Читать книгу The Handy Islam Answer Book - John Renard - Страница 10
ОглавлениеMany non-Muslims seem to assume (if not insist) that Islam was, and continues to be, always and everywhere “spread by the sword.” Is this historically accurate?
Unfortunately, even highly placed and influential non-Muslims, such as Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, still make dramatic pronouncements to the effect that everything Muhammad taught was evil and inhumane and that it is a simple historical fact that Islam was spread by violence. A great deal of concrete historical data tells a very different story. The assumption that Islam spread so dramatically because Arab-Muslim armies moving out of Arabia, northward into the central Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Palestine), eastward into present-day Iran, and westward across North Africa, offered conquered peoples the stark option of conversion or death, is seriously flawed. It presupposes an equation between military domination and subjugation to governance by Muslim invaders on the one hand, and being forced to become Muslim on the other hand. On the contrary, Muslim military policy did not force conversion and in fact mandated that once the invaded territory’s authorities accepted terms of peace (often without major loss of life to the general populace), the Muslim armies retreated to newly established garrison cities rather than leave a large footprint on existing cities and towns. Muslim taxation policy also made it financially advantageous for the conquerors not to convert subject peoples en masse, since that would remove the poll tax imposed on non-Muslims.
If Muslims didn’t systematically force the conversion of peoples they conquered, how did these conquered territories become predominantly Muslim?
Recent studies concerning rates of conversion suggest nothing like a meteoric acceptance of Islamic faith. By around 750, 130 years after the death of Muhammad, the population of Persia (Iran) appears to have been around 10 percent Muslim, while at about the same time the populations of much of the Central Middle East (Greater Syria and Iraq) were no more than 20 percent Muslim. A century later (c. 850), Persia’s Muslims numbered around 50 percent of the population. Two-and-a-half centuries later (c. 1096), on the eve of the first Crusade, the population of the central (Arab) Middle East was evidently still less than 50 percent Muslim. In other words, it seems to have taken nearly half a millennium for Muslims to become the clear religious majority in the lands conquered in the earliest invasions by Muslim armies.
How can one organize the huge topic of global Islamic history to make this difficult topic more manageable?
One good organizing concept is that of “culture spheres.” It makes it possible to imagine large swaths of history and geography by thinking of somewhat overlapping areas of the globe, but recognizing each by its distinctive characteristics in a group of shared categories. For example, all of the five Islamic “culture spheres” have unique configurations of the following: First, a dominant religious school of law or “denomination”; second, a distinctive tone of popular spirituality or dominant Sufi order(s); third, signature racial or ethnic elements; fourth, a unique history or understanding of the region’s past; fifth, special geography or demography; and finally, languages that predominate in culture or administrative structures.
What are these culture spheres?
The five spheres, or realms, are as follows: 1) the Arabicate, the oldest historically, in which the Arabic language has been a strong influence on other tongues (such as Swahili), even when Arabic is no longer the dominant tongue; 2) the Persianate, second in antiquity, with Persian casting as long a shadow as Arabic in its sphere; 3) the Turkic, originating in Central Asia and expanding westward with Turkish migrations; 4) the Southeast Asian Malay, where in addition to a blend of Arabicate and Persianate features, Malayo-Polynesian languages predominate; and 5) the Black African, with a host of indigenous sub-Saharan languages. A sixth large, more generic and amorphous sphere, whose Muslim populations are distinctly minorities, would be “Europe and the Americas,” and will be treated separately below and in other chapters.
How would one describe the Arabicate culture sphere? And why not just call it “Arabic”?
With its center more or less in Egypt, the Arabicate sphere stretches eastward across the Central Middle East nations of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and the numerous nation-states of the Arabian Peninsula, the land of Islam’s birth. Toward the west, it stretches across North Africa, encompassing Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, with their Berber and Tuareg ethnicities and non-Semitic languages, as well as the historically crucial cultures of Islamic Spain, or Andalusia. South of Egypt, it includes not only Arabic speaking lands, such as Sudan and Somalia, but also the Swahili populations of Kenya and other parts of East Africa. Numerous smaller Islam-related communities such as the Alawis, Nusayris, and Druze are largely unique to the central part of this sphere, and significant Shi’i populations, including a slight majority in Iraq, are important in the religious mix, especially on the eastern fringe of the sphere. In this very diverse sphere, all four Sunni law schools are well-represented: the Maliki dominant in the western reaches, the Shafi’i and Hanafi more prevalent in the central areas, the Hanbali in the Arabian Peninsula, and the Shi’i schools important in Iraq and parts of the Persian Gulf coast. Finally, why not just “Arabic”? Because Arab(ic) influence in this sphere extends far beyond the actual dominance of Arabic as a language and pure Arab ethnicity and includes regions deeply influenced by Arab language and culture over many centuries.
How did the first Islamic “dynasty,” the Umayyads, come into being?
In 656, after the murder of Uthman, the third Rightly Guided Caliph, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, Ali, acceded to the office of caliph, but not to universal acclaim. One group that opposed him was led by Aisha, one of the Prophet’s wives, but this relatively weak faction was defeated in 656. Members of the Umayyad clan also refused to acknowledge Ali as caliph, thus sparking the first of several civil wars within the young Muslim community. A member of that clan, named Muawiya, a cousin of Uthman, was governor of the ancient city of Damascus when Ali and Muawiya’s forces engaged in battle at Siffin. After fighting to a draw, Ali agreed to human mediation, thus alienating a group of his supporters who insisted that anyone who thus failed to trust in God alone was not a true Muslim. They “seceded” from the Shia, and these “seceders” (or Kharijites) became set on overthrowing Ali. In 659, a council of elders (shura) ruled against Ali’s claims, thus further sealing a shift in which the Sunnis leaned decisively toward Muawiya’s counterclaim. The First Civil War (fitna, dissension) ended in 661 when a Kharijite murdered Ali, clearing the way for Muawiya to become the first Umayyad caliph. Previously, the first three Rightly Guided Caliphs had ruled from their capital in Medina, after which Ali shifted his center of power to the former garrison town of Kufa in Iraq. Wanting to establish their own seat of authority, the Umayyads moved the capital to Damascus, thus signaling an important departure from Islam’s land of origin and a deliberate opening to the greater Middle East.
How did the Abbasid dynasty originate?
Within the early years of Abbasid rule, the first two caliphs consolidated power against rivals, some of whom had been their collaborators against the Umayyads. Then there was the problem of the Umayyads themselves, which the first Abbasid caliph tried to solve by exterminating the dynasty’s surviving elites. One of them, the story goes, managed to escape to Iberia, and there laid the foundation for an Andalusian extension of Umayyad rule in Spain. Meanwhile, back in Iraq, by 756 the Abbasid family had been firmly established as the ruling dynasty. The family traced its ancestral legitimacy to Muhammad’s uncle Abbas, hence the name Abbasids, descendants of Abbas. It was Caliph al-Mansur (r. 754–775) who decided he needed a distinctive seat of power by distancing the Abbasids from the first dynastic capitol of Damascus. Emulating the royal dynasties of Sasanian (and Zoroastrian) Persia, he selected a site not far from Ctesiphon, a Persian royal palace in central Iraq—a statement not only that they would act like kings (though they had denounced the Umayyads for that very affectation), but that Islamic rule was now to be centered squarely in conquered territory in very new surroundings. There they founded the new city of Baghdad, proclaiming with its innovative round plan that it would be a symbol of openness to the wider world. It soon outgrew not only its Per-sian archetype, Ctesiphon, but Constantinople as well.
What were some of the greatest achievements of the Umayyads?
Muawiyah (r. 661–680) appointed strong governors over newly conquered territories, developed a highly refined system of diplomacy to keep the peace, and slowly increased the expanse of military expeditions. The caliph exchanged his power base in the tribal coalitions for a centralized monarchy and further expanded the military and administrative power of the state. Numerous factions continued to undermine his rule, however, and upon his death in 682, the Second Civil War (682–692) broke out with several groups fighting for power against Muawiya’s son, Yazid (r. 680–683) and later by Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (r. 685–705). Again the Shia reasserted themselves and promoted the cause of Ali’s younger son, Husayn, but he became the first Shi’i martyr in 680 against the Umayyad general Yazid at Karbala (in southern Iraq). Again the Kharijis also rebelled, engaging in guerilla warfare with small armed bands, arguing that they were the only true Muslims. In time, Abd al-Malik brought the empire under Umayyad control through force, in turn weakening the dynasty further by stimulating still more factional discontent. Abd al-Malik remains, however, best known for creating the stunningly beautiful Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem, completed in 692. His successors also expanded the empire westward all the way to Gibraltar and southern Iberia by 711 and inland to France by 732; and eastward as far as the Indus River in what is now Pakistan. During a Third Civil War in 743, anti-Umayyad forces gathered steam, undermining the regime and ending it definitively in 750.
What are some of the signature features of the Abbasid dynasty?
The Abbasids looked back to the example of the legendary Umayyad Caliph Umar II in promoting the equality of all Muslims. Recruiting capable bureaucrats from across the empire, they organized new armies and new groups of administrators with the specific intent of weakening a prior pattern of privileging the Arab elite. Since the Umayyad armies had already expanded Muslim administrative control across an enormous expanse of territory, the Abbasids could replace a huge expeditionary capability with a smaller force at the center and a structure of frontier forces sufficient to maintain farflung holdings. The Abbasid shift to a new expression of global diversity manifested itself in administrative appointments: Nestorian Christians, Shi’ites, Jews, and non-Arab Muslims, were given considerable authority in an increasingly complex centralized governmental structure. For example, the Abbasids created a chancery to deal with records and correspondence, bureaus for tax collection, and a kind of “exchequer” to manage expenses of the caliphs, including the army, court, and pensioners.
How long did the Abbasid dynasty last, and how did the Abbasids manage such a vast empire?
