Titans of History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  Over the next few years, Muhammad continued to receive the revelations that would become the Koran and which Muslims believe are the direct word of God. Soon he began to preach to the people of Mecca, converting small groups of his friends and family and various prominent Meccans. He taught them that there was one God, deserving of their complete submission (the meaning of the word Islam), and that he, Muhammad, was God’s true prophet. This was seen as disruptive by many of the polytheistic tribesmen of Mecca, and Muhammad’s supporters were threatened and persecuted. Muhammad sent one group of his followers to Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) to seek refuge.

  In 619, the “year of sorrows,” Khadijah and Abu Talib died. It was around this time that Muhammad experienced the most intense religious experience of his life. He felt the angel Gabriel transport him from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from the Temple Mount ascended to heaven. Witnessing the divine throne of God and meeting prophets such as Moses and Jesus, he learned of his own supreme state among them. The form of daily prayer was also revealed to him. This two-part journey is known as Isra (Night Journey) and Mi’raj (Ascension).

  Still persecuted in Mecca, in 622 Muhammad led his supporters out of the city in the Hijra, a great flight to the city of Yathrib, now known as Medina. There he was recognized as the judge and arbiter, and his following grew. There he created a new state of tolerance under a constitution. But the Jewish tribes of Medina resisted his claim to be the last prophet with the final revelation. At first he had made Jerusalem the direction of prayer—qibla—but now he turned it back to Mecca. Nevertheless, tensions remained between Muhammad and the Meccans, and between 624 and 627 there was a series of battles between the two groups. In the first of these, the Battle of Badr, 313 Muslims defeated a force of 1000 Meccans. In 627 a truce was concluded following a great victory for the Muslims at the Battle of the Ditch. Muhammad was both religions visionary and military-political statesman. When some Jewish tribes backed the Meccans, Muhammad broke with them and had them judged. The result was the execution of male Jews. His Koran promised both tolerance to all those who recognized Islamic supremacy and paid a tax of submission, but also jihad, holy war, against those who resisted.

  In 629 Muhammad carried out the first haj (pilgrimage) to Mecca, a tradition still followed by hundreds of thousands of Muslims each year. In 630, when the Meccans broke the truce, Muhammad led a force of 10,000 of his followers to the city, capturing it and destroying the idols of the polytheistic tribes. By the following year he had extended his influence to most of Arabia, so bringing to an end what he called the “age of ignorance.” After preaching his final sermon to 200,000 pilgrims in 632, Muhammad died, leaving Arabia stronger and united under the banner of Islam.

  Muhammad’s promulgation and interpretation of God’s word were based on the virtues of humility, magnanimity, justice, meritocracy, nobility, dignity and sincerity. The concept of internal jihad—the inner struggle to live a better, more pious life—was as important to him as taking up arms against enemies—the jihad of holy war. Both ideas are powerful components of Islam. He enhanced the rights of women—compulsion to wear the veil did not arise until well after his death—and slaves. He condemned Arab practices such as female infanticide; reformed tribal custom in favor of a unifying divine law; and denounced corrupt hierarchies and privilege. His name is the inspiration for countless beautiful calligraphic works and much exquisite Islamic poetry. Christian contemporaries confirm that he existed but most of the details of his biography derive from histories written in Iraq and Iran, one or two centuries later. His life and words are indispensable to the Muslim world. Despite the excesses carried out in his name by extremists, he continues to provide spiritual direction to millions of ordinary people. On the basis of Muhammad’s achievements, it is little wonder that Muslims believe that he was the “perfect man”—not divine but “a ruby among stones.”

  MUAWIYA & ABD AL-MALIK

  The Caliphs and the Great Arab Conquests

  Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan is one of the greatest Arab and Muslim Caliphs. He followed in the footsteps of Umar ibn al-Khattab, the Commander of the Believers, in regulating state affairs.

  Ibn Khaldun, 14th century

  After the death of the Prophet Muhammad, his new theocratic realm almost fell apart, but his successors, known as the Caliphs or the Commanders of the Believers, not only restored Islamic rule in Arabia but then embarked on an astonishing military campaign that, in a matter of a few decades, conquered a new empire that stretched from Spain in the west to the borders of India in the east. The first four of the successors were known as the Righteous Caliphs, but this epoch of triumphant success ended in two bursts of civil war, fought for political control of the new empire and religion. These wars remain relevant today because they created the schism in Islam between the Sunni and Shia. But in each case, the scars were healed by two remarkable rulers from the Ummayad dynasty.

