important, changes the Abbasids made was to move the capital of the Islamic empire from the old Umayyad power base of Damascus to a new city—Baghdad. Baghdad was founded in 762 by al-Mansur on the banks of the Tigris River. The city was round in shape, and designed from the beginning to be a great capital and the center of the Islamic world. It was built not far from the old Persian capital of Ctesiphon, and its location reveals the desire of the empire to connect itself to Persian culture. Baghdad grew quickly with encouragement from the Abbasid state, and it was soon the largest city in the world. At Baghdad, the Persian culture that the Umayyads had attempted to suppress was now allowed to thrive. Art, poetry, and science flourished. The Abbasids learned from the Chinese (allegedly from Chinese soldiers captured in battle) the art of making paper. Cheap and durable, paper became an important material for spreading literature and knowledge. The fifth caliph of the Abbasid empire, Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), is remembered as one of history’s greatest patrons of the arts and sciences. Under his rule, Baghdad became the world’s most important center for science, philosophy, medicine, and education. The massive size of the caliphate meant that it had contact and shared borders with many distant empires, so scholars at Baghdad could collect, translate, and expand upon the knowledge of other civilizations, such as the Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines. The successors of Harun al-Rashid, especially his son al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833), continued his policies of supporting artists, scientists, and scholars. Al-Ma’mun founded the Bayt al-Hikma, the House of Wisdom, in Baghdad. A library, an institute for translators, and in many ways an early form of university, the House of Wisdom hosted Muslim and non-Muslim scholars who sought to translate and gather the cumulative knowledge of human history in one place, and in one language—Arabic. At the House of Wisdom, important ideas from around the world came together. The introduction of Indian numerals, which have become standard in the Islamic and Western worlds, greatly aided in mathematic and scientific discovery. Scholars such as Al-Kindi revolutionized mathematics and synthesized Greek philosophy with Islamic thought. Al-Biruni and Abu Nasr Mansur—among many other scholars—made important contributions to geometry and astronomy. Al-Khwarizmi, expanding upon Greek mathematical concepts, developed Algebra (the word “algorithm” is a corruption of his name). Ibn al-Haytham made important contributions to the field of optics, and is generally held to have developed the concept of the scientific method. A number of very practical innovations took place, especially in the field of agriculture. Improved methods of irrigation allowed more land to be cultivated, and new types of mills and turbines were used to reduce the need for labor (though slavery was still very common in both the countryside and cities). Crops and farming techniques were adopted from far-flung neighboring cultures. Rice, cotton, and sugar were taken from India, citrus fruits from China, and sorghum from Africa. Thanks to Islamic famers, these crops eventually made their way to the West. Such Islamic innovation would continue, even as the Abbasid government fell into chaos. Due to several very capable caliphs and their advisers, the Abbasid Caliphate thrived through the early ninth century, despite the major challenges of ruling a massive and multiethnic empire. Besides being a great patron of the arts and sciences, Harun al-Rashid also brought the Abbasid Caliphate to its high MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 4 point. Still, he had to deal with revolts in Persia and North Africa, and he removed from power the Persian Barmakid family, the source of many great advisers Al-Rashid’s son, Caliph al-Ma’mun not only continued his father’s patronage by establishing the House of Wisdom, but he made a number of important independent innovations. After the caliphate of al-Ma’mun, Abbasid power began to noticeably decline. The cost of running a massive empire and maintaining a large bureaucracy required steady revenues, and as the authority of the caliphate diminished it was able to collect fewer taxes. In order to stabilize the state finances, the caliphs granted tax-farms to governors and military commanders. These governors, with their own troops and revenue bases, soon proved independent-minded and disloyal. The caliph al-Mu`tasim (r. 833–842) furthered the gap between the caliph and his people. Expanding on al-Ma’mun’s new army, he created his own military force of slave soldiers called ghilman (later know as “Mamluks”). As the elite guard of the caliph, these slaves began acting superior to the people of Baghdad, which inspired anger and led to riots. Instead of trying to diffuse the situation, alMu’tasim simply moved the capital away from Baghdad and settled in Samarra, 60 miles to the north. Away from the bulk of their subjects who lived in