With conquered territories stretching from North Africa through the Middle East, across Persian and Central Asia and into South Asia, the administrative task facing the Abbasids was mind-boggling in scope. The logistical challenges soon manifested themselves in the slow undermining of Baghdad’s control at the periphery. Governors in the outlying provinces took advantage of the caliph’s increasing inability to extract taxes to pay mounting bills in the capital and immediately surrounding lands. This included challenges maintaining the loyalty of mercenary Turkic slave-soldier troops the Abbasids preferred as palace guards (since using Arab troops would have made them vulnerable to age-old inter-tribal feuding and mutiny). Within a scant seventy-five years of its founding, the Abbasid dynasty began to lose frontier provinces as governors refused to pay taxes and declared de facto independence. By the mid-tenth century, effective Abbasid control had shrunk to the Central Middle East—and not the whole of that—as governors proclaimed themselves emirs, and emirs claimed the “universal” authority as caliphs and thus direct rivals to Baghdad’s rule. Though some regions continued to mention the name of the “reigning” Abbasid at Friday prayers, the nod was largely an empty formality. More ominously still, in 945 a powerful Shia family called the Buyids managed to assume effective control, becoming the power behind the throne in Baghdad.
This map shows the widest extent of the Umayyad Empire around the year 750 C.E. (The country boundaries indicated are modern).
What are some of the key turning points in Abbasid history?
In 1055, invading Saljuqid Turks took Baghdad and created a two-track administrative structure in which a (Saljuqid Turkish) Sultan wielded actual temporal power, reducing the (Abbasid Arab) caliph to the role of a largely symbolic spiritual authority. The Saljuqids had converted to Sunni Islam in Central Asia and had as one of their goals the eradication of Shi’i power, and to that end they began a system of higher educational institutions called madrasas, a development that spread rapidly in other political regimes as well. A succession of smaller dynasties continued to rule a much diminished Baghdad, all nominally acknowledging the Abbasid caliph’s authority, until an invasion by Mongol descendants of Genghis Khan in 1258 sealed the fate of the Abbasids. Various other dynasties continued to claim the title of caliph until the early twentieth century, but the office remained largely ceremonial.
What are the origins and early history of the Crusades?
Muslims had occupied Jerusalem since 638, but it was not until 1095 that Pope Urban II called for a crusade at the Council of Clermont. One proximate cause was the defeat of a Byzantine force by a Turkish army at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia in 1071. That Saljuqid Turkish expeditionary force represented the first significant incursion of a Muslim power into the home land of the Byzantine Empire. Under Muslim rule, Christians were allowed to practice their faith. Stories that the invaders had desecrated Christian spaces and mistreated Christians gradually fueled conviction that Christians needed to respond in force. Then Emperor Alexis I of Constantinople asked the pope for help, and his call led to the First Crusade. Composed largely of knights from France and Italy, the first Crusader force set off in 1096 and eventually arrived in Palestine. The force captured Antioch in 1098 and Jerusalem in July 1099. A slaughter of Muslims and Jews ensued, and the Crusaders established the so-called Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. When Turkish troops moved into Edessa, Syria, Christian Europe responded with the ultimately unsuccessful Second Crusade in 1147. Christian hold on the Latin Kingdom began to weaken and finally fell to a Kurdish Muslim general named Saladin (Salah ad-Din). He retook Jerusalem in 1187, beginning the Ayyubid dynasty. He treated the Christians there very well and historical sources suggest that the non-Muslim population held Saladin in high regard. Christian loss of Jerusalem led to the Third Crusade in 1189, in which Christian forces made limited territorial gains, but Christian pilgrims were granted free access to Jerusalem. During the following century or so, Christian forces suffered steady erosion and considerable defeats, and by the Sixth Crusade, the Mamluk dynasty had driven all remaining Crusaders out of Syria-Palestine.
Pope Urban II (r. 1088 to 1099) was the first Christian leader to call for a crusade to the Holy Land. The First Crusade lasted from 1096 to 1099 C.E.
How would one characterize Christian attitudes toward Muslims during the early years of Muslim expansion and the Crusade era?
As Islam expanded into the central Middle East and parts of the Byzantine Empire, Christians generally did not regard the Arabs as different than other invading groups. At first they referred to the invaders “ethnically” as Arabs, culturally and religiously as Agarenes (descendants of Hagar, Abraham’s “slave” wife) and later Saracen (from the Greek Sara kenos, “Sarah’s progeny,” implying descent from Abraham’s wife Sarah). During the Crusades, the name “Saracens” came to refer to their enemies more specifically as Muslims. In Spain and North Africa, Christians referred to Muslims as “Moors,” and beginning with the era of the Crusades, the term “Turk” became more prominent and continued well in to late medieval and Renaissance times. During periods in which anti-Muslim fervor was especially intense, Muslims became the Barbari (barbarians/enemies). In general, Christians during late antiquity and early medieval times had virtually no clear notion of Islamic history and beliefs. Widespread views of the “enemy” were spread by literary works such as the Chansons de Geste (“Songs of Deeds”), popular poems, and works of epic adventure and romance in which Christian heroes dealt crushing blows to the foe. At a more refined level, many Christian scholars across the Mediterranean developed more sophisticated and, generally speaking, more accurate estimates of Islamic beliefs. On the whole, Christians regarded the areas under Muslim rule as outside the civilized world and as fields ripe for the harvest of conversion.
What are some further details about Islam’s religious expansion in the Central Middle East?
Ninth-century Baghdad was a critical focal point in this respect, because of cultural and religious ferment in the still relatively new capital of the Abbasid dynasty. There were conversions of Christians and Jews during this time period, for three main reasons: 1) fear of discrimination and even persecution; 2) relief from the jizya, or poll tax, levied on non-Muslims; and 3) enhancement of social standing within an Islamic society. The conversion rate was more rapid here than elsewhere generally in the Middle East. One estimate has it that the Muslim population in central Iraq grew from 18 percent in 800 to 50 percent in 882. This was not the result, however, of any discernible systematic missionary effort on the part of the Muslims.
What was the fate of medieval Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land?
Many Christians learned about Islam and Muslims by visiting Muslim lands on pilgrimage to holy sites. In an unusual, early ninth-century collaboration, Charlemagne and the Abbasid Caliph Harun ar-Rashid made arrangements for a hostel for the pilgrims in Jerusalem, which had been under Muslim control for nearly two centuries by this time. By the eleventh century, Muslim rulers allowed a fairly steady flow of Christian pilgrims, owing arguably to generally positive attitudes of Muslim rulers towards Christians. During the early period of the Crusades, some sources suggest it may have been difficult to differentiate between pilgrim and crusader. In the early thirteenth century, Francis of Assisi traveled to Damietta (Egypt) in hopes of converting the Ayyubid dynasty caliph. Earlier on, pilgrims generally did not expect to find anything of value in Islam or among the Muslim people, but after the thirteenth century, interest in Islam grew. From the fifteenth century on, European travelers’ accounts about Muslims proliferated, and though understandably skewed by their negative preconceptions, many reports noted praiseworthy aspects of the religion and human qualities of its people.
What is known about early Muslim-Christian relationships in the Central Middle East?
Three documents of the period sum up Muslim-Christian relationships: a letter from Abd Allah ibn Ismail al-Hashimi (a Muslim) to Abd al-Masih ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (a Christian); al-Kindi’s letter of response; and a treatise on Islam by Ali ibn Rabban al-Tabari, a convert from Christianity. All three documents operate on a theoretically elevated level, discussing the validity of theological issues such as the Trinity and Muhammad’s prophethood. These documents show the widespread contact between Muslims and Christians, and reflect that, though there were radical Muslim groups that did not hesitate to use intimidation and even military threat to convert Christians, the majority of inter-religious encounters were peaceful and focused on a discussion of religious truths rather than violence.
How were relations among Christians and Arab Muslims in the Holy Lands before the Crusade era?
By the end of the tenth century, Palestine had different religious groups living within its borders. The relationship among these groups was marked by tolerance and interdependence, exemplified in the burgeoning, multivalent trade system. Communal celebrations were common and continued despite the Crusades. The demographic composition of Palestine changed with the arrival of Sunni Turks in 1065. These Turks harassed both pro-Fatimid Ismaili Muslims and their sympathizers (Jews, Christians). With the landscape shifted, the relationship between Muslims and Christians grew colder, though certainly not to the degree described in many European “reporters,” most notably William of Tyre. The vituperative language used to describe Muslims in crusader memoirs was often hyperbolic. As the control of the Holy Land shifted from Muslim to Christian and back, distrust grew on both sides, and conversion and apostasy became huge issues for inhabitants of each faith. There was, however, little sign of forced conversions, and many times there were instances of an amalgamation of the cultures. Christian Franks adopted Muslim fashion and married Muslim women (who often converted to Christianity). Such “arabacized” Christians were regarded poorly by both Muslims and new European visitors; they were seen as half-Christians, an epithet from either a Christian or Muslim perspective. Muslims did hold Christian knights in high regard for their bravery and Christian monks for their piety, but held the everyday Frank living in Palestine in low esteem. On the whole, the Crusades irreparably disrupted the peaceful coexistence of Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land.
What is known about Christian conversion to Islam and Christian-Muslim relations in medieval Spain?
From very early in Iberian Muslim history, Christianity was a “protected religion” under Muslim rulers. Historians are virtually unanimous that there was no early proselytizing or persecution of Christians by Muslims (the conversion rate during the eighth century was about 5 percent). An important ingredient in Christian–Muslim relations in eighth- and ninth-century Spain is known as the “adoptionist controversy,” a proper understanding of which is useful here. “Adoptionism” in this instance refers to the notion that Jesus was the “adoptive” (not the actual) son of God. Some Christian leaders of the time attributed the prevalence of that notion in Spain to the influence of Muslim theology, with its belief that Jesus is neither divine nor the “actual” son of God. Pope Hadrian I believed that the controversy was a result of “too much association with the Jews and Muslims.” Charlemagne, who had clashed with Muslims on a political and military level, opposed the controversy violently. He blamed it on the Muslims, and, in a letter to a Spanish Christian aristocrat, said that if the Spanish held to adoptionism, they would not receive “appropriate” help (i.e., military aid to fight the Muslims) from the Franks.