  After the Prophet’s death, he was succeeded by his old supporter Abu Bakr, who sent probing expeditions into the Byzantine provinces of the Middle East. But on Abu Bakr’s death, the next Caliph Omar the Just—an austere and severe giant—dispatched Arab armies that conquered the great cities of Damascus and Jerusalem and ultimately Syria, Palestine, Iraq and Egypt. Then the Arabs conquered Persia—and this was only the beginning.

  In 644 Omar was assassinated, succeeded by Othman, who continued the conquests but whose nepotism and bad management led to his murder. For those who believed the succession should lie with the family of Muhammad, the ideal successor was his first cousin Ali, married to his daughter Fatima—but others felt Ali was implicated somehow in the murder of Othman and so they named as their leader Muawiya, who became one of the greatest Arab rulers.

  Muawiya was a Meccan aristocrat, son of Abu Sufyan, who had led the opposition to Muhammad. When Mecca surrendered to Islam, Muhammad welcomed the family into the fold, Muawiya became his secretary, and he married his sister. Caliph Omar appointed Muawiya as governor of Syria, describing him as the “Arab Caesar”—a backhanded compliment that has some truth in it. Muawiya ruled Syria and Palestine for twenty years for his cousin Caliph Othman but on his assassination he defied the new Caliph Ali. In the civil war ensuing in Iraq, Ali was killed—the last of the Righteous Caliphs—and in 661 Muawiya became the Caliph of the vast empire that included Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Persia and Arabia.

  He was handsome, shrewd, well bred and prided himself on his prowess both as a general and a lover of women. He built an Islamic fleet that conquered Rhodes and Cyprus and almost took Constantinople in his annual attacks on the Byzantines. He treated Jerusalem as his spiritual capital but ruled from Damascus, creating a new ideal of imperial monarchy, the Islamic-Arab king-ruler, that has lasted to the present era. He ruled through Christian bureaucrats and tolerated Christians and Jews alike, seeing himself as something between Arab sheikh, Islamic caliph and Roman emperor. He was tolerant and pragmatic, following an early, looser version of Islam, happy to worship at Christian and Jewish sites, and share their shrines. Later he expanded the empire into eastern Persia, central Asia, the Sahara and into today’s Libya and Algeria.

  Muawiya was famed for his good sense and witty decency at a time when he was probably the most powerful ruler on earth. He prided himself on his patience and forbearance: no one has ever so cleverly stated the essence of politics as Muawiya, who said: “I apply not my sword when my lash suffices nor my lash when my tongue suffices. And even if but one hair is binding me to my fellow men, I don’t let it break. When they pull, I loosen, if they loosen, I pull.”

  On his death in 680, his son Yazid failed to grasp the succession, facing rebellions in Arabia and Iraq. Muhammad’s grandson Hussein rebelled to avenge his father Ali’s death but was brutally murdered at Karbala in Iraq, his martyrdom creating the Shia, “the party,” a division that still splits Islam today. However, after Yazid’s early death, Muawiya’s old kinsman Marwan started to reconquer the empire, dying in 685 and leaving t
his troubled inheritance to his son Abd al-Malik, the second of the titanic Ummayad Caliphs. Abd al-Malik was less humane and flexible but more ruthless and visionary than Muawiya. He first mercilessly crushed the rebellions, retaking Iraq and Arabia; in Jerusalem he built the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, a triumph of religious expression and imperial grandeur, the oldest Islamic shrine, and ordered the building of the Aqsa Mosque.