Baghdad, the caliphs became insulated from the problems of their empire. Caliph al-Nasir (r. 1180–1225) attempted to restore Abbasid power in Iraq. His long reign of fortyseven years allowed him ample time to reconquer Mesopotamia and further develop Baghdad as a center of learning. His chief rival was the Sultanate of Khwarezm, which ruled Persia. Supposedly, alNasir appealed to the Mongols, an expanding central-Asian nomad empire, for help against Khwarezm. Under al-Nasir’s less competent successors, this backfired disastrously. The Mongols completely overran Khwarezm and then turned their attention to Baghdad. The Mongols seem to have wanted to rule, by holding real military power but allowing the Abbasid caliph symbolic authority. Caliph al-Mu`tasim (r. 1242–1258), however, refused to acknowledge their authority. Faced with Mongol invasion, he did little to prepare, and the Mongol hordes soon surrounded Baghdad. They captured the city in 1258 and left Baghdad a smoldering ruin. This marks the end of the Abbasid caliphate of Baghdad, and the abrupt end of the Islamic golden age. The Abbasid line was reestablished in 1261, in Egypt. The sultans of Egypt appointed an Abbasid caliph in Cairo, but these Egyptian caliphs were even more symbolic than the late caliphs had been in Baghdad, and were simply used to legitimize the power of the sultans. The authority of these caliphs extended strictly to religious matters. Still, the Egypt-based period of the Abbasid empire lasted over 250 years. In 1517, the Ottoman Empire conquered Egypt. The last Abbasid caliph, al- Mutawakkil III, was forced to surrender all his authority to the Ottoman Sultan Selim I. This was the end of seven-and-a-half centuries of Abbasid history. MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 5 THE ART OF THE ABBASID PERIOD Under the Abbasid caliphate the focal point of Islamic political and cultural life shifted eastward from Syria to Iraq, where, in 762, Baghdad, the circular City of Peace (madinat al-salam), was founded as the new capital. The Abbasids later also established another city north of Baghdad, called Samarra’ (an abbreviation of the sentence "He who sees it rejoices"), which replaced the capital for a brief period (836–83). The first three centuries of Abbasid rule were a golden age in which Baghdad and Samarra’ functioned as the cultural and commercial capitals of the Islamic world. During this period, a distinctive style emerged and new techniques were developed that spread throughout the Muslim realm and greatly influenced Islamic art and architecture. Since the style set by the capital was used throughout the Muslim world, Baghdad and Samarra’ became associated with the new artistic and architectural trend. As virtually nothing remains from Abbasid Baghdad today, the site of Samarra’ is particularly significant for understanding the art and architecture of the Abbasid period. In Samarra’, a new way of carving surfaces, the so-called beveled style, as well as a repetition of abstract geometric or pseudo-vegetal forms, later to be known in the West as "arabesque," were widely used as wall decoration and became popular in other media such as wood, metalwork, and pottery. In pottery, Samarra’ also witnessed an extensive use of color in decoration and, possibly, the introduction of the technique of luster painting over a white glaze. Admired for its glittering effect reminiscent of precious metal, luster painting, the most notable technical achievement at the time, spread in the following centuries from Iraq to Egypt, Syria, Iran, and Spain and eventually also contributed to the development of ceramic decoration in the Western world. In terms of architecture, along with the palace of Jawsaq al-Khaqani (ca. 836 onward), the mosques of al-Mutawakkil (848–52) and Abu Dulaf (859–61) in Samarra’ were important in setting the style that was emulated in regions as far as Egypt or Central Asia, where it was adapted to need and taste. In the tenth century, Abbasid political unity weakened and independent or semi-autonomous local dynasties were established in Egypt, Iran, and other parts of the realm. Following the capture of Baghdad, Abbasid caliphs retained little more than moral and spiritual influence as the heads of Orthodox Sunni Islam. During the brief revival under caliphs al-Nasir (r. 1180–1225) and al-Mustansir (r. 1226–42), when Baghdad once again became the greatest center for the arts of the book in the Islamic world, the first college for the four canonical schools of Sunni law, was built. However, this burst of artistic vitality came to a temporary halt with the sack of Baghdad by the Ilkhanid branch of the Mongols in 1258. MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 6 THE SPREAD OF SCHOLARSHIP With the spread of Islam came the spread of the Arabic language across Afroeurasian lands from Central Asia to the Atlantic. Just as the Greeks, the Romans, and the Persians had done under their rule, Muslim governments established centers of learning to collect and translate scientific, literary, and philosophical works. Among the most famous effort was the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma in Arabic) the Caliph al-Ma’mun established in 870 CE in Baghdad. Under the leadership of al-Hunayn, a Christian scholar, a great effort to collect and translate available knowledge took place. Works in the library at Jundishapur played a role, and emissaries were sent out to purchase books from wherever they could be found. All of the great traditions were included. Just around the time the House of Wisdom was founded in Baghdad, a new technology gave a boost to the spread of knowledge. In the early 700s, the Chinese invention of paper arrived in the Muslim countries of Southwest Asia. Paper can be made from cotton, linen, other plant fibers, or even from old rags. Suddenly, making books became cheaper and easier. Parchment was a good writing material, but it was made from expensive animal skins. Papyrus was cheap, but not very durable. Now, in the growing cities of Muslim lands, more and more people bought books, wrote books, and collected books than ever before. Instead of having just a few copies of a work in existence, more could be produced, increasing the chances that the work would not be lost to history. Books and paper-making spread westward across Africa to al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain. Use of water-power to pound the fiber was another technology that moved with the spread of paper-making. The result: libraries in Muslim lands grew to thousands of volumes, even though books were still copied by hand. The cities in western Muslim lands, including Cordoba, Toledo, Seville and Granada, shared in this exchange of books and scholarship. Muslims, Jews and Christians took part in the growth of learning and culture in eastern and western Muslim lands. Scholars in different places using the same book could correspond with each other, contributing to the growth of knowledge. Trade, travel and migration speeded this process, fueled by growing wealth and eased by the use of Arabic language and Islamic law across a wide territory. It was a very dynamic period for learning. The House of Wisdom was a translation center and library, a museum, and an institute for scholars. Scholars copied, studied and discussed its books and manuscripts from every angle. In the courts and palaces, in the streets, homes and book shops, Baghdad’s scholars also worked with the scientific ideas, and tested them by measuring, experimenting and traveling. In time, they developed a large body of new knowledge, in addition to the wisdom of ancient times. One important concern, which would be shared across religious boundaries, was the question of how these ancient ideas fit in with Islamic teachings. If scriptures, based as they believed on revelation from God, contained all wisdom, was it permitted to look to other sources of knowledge? Numerous scholars wrestled with this issue, and they generally reached agreement that faith, or belief, and reason, or independent investigation, are not just permitted, but encouraged. God created the human being with the capacity to think and to reason, and like other human abilities, it could be used for good and evil. The search for knowledge, understanding, and wisdom are another way to discover God and glorify Him. This important balance between faith and reason would be explored for centuries, and passed on through the work of Muslim, Jewish, and later Christian, philosophers and scientists. This shared MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 7 understanding among the Abrahamic faiths put in place one of the cornerstones of modern science, and the scholars of al-Andalus played an important role in its formation and transmission. Educational institutions such as schools, universities and libraries spread across the network of Muslim cities. Mosques offered classes in reading Arabic, and the wealthy employed tutors in theirs homes or palaces. In the centuries from the 800s to the 1100s, formal schools and colleges were established in major Muslim cities, and several important universities for teaching and research existed. In al-Andalus, there was a college in Cordoba attached to the Umayyad caliphate, the Seljuk Turks had established the Mustansiriyyah in Baghdad, and Cairo’s famous al-Azhar university had been founded by the Fatimid rulers. Traveling students came to these colleges. Among the students who were young European scholars. They came, learned Arabic, and transmitted important ideas, and even styles of song, poetry, and new foods when they returned home. During the time when Muslims ruled territory in Spain and Sicily, people in those lands became centers of Muslim learning and culture. Spain and Sicily are Mediterranean lands within Europe, and linked to the East. Both warfare and peaceful contacts brought to Christian Europe information about the advanced way of life, luxury goods, music, fashions and learning available in al- Andalus. Some curious scholars, including Church officials, traveled to al-Andalus to learn first-hand and see the libraries of wondrous books available there in Arabic, on many important