Does this view still prevail?
Historians now tend to argue that the low conversion rates during the early centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia militate against the view that Muslim influence exacerbated the wayward tendencies of “adoptionist” Spanish Christians; in other words, those Church authorities were reacting out of fear of Islam. During the eleventh century, the situation was in a way reversed: Islamic theology reflects a feeling of alienation and deep fear of Muslim apostasy and conversion to Christianity. These fears were provoked by the increased missionary work by the Cluniac monks in Spain and a degree of heteropraxy among Muslims. With the capture of Toledo in 1085, the Muslims were no longer invincible in Spain, and the Christian motivation for fighting was “no longer for the collection of tribute, but for the restoration of the land of St. Peter.” Conflict thus became more explicitly religious and not purely political. When the Moroccan Almoravid Muslim dynasty filled the political vacuum in Spain in 1086, they won a decisive victory at Zallayah, provoking an all-out war by the Christians against Islam in the Iberian Peninsula and the East. The Christians wanted Muslims to be baptized, while the Muslims wanted King Alfonso VI to accept Islam. Christians had come to prefer war against the Muslims to dialogue with them.
How did North Africa become Islamized?
Muslim armies conquered the coastal regions of what are now Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco during a long drive that ended with Umayyad troops crossing to Gibraltar in 711. During the eighth century, much of that vast region remained in control of independent tribes of diverse ethnicity. Itinerant Kharijites managed to convert many Berbers (a major ethnic group) to their brand of “puritanical” Islam with its centripetal tendency to dissociate itself from central rule in Damascus and later Bagh-dad. But in 800, the first of many indigenous Muslim dynasties was founded by Ibrahim ibn al-Aghlab, after whom a line of hereditary governors were named “Aghlabids.” Around 868 they declared “officially” their independence from the caliphate. They encountered their first serious competition with the rise of the Fa-timid dynasty, whose founding figures traced their origins to the early Ismaili (aka Sevener) Shi’ites, hard-core opponents of Abbasid central rule in Baghdad. They were more politically activist than the Twelvers, who had effectively deferred hope of righteous rule until the Twelfth imam would emerge from Occultation (Concealment) as the Mahdi, Guided One, at the end of time. Convinced that there would always be an imam present and active in the world, the Fatimids (that is, “descendants of Fatima,” Muhammad’s daughter) pursued a vigorous missionary agenda of da’wa (“inviting” to Islam). Around 909, Ubayd Allah proclaimed himself the new imam, thus launching the Fatimid caliphate and beginning the conquest of what are now Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. In 969, the Fatimids founded the city of Cairo, from which they ruled the region until 1171, effectively cutting it off from the Abbasid caliphate.
Ruins of a Fatimid castle in Ajdabiya, Libya. The Fa-timid caliphate covered much of northern African and the Middle East, lasting from 909 to 1171 C.E.
How did the history of the central Arabicate Sphere unfold thereafter?
Among the numerous dynasties and political regimes that ruled throughout the Mediterranean and central and south Asia, several stand out. In Egypt, Saladin’s Sunni Ayyubid dynasty (1171–1250) supplanted the Fatimids and was in turn overthrown by the Mamluk dynasty (1250–1517). The Mamluks presided over two and a half centuries of relative peace and prosperity throughout the central Middle East, ruling Egypt and Libya as well as much of “Greater Syria.” They were patrons of the arts and architecture on a grand scale under whom Cairo, especially, grew into a worthy rival of any great Mediterranean city. The Ottoman Turks (1300–1921) succeeded the Mamluks as they expanded to conquer most of the former Byzantine empire and more. To the east, the Safavid dynasty (1501–1722) replaced the descendants of Genghis Khan, who had ruled Iraq and Iran for 250 years. Establishing Twelver Shi’i Islam as the official creed of the realm, the Safavids created splendid art and architecture in cities such as Isfahan.
What is the Persianate sphere? And why not just call it “Persian”?
As the name suggests, at the core of this sphere are Persian language and ethnicity centered historically on the Iranian plateau. Its western reaches begin in eastern Iraq and stretch northward into the Caucasus, eastward across present-day Iran, through Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, and north of there to cover much of Central Asia, overlapping historically with parts of the Turkic sphere (see below). Extremely diverse ethnically and linguistically, the western half of the sphere embraces ethnic groups such as Kurds, Baluchis, and Pashtuns. The eastern half of the sphere—most of South Asia— begins in eastern Pakistan and covers the northern two-thirds of India, much of Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In the “Indian subcontinent” Persianate culture blended with Hindu traditions of art, architecture, and literature, and the “classical Persian” language (already much influenced by Arabic) put its stamp on other Indo-European languages such as Sindhi, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Kashmiri. Urdu, now the “national language” of Pakistan and a tongue spoken by many Indian Muslims, is a rich amalgam of Indic, Persian, and some Turkic elements. The Persianate sphere is home to a rich religious diversity: Twelver Shi’ism, especially in the western half (over 90 percent of Iranians and over half of Iraqis, for example), Ismailis sprinkled through the eastern half, and smaller religious minorities such as the Bahais and Parsees (aka Zoroastrians). In addition, Sufi orders especially associated with the Persianate sphere include Chishtis and Suhrawardis as well as distinctive Shi’i orders like the Dhahabis. The term “Persianate” is used here because there are actually several “Persian” languages and because the sphere represents the results of centuries of linguistic and cultural influence that go well beyond lands now typically identified as “Persian.”
How did Persia become Islamized?
When Arab Muslim forces moved into the Iranian plateau in the early seventh century, various Persian Empires had already ruled the region for over a millennium. The dominant languages belonged to the large “Indo-European” family of tongues, entirely different from the Semitic Arabic of the invaders. And the dominant religious tradition was Zoroastrianism, also about a thousand years old by then. Muslim armies brought down the last of the Sasanian rulers by 653 and continued to push eastward toward central and south Asia. Under the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphates, Muslim administrations managed Persia through regional or provincial governors (amir, uh-MEER). By the mid-ninth century, governors of the always restive region began to proclaim themselves independent of Baghdad. From then on, Persia was ruled by a long succession of dynasties small and large. Most prominent were the Ilkhanids (thirteenth to fourteenth centuries) and the Timurids (fourteenth to fifteenth centuries), both tracing their ancestry to Genghis Khan and holding significant positions in Central Asia. Most of what is now the nation of Iran was unified by the region’s first major Shi’ite dynasty, the Safavids, in the early sixteenth century, and Iran’s dominant faith tradition has been more or less “officially” that of Twelver Shi’ism ever since.
How did Islam become important in South Asia?
Early conquests brought Islam to the region of Sind, in present-day Pakistan, by 711. Over the next several centuries a succession of Muslim dynasties made occasional advances into the Punjab in northwestern India. In 1191 the Ghurid dynasty captured Delhi and established the first major Muslim presence in the heart of India and the first of a succession of sultanates to hold sway in various regions of the subcontinent. The most important of those was that of Tughluq Shah (1320–1351), who managed to unite most of northern and central India from Delhi. For the next sixty years or so the Tughluquids shared power with several other dynasties that ruled to the south, while the kings of Bengal established their independent rule over a newly Islamized population. In 1526 Babur conquered Delhi and established the Islamic Mughal dynasty, whose rule would soon encompass most of the subcontinent.
What happened to the Mughal Empire?
The Mughal dynasty (1502–1757) established Islamic rule over much of south Asia, from Afghanistan across at least the northern two-thirds of India. Babur’s grandson Akbar (r. 1556–1605) was the patron of major cultural and religious developments effected through a vast network of international relations. Akbar’s son Jahangir and grandson Shah Jahan continued to rule in splendor. They constructed some of the world’s finest architectural creations, including the Taj Mahal, in which Shah Jahan and his wife are buried. Akbar’s great grandson Aurangzeb (1658–1707) reverted to a religiously intolerant rule and presided over the beginning of the end of Mughal glory.
How did the early Muslim conquerors of South Asia deal with the subject peoples? Did they insist on conversion to Islam?
When the first of the several waves of Muslim conquest arrived in 711 (about the same time Muslims crossed over to Gibraltar and began the conquest of Spain), General Muhammad ibn Qasim’s forces allowed the populace to retain its ancient faith traditions. As Muslims entered predominantly Hindu lands, the military commander explicitly declared that their temples would enjoy the status of Christian churches, Jewish synagogues, and Zoroastrian fire temples already under Muslim law—that is, protected. Some three centuries later, Mahmud, Muslim ruler of Ghazna in present-day Afghanistan, conquered the region of Punjab. Even in the mid-eleventh century, Muslims remained a minority in the regions under Islamic administrations. Not until the early thirteenth century— that is, a full five hundred years after the initial Muslim conquests in the region—did the Muslim population in Northern India arrive at majority status, and this occurred primarily through natural growth rather than through forced conversion.
The Taj Mahal is a seventeenth-century tomb constructed in Agra, India, by Mughal Muslim ruler Shah Jahan as a burial place for his favorite wife.
How would one describe the “Turkic” sphere? And why not just call it Turkish?