  Abd al-Malik was severe, thin, hook-nosed, curly-haired and, his enemies claimed, in what can probably be dismissed as hostile propaganda, that he had breath so noxious he was nicknamed the Flykiller. Abd al-Malik saw himself as God’s shadow on earth: if Muawiya was Caesar of the Arabs, he was a mixture of St. Paul and Constantine the Great—he believed in the marriage of empire, state and god. As such it was Abd al-Malik who collated the book of Islam—the Koran—into its final form (the inscriptions in Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock are the first examples of the final Koran text), who defined Islamic rituals and who unified Islam into a single religion recognizable today with the emphasis on Koran and Muhammad, expressed in the double shahada: “There is no God but God and Muhammad is the apostle of God.” Abd al-Malik and his son Caliph Walid expanded their empire to the borders of India and the coasts of Spain. Yet their dynasty remained part Islamic theocrats, part Roman emperors, often living in a distinctly un-Islamic decadence. This led to the family’s downfall in the revolution of 750, when they were replaced by the Abbasid caliphs who ruled from Iraq and blackened the reputation of the Ummayads. To the Shia, they remained heretics and sinners because the Shia believed the real Caliphs were the twelve descendants from Ali and Fatima: indeed the Shia of Iran still await the return of the Twelfth.

  ZHAO WU

  625–705

  Wu is a treacherous monster! May it be that I be reincarnated as a cat and she be reincarnated as a mouse, so that I can, forever and ever, grab her throat.

  Consort Xiao, one of Empress Wu’s many victims

  The only woman in Chinese history to rule in her own right, the empress Wu was both depraved megalomaniac and intelligent puppeteer. Beginning life as the emperor’s concubine, she dominated the imperial court for over half a century, eventually achieving absolute power as the self-styled “Heavenly Empress.”

  Wu Zhao, as she was then known, was only thirteen when in 638 she entered the imperial palace as a concubine of the emperor Taizong. From an early age she was aware of the power that flowed from her good looks and intelligence, and by the time Taizong died a decade or so later, she had already ingratiated herself with his son and heir, Gaozong.

  As was customary for concubines following the death of their master, Wu Zhao spent a brief period in retreat at a Buddhist convent. But within a couple of years she was back at the center of imperial court life, her return being partly driven by the empress Wang, Gaozong’s wife: jealous of one of her husband’s other concubines, Consort Xiao, Wang had hoped that Wu might divert his attention. It was to be a fatal move.

  As Wang had anticipated, Wu quickly displaced Xiao as the new emperor’s favorite concubine, and went on to bear him four sons. But Wu now wanted power for herself, and sought ways of eliminating the influence of the empress Wang. When in 654 Wu gave birth to a daughter who died shortly afterward, Wu ensured that Wang emerged as prime suspect in the baby’s death. Gaozong believed his concubine over his wife and duly had both Wang and Consort Xiao removed from their positions. In their place, Wu became empress.

  Increasingly, Gaozong suffered from debilitating bouts of ill health, giving the empress Wu greater opportunities to exert her power. She used her agents to spy on and eliminate potential rivals and officials whose loyalty she doubted—including members of her own family. Some were demoted, some exiled—and many put to death. Among the hundreds who were strangled, poisoned or butchered were the former empress Wang and Consort Xiao, whose murders Wu ordered after it emerged that Gaozong might consider pardoning them. An atmosphere of general terror spread through the imperial court, with servile obedience the only guarantor of survival.

  In 675, with Gaozong’s health deteriorating still further, the empress Wu maneuvered for the succession. The emperor’s aunt Princess Zhao, whom he had appeared increasingly to favor, was placed under house arrest and starved to death. Then Wu’s son Crown Prince Li Hong died suddenly—poisoned by an “unknown” hand. He was replaced by his brother—Wu’s second son—Li Xian. Wu’s relationship with him also quickly broke down, and in 680 Wu had him charged with treason and exiled. He was later forced to commit suicide. The line of succession now passed to a third son, Li Zhe.

  When Gaozong finally died in 684, it was Li Zhe who became emperor, taking the new name Zhongzong. Needless to say, real authority still lay with Wu, now empress dowager. When Zhongzong looked as if he was about to challenge her power, she had him deposed and replaced him with another of her sons, who became Emperor Ruizong.

  Wu now exercised even greater control, preventing Ruizong from meeting any officials or conducting any government business. Anyone who questioned this state of affairs was summarily removed and, frequently, executed. In 686 she offered to return imperial powers to Ruizong, but he had the good sense to decline.