and useful subjects. Like a mirror of the translation effort in the House of Wisdom at Jundishapur centuries earlier, groups of scholars—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—sat down together to translate these precious books. With the support of some wise Christian rulers, they began to translate into Latin the Arabic books they found there. During the 1100s and 1200s, Latin translations of Arabic books helped to bring about changes in Europe’s schools and growing cities. Books about mathematics, including algebra, geometry and advanced arithmetic, introduced Arabic numerals. It took another 200 years before they replaced Roman numerals in Europeans’ everyday life. Use of Arabic numerals by North African and Italian merchants helped to spread them first among accountants (people who do bookkeeping for merchants). Other books brought knowledge about astronomy— contributions from Greek, Persian, and Arabic sources. Geography and maps, as well as careful measurements of latitude and longitude, helped Europeans to see the world in a new way, and instruments for navigation eventually helped them to cross the Atlantic and discover the Americas. Among navigational instruments were the astrolabe, the quadrant, the compass, and the use of longitude and latitude to create accurate maps and charts (calculating longitude at sea came in later centuries). Medical books, especially works by Ibn Sina, al-Razi and al-Zahrawi, and some classical Greek works, lifted the cloud of superstition over illness. Descriptions of diseases and cures, surgery, and pharmacy—the art of preparing medicines-helped develop a medical profession in Europe. MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 8 To summarize the importance of the translation work that took place in Spain after the Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085, modern writers Francis and Joseph Gies wrote: It was the Muslim-Assisted translation of Aristotle followed by Galen, Euclid, Ptolemy and other Greek authorities and their integration into the university curriculum that created what historians have called “the scientific Renaissance of the12th century.” Certainly the completion of the double, sometimes triple translation (Greek into Arabic, Arabic into Latin, often with an intermediate Castilian Spanish...) is one of the most fruitful scholarly enterprises ever undertaken. Two chief sources of translation were Spain and Sicily, regions where Arab, European, and Jewish scholars freely mingled. In Spain the main center was Toledo, where Archbishop Raymond established a college specifically for making Arab knowledge available to Europe. Scholars flocked thither...By 1200 “virtually the entire scientific corpus of Aristotle” was available in Latin, along with works by other Greek and Arab authors on medicine, optics, catoptrics (mirror theory), geometry, astronomy, astrology, zoology, psychology, and mechanics.” MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 9 GEOGRAPHY AND TRADE In popular imagination, Islam was a religion of the desert, which arose in the oasis towns of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt in the seventh century AD. Of course, neither Mecca nor Medina, the twin cities of the Prophet Muhammad, really belonged to the desert or the Bedouin nomadic way of life. The Umayyad military victories in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Iran within a decade of Muhammad's death in 632 produced immediate and tangible results, the most notable of which was the consolidation of the two transcontinental trade routes through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The economic foundation of the Muslim world system created by the Umayyads and the Abbasids in the first century of Islam rested on three factors: settled agriculture, urbanization, and long-distance trade. Nomadism and its economy had provided the backdrop to the early Arab expansion and they were not entirely marginalized in the development of urbanized Islam. The Bedouin of Arabia did not give up their nomadic way of life; the desert and the camel continued to signify certain aspects of Islam and certainly to signify the context of its movements. Anyone who contemplates the magnificent mihrab of the Great Mosque in Cordoba built in the eight century, with its pure Arab geometry, must be aware that the historical roots of the Islamic world were already strong by the Umayyad and Abbasid periods. But those political leaders and their Arab followers who did migrate to the old and new towns to adopt an urban life soon revived the economic unity of the ancient world, which had been lost with the decline of Rome and Persia. The expansion and the new activities which became faintly evident in the rhythm of both caravan and trans-oceanic trade from the seventh century onwards in northern and southern China received a great deal of their impetus from the domestic aspirations and developments of the T'ang and Sung empires. However, in the West it was joined by the second and most powerful of the historical forces of the time, the rise of Islam and its expansion across the fertile lands of the Near East and South Asia. Movements of people by definition involve the exchange of ideas, economic systems, social usage, political institutions, and artistic traditions. The spread of Islam subsumed all these things. It may be an exaggeration for lack of definite proof to state that the commerce of the Indian Ocean in the westward direction had entered a period of relative contraction during the later Roman Empire with the weakening of a Mediterranean “world economy.” It is certainly true that the Arab conquests and rapid demographic diffusion and the political integration of Egypt, Syria, Iran, and North Africa created an enormously powerful zone of economic consumption. It was an expanding area that drew its commercial and fiscal strength from refashioning in the West the Mediterranean economy of antiquity and from harnessing the productive resources of the lands around the Indian Ocean in the East. Arab economic success in the early caliphate period was achieved with the aid of the skills possessed by the people of the ancient Near East. But the growth of great urban centers, a universal feature of Islam, and the new capital cities gave rise to an expanding demand for commodities of all kinds and for precious objects. This in turn quickened the pace of long-distance trade. The revival of the sea and caravan routes across the famous international boundary lines, known to merchants since Hellenistic times, owed much to the ability of the Islamic rulers to protect their property and persons against violence. The laws of commercial contracts and the principles of juridical rights, which evolved in the centuries following the foundation of Islam, took into account a cardinal fact of pre-modern trade. Merchants who traveled by land and sea into the realms of foreign princes were prone to take their business elsewhere without the guarantee of a certain amount of commercial freedom secured by reciprocal political rights and obligations. MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 10 Trade was a significant source of income for Muslims during the Abbasid Caliphate. Some of the trading routes used during the Abbasid Caliphate are shown on the map on page 11 with red lines. Muslims established trading colonies throughout the Middle East and even as far away as China to obtain porcelain and silk. The main centers for trade and commerce at this time were: Baghdad (Iraq), Cairo (Egypt), and Cordoba (Spain). Muslims spread transportation technology. Camel caravans were used as one method of travel during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate. Arab and Muslim conquerors of North Africa brought the onehumped camel and the efficient North Arabian saddle to expand trans-Saharan trade. Many trade routes went through the Arabian Desert and Sahara Desert. The camel made it possible for people from the southern Sahara to establish contacts with the people of the northern Sahara. Since camels can travel for such long periods of time on a smaller amount of water than other animals would need, the use of camel caravans was a practical method of trade while traveling through desert lands. The Bedouin (the people of the Arabian Desert) used camel caravans for trading, not only because of their small need for water, but because they were ideal for carrying goods. The Bedouin used camels to carry goods such as milk, butter, wool, hides, and skins. Still used today, camel caravans are an example of the Abbasid Caliphate's influence on the world today and the clever thinking that was done during this time. Muslim traders on long-distance sea trade used dhows. Dhows are sailing vessels that use two or three masts, and were common on the Arabian, Indian, and East African coasts. Much of the trade that took place during the Abbasid Caliphate was on the sea, so these dhows were often used. Muslim sailors and merchants on these ships traded ivory, gold, frankincense and myrrh, animal skins, rice, cloth, glass beads, and more on these ships. Muslim Sailors used the Astrolabe for navigation on the seas. It helped them determine latitude and contributed to the development of geography. It is said to have originated in Baghdad, a center place for Islam during the Abbasid Caliphate, in the 900's. They also developed cartography, the knowledge of the monsoon wind patterns and map making recorded in books supported by Islamic governments (mostly the Caliphates), to aid them on their sea-routes. Coins produced by governments and having Arabic texts and standard shapes made trade easier. In the Red Sea port of Aqaba, archaeologists found at the eleventh century street levels a cloth sack full of gold coins, 32 dinars, possibly left by a hajj pilgrim trying to escape an attack on the city. Three of the coins appear to have been minted in North Africa. Others were gold coins probably minted at Sijilmasa, a Moroccan town on the northern edge of the Sahara. Muslim government protected trade and property for merchants. In his eleventh-century work A Guide to the Merits of Commerce Abu al-Fadl Ja’far bin ‘Ali ad-Dimashqi wrote