As with all of our “spheres,” the Turkic overlaps and intersects in fascinating ways with others, especially with the Persianate and Arabicate. In the former case, the contiguity of Central Asia, Turkic ancestral homeland, fostered a natural mingling of culture and ethnicities across Persia’s northeastern boundaries; and toward their northwestern borders, Persians encountered Turkic peoples already present in the Caucasus (Khazars and Bulgars). Turkic elements entered the Arabicate sphere as early as the ninth century, originally as prisoners captured in military expeditions into Central Asia and brought back to the Central Middle East as “slave soldiers” who went on to establish themselves as independent dynasties (most notably the Mamluks). Sufi spirituality gradually replaced the traditions of Shamanism, Buddhism, and Manicheanism the Turkic peoples brought with them. As the Turkic peoples moved into Anatolia, they encountered Arabic culture in Iraq and adapted elements of Byzantine culture.
How extensive is the Turkic sphere today?
Today the Turkic sphere includes not only most of the Central Asian republics formerly under Soviet control as well as Anatolia, but parts of the Balkans to the west, and of western China to the east (especially in the province of Xinjiang). In addition, Turkic influence extended importantly into South Asia, since major Muslim rulers of late medieval India traced their legitimacy to descent from another major Central Asian source, the Mongols. The dominant law school is the Hanafi, and the Mevlevis, Naqshbandis, and Halvetis are among the most important Sufi orders. The term “Turkic” is used here because of the rich diversity of tribal and linguistic components, because the linguistic and cultural influence of the “Turks” is not limited to the use of the Turkish tongue, and because the sphere extends well beyond what is now called Turkey.
If Central Asia is the ancestral homeland of the Turkic peoples, how did Turks come to the Middle East?
A complex development started in the ninth century when Muslim Arab armies invading Central Asia began a policy of transporting young prisoners of Turkic origin back to Baghdad and other major cities to serve as palace guards. Caliphs could easily make enemies even among family and friends and found it necessary to employ troops more capable of disinterested service. Thus was born a class of people within Islamic societies, the Turkish slave soldier. From time to time the Turkish guard would rise up and take temporary control of the reins in Baghdad. On several occasions promising members of the guard would work their way up through the ranks and even be appointed to high office in a provincial post. Some took the next logical step, declaring themselves independent rulers when the caliph back in Baghdad had too much on his mind to attend to the provinces.
How did the nation-states of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh come about?
After about the mid-eighteenth century, European colonialism began to make inroads into lands formerly under Islamic regimes. Not until the mid-twentieth century did major colonial powers begin to withdraw, ceding political control back to indigenous populations. One dramatic example of that relatively recent change is the independence of India from Britain and the partition of India that created the Muslim state of Pakistan (1948), itself divided in 1971 into Pakistan and Bangladesh. Pakistan and Bangladesh are almost entirely Muslim, while the Muslim population of India constitutes the world’s largest Islamic minority. Collectively, the Indian subcontinent is home to over one quarter of the world’s Muslims.
How did the present-day state of Turkey become Turkish?
In the mid-eleventh century, a confederation of Central Asian Turkic tribes newly converted to Sunni Islam began to migrate westward, occupying the city of Baghdad in 1055. There they established the sultanate as a temporal institution parallel to the caliphate, which they had reduced largely to a position of spiritual leadership. Moving northward through Syria and into eastern Anatolia, the Saljuqid rulers launched campaigns northward against the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia. In 1071, the Turkic expeditionary force encountered a Byzantine army at Manzikert and won a decisive victory, after which a Byzantine call for help went out to Rome, resulting in the first Crusade in 1096. Under Sultan Alp Arslan (r. 1063–1072), the Turks continued their westward conquest and established their regional capital in Konya.
By the mid-twelfth century the Saljuqid tribe established its dominance under Sultan Kilij Arslan II (r. 1153–1192). Known as the Saljuqids of Rum (i.e., “eastern Rome”), they controlled central Anatolia until 1243 from Konya, amid continuing struggles for power with another Turkic group called the Danishmendids and the Byzantines. Konya became a Sufi center with a heavily Persian cultural substrate. Sufi orders facilitated the conversion of Greek and Armenian peoples to Islam.
Two important Sufi leaders were Haji Bektash, who synthesized Sunni and Shia beliefs, and Muslim and Christian practices; and Jalal ad-Din Rumi, known as a foundational figure of the so-called “Whirling Dervishes.” Mongol forces migrating through the Middle East from Central Asia invaded the area in 1242–1243. Finally, in 1280, the Saljuqid dynasty was decisively overcome by the increasingly dominant Osmali Turkic tribe, which consolidated its power through a confederation of tribes that became the basis of the Ottoman Empire.
How did the Ottomans get started as an eastern Mediterranean power?
The early Ottoman “state” arose from one of the warrior states and was led by Ertugrul (d. c. 1280) and his son Osman (aka Othman; the namesake of the Ottoman Empire). Osman’s confederation was the beginning of what would become the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman sultans generally conceived of themselves as supreme rulers of all Muslims, even if they did not claim the title of caliph. Expanding out of Anatolia in 1345, they crossed to Gallipoli (on the Dardanelles strait) and from there conquered Northern Greece, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. In 1389 they defeated a Serbian force at the Battle of Kosovo, largely securing their hold on the Balkans. (It was in June 1989, on the six hundredth anniversary of this battle, that Slobodan Milosevic declared his campaign for a “Greater Serbia” that would redress Ottoman oppression by defeating the Bosnian Muslims, regarded by Serbian nationalists as descendants of the Ottoman invaders.) In 1402, Mongol ruler Timur invaded Anatolia and temporarily slowed the Ottoman advance by making the Turks his vassals. After a brief hiatus, the Ottoman advance continued, posing a significant threat to eastern Europe. The Turks crushed a late-forming coalition of Crusaders in 1396 at Nicopolis and again in 1444 at Varna.
How did the Ottomans become an empire powerful enough to supplant the Byzantine Empire?
The Ottoman stranglehold on the remnant of Byzantium tightened steadily, and by 1449 the Ottomans had reached the Danube River further west. After a protracted siege of Constantinople, the Ottomans captured the city in 1453, renaming the Byzantine capital Istanbul. They proceeded to continue their takeover of what remained of formerly Byzantine lands. A rapid expansion was in part due to their support among the conquered Byzantine people whom they treated well, including their protection of the Greek Orthodox Church. At its height the Ottoman realm was one of the largest in history, stretching from the gates of Vienna, across the Balkans, from the Caucasus to the Yemen, and from Alexandria to Algeria. The Empire gave way to the Turkish Republic under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the 1920s.
What was the general course of conversion under the Ottomans?
By the fifteenth century, an estimated 90 percent of the population in Anatolia was Muslim—a measure of success due not only to conversion, but also to continued Muslim migration to the newly conquered areas. Other factors were the weakening of Anatolian Christianity and the Greek Orthodox Church and concomitant growth of strong Muslim infrastructure of social and charitable institutions. In addition, many Christians regarded the Byzantine defeat at the hands of the Muslims as a divine punishment. By contrast, the Balkans remained mostly non-Muslim, with roughly 45 percent conversion, generally in urban areas. Muslim migration was far less important there than in Anatolia.
The Ottoman Empire at its height in 1683 was impressively extensive.
What happened to Christians under Saljuqid and Ottoman Rule from the eleventh to the sixteenth century?
Anatolia and the Balkans, among other regions ruled by the Saljuqids and Ottomans, employed tax tables to determine the number of Christians in a region, as well as the amount of taxes charged to Christians (particularly, if a jizya, or poll-tax, was in effect). The results of Muslim invasions, of what came to be known as Turkey, on Christian populations of the then-Byzantine realm are varied. In eleventh- to twelfth-century Anatolia, sixty-three Christian towns and villages were destroyed by invading Muslims, and the inhabitants were sold into slavery.
From the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, twenty-five different Muslim tribal polities led to chaos, wars, and demographic migrations. An area that had four hundred bishoprics and thirty-five metropolitanates in time only had three bishoprics and seventeen metropolitanates (about 97 percent and 50 percent destroyed, respectively)— this according to tax tables used to estimate Christian survival rates. In times when the empire’s central bureaucracy was in flux (new emperor, power struggle at the top), forced conversions were more prominent. The two empires (Saljuqid and Ottoman) developed a legal basis for making dhimmis second-class citizens, mainly by disenfranchising their testimony in court. Apostasy from Islam was punishable by death, while conversion to Islam was rewarded. Finally, mixed marriages were more prevalent, because only a husband needed to be Muslim; thus, many women converted. In these ways, a one-way street for conversion from Christianity to Islam was created.
How did the Christian area called Armenia manage to survive as a distinct Christian enclave in the region?
When the Arabs first invaded Persia in the centuries following Muhammad, conversion of inhabitants to Islam had four levels. First, the upper layer of Persian society converted and intermarried with Arab magnates so as to save their hereditary rights. Second, partisans and craftsmen converted because the creed of Islam, which made no distinction between social classes, greatly appealed to them. Third, Christians and Jews were not discriminated against and were attracted to the religion for that reason. Finally, many people rejected the predominant religion of Zoroastrianism for various reasons, such as dislike for clergy and problems with the truths of the religion. Arab forces overtook the Transcaucasus and the land of the Jewish Khazars. When Arab forces in the northeastern province of Khurasan attacked the eastern border of Persia, nobility and townspeople again accepted the religion, so as to maintain their old privileges. The Armenians, who did not readily convert, nevertheless were, in this situation, valuable auxiliary troops. Various Khurasan chieftains and preachers tried to convert the Armenians somewhat forcefully. It is reported that one thousand converted, many of whom were noblemen who feigned conversion so that their lives would be spared, and who rescinded the apostasy when they were released. Intermarriage also factored into the conversion. Mostly though, the Armenians maintained their Armeno-Gregorian faith and maintained good relations with the Arabs through trade; all this despite the fact that Armenia itself was being ravaged by warfare. Armenia as a region suffered massive erosion as a result of battles and invasions, resulting ultimately in the great emigration, or Sürgün, of Armenians from their homeland. Largely because the Armenian people preserved their vernacular language and culture, they ensured the survival of their distinctive Christian identity, despite their ultimate separation from their original ancestral home.