  Ever on the lookout for possible threats to her position, Wu encouraged her secret police to infiltrate official circles and identify would-be conspirators. In 688 a putative plot against the empress dowager was smashed, and this sparked a particularly ferocious round of political killings. False accusations, torture and forced suicides became almost routine. Then, in 690, following a series of “spontaneous” petitions demanding that the empress dowager take the throne herself, she acceded to the request. Ruizong was demoted to crown prince and Wu became emperor.

  For the next fifteen years Wu ruled using the same ruthless methods that had guaranteed her elevation, and politically motivated denunciations and state-sanctioned killings remained commonplace. In 693 the wife of her son Ruizong (the former emperor and now heir again) was accused of witchcraft and executed. Ruizong was too afraid of his mother to object.

  Eventually, in 705, with her own health now failing, Wu was prevailed upon by Ruizong to surrender the throne. Unlike so many of her own victims, she died peacefully in her bed that same year, at the age of 80. While she was in power, imperial politics had been reduced to little more than a deadly game, in which many ended up losers. An old Chinese proverb has it that the rule of a woman is like having a “hen crow like a rooster at daybreak.” Given the country’s experience with Empress Wu, it is scarcely surprising that she has been the only person to put that maxim to the test.

  CHARLEMAGNE

  768–814

  Let peace, concord and unanimity reign among all Christian people … for without peace we cannot please God.

  Charlemagne, The Admonitio (789)

  Charlemagne—literally “Charles the Great”—transformed his Frankish kingdom into a Christian empire that extended from France’s western coast eastward into Germany, northward into the Low Countries, and southward into Italy. Charlemagne was not only a conqueror; he also presided over a court renowned for its artistic and scholarly achievements, especially in the preservation of classical learning.

  The grandson of Charles Martel—the Hammer—who defeated the Islamic invasion of France, Charlemagne succeeded to the Frankish throne jointly with his brother, but the latter’s death three years later left him in sole possession of the crown. His will for power driven by a sense of divine purpose, Charlemagne set about building a Christian realm during a reign of forty-six years and fifty-three military operations. In eighteen campaigns he subdued and converted the pagan Saxons. A decade later he conquered Bavaria, uniting the west Germanic tribes into one political entity for the first time. His influence extended still further. Campaigning from his Bavarian base, Charlemagne turned the Avar principalities (in modern-day Hungary and Austria) and the Slavic states along the Danube into dependents of the greatest empire since that of the Romans. In 773 Pope Adrian summoned hi
m to help against the Lombards. By 778, he was master of Italy. Only once, when he made an unsuccessful incursion into Spain, was Charlemagne’s effort to dominate Europe thwarted.

  Pope Leo III’s coronation of Charlemagne as emperor was one of history’s most extraordinary Christmas presents. On Christmas Day AD 800, Charlemagne was attending mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome for the consecration of his son, the future Louis the Pious, as king of Aquitaine. As Charlemagne rose from prayer, the pope slipped an imperial crown on his head. While the Romans present acclaimed him as “Augustus and Emperor,” the astonished Charlemagne, who a minute before had been kneeling at the tomb of the first pope, found himself with the current incumbent at his feet, “adoring” him “after the manner of emperors of old.”

  According to the chronicler Einhard, Charlemagne’s imperial coronation caught him completely off guard. Had he known what was going to happen, the emperor reportedly said, he would never have gone to the basilica that day. Charlemagne’s outrage was surely feigned: the smoothness of the operation suggests that there was meticulous planning and negotiation beforehand.

  The Byzantines did eventually deign to acknowledge him as “emperor” (although they refused to automatically recognize his successors). For his part, Charlemagne laid no claim to their throne.

  The so-called Carolingian Renaissance—named after Charlemagne himself—transformed western Europe’s spiritual and cultural life, as Charlemagne strove to fulfill what he saw as his divinely sanctioned purpose: the creation of a truly Christian empire. From the early years of his reign, Charlemagne sent out appeals for copies of remarkable or rare texts, whether Christian or classical. Libraries and schools flourished in monasteries and cathedrals across his realms. At his court at Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) Charlemagne gathered together Europe’s most eminent scholars to instruct a new generation of the clergy, seeking to set up a chain of learning that would ultimately disseminate this Christian culture to the people. Greek was revived, and the intensive learning of Latin became compulsory in all educational establishments.