about Damascus: “There are three kinds of merchants: he who travels, he who stocks, he who exports. Their trade is carried out in three ways: cash sale with a time limit for delivery, purchase on credit with payments by installment, and muqaradah (in Islamic law a contract in which one individual entrusts capital to a merchant for investment in trade in order to receive a share of the profits). The investor bears all of the financial risks; the managing party risks his labor.” The Book of Routes and Kingdoms by the eleventh-century Andalusian geographer Abu Ubayd al MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 11 Bakri writes on the West African kingdom of Ghana: "The city of Ghana consists of two towns situated on a plain. One of these towns, which is inhabited by Muslims, is large and possesses twelve mosques in one of which they assemble for the Friday prayer. There are salaried imams and muezzins, as well as jurists and scholars. The king's town is six miles distant from this one. . . . The king has a palace and a number of domed dwellings all surrounded with an enclosure like a city wall. Around the king's town are domed buildings and groves and thickets where the sorcerers of these people, men in charge of the religious cult, live. In them too are their idols and the tombs of their kings." http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/4chapter1.shtml The hajj, the annual Muslim religious pilgrimage to Makkah, affected trade positively. Ibn Jubayr was a Muslim from Spain who made the hajj in 1184 CE. From all parts produce is brought to it, and it is the most prosperous of countries in its fruits, useful requisites, commodities, and commerce. And although there is no commerce save in the pilgrim period, nevertheless, since people gather in it from east and west, there will be sold in one day, apart from those that follow, precious objects such as pearls, sapphires, and other stones, various kinds of perfume such as musk, camphor, amber and aloes, Indian drugs and other articles brought from India and Ethiopia, the products of the industries of 'Iraq and the Yemen, as well as the merchandise of Khurasan, the goods of the Maghrib, and other wares such as it is impossible to enumerate or correctly assess. Even if they were spread over all lands, brisk markets could be set up with them and all would be filled with the useful effects of commerce. All this is within the eight days that follow the pilgrimage, and exclusive of what might suddenly arrive throughout the year from the Yemen and other countries. Not on the face of the world are there any goods or products but that some of them are in Mecca at this meeting of the pilgrims. This blessing is clear to all, and one of the miracles that God has worked in particular for this city. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, and adherents of other belief systems cooperated in trade together. The Geographical Encyclopedia of Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179-1229) included a section about Baghdad under the Abbasids, c. 1000 CE : “The long wide estrades [platforms] at the different gates of the city were used by the citizens for gossip and recreation or for watching the flow of travelers and country folk into the capital. The different nationalities in the capital had each a head officer to represent their interests with the government, and to whom the stranger could appeal for counsel or help. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1000baghdad.html MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 12 MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 13 THE SPREAD OF ISLAM It is quite easy to map the large territory ruled by different Muslim political groups, or to illustrate the expansion of an empire. We can shade in areas of a map, and we can track the dates of Muslim rulers and dynasties from the time of Muhammad to the present day. It is more difficult, however, to understand why historians speak of a geographic area as a “Muslim region,” “Muslim society,” “Muslim civilization,” or even “the Islamic world.” At a minimum, such terms must mean that most of the people who lived in those places considered themselves to be Muslims, that is, people who believed in the religion called Islam. By what point in time did the majority of people in those places accept Islam, and how rapid was its spread? What effect did the gradual or rapid spread of Islam have on language, customs, art, and politics? How did the fact that many people were converting to Islam relate to the development of Muslim culture and civilization? We know, of course, that substantial numbers of people in those regions continued to practice the faiths they had belonged to before Islam, including Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Hindus and others. The social contributions of people of these religions continued under Muslim rule. As these former majorities became minorities, how were they affected? How did the presence of a large region in which the majority of its inhabitants were Muslim affect adjoining regions where the majority accepted other faiths? In the decades after Muhammad’s death, nearly all of the inhabitants of Arabia accepted Islam, except Christian and Jewish communities, which were allowed to continue practicing their faiths. As Muslim rule extended into regions beyond the Arabian tribal system, however, khalifas, that is, the successors of the Prophet as leaders of the Muslim community, did not encourage conversion to Islam among the populations of newly conquered areas. Nevertheless, during the early caliphates (632–750) non-Arabs began to accept Islam. Conversion took place at first among the lowest classes of people. Men and women migrated to Muslim garrison cities to look for jobs and to offer their services to the ruling group. Learning about Islam in these centers, some converted and expanded the Muslim population. These migrants became associates, or mawali, of Arab tribes, a traditional method of integrating outsiders. Some migrant Arab and mawali converts founded families that later made important contributions in preserving and spreading Islamic knowledge. They became scholars of Islamic law, history, literature, and the sciences. In this way, Islam spread in spite of the policies of political rulers, not because of them. During the years of the Umayyad Caliphate (Umayyad dynasty) from 661–750 CE, the overwhelming majority of non-Arab populations of the empire, which stretched from Morocco to Inner Eurasia, did not practice Islam. Toward the end of that time, the North African Berbers became the first major nonArab group to accept the faith. Within a few centuries, Christianity disappeared almost completely in North Africa (today’s Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), though Christian groups persisted in many other Muslim regions. Jews remained as a small minority, with many living in Muslim Spain. The spread of Islam among Iranians and other peoples of Persia was the second major movement, beginning about 720 CE. Both of these early groups of converts caused problems for the central government. In North Africa, Berbers set up an independent caliphate, breaking up the political unity of Islam. In Persia, the revolution arose that replaced the Umayyad with the Abbasid dynasty in 750, though only a small proportion of the population of Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia, centered on the Tigris-Euphrates valley) had at that time accepted Islam. From then, however, Islam was no longer the religion of a single ethnic or ruling group, and the rates of conversion climbed more rapidly in lands under Muslim rule. MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 14 For example, Arab Muslim forces conquered Egypt in 642, but by 700 few Egyptians had become Muslims. By 900 CE, about fifty percent of the population was probably Muslim, and by 1200, more than 90 percent. In Syria, Islam spread even more slowly. There, the 50-percent mark was not reached until 1200, nearly six hundred years after the arrival of Islam. Iraq and Iran probably reached a Muslim majority by around 900 CE, like Egypt. In much of Spain and Portugal, Islam became established in the 500 years following the initial conquests of 711 CE, though it may never have become the majority faith. After Spanish Catholic armies completed the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, many Muslims and Jews were either expelled from Spain or converted to Christianity. Islam continued to exist, however, until after 1600. As in Spain and Portugal, Islam withered away in Sicily, the Mediterranean island that Muslims had conquered in the ninth century. In Persia, Inner Eurasia, and India, Muslim law treated Zoroastrians, Buddhists, and Hindus just as it treated Jews and Christians. Muslim rulers offered adherents of these religions protection of life, property, and freedom of religious practice in exchange for the payment of a tax, as an alternative to military service. In Sind (northwestern India), the Buddhist population seems to have embraced Islam in the eighth and ninth centuries. Buddhism disappeared entirely in that region. Hinduism, however, declined there more slowly than Buddhism did. All of the lands described above had Muslim rulers. After the decline of the unified Muslim empire— from about 750—Islam gradually spread to lands outside the boundaries of Muslim rule. After 1071, Anatolia (or Asia Minor), which makes up most of modern Turkey, came under the rule of Turkish animal-herding groups that had become Muslims. Islam spread gradually for centuries after that, and when the Ottoman Turkish Empire enfolded much of southeastern Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, most Albanians and Bosnians, as well as some Bulgarians, became Muslims. Beginning in 1192, other Muslim Turkish military groups conquered parts of India, including most of the north all the way to present-day Bangladesh, which borders the Bay of Bengal. The number of Muslims in India gradually increased from that time. The people of Bangladesh had been Buddhists, but beginning about 1300, they rapidly embraced Islam. Elsewhere in India, except for Punjab and Kashmir in the far northwest, Hinduism remained the religion of the majority. In South India and Sri Lanka, both merchants and Sufi preachers, that is, followers of mystical Islam, spread the faith. By 1300, traders and Sufis also introduced it to Southeast Asia. Over the next two centuries, Islam spread from Malaysia to the great archipelago that is today Indonesia. Entering a region where Buddhism, Hinduism, and local polytheist religions existed, Islam required several centuries to become well established. In Inner Eurasia beginning in the eighth century, Islam gradually spread to the original homelands of the Turkic-speaking peoples until it became the main religion of nearly all of them. Islam also spread into Xinjiang, the western part of China, where it was tolerated by the Chinese empire. Islam entered southern China through seaports, such as Guanzhou, the city where the earliest masjid exists. Before 1500, Islam spread widely in sub-Saharan Africa. Before 1000 CE, the first major town south of the Sahara that became majority Muslim was Gao, a commercial center located on the Niger River in Mali. Over the centuries, many other rulers and parts of their populations followed this pattern. By MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 15 1040, groups in Senegal had become Muslims. From there, Islam spread to the region of today’s Mali and Guinea. Muslims established the kingdom of Mali in the thirteenth century and the Songhai empire from 1465 to 1600. Farther east, Kanem-Bornu near Lake Chad became Muslim after 1100. In West Africa, like Turkestan, India, and Indonesia, traders and Sufis introduced Islam. When rulers accepted the faith, numerous Muslim scholars, lawyers, teachers, and artisans migrated into the region to help build Muslim administration and cultural life. African Muslim scholars became established in major towns like Timbuktu, where they taught and practiced Islamic law as judges. By 1500, Islam was established in West Africa in a wide east-west belt south of the Sahara. Local polytheistic religions remained strong, however, and Islam did not become the majority faith in this region until the nineteenth century. In East Africa, traders spread Islam along the coast beginning at least by the tenth century. By the fourteenth century, the numerous commercial city-states along the coast from today’s Somalia to Tanzania were predominantly Muslim. In the Sudan, south of Egypt, the population of Nubia gradually became Muslim during the fourteenth century, through immigration of Muslim Arab pastoral groups and because Christian rule became weak in that region. Strong Governments and the Spread of Islam. By understanding that the expansion of Muslim rule was different from the spread of Islam, we can see an interesting trend. Ironically, Islam has spread most widely and rapidly among populations at times when Muslim rule was weaker and less unified. When Muslim political regimes were decentralized, disunited, or completely absent, Islam as a religion flourished and often spread to non-Muslims. Influence by traders and Sufis and influence of Muslim scholars, lawyers, and artisans in the cities aided the spread of Islam to new areas. On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire in southeastern Europe, or the Sultanate of Delhi, and the later Mogul empire of India had little success in spreading Islam, though they did gain territory. Non-Muslim populations seem to have viewed these powerful, tax-gathering Muslim rulers negatively, and so they resisted conversion to Islam. Whoever did embrace Islam in such circumstances, if not for material gain, usually did so because of the efforts of merchants, teachers, and traveling Sufi preachers, who were not part of the government. MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 16 BASIC TIMELINE MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 17 ISLAM: EMPIRE OF FAITH DOCUMENTARY This Quiz Bowl topic will also include questions from the following documentary: Islam: Empire of Faith, Part 2: The Awakening - http://youtu.be/X1PxJomypQE MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 18 REFERENCES Cohen, Sharon, and Susan Douglass. “Afroeurasia and the Rise of Islam, 600-1000 CE.” World History for Us All. Web. Jan. 2015. http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/units/five/landscape/05_landscape2.pdf Douglass, Susan. "Legacies and Transfers: The Story of the Transfer of Knowledge from Islamic Spain to Europe." Unity Productions Foundation. 2007. Web. Jan. 2015. http://www.islamicspain.tv/ForTeachers/11_Legacies%20and%20Transfers%20Story%20of%20Transfer%20of%20Knowledge.pdf Yalman, Suzan. Based on original work by Linda Komaroff. "The Art of the Abbasid Period (750– 1258)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. Web. Jan. 2015. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/abba/hd_abba.htm “The Abbasid Empire: The Golden Age of Islamic Civilization”. The Saylor Foundation, 2014. Web. Jan. 2015 http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HIST101-9.3.1-AbbasidDynasty-FINAL.pdf MIST 2015 BOWL PACKET 19