How did the Ottomans expand into a major threat to Eastern Europe?
Mehmed II the Conqueror (r. 1444–1446, 1451–1481)—so named because of his defeat of Constantinople—laid the foundation for the Ottoman Empire. He began a long tradition of Ottoman codification of legal codes that incorporated separate categories for Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. It may be convenient to think of the sixteenth century as a period of expansion, the seventeenth as maintenance, and the eighteenth as the beginning of reversals in Ottoman fortunes. Under Mehmed’s successors, especially Sulayman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), the Ottomans experienced dramatic growth and conquest of the central middle east. In 1516, the Ottomans conquered the Mamluks of Cairo, and their holdings in Syria-Palestine and took over northwestern Arabia. As custodians of the “two sanctuaries” (Mecca and Medina), the Sultans could claim symbolic leadership of Islamdom. Fierce naval competition with the Portuguese marked Ottoman efforts to control the Mediterranean. And on their eastern frontier, Iran was a major competitor. In response, Ottoman rulers sought to limit hitherto enormous Persian cultural impact by cutting ties in favor of Arabic cultural influence. On the western front, the Ottomans set their sights on Europe. By 1504, the Ottomans had crossed the Danube River, and by 1520, Belgrade and Hungary accepted Ottoman rule. In 1529, the Ottomans laid siege to Vienna but failed to take the city. In 1606, the Treaty of Zsitva Torok proclaimed Ottoman rule over Romania, Hungary, and Transylvania, with the condition of accepting the Habsburgs as equals. This effectively marked the limit of Ottoman expansion westward.
A memorial statue to Mehmed II the Conqueror stands in Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey.
Didn’t the Ottomans also become a Mediterranean power?
Ottoman naval strength was definitely a factor in late medieval and early modern European and North African history. Admiral Khayr ad-Din Barbarossa expanded the navy, took Algiers in 1529, and was given overall control of the fleet in 1533. Numerous battles ensued over control of the central Mediterranean, with Sicily and Tunisia major centers of struggle in 1534–1535. During the latter half of the sixteenth century, Ottoman naval forces seized Tripoli (1551), Malta (1565), and Cyprus (1570). An increasingly worried Catholic Europe successfully raised a naval coalition and defeated the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. In 1580, European powers and the Ottomans declared a truce, and the resulting actual and symbolic borders between “Christian West” and “Muslim East” held until recent times.
What is the importance now of the Turkic republics that belonged to the former Soviet Union?
Several of the former Soviet republics have significant Muslim populations: Azerbaijan, Chechnya, and Dagestan in the Caucasus; and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan (the “-(i)stan” suffix indicating the “place of” the people to whose name it is attached). There is a great deal of diversity among these republics, both ethnically and linguistically. The one nearly common link is a thread of Turkic ancestry that runs through them all, with the exception of the Tajiks who are of Iranian descent and speak Persian. The Turkic connection has naturally made these republics a subject of intense interest to the Republic of Turkey, which regards them as natural economic and cultural allies.
Did Turkic peoples remain significant in the Turkic ancestral homelands of Central Asia?
Turkic peoples have remained a major population in Central Asia over the centuries and are a significant presence in at least four of the five “-stans” of the region. The former Soviet-controlled regions are now the independent states of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Taken as a whole, the predominantly Muslim region is sometimes referred to as “Western Turkistan,” to distinguish it from the largely Muslim Chinese western provinces often called “Eastern Turkistan.” As a result, Muslim areas of China fall within the Turkic Sphere.
Geographically the republics collectively represent a vast expanse; Kazakhstan, the largest, covers an area one-third as large as the “lower forty-eight” states; Uzbekistan is nearly the size of Spain; and Turkmenistan is as large as Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma combined. Together their total Muslim population numbers nearly fifty million, with another ten million or so still living under the Russian Federation—the people of Chechnya and Dagestan in the Caucasus, for example. Soviet domination was very hard on the Muslims of these republics, imposing massive control and closing down hundreds of mosques and schools. During the Brezhnev years, Soviet agricultural policy nearly destroyed the Aral Sea, shrinking it from the world’s fourth largest freshwater lake to less than half its original size. Central Asia’s Muslims especially have had good reason to resent their former overlords and were a major force in compassing the end of the Soviet empire. From the time Stalin first cracked down on them to the end of Soviet rule, these Muslims managed to keep Islam alive through clandestine and risky illegal activities. Russia’s concerted efforts to wipe out Soviet Islam may even have given some renewed energy to pass on the heritage to their children.
How did the Muslim Turkic minority in China originate?
According to ancient tradition, Islam came to China in the seventh century with Arab silk merchants. In the mid-eighth century an Abbasid caliph dispatched a regiment of Turkic soldiers to help the Chinese emperor put down the revolt of a mutinous officer. Remaining after the war, those soldiers formed the nucleus of inland Muslim communities. Over the next four centuries, the Muslim population grew very slowly in coastal and central regions. But in 1215 Genghis Khan’s Mongols captured Beijing and eventually overthrew the Sung dynasty. Under the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty the Muslims enjoyed privileged status. Meanwhile, various segments of the population in the northwestern province of Xinjiang converted to Islam. After the Yuan dynasty fell to the Mingd (1368–1644), Muslim fortunes took a turn for the worse, and under the Manchu dynasty (1644–1911) Muslims endured several centuries of persecution. During Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Muslims suffered terribly again but have regained many important rights in the twenty-first century.
What are the basic facts about Islam in China? Are there any distinctively Chinese features of Islam there?
Approximately forty million citizens, perhaps more, of the People’s Republic of China consider themselves Muslims. Fully ten different “nationalities” make up the total Muslim population, but about half the total belong to the Hui people. The Hui resemble the majority Han population in physical appearance and they speak Chinese (unlike the other Muslim minorities, several of whom speak Turkic languages). But the Hui think of themselves as a distinct people in that they disavow ancestor veneration, gambling, drinking, and eating pork. The term “Hui” is related to Chinese Muslims’ traditional identification of themselves as ethnic “Uighurs.” They consider themselves ethnically related to other Muslims who live to the west in Central Asia—all part of a great region known as Turkistan. Hui people speak a dialect of Turkic origin, and the Chinese province of Xinjiang is also known as “Eastern Turkistan.” Many Chinese mosques are built in distinctively Chinese architectural styles. Their minarets are square rather than cylindrical and have the gracefully curved roofing associated with the pagoda.
THE SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN SPHERE
What are the main characteristics of the Sub-Saharan (or Black) African Sphere?
Well over a dozen important nation-states, from the far west of Africa to the shores of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, comprise the Sub-Saharan Black African sphere. Perhaps the most diverse of all the spheres, ethnically and linguistically as well as religiously, the sphere’s west-east expanse is also impressive. In the northwest of the continent is the small but richly Islamic nation of Senegal, now most widely known for the cultural centrality of the Muridiyya Sufi order, a branch of the Qadiriyya unique to Senegal; and the Tijaniyya, a major African order. Further south, Mali is most famous for its major center of traditional Arabic scholarship in Timbuktu. Along with the Songhay and Kanem-Bornu empires, Mali was one of several “religious” polities begun from the eleventh century on.
Later developments included the Islamization of tribal communities identified by their dominant languages: the Fulani in Kano (Nigeria), the Hausa (from the fourteenth century), the Yoruba (from the sixteenth century), and the Bambara in upper Nigeria (from the seventeenth century). At the eastern limits of the sphere, where the African sphere overlaps significantly with the Arabicate, a major nation is Sudan, one of three geographically largest African states. Arabs conquered the Nubian and Funj in the fourteenth century, and Sufi missionaries converted much of the populace, making this a rare example of simultaneous Arabization and Islamization. Arabic remains the dominant main language here. In coastal states such as Somalia, Zanzibar, and Eritrea, by contrast, large numbers of people speak Swahili, a blend of Arabic and Persian on a foundation of Bantu origin. Though the vast majority of Muslims in the sphere are Sunni, more recent immigrants from the Indian subcontinent imported Shi’ism (especially Ismaili) to East Africa. Muslims make up a small minority of a score of other nations in central and south Africa, typically 4 percent or less of total populations.
How did Islam arrive and take root in Africa?
Muslims first arrived across North Africa during the early seventh century in connection with the earliest conquests of the Mediterranean coast of Africa. Beginning in about 638, the process of Islamization proceeded slowly, and the region’s population, from Egypt westward to Morocco, was predominantly Muslim by around 1000. During the next seven centuries or so, from 1050 to 1750, Islam spread down the west coast of Africa, brought largely by Maghribi (“Where the sun sets,” i.e., North Africa) merchants (who were mostly Berbers) and Sufis. Since these travelers were not chiefly interested in proselytizing as such, the brand of Islam they represented took root in ways that accommodated generously to the indigenous practices and beliefs of the so-called African Tribal/Traditional Religions (ATR). Both Muslim and Christian missionaries have often retroactively claimed credit for this form of Islamization and Christianization, but where either of those two faiths have gained ground, a major factor seems to have been ATR’s affinity with the large cosmological frameworks of the two Abrahamic faiths. Those same itinerant Muslims brought Islam across the Sahara and down the east coast of Africa. At the same time, Muslim traders and exiled Muslims from southeast Asia and India populated Indian Ocean coasts from south Africa northward through Swahili-speaking areas like Kenya and Tanzania. In many regions, kings and other tribal leaders played significant roles in encouraging their people to accept Islam (or Christianity).
How has African Islam taken shape in more recent times?
