He reminded them of the rewards that awaited them if they won. The Qur’an allowed a Muslim to have sexual intercourse not only with his wives but with the “captives of the right hand” (4:3, 4:24, 23:1–6) that were the spoils of war (33:50), and there were plenty of young women in Spain who could be used in this way:
You have heard that in this country there are a large number of ravishingly beautiful Greek maidens, their graceful forms are draped in sumptuous gowns on which gleam pearls, coral, and purest gold, and they live in the palaces of royal kings.8
The caliph, meanwhile, was forsaking his rightful share of the booty; the only thing he wanted was for Islam to be established in Spain:
The Commander of True Believers, Alwalid, son of Abdalmelik, has chosen you for this attack from among all his Arab warriors; and he promises that you shall become his comrades and shall hold the rank of kings in this country. Such is his confidence in your intrepidity. The one fruit which he desires to obtain from your bravery is that the word of God shall be exalted in this country, and that the true religion shall be established here. The spoils will belong to yourselves.9
Tariq ended his address by calling upon his men to kill Roderic. There were others on the Christian side besides Count Julian who wanted him dead as well. Roderic was a usurper, and some of the chronicles of the Muslim invasion of Spain have the sons of a previous Visigothic king, Witiza, aiding the Muslim armies against Roderic. Also helping the Muslims was Witiza’s brother Oppas, the archbishop of Toledo and Seville. Whatever the historical value of these accounts, there has never been a shortage of non-Muslims willing to aid the jihad for their own purposes.
The two armies met near the Guadalete River in the lower Guadalquivir valley. As seemed always the case in the days of the early jihad conquests, the Muslims were vastly outnumbered. Roderic appeared on the field of battle dressed as if he were certain of victory: he was arrayed in a gorgeous gold robe, with a crown of pearls on his head, and was carried on a litter of ivory. But the battle did not go well for the defenders. According to Ibn Abd al-Hakam: “And there was never in the West a more bloody battle than this. The Moslems did not withdraw their swords from Roderic and his companions for three days.”10
As the Visigoths’ losses mounted, Roderic fled the field of battle; his magnificent crown and robe were found on the riverbank, but there was no trace of the king. The Muslims concluded that Roderic had drowned in the river; they beheaded someone else, sending the head back as Roderic’s to the caliph Walid, who was headquartered in Damascus, as a symbol of his triumph.11
Conquering Spain
Count Julian’s thirst for revenge was not slaked by Roderic’s death. He went to Tariq and urged him to press on and conquer all of Spain: “The king of the Goths is slain; their princes are fled before you, the army is routed, the nation is astonished. Secure with sufficient detachments the cities of Boetica; but in person and without delay, march to the royal city of Toledo, and allow not the distracted Christians either time or tranquillity for the election of a new monarch.”12 Toledo was at that time the capital of Spain. Tariq heeded his advice and marched north, meeting very little resistance and capturing Toledo with relative ease. Among the spoils he seized was a table of emeralds that was said to have belonged to King Solomon, taken from the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans as they were destroying it in AD 70.
Back across the strait, Musa heard of Tariq’s astonishing victories and grew envious. Not to be upstaged, he landed in Spain with an army of eighteen thousand Muslims and began seizing towns and cities that Tariq had bypassed, most notably Seville. Some Christian turncoats who had entered Seville posing as refugees opened the gates of the city for Musa and his men, and the plunder began.13 Leaderless, dispirited, riven with short-sighted factionalism and beset with widespread treason, Visigothic Spain collapsed with amazing speed before the invading Muslims. By 718, just seven years after Tariq and his men burned their boats and determined to take the land for Islam or die, they had done so: Spain was almost entirely subdued.
The Holdout
Almost entirely. In Asturias in northwestern Spain, those among the Visigoths who were not utterly defeated or traitorous in 718 chose as their leader a man named Pelayo, who immediately told the local Muslim overlords that he would not pay the jizya. He established what he called the Kingdom of Asturias and began to attack the Muslim bases in the area. The warriors of jihad made only perfunctory attempts to find and kill Pelayo and destroy his little kingdom, for they didn’t regard it as significant enough: they were pressing on into France, and a few Christian fanatics in a remote, mountainous region of Spain didn’t worry them.
