Topics in Middle East History
Chapter 5: The Rise of Islam and the Arab Caliphate
Copyright ©2010 by T. Pavlidis
The Origins of Islam
The year 622CE is used by Muslims as the start of their chronology and it marks the migration (Hijra in Arabic) of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina. Muhammad had been preaching in Mecca for about thirteen years but the Meccans were not responsive to his teaching. In contrast, the inhabitants of Medina welcome him and the town became the center of the Muslim faith and community [BL95, pp. 52-53]. Muhammad was not only a religious leader but also a temporal leader and he soon became involved in warfare with the pagan rulers of Mecca. The Muslims won and abolished the Mecca idols while keeping the city as well as the old shrine, Kaaba, as center of Islamic worship. By the time of Muhammad's death (632CE) the Muslims had conquered the rest of the Arabian peninsula.
The history of Islam has several parallels with the history of Judaism where Moses was both a prophet and the leader of his people, even though Moses did not live long enough to enter the promised land. Like Moses, Muhammad made no claim to divinity and he had a wife. In contrast, Christians believe that Jesus was divine and he never held temporal authority. The divinity of Jesus and the related dogma of Trinity has been at the root of the many schisms in Christianity as we saw in Chapter 4. Islam is also similar to Judaism in two other respects. It requires circumcision of the male followers and it imposes dietary restrictions that include the prohibition of eating pork. While theological issues are beyond the scope of this writing we cannot help but observed that Islam and Judaism are much closer to each other than either of them is to Christianity.
There are two questions about Islam that we need to answer. First, why it was successful in the Arabian peninsula and second, why it spread so quickly after its founding.
Gibbon [EG] devotes one chapter (L, vol. 5, pp. 207-292] to the genesis of Islam and he depicts the Arabian peninsula as a barbaric and desolate land. He quotes Pliny as saying that "the Arabian tribes are equally addicted to theft and merchandise; the caravans that traverse the desert are ransomed or pillaged" [ibid, p. 218]. Gibbon claims that an Arab translation of the Jewish Bible existed before Muhammad's time and that the Arabs were familiar with Christianity for two reasons. Some of the persecuted Christian "heretics" would find refuge in the Arabian peninsula and there was warfare between the Arabs and the Christian princes of Ethiopia who ruled over Yemen [ibid, pp. 228-229].
Gibbon [ibid, pp. 290-91] points out the permanency of Islam, a religion that has not changed significantly since its inception in contrast to the momentous changes in Christianity. He does not state a reason, but one explanation is that the Quran, the sacred book of Islam, is believed by Muslims to be a direct dictation of God to the Prophet and copies from the time of the founding of the religion exist. Therefore there is less room for theological debates than in either Judaism or Christianity where the respective sacred texts were codifies several centuries after the founding of each religion. Gibbon adds that Muhammad "breathed among the faithful a spirit of charity and friendship; recommended the practice of social virtues; and checked ... the thirst of revenge, and the oppression of widows and orphans."
Wright [Wr09, pp. 327-405] agrees with Gibbon and he also suggests that Islam succeeded because it contributed to social improvement in the Arabian peninsula. For example, because the emphasis in a family was to have sons, newborn girls sometimes would be buried alive [ibid, p. 334]. "Some scholars believe robbery wasn't a crime in the Arabia of Muhammad's day" [ibid, p. 359]. Today some Muslims explain certain harsh (from the modern viewpoint) punishments in the Quran as being an improvement over what prevailed in Arabia before Islam. Similar explanation are offered by Jews about the "eye for an eye", etc directives in the Jewish Bible. Islam carried not only a theological message, but also a message of social justice, and of humanitarianism [ibid]. Wright also claims that in the beginning of Islam there was an alliance with Jews and that "the conquest of Jerusalem was the work ... of a Jewish-Muslim alliance" [ibid, p. 371]. According to Wright the break between the two religions occurred after that conquest. Finally, he points out that the Quran contains passages that can be used to justify "holy war" as well as passages that point to Islam as a religion of peace.