Between 1750 and 1900, several militant and intolerant Muslim religious leaders established theocratic or jihadi regimes and managed to gain allegiance by replacing tribal bonds with allegiance to states regulated by Islamic law. Sudan and Nigeria saw noteworthy examples of such developments. Some influential teachers and holy men, supported by merchants and herdsmen, nurtured visions of reestablishing Islamic empires of legend that they had read about in Arabic historical sources. But the age of jihadists claiming the status of an exalted ruler such as a re-vitalized caliph, or as the expected mahdi (guided one with apocalyptic overtones), gave way under various forms of colonialist rule in the early twentieth century. Colonial powers introduced economic, technological, and religious influences that ironically contributed to the dissemination of Islam by undermining traditional social structures and patterns. Anti-Christian sentiment tended to hitch a ride on anti-colonial anger, and third-world Africans have often been more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians than to Is-rael. Identifying Christianity as the “white person’s religion” and associating it with capitalism—often judged a dismal failure for Blacks and a prop to apartheid—many opted for Islam as a “third way.” In addition, Islam’s tolerance of polygamy was well-received in many regions for a time. Islam had also spread to many parts of the African continent well before Christianity: more portions of Black Africa have had a Muslim presence for a millennium than have seen continuous Christian presence for even a quarter of that time. Nowadays, Sub-saharan Africa is roughly forty percent Muslim, forty percent Christian, and twenty percent ATR—with a fair amount of syncretism. By far the majority of Muslims now live in the northern half of the continent, while in most central and southern nations Muslims typically account for four percent or less of the populations.
THE MALAY (OR SOUTHEAST ASIAN) SPHERE
How would one describe the Malay or Southeast Asian sphere?
Farthest removed from the lands of Islam’s origins, the Malay sphere comprises principally the nations of Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as the Muslim communities of the southern Philippines. In addition to being arguably more homogeneous ethnically than any of the other spheres, the manner of Islamization was also in general remarkably irenic. Islam began to arrive in the thirteenth century when Sufi missionaries went to Sumatra (the largest of Indonesia’s several thousand islands) with merchants from India. Two centuries on, Islam arrived at neighboring Java, and about a century after that, Muslim rulers set up shop at Malacca (on the Malay peninsula) and at the Sumatran city of Acheh. Subsequent phases of Islamization, as well as a desire to expunge local practices of “folk” traditions, began with the growing importance of pilgrimage. Here a major influence was that some pilgrims stayed in Mecca and Medina to study formally and brought home more “traditional” interpretations of Islam’s sacred sources. The Shafi’i school became the only significantly influential law school, and the spiritual tone of southeast Asian Islam was marked by major Sufi influence.
How did Islam enter the lands of Southeast Asia?
Sparse documentation makes it difficult to determine exactly when Islam took root in the Malay sphere, but there are indirect indicators. Hindu rulers of Sumatra had Muslim advisors as early as 1282, and ten years later, Marco Polo reported Muslim communities in North Sumatra. Celebrated Moroccan world traveler Ibn Battuta encountered established Muslim scholars there in 1345–1346. The presence of Islam on the Malay mainland around that time can be deduced because a deposed former ruler of Srivijaya named Iskandar went to Malacca and converted to Islam there. That city apparently became a base for the growth of Islam throughout the area, and by the late fifteenth century, Islam spread to interior territories. Moving to the east, the Moluccas became Muslim in 1498, and Islam had reached the Philippines by the early sixteenth century.
At what point did Muslims encounter European powers in Southeast Asia?
Around that same time, the age of colonialism arrived as the Portuguese asserted significant power in the Indian Ocean. In 1509 they took Goa, in India, and in 1511 conquered Malacca. Counterintuitively perhaps, Portuguese control in the region actually helped Islam spread, as Muslim scholars fled Malacca for Sumatra when the city fell to the Portuguese. Acheh emerged as a strong rival to Malacca, and Muslim sultanates, such as that of Johore (1512–1812), soon emerged on the Malay peninsula as well. Meanwhile, parts of the central Indonesian island of Java developed into a third center of Muslim power in the area. In search of pepper, the Dutch arrived in the southeastern region with naval firepower and took Batavia in 1619, Ceylon in 1640, and Malacca in 1641. The Dutch ousted both the Portuguese and regional Muslims, establishing themselves as the undisputed power through the seventeenth century. European control did not stifle Islam but instead facilitated its emergence as the main religion of the region.
Malaysian Muslims celebrate the birthday of the Prophet at Putrajaya Putra Mosque.
Is it true that the “Islamization” of Southeast Asia occurred largely without conflict?
Much of the character of early Malay sphere Islam was influenced by major Sufi teachers, who were among the first scholars to translate Arabic sources and tradition into Malay. Their missionary approach was generally very adaptive and flexible. Hamza Fansuri (d. 1600) founded a branch of the Qadariya order, wrote commentaries in Malay, and taught the philosophy of Ibn al-Arabi. Abd as-Samad of Palembang (on Sumatra, 1779–1789) translated the works of the great eleventh-century theologian and Sufi al-Ghazali into Malay, thus introducing a reformist strain of Islam into the area. Still, the practice of Islam did not rule out celebration of indigenous non-Islamic observances. An eighteenth-century teacher named Tuanku Nan Tua led a religious revival attempting to eradicate local religious and social practices that did not conform to Islam; but his attempt at reform sparked a civil war. Nan Tua advocated pacifist reform while others in the movement were more militant, and the reform movement split.
Although many accepted Sharia and the reforms peacefully (especially the merchant communities), the local chieftains did not. When religious leaders asked the Dutch to intervene, the Dutch suppressed the reformers and took control. Malay Muslim leaders mounted an unsuccessful reprisal against Dutch rule. Meanwhile, a Javanese state had sought to combine Hindu and Muslim concepts of rule, but Islam was in fact just a facade for residual Hindu belief. The result was a Javanese society Islamic in name only, since for the villagers of Java, Islam remained chiefly a way to control spiritual forces in a cultural blend of Hindu, Muslim, and animist beliefs. A recently independent Indonesia is experiencing a wide range of new and ongoing attempts to “purify” Islam of such “un-Islamic” accretions.
How did colonialism and European imperialism play out in early modern times in relation to Southeast Asian Islam?
By the end of the eighteenth century, the Dutch commercial empire in Europe was undermined seriously by British competition, the French revolution, and the Napoleonic wars. But in the nineteenth century the Dutch revived as a territorial land-based empire in Southeast Asia. In 1871 and 1874, they annexed Acheh and abolished the sultanate. By 1911 they had complete control of the region and for the first time a single empire ruled over the entire “Indies,” thus laying the foundation for Indonesia. The British were meanwhile extending their empire to Malaya (present-day Malaysia), which around 1819 witnessed an influx of Chinese and Indians in the area. From 1877 to 1889 the British consolidated their direct control in that part of mainland Southeast Asia. Muslim populations in the islands (especially Indonesia) grew apace, and the world’s most populous Islamic nation gained its independence in the mid-twentieth century.
Islam was once prominent in Spain. How did it become so important there?
Muslim armies crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711, and an important Arab-Islamic presence established itself in Spain within fifty years or so. After the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus, the incoming Abbasids sought to put an end to their Umayyad rivals by assassinating all of the family’s princes. However, one managed to escape to Spain, where he established the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba. Later it would grow to challenge Baghdad’s authority as the Cordoba caliphate.
What was the overall religious and cultural situation in early Islamic Spain?
Spain’s population had become “Latinized” over the preceding seven centuries or more. Jews who had lived in the Iberian peninsula since Roman times experienced considerable persecution under their Christian rulers and were among the first to taste the benefits of the Arab Muslim conquest: they were given their religious freedom, while the Christian population was allowed to retain its Roman institutional heritage as a basis for local order. For several centuries Cordoba would be a marvel of cultural splendor and inter-religious harmony. On the whole, Cordoba was an outstanding example of how Jews, Christians, and Muslims could live together in peace under Muslim rule. As for larger political and cultural traditions, the Arabs drew heavily on their Middle Eastern roots. Educated Christians and Jews learned Arabic, and Middle Eastern taste in fashions and luxury items found ready acceptance. The over seven-hundred-year presence of Islam in Spain left a lasting influence on the Spanish language and the arts. The expression of enthusiastic approval “Ole!” comes from the Arabic Wa’llahi, (“By God!”), and dozens of Spanish words that begin with al-, such as Alcazar (“the castle”) betray an Arabic influence.
In what other ways did Islam advance westward across the Mediterranean and into Europe?
The Byzantine empire ruled subjects harshly so many Christians welcomed Muslims and actually regarded the coming of Islam as a liberation. They preferred being dhimmis (protected minorities) to being under Byzantine rule. Eventually, many converted to Islam but for as many as four centuries, Muslims remained the minority in the Middle East generally. Christians were allowed their freedom in return for paying a “poll” tax. Jerusalem’s citizens were mostly dhimmis for many generations. Further to the west, Muslim rule in Spain began in 711 and their advance toward central Europe was halted in 732 by Charles Martel at Poitiers. As a result, Muslims in the North of Spain no longer posed a significant threat to the portions of Europe then ruled by Charlemagne (crowned in 800). Minority populations of Muslims nonetheless trickled into parts of Switzerland and northern and southern Italy. Christians had largely lost control of the Mediterranean in the early ninth century after Sicily came under repeated Muslim invasions. In 831 the people of Palermo surrendered and in 966 Byzantines acknowledged Muslim rule there. That was short-lived, however, and by 1072 Sicily was back in Christian hands, but Muslims were allowed to remain. By the end of the Crusades, the Muslim presence in the central Mediterranean had largely vanished.
The Cordoba mosque, known to locals in Spain as Mezquita-Cathedral, is one of the oldest structures remaining from the age when Muslims ruled much of the Iberian Peninsula.
What happened to the Muslims of Spain?
Spanish Catholics gradually reclaimed the important Muslim cities of Toledo (1085), Cordoba (1236), and Seville (1248), with the Nasrid kingdom in Granada holding out until 1492. Determined to purge the land of any taint of infidel faith, Ferdinand and Isabella gave remaining Muslims and Jews the choice of conversion, exile, or death. Muslim converts to Christianity, called Moriscos, continued to live in small communities, but after 1500 Spanish Islam was little more than a memory. Today some Muslims are emigrating to Spain from North Africa, though in much smaller numbers than to France.
What is the meaning of the term convivencia and why is it applied to medieval Spain?
Convivencia is Spanish for “living together,” and it refers to a period from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries because of the often romanticized notion that Christians and Jews lived together in peace under Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. Some have referred to the “medieval” period in Spain as a Golden Age, and it is true that the early Middle Ages in Spain were in many ways a period of Muslim-Christian harmony. But these seven centuries witnessed more than enough difficulties, along with a genuinely remarkable cultural flourishing, during several periods within that long stretch of history in a land known as al-Andalus. In the area of juridical matters, Christians and Jews held the status of “protected minorities,” or dhimmis—a status accorded to “peoples of the Book,” that is, members of the Abrahamic faiths. All Jews and Christians were required to pay the jizya, or poll tax, in lieu of freedom from Muslim almsgiving requirements and military service. In exchange they were also guaranteed protection for their lives and possessions, freedom of livelihood, and religion. Christians and Jews were forbidden to proselytize among Muslims.
What are some examples of the benefits of convivencia?
In the realm of cultural affairs, many important connections occurred. Intermarriage was not unusual and Muslim rulers often married Christian women from the north of Spain. Many Spanish words have Arabic influences, words beginning with “al” and those associated with agriculture, crafts, and civil administration. Christian and Jewish architecture borrowed many formal and decorative conventions from Islamic buildings, such as the horseshoe arch, colored voussoirs (the periphery of arches), and stalactite-like features on vaulting called muqarnas. Perhaps most importantly, the city of Cordoba’s intellectual life was rich with poetry, music, and science, offering educational opportunities that attracted members of all faiths from across Europe. This cross-pollination was essential in facilitating the transfer of much “Islamic” learning and scholarship to Europe by encouraging translation into Latin from Arabic. Living not far from the famous Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was a noted contemporary, the legendary Rabbi Maimonides. On the negative side, Jews and Muslims were often segregated in religious and ethnic ghettos called juderias and morerias, respectively; and slavery was very common in medieval Spain.
What was the reconquista?
Throughout much of the period in question, Christian rulers were engaged in the reconquista, attempting to “reconquer” the peninsula in the name of Christian monarchs, and this occasionally caused tension among those still under Muslim governance. With his fifty-seven campaigns, Caliph al-Mansur was very active militarily and often held captives in lengthy imprisonment. Under later Muslim sovereigns, Christian prisoners of war contributed to the Kutubiyya mosque in Marrakesh. On the other hand, victorious Christian rulers returned the favor, and Muslim prisoners of war helped build the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela in the 1100s. Christianity’s Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 addressed issues regarding Jews and Muslims, and included a number of harsh conditions for non-Christians enacted across much of Europe.
By the tenth century, the Iberian Peninsula was divided more or less in half, Christian kingdoms in the north and Muslims in the south. All sorts of curious social and religious changes followed. Muslim tolerance of Christians and Jews marked a high point in the tenth century, but many Christians converted, and the Arabized Christians were called Mozarabs (from an Arabic root meaning roughly “adopting Arab ways”). Shifts in religious allegiance were a cause of grave concern for both Muslims and Christians. A prominent Christian leader named Eulogius, archbishop of Cordoba, for example, raised alarms over what he perceived as dangerous signs of “Islamization.” He lamented that Christians seemed to prefer Arabic to Latin. Christian women began veiling their faces, stopped eating pork, and appreciated Arabic culture, music, and poetry. With the decline of Cordoba, official toleration of Christians declined also: their houses had to be lower than those of Muslims, and they could not study the Quran, build new churches, or display crosses outdoors. Both Muslim and Christian attitudes hardened towards each other, and the conquering Christians persecuted and expelled Muslims from land they recaptured.
What are some examples of how Christian scholars thought of Islam and engaged their Muslim counterparts in the greater Mediterranean world of the Middle Ages?
Beginning as early as the late seventh century, Christian leaders and scholars of the central Middle East addressed seriously the phenomenon of Islam as a system of thought and belief. John of Damascus (c. 675–749) was one of the first Christians to devote himself to the formal study of Islam. His father and grandfather had both occupied high posts in the administration of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus, though both remained Christian. John knew Arabic and had a solid understanding of fundamental Muslim texts and beliefs. In a major work, John discusses the “heresy” of Islam and calls the Prophet the Antichrist. But the mere fact that he took Islam seriously was enough to get him condemned by his fellow Christian authorities in 754 as “Saracen-minded.” Subsequent generations of eastern Mediterranean Christian scholars became increasingly negative in their assessments of Islam, identifying Islam as the “Anti-Christ” and a harbinger of the apocalypse (and thus a tool of divine punishment of Christians for their infidelity), and inventing a lexicon of stunningly uncomplimentary epithets for Muhammad. During early medieval times, however, even as the Crusades were ramping up, some influential Christian scholars sought to present Islam more accurately. For the most part, they continued to regard Islam as a form of heresy—a step up from rank paganism. Peter the Venerable, the Abbot of Cluny (c. 1092–1156), asked Robert of Ketton to translate the Quran into Latin; Robert did so in 1143.
Christians in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries often referred to Christendom’s chief rival as “the infidel Turk.” Why not “the infidel Arab”?
When a person like St. Ignatius Loyola (d. 1556), founder of the Society of Jesus, thought of what he could do for the Church of his day, toward the top of his list was the desire to convert “the Turk.” He and many other devout Catholics would have liked nothing more than to make pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then in the hands of the Ottoman Empire. From the late-eleventh through the sixteenth centuries, that empire had gradually supplanted virtually all of what had been the Byzantine empire, a name given to a region that had continued to refer to itself as the Roman Empire until its demise in 1453. The story of how the people called Turks came to dominate nearly the whole of the Mediterranean world—and all of western Islamdom—is intriguing and a fine example of the dynamic quality of the history of Islam. But for sixteenth-century Europeans, Arabs were “ancient history” and no longer posed a serious threat of Mediterranean domination.
THE BROADER ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE
Who are Sunni Muslims?
About eighty to eighty-five percent of the world’s Muslims consider themselves Sunni. Their historic patrimony derives directly from the Prophet himself as institutionalized in the caliphate. Sunni tradition has been embodied in most of the regimes that have held political power from Morocco to Indonesia, since the early Middle Ages until early modern times. The ideal of the caliph, legitimate successor to Muhammad, as the spiritual as well as temporal ruler of all Muslims, has survived largely as a distant dream since the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258. And since the last Ottoman sultan fell from power in the 1920s, virtually no Muslim ruler has been even nominally regarded as a universal ruler. Some Muslims still entertain the possibility of a resurgence of the caliphate, but that is definitely a minority view.
Who are Shi’i Muslims?
Various Shi’i communities have been identifiable since at least the eighth century. Among the principal features that distinguish Shi’i from Sunni tradition is the belief that a legitimate successor to leadership, called imam (ee-MAAM), must be designated by his predecessor and belong to the family of the Prophet. According to ancient Shi’i belief, Muhammad did designate his cousin Ali, but Abu Bakr, Umar, and Uthman managed to usurp power and prevent Ali from assuming his rightful place. Around the middle of the eighth century a split developed over who would be the seventh imam. One group continued to pledge its loyalty to a man named Ismail, who had just died, even though Ismail’s father, the seventh imam Jafar, appointed a replacement when Ismail died. The faction that stayed with Ismail came to be called the Ismailis, or Seveners, since their line of imams ended then. There are now at least two major branches of Seveners, one of which looks to the Aga Khan as its spiritual leader. The larger group of Shi’ites in the eighth century believed the legitimate line of imams extended to a twelfth and ended when that imam went into concealment until his expected return at the end of time. Twelver Shi’ites are by far the majority community, constituting nearly all of Iran’s and more than half of Iraq’s people.
Who are the Bohras? Any connection with the Khojas? And where do the Nizari Ismailis fit in this picture?
Bohras belong to a community based largely in the Indian state of Gujarat with roots in medieval Ismaili Shia history. As early as the eleventh century, Ismaili converts had migrated from Egypt to India. During a schism within that community, many Ismailis then in India switched their allegiance to a Yemeni teaching authority. But that was only the beginning of a continuing history of division, for groups of Bohra Ismailis peeled off to form new sub-communities over the next several centuries. Now there are many groups, the largest being the Da’udis, Sulaymanis, Aliyahs, and Jafaris, mostly centered in India. Another important branch of the Ismaili community is known as Khojas (from a Persian word for teacher or exemplary figure, khwajah). They trace their origins to a fourteenth-century missionary among a community of Indian converts from Hinduism, Pir Sadr ad-Din. His legacy represents a fascinating chapter in the history of Muslim-Hindu relations in India. Khoja Ismailism’s relationship to other Islamic communities and its complex internal development are especially significant. Some Khojas have historically identified themselves as Sunni Muslims, others as Twelver Shia, and still others as Nizari followers of the Aga Khan. In modern times, however, the majority of Khojas have come to identify themselves as Nizaris, altogether distinct from Twelver Shi’ism. Leaders of the global community have been known by the title Aga Khan since the late nineteenth century. Today Nizaris live in small community networks internationally, as do less numerous pockets of Ismailis.
Who are the Alawis?