However, after the harassment from Pelayo’s men caused a Muslim governor, Munuza, to flee the area, the Muslims had had enough. Munuza returned with a Muslim commander, al-Qama, and an army, to put an end to Pelayo’s Kingdom of Asturias once and for all. Al-Qama and Musa brought with them the renegade bishop Oppas. According to an early tenth-century account, Oppas sought out Pelayo in his mountain hideaway and told him resistance was futile: “I believe that you understand how the entire army of the Goths cannot resist the force of the Muslims; how then can you resist on this mountain? Listen to my advice: abandon your efforts and you will enjoy many benefits alongside the Moors.”14
Pelayo was unmoved by this appeal to defeatism. He made a counterappeal to Oppas’ putative religion: “Have you not read in Sacred Scripture that the Church of the Lord is like the mustard seed, which, small as it is, grows more than any other through the mercy of God? Our hope is in Christ; this little mountain will be the salvation of Spain and of the people of the Goths; the mercy of Christ will free us from that multitude.”15
At first it appeared as if the Muslims would have no trouble overcoming this little rebellion, as they regained control of much of the area with little or no resistance. But Pelayo and his force of only three hundred men were hiding deep in the mountains; they swept into the valley at the village of Covadonga and surprised the Muslim forces, which vastly outnumbered them. In a turnabout of the usual scenario in early jihad attacks, the Christians were both outnumbered and victorious. After another defeat at his hands, the Muslims decided to leave Pelayo and his tiny kingdom alone.
Pelayo’s words to Oppas proved prophetic. That Kingdom of Asturias and Battle of Covadonga were the beginning of the seven-hundred-year effort by the Christians of Spain to drive the Muslims out: the Reconquista.
Treatment of the Conquered People
As the conquest of Spain was being completed, the Umayyad caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz sent out a message to the governors of the various Islamic provinces, denouncing non-Muslims:
O ye who believe! The non-Moslems are nothing but dirt. Allah has created them to be partisans of Satan; most treacherous in regard to all they do; whose whole endeavor in this nether life is useless, though they themselves imagine that they are doing fine work. Upon them rests the curse of Allah, of the Angels and of man collectively.16
According to the thirteenth-century Muslim jurist Ghazi ibn al-Wasiti, Umar also “commanded that both Jews and Christians should be forbidden to ride upon saddles; that no one belonging to the ‘Protected People’ should be allowed to enter a public bath on Friday, except after Prayer-time. He ordered, further, that a guard should be set to watch both Jews and Christians whenever they slaughtered an animal, so that the guard should mention the name of Allah and of his Prophet [at such a slaughter].”17 The Umayyad caliphate began large-scale dealing in slaves, requiring not only physical laborers but sex slaves for the harems of the caliphs and other high officials, as well as eunuchs who could be trusted to guard these harems. The warriors of Islam drew these slaves beginning in the eighth century from regular raids in three principal areas: Central Asia, the northern fringes of Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central and southeastern Europe, which they called Bilad as-Saqaliba, slave country. The ethnic designation “Slav” is derived from
the Arabic “saqlab,” or slave.18
II. THE JIHAD IN INDIA BEGINS
Conquering Sindh
In 711, the same year that Tariq ibn Ziyad and his men crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in Count Julian’s boats and began the jihad against Spain, the Umayyad Empire was expanding eastward as well. Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, the governor of Iraq, sent the general Muhammad ibn Qasim into Sindh, modern-day western Pakistan. It was the beginning of the jihad conquest of India.
Hajjaj gave his commander ruthlessly precise instructions:
My ruling is given: Kill anyone belonging to the combatants [ahl-i harb]; arrest their sons and daughters for hostages and imprison them. Whoever submits…grant them aman [protection] and settle their tribute [amwal] as dhimmah.19
This policy severely discouraged resistance. The Muslim invaders of India treated the native population with extraordinary harshness. In jihad campaigns in Europe, as well as in the Middle East and Persia, the warriors of jihad had subjugated the local populations and collected the jizya from them—the Qur’an-mandated (9:29) poll tax to be paid by the People of the Book, that is, the monotheistic Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians. But the Hindus, Jains, and Buddhists whom Muhammad ibn Qasim and his jihadis encountered in Hindustan were not People of the Book, and hence no jizya could be demanded from them. Their only choices were to convert to Islam or face the sword of Islam.
The Indians quickly realized just how ruthless their foe really was. As the Muslims besieged the city of Brahmanabad, its inhabitants saw the writing on the wall:
If we unite and go forth to fight, we will be killed: for even if peace is [subsequently] made, those who are combatants [ahl-i silat] will all be put to death. As for the rest of the people; aman is given to the merchants, artisans, and agriculturalists. It is better that we be trusted. Therefore, we should surrender the fort to him on the basis of a secure covenant [ahd-i wathiq].20
However, not all of the Sindhis were that willing to give up without a struggle, even at Brahmanabad. The Muslim response was just as fierce; Muslims massacred between six thousand and twenty-six thousand Sindhis at Brahmanabad, six thousand more at Rawar, four thousand at Iskalandah, and six thousand at Multan.
As Muhammad ibn Qasim’s jihad in India continued, however, it proved to be impractical to offer all the people in India the choice of conversion to Islam or death: there were simply too many people in India for them all to be converted to Islam or killed. Consequently, an adjustment had to be made, and Muhammad ibn Qasim ultimately granted the Hindus the status of the People of the Book, accepting their submission and payment of the jizya, with the ultimate objective remaining to bring all of these people into the fold of Islam.21
The jihadis, however, were unremittingly ruthless toward Hindu temples. The Qur’an says: “And were it not that Allah checks the people, some by means of others, there would have been demolished monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which the name of Allah is much mentioned.” (22:40) The Qur’an regards Jesus and the prophets of Hebrew Scriptures as prophets and the Torah and Gospel as legitimate revelations, although it contends that the Jews and Christians twisted their prophets’ words and altered the scriptures they received. Consequently, while many churches and synagogues were seized throughout the history of jihad and turned into mosques, this was never a thoroughgoing or universal policy. Hindu temples, by contrast, were always considered to be centers of idolatry, in which the “name of Allah” was not “much mentioned,” and consequently they were to be destroyed whenever possible.
At Daybul, the Muslims faced a force of four thousand Rajputs (Indian warriors) and two to three thousand Brahmins (Hindu priests) defending a Hindu temple. Once victorious, Muhammad ibn Qasim had the temple destroyed and the Brahmins circumcised so as to convert them to Islam. However, seeing that his new converts were resisting, rather than embracing, their new religion, he ordered all of them over the age of seventeen to be executed.22 The victorious jihadis began a massacre so intensive that it lasted three days.23 Young women and children were enslaved, but in a rare act of mercy, older women were freed outright.24
Seeing the immensity of the task before him, Muhammad ibn Qasim began encouraging the locals to surrender rather than fight; but this aroused the ire of his boss. Hajjaj wrote to Muhammad urging him to be more discriminating between those who had surrendered sincerely and those who had not, and charged that his practice of granting protection was un-Islamic:
I am appalled by your bad judgment and astounded by your policies. Why are you so intent on giving aman, even to an enemy whom you have tested and found hostile and intransigent? It is not necessary to give aman to everyone without discrimination.… In any case, if [the Sindis] sincerely request aman and desist from treachery, they will surely stop fighting. Then income will meet expenditures and this long situation will be concluded.… It is acknowledged that all your procedures have been in accordance with religious law [bar jadah-yi shar] except for the one practice of giving aman. For you are giving aman to everyone without distinguishing between friend and foe.25
His instructions to Muhammad ibn Qasim were ruthlessly precise:
God says, “Give no quarter to infidels but cut their throats.” Then you shall know that this is the command of the great God. You shall not be too ready to grant protection, because it will prolong your work. After this give no quarter to any enemy except those of rank.26
Muhammad ibn Qasim may have been too lenient for Hajjaj’s taste, but as he subdued Sindh he was ruthless against manifestations of non-Muslim religion. At Nirun, he had a mosque built on the site of a Buddhist temple, and appointed an imam to instruct converts in the new, dominant religion. After a series of victories over Dahir, king of Sindh, Muhammad wrote triumphantly to Hajjaj:
The forts of Siwistan and Sisam have been already taken. The nephew of Dahir, his warriors, and principal officers have been dispatched, and infidels converted to Islam or destroyed. Instead of idol temples, mosques and other places of worship have been built, pulpits have been erected, the Khutba [Islamic Friday sermon] is read, the call to prayers is raised so that devotions are performed at the stated hours. The takbir [“Allahu akbar”] and praise to the Almighty God are offered every morning and evening.27
At Multan, Muhammad ibn Qasim ordered the destruction of an immense idol made of gold, with eyes of rubies. According to the Chach Nama, a twelfth-century Persian history of the conquest of Sindh that may have been based on an earlier Arabic original, “Two hundred and thirty mans of gold were obtained, and forty jars filled with gold dust. This gold and the image were brought to the treasury together with the gems and pearls and treasures which were obtained from the plunder of Multan.”28
Muhammad ibn Qasim left another idol in place at Multan because of its popularity, intending to profit from the many offerings left there; however, to show his horror at Hindu superstition, and seeing that the cow was sacred to Hindus, he ordered that the idol’s necklace be removed and replaced with a piece of cow’s flesh.29 The idol did not protest. The great general and his followers told the Hindus that was a sign that their idols were false and the harsh god of the invaders was the only true god.
The conquering jihad commander sent some of his massive haul back to the caliph Walid, along with two choice sex slaves, the daughters of the Sindhi king Dahir himself. One of them, named Janaki, particularly caught the caliph’s eye, but when he took her to bed, the panicked girl told him that she had already been raped by Muhammad ibn Qasim.
Walid was enraged. Muhammad ibn Qasim had dared to send him damaged goods. Immediately he ordered that the victorious general, victories or no, be sewn up into a rawhide sack and shipped to his court. By the time the sack containing Muhammad ibn Qasim arrived, he was already dead.
The cause of Walid’s monumental fit of temper, Janaki, was appalled. “The king has committed a very grievous mistake,” she exclaimed, “for he ought not, on accoun
t of two slave girls, to have destroyed a person who had taken captive a hundred thousand modest women like us and who instead of temples had erected mosques, pulpits and minarets.”30
In any case, the killing of Muhammad ibn Qasim stalled the jihad in India. But the subcontinent was never forgotten. A century or so after Muhammad ibn Qasim’s jihad in Sindh, words were put into the mouth of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, emphasizing the importance of jihad in India. Abu Huraira, one of Muhammad’s companions, is depicted in a hadith as saying: “The Messenger of Allah promised that we would invade India.”31 In another hadith, Muhammad himself says: “There are two groups of my Ummah whom Allah will free from the Fire: The group that invades India, and the group that will be with Isa bin Maryam [Jesus Christ], peace be upon him.”32
III. THE JIHAD IN CONSTANTINOPLE BEGINS
The Second Siege of Constantinople
With Islam on the march in the East, as the warriors of jihad conquered Sindh, and in the West, with the Islamic conquest of Spain nearly completed and the jihadis pressing on into France, the Muslims were at a pinnacle of confidence: it looked as if Allah had indeed granted them hegemony over the entire world; all they had to do was seize it. And so, in 717, they made their second attempt to capture the jewel of Christendom and the capital of the great empire that still stood as the foremost obstacle to their plans: Constantinople.
The History of Jihad- From Muhammad to ISIS Page 9