The Beginning of the Caliphate and the Arab Conquests
Upon Muhammad's death his followers chose Abu Bakr as their leader with the title of caliph. The Arabic word caliph combines the meanings of successor and deputy and, for future holders of the title, it could mean both successor of the Prophet and deputy of God [BL95, p. 54]. Abu Bakr lived for only two years and he was succeeded by Omar (or Umar) (634-644) and then by Othman (or Uthman) (644-656). All three had been companions of Muhammad and Gibbon [EG, Chapter LI, vol. 5, pp. 295-296] comments on their frugality and modesty. The fourth caliph was Ali (656-661) who was the son-in-law of Muhammad. The first four caliphs are known as the Rashidun, or the righteous ones. In the less than 30 years span of their rule Islam spread throughout the lands of the Persian empire, Syria, north Africa, including Egypt and all the lands in between. This is shown in the map below.
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Figure 1: Map of the greatest extend of the Arab Rashidun empire (by Mohammad Adil). Click on the map for a larger version and full credits. |
What are the reasons for such a success? Clearly, the Arabs had an enthusiastic army but that may not have been enough. One factor was that the Roman and Persian empires had exhausted themselves in a 30 years mutually destructive warfare (see Chapter 4) so there was a power vacuum in what we call today Middle East. We should point out that the conquest may have been facilitated by the pre-existing Arab semi-independent Arab states in the region. The Ghassanid confederation held sway in southern Syria and in today's Jordan and were allies of the Romans. Greek and Syrian texts mention their leaders as "our most pious and Christ-loving kings" [CM02, pp. 123-124]. The chief of Ghassan was given high honors as well as weapons by the Roman emperor Justinian the Great. The Ghassanids had waged successful warfare against Hira, a state of the Arab confederation of the Lakhmids, who although Christian, were allied with the Persian empire [BL95, p. 44, MW96, p. 52]. Proxy wars between the Romans and the Persians took also place over Yemen [MW96, p. 53]. It was not too hard for these states to turn against their former overlords when inspired by the new religion. Whittow observes that the "Ghassanids had been as effective ... against the Persians as any other Roman troops" [ibid, p. 87].
Another factor for the Arab successes is that Arab rulers were more liberal in matters of religion than the Roman or Persian rulers. This may surprise modern readers who are accustomed from the news media to view Muslim countries as been too strict in terms of religion. This view ignores the fact that Christian states in the seventh century (and a long time thereafter) were far stricter than they are today. Today in most of the Western world we have separation of church and state but that is only a recent development. A better point of reference is the decree of Theodosius (Chapter 3) that required the subjects of the empire not only to be Christian but also to adhere to particular version of Christianity. Heretics were not tolerated. The same was true with Zoroastrianism in Persia. It did not tolerate heretics either.
In contrast, Arab rulers did not require their subjects to be Muslims, a far more liberal policy than the Roman or Persian religious policies. This was crucial for the Monophysite Christians of Egypt. Under Roman (Byzantine) rule they were persecuted. Under Muslim Arab rule they were free to practice their version of Christianity. Of course, there were inducements for conversion, but only voluntarily. Bernard Lewis [BL95, pp. 55-57] provides a concise review of the subject that included a lower tax (or no tax) on Muslims than on non-believers. He states that "the .. Christian Aramaic-speaking people of the Fertile Crescent, and the Coptic-speaking Christian people of Egypt ... found their new masters less demanding, more tolerant, and ... more welcoming than the old." Gibbon provides an extensive account that includes such vignettes as a letter from a governor of Africa to the caliph that states "that the tribute of the infidels was abolished by their conversion" [EG, Chapter LI, vol. 5, pp.380-381].
The conquest of Persia, Syria, and Palestine were achieved after several bloody battles although some towns surrendered to the Arab invaders. Gibbon [ibid, pp. 309-310] quotes the instructions of Abu Bakr to the army attacking Syria: "...When you fight the battles of the Lord, acquit yourselves like men, without turning your backs; but let not your victory be stained with the blood of women or children. Destroy no palm-trees, nor burn any field of corn. ... As you go on, you will find some religious persons who live retired in monasteries, ... let them alone and neither kill them nor destroy their monasteries: and you will find another sort of people, ... who have shaven crowns; be sure to cleave their skulls, and give them no quarter till they either turn Muhammadans or pay tribute." The people with shaven crowns were ordained Christian priests. In the seventh century monks did not have to be ordained. Gibbon also reports a case where a Syrian town, Bosra, was betrayed to the Arabs by its governor Romanus who then converted to Islam [ibid, pp. 311-312].
The story was quite different in Egypt where the Monophysite Coptic Christians under the leadership of Mokawkas signed a treaty with the Arabs. His message to the Arabs was "... we are resolved to live and die in the profession of the gospel and unity of Christ. It is impossible for us to embrace the revelations of your prophet; but we are desirous of peace, and cheerfully submit to pay tribute and obedience to his temporal successors" [ibid, pp. 341-342]. The emphasis on the words "unity of Christ" has been added. This was the monophysite doctrine. However, the Byzantine armies were able to put significant resistance in Alexandria and it took four years for the Arabs to take the city. An often told story is that the conquerors burn the famous Alexandria library. However Gibbon doubts the story and provides several reasons why it is suspect. His commentator (Oliphant Smeaton) suggests that the Muslims had destroyed books of the Zoroastrians in Persia and that story was transferred to Alexandria [ibid, pp. 346-348].
The Arab advance to the rest of north Africa was resisted by Byzantine and Gothic troops (the latter came from Spain) but the end came with the fall of Carthage in 698. That was the end of the famous city and today it is only an archeological site. It is also the end of Roman and Greek influence in north Africa. Because the focus of these notes is on the Middle East we will not follow the Arab conquest of Spain.
Internal Strife and Split of the Caliphate
Not so surprisingly, the success was followed by inner strife. Caliph Uthman was murdered by a group of Arab Muslim mutineers who installed Ali at his place. Ali faced, for the first time in Muslim history, a mutiny that he was able to put down [EG, Chapter L, vol. 5, pp. 282-283] but then he to face Moawiyah who laid claims to the title of caliph. Ali was able to get an advantage in the battle but his troops were reluctant to pursue fellow Muslims and Ali agreed to a truce and retreated to the city of Kufa on the banks of the Euphrates river. He was assassinated in 661 by a lone assassin from a radical religious sect, the Charegites (or Kharijites) [ibid, p. 284]. See also [BL95, p. 62-63]. Ali is considered the first Imam by the Shi'ites and the Sunni/Shia split dates from his time.
With Ali dead his son Hasan renounced his claim to the caliphate so Moawiyah became the undisputed caliph. There is an irony to his elevation because his father Abu Sophian had opposed Muhammad and he was a late convert to the new religion (Gibbon [ibid, p. 285]). Moawiyah and his descendants are known as the Umayyad caliphs and had Damascus as their capital. In 680 Ali's son Hosein (Gibbon's spelling) or Husayn (Lewis' spelling) revolted against the Ummayyads but he was defeated and killed in the battle of Karbala (In modern day Iraq). The day of his death is commemorated by the Shi'ites who worship his memory. The accounts of the battle and the start of Shi'ite tradition can be found in Gibbon [ibid, pp. 286-290] and Lewis [ibid, pp. 66-67]. We may note that the Shi'ite position is that the caliphate belongs to the family of the Prophet while the Sunnis do not accept that rule. The Kharijites refused to accept any authority other than moral authority and their position has been revived in modern times by radical Islam.
The Umayyad caliphate lasted till 747 when the Abbasid revolt took place. The revolt was led by Abu Muslim (a freed Persian slave) on behalf of the Abbasids, descendents of the Prophet's uncle al-Abbas [BL95, pp. 75-77]. The Abbasids won and, amongst their actions, was building a new capital on the banks of the Tigris river, near the old Persian capital of Ctesiphon. The new city came to be known as Baghdad from the name of the village in that location. The official name was City of Peace, Medinat al Salem in Arabic or Irenopolis in Greek (Gibbon [EG, Chapter LII, vol. 5 pp. 406-407]). There were many other changes. The Arab monopoly of power was over and with it the tradition that the caliph held power by the consent of the Arab tribal chiefs. Instead, Persian influence became strong and with it the Sassanid model of government was revived. The caliph became an absolute autocrat [BL95, p. 78]. We should point out that at that time most Persians were Sunnis.
"The Abbasids reached the peak of their power during the reign of Harun al-Rashid (786-809). After that the caliphate split, if not in name, at least in practice. Spain and North Africa first became an emirate (in 755) and eventually a caliphate (in 929) under rulers from the Umayyad dynasty (Gibbon [ibid, p. 405]). Egypt also broke away in 868 under a Turkish ruler who was originally sent from Baghdad but declared himself independent (presaging the Muhammad Ali story 1000 years later). A new caliphate arose in 908 in North Africa under Ubaydallah who is the founder of the Fatimid dynasty, so called because they claimed to descend from the Prophet's daughter Fatima (and therefore they were Shi'ites). In 969 they conquered Egypt and they build Cairo as their capital [BL95, p. 83].
Gibbon [ibid, p. 406] observes that "In the tenth century the chair of Muhammad was disputed by three caliphs ..., who reigned at Bagdad, Cairoan, and Cordova, excommunicated each other, and agreed only in a principle of discord that a sectary is more odious and criminal than an unbeliever". (I have preserved the spelling of the original.)
The secular power of the Abbasids did not last beyond the middle of the tenth century. Their lands were taken over by Iranian Muslim emirates. Baghdad fell under the Shia Buyids in 946. The Sunni Abbasid caliphs became figure-heads under the control of Shiite rulers. Thus Arab control of the Middle East was replaced by Muslim Persian control that lasted for a century until the rise of the Turkish power [BL95, pp. 80-81].
The Arab Golden Age
In spite of the strife the period of the caliphates is considered as the Arab Golden Age. Historians usually date the period from about 750 to 1250, the time of the Mongol invasions. Some scholars prefer the term Islamic Golden Age because of the large role of Persians in the caliphate. However the language in use was Arabic and the term "Islamic" over-emphasizes the factor of religion. What we see is an intellectual (and economic) flourish that parallels the flourish of the Hellenistic period that was put to an end by imperial Christianity 300 years earlier. In that earlier era Greek meant someone who knew the Greek language and culture but he was not necessarily of Greek descent. Similarly, in this era Arab means someone who knew Arabic and followed Islam but he was not necessarily of Arab descent. In both cases the contributors included Syrians, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, etc. An instructive account can be found in the Nestorian web site (http://www.nestorian.org/arab_golden_age_and_education_.html).
The Abbaside caliph Al Mamun (813-833) started a vast translation project collecting all the Greek writings that could be found and having them translated into Arabic. These translations became very valuable later on because they were the only available record of many ancient Greek writings. (Christian Europe looked with disfavor on the pagan writers.) Eventually, they were translated from Arabic into Latin and they contributed the European Renaissance.
In the same period a college (House of Wisdom) was founded in Baghdad with an initial expenditure of 200,000 pieces of gold and an annual revenue from endowment of 15,000 dinars. There was an explosion of literature and learning. For example, the royal library of the Fatimids consisted of 100,000 manuscripts (Gibbon [ibid, pp. 410-411]). The sciences of Astronomy and Mathematics flourished particularly and the modern terms Algebra and Algorithm point to the Arab roots of some of our knowledge. (To say nothing of Arabic numerals.) There was also progress in Medicine, Agriculture as well as Commerce and Industry [BL95, pp. 83-85 and elsewhere].
An interesting question to ponder is why the scientific breakthroughs of the European Renaissance did not occur 200 years earlier, during the Arab Golden Age. Certainly the Arabs were far more advanced than their contemporary Europeans. Gibbon [ibid, pp. 412-414] blames the emphasis the Arabs put in the study of Aristotle with his focus on logical deduction rather than experimentation. One of the most famous Arab scholars of the period was Ibn Rushd (known to Europeans as Averroes, lived 1126-1198) who exercised great influence on European philosophers through his commentary of Aristotle. Of course, Aristotle was also an impediment in Europe and it look considerable time to establish the acceptance of experimentation as the struggles of Galileo with the Church demonstrate. Interestingly Averroes also got into trouble with Muslim authorities because his rationalism conflicted with orthodoxy (Wikipedia article on Averroes).
Continuity between Byzantine and Arab Administrations
Lewis [ibid, pp. 182] notes that "In the course of the millennia Middle East bureaucracies, through many changes of government, religion, culture, and even script and language, show a remarkable persistence and continuity." He goes on to describe how the Persian and Greek administrative practices survived, first under Christian rule and then under Muslim rule. It turns out that the administrative records of Egypt have survived largely intact (mainly because of the dry climate) and provide a striking evidence for this continuity. "the record (during the Arab conquest) ... makes clear that as far as the day-to-day business of government was concerned nothing changed" [ibid, p. 184]. It took over a century for Arabic to replace Greek in government documents.
Because the Arabic peninsula was in far less developed state than the lands conquered, the new rulers had no administrative mechanisms of their own to impose on their new subjects so the developments described by Lewis are not surprising. In an earlier development the Greek conquerors of the Persian empire had no experience with administering large states (the Greek states were quite small) so they had to adopt the Persian administrative system (Chapter 2).
First Posted: January 29, 2010. Latest Revision: March 7, 2010.