In its original meaning, the term Alawi (or Alawite) referred to any Muslims with a special relationship to Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law Ali—in particular, members of any of a dozen or more communities otherwise known generically as the Shia. In current usage with respect to the Middle East, however, the term refers to a population descended specifically from a follower of the eleventh Shi’i imam (a spiritual guide of the “twelver” Shia who died in 873). That follower was Muhammad ibn Nusayr, who initially portrayed himself as a spokesperson of that imam, Hasan al-Askari. But when he went so far as to teach that Hasan was in fact divine, the imam renounced him. Ibn Nusayr nonetheless developed a following who lived mostly in the mountainous region crossing the borders of Turkey and Syria. In 1922, their status morphed into the Alawi community now associated with the ruling family of Syria, when the occupying French proclaimed a political entity called the Alawi Regime. Thus elevated to the status of a sort of proxy power over Syria under the French mandate, the Alawi community eventually became further politically empowered by joining in considerable numbers the Arab socialist Baath party that took control of the region in the 1940s.
Do the Alawis profess any distinctive beliefs?
In spite of their historical links to Shi’ism, with many still claiming to believe in Shi’i principles, the Alawis are theologically and religiously quite idiosyncratic—so much so that Sunni thinkers long ago labeled them “exaggerators.” Like all Shia communities they observe the martyrdom of Husayn. Like “Twelver” Shia, they believe in an unbroken line of twelve imams, and like all Muslims they profess faith in one God. Some, however, still maintain that God has become incarnate seven times, the last being in the form of Ali himself. Needless to say, at this juncture Alawis and mainstream Muslims part company. Among other beliefs and practices, Alawis make unique theological associations between Husayn and Christ and celebrate various Christian feasts, with special attention to John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene; and some even celebrate Mass, but feature Ali as the divine illumination shone forth in the wine offered by Christ at the Last Supper. Some Alawis are still known by the name Nusayri.
Are the Druze people related to Islam in any way?
During the early eleventh century a ruler, al-Hakim (d. 1021), of the Fatimid dynasty—a type of Sevener Shi’ites—did not argue when his followers began to claim that he was divine. Among al-Hakim’s supporters was a Turk named Darazi. Even after Darazi died and his former arch-rival claimed that he himself was the true spokesman of al-Hakim, the name of Darazi would live on in the word “Druze.” Fatimid Ismaili doctrine had long shown very esoteric tendencies in interpreting the role of its seven imams, and a similar esoterism remains a hallmark of Druze teaching. A collection of letters attributed to al-Hakim form the core sacred literature of the very closed and secretive communities, which now, for the most part, inhabit Lebanon, Syria, and the northern occupied West Bank of Palestine. Their esoteric teachings about al-Hakim, along with notions of reincarnation and other decidedly non-Islamic themes, leave them very much outside the fold of Islam.
A group of Druze men from Majdal Shams, Israel, are seen in this photo from 2009. The number of Druze people worldwide exceeds one million, with the vast majority residing in the Middle East.
While those of the Baha’i faith are said to have historical connections with Islam, is it true members don’t consider themselves Muslims?
In mid-nineteenth century Persia, a faction called the Babis (followers of the Bab, “Gateway”) broke away from Twelver Shi’ism. The Bab had prophesied the coming of a promised messiah-like figure, a role claimed by a man who called himself Baha’ Allah and claimed the office of prophet. Upon his death in 1892, a follower took up the claim, as did others. According to mainstream Muslim belief, there can be no prophet after Muhammad, so Baha’is are considered non-Muslims.
What about the small community called the Ahmadiya—are they Muslims?
Around the time the Baha’i movement was getting started in Iran, a group formed around a Punjabi named Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who claimed to be both the Mahdi and Jesus’s Second Coming. Around 1909 the Ahmadiyya (followers of Ahmad) split into two main factions. One faction claimed its founder was a prophet, thus meriting an official condemnation from Islamic authorities. The other Ahmadiyya faction insisted that Ahmad was only a religious reformer. Between half a million and a million members live in west Africa and Pakistan. Most Muslims today consider Baha’is and Ah-madiyyas non-Muslims.
Is Sufism considered a cult among Muslims?
Muslims have historically expressed a variety of opinions about the phenomenon known as Sufism. Those who have taken a dim view have generally fallen into two general groups. On the one hand, some have accused Sufis and their organizations of lax observance of Muslim law and tradition at best and outright antinomianism and heresy at worst. On the other hand, some have regarded Sufism as anti-intellectual and dismissive of the ancient Islamic regard for knowledge and learning. As for the first criticism, the historical record suggests that Sufism is not simply an idiosyncratic, aberrant sidetrack to “mainstream” Islamic tradition. Virtually all of the great Sufis who built the foundations of Sufi spirituality were explicitly aligned with one (or more) of the major law schools, and in no way did they play down the need for all Muslims to express their faith through the Five Pillars. Recent research clearly indicates that Sufism arose as a distinctive way of studying, interiorizing, and communicating that tradition that situated Sufis not as “spirit-filled radicals,” but as “fierce upholders of the emerging moral and legal order.” In other words, though many of the Sufi orders did indeed foster a distinct approach to community life, they were nothing like what contemporary Americans might identify as “cults.”
INTERSECTION OF THEOLOGY AND POLITICS: A MAJOR HISTORICAL EXAMPLE
What is an example of the interaction between religion and politics during the Abbasid caliphate?
The late eighth-/early ninth-century Caliph Harun ar-Rashid (r. 786–809) and his two warring sons, al-Amin (r. 809–813) and al-Mamun (r. 813–833) stand out as seminal figures in the Abbasid history. Harun fostered a cosmopolitan atmosphere at court and an intellectual climate that welcomed novelty and exotic thinking. Most famous as a highly romanticized bon-vivant from One Thousand and One Nights, the Harun of the “historical” sources appears to have been another sort altogether. Later chroniclers make much of the ruler’s religious devotion, and “traditionalist” interests prevailed in recasting the caliph as ascetically inclined and theologically mainstream. Out with the high-roller, in with the spiritual twin to the Prophet himself, a ruler easily moved to compassion and perfectly comfortable with taking advice from the religious scholars. These and other manifestations of religio-ideological spin are key elements of a traditionalist reconstruction of history that took place in the aftermath of the “inquisition” (mihna) sponsored by Harun’s second successor, al-Mamun.
What was the outcome of the struggle between Harun’s two sons as contenders for the title of caliph?
Harun’s son al-Amin lost out to sibling al-Mamun, under whom especially the Abbasids vigorously supported the Mutazilite school of philosophical theologians, whose “theology-from-below” had the great political advantage of investing the caliph with enormous religious authority. By arguing that the Quran was created, rather than uncreated and co-eternal with God, the Mutazilites were theologically defending the divine unity while politically allowing the caliph, to whom God had entrusted the administration of all things created, final say in interpreting the Quran. Historical sources attempt to explain how the intemperate, impious, and politically inept al-Amin was an exception to the rule in the Abbasid line in order to justify his murder at the hands of his own brother. At the same time, a kind of hagiographic theme of “sympathy for al-Amin” persists in other accounts that suggests striking parallels between the murders of al-Amin two earlier caliphs, Uthman, the second of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and the Umayyad al-Walid II, all of which are examples of religio-historiographical struggle around the enormity of regicide.
What was Caliph al-Mamun’s role in the evolution of Islamic thought?
Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun’s Mutazilite theology was a major point of contention in the history of Islamic political thought. He argued that caliphs are heirs to the prophets in that they possess knowledge based on reason that corroborates revelation. A defining characteristic of his caliphate was al-Mamun’s concern for reconciling Muslim factions, but his critical mistake was using a form of “inquisition” to secure uniformity. The caliph’s otherwise puzzling appointment of the eighth Shi’i imam, Ali ar-Rida, as heir apparent also arose out of his drive for unity. Perhaps as close to the classic “liberal” as one can find in medieval Islamic history, al-Mamun sought to smooth over divisions among the various schools and factions but ended up disastrously widening the gap between himself and an emerging and increasingly potent “proto-Sunni” consensus. Biographical sources on al-Mamun generally accepted his caliphate but rejected his claims to the imamate—in other words, even as early as the mid-ninth century, Muslim thinkers distinguished between civil and religious authority. They acknowledged al-Mamun as the legitimate political leader virtually by default and judged him as lacking the requisite knowledge to qualify as true spiritual leader (imam) and thus as authentic heir of the prophet.
In addition to murdering his brother, what other issues made al-Mamun controversial?
For all his acknowledged strengths and superior suitability for rule, al-Mamun had that nasty penchant for “heterodoxy,” as judged by the traditionalists. Al-Mamun’s popular association with liberal attitudes toward the seeking of wisdom parallels Harun’s identification with romance and mystery. Far more important to some Abbasid historians was the danger he represented to traditionalist “theology from above,” with its concern to subordinate the caliph’s authority to that of God. But alongside that theme ran the virtually opposite view that al-Mamun was indeed not only worthy to be called “God’s Shadow on Earth,” but was the mahdi (Guided One), a messianic figure appearing in due course at the turn of a new Islamic century. According to that strand, the caliph was, at least as he approached death, the staunchest of Muslims.
What crisis reversed the religious and political directions of the Abbasid caliphate?
Two reigns after al-Mamun came the next major Abbasid, al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–61). His story is in a way a mirror-reverse of al-Mamun’s: al-Mutawakkil began his reign by overturning al-Mamun’s preference for the rationalist Mutazilites, but, according to the chronicles, he ended his life a moral and political failure as a murder victim—perhaps the chronicler’s way of justifying the violent demise of yet another caliph. It was al-Mutawakkil who returned the caliphate’s official Islamic ideology to that of the more conservative Traditionalists, especially as represented by renowned legal scholar Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (d. 855). Against the Mutazilites, the Traditionalists maintained that one must do theology “from above,” beginning not with reason but with revelation, and they eschewed the notion that human beings can know definitively the mind of God, insisting instead upon divine transcendence and mystery.
