Sea of Faith
Page 39
1229 Frederick II negotiates Christian lease of Jerusalem
1236 Christians capture Córdoba,
1244 Muslims recapture Jerusalem
1258 Mongols sack Baghdad
1260 Mamluk sultan Baybars defeats Mongols at Ayn Jalut
1261 Byzantine restoration in Constantinople
1291 Acre falls; end of Outremer
1305 Papacy moved from Rome to Avignon
1347 Black Death pandemic reaches the Mediterranean
1354 Ottomans occupy Gallipoli
1367 Papacy returns to Rome
1371 Battle of Marica (Maritsa)
1389 First battle of Kosovo
1396 Battle of Nicopolis
1402 Battle of Ankara
1444 Battle of Varna
1448 Second battle of Kosovo
1453 Siege of Constantinople
1469 Marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile
1492 Fall of Granada
1492 Expulsion of Jews from Spain
1517 Fall of the Mamluks
1521 Ottomans take Belgrade
1522 Siege of Rhodes
1529 Suleyman the Magnificent fails before Vienna
1538 Battle of Preveza
1565 Siege of Malta
1571 Battle of Lepanto
NOTES
These notes include information—digressions, anecdotes, names, explanations, prose from other authors—that I judged better left out of the main narrative. On the whole, I do not flag information about which there is a consensus among the sources, whether secondary or primary, as doing so would require an encyclopedic notes section. The observant will note that I do not use ibid, or op. cit.; rather, I give the full bibliographical details of a book the first time it is mentioned in the notes (for each chapter), then use a shortened version of the author's name and title thereafter. Sometimes a particularly long entry entails a discussion on the principal volumes I used in reconstructing a battle. However, for a full list of the works consulted, see the Bibliography. Nonetheless, the Notes are the place where the curious should look.
INTRODUCTION
The peekaboo succession of spaces: The mosque has astonished visitors for more than a millennium, epecially those with a trained eye. In Jerrilynn D. Dodds, ed., Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), we read in Dodds's "The Great Mosque of Córdoba,": "This carnivalesque solution converts a basic building type that is repetitious and somewhat monotonous into a wild three-dimensional maze, a hall of mirrors in which the constant echo of arches and the unruly staccato of colors confuse the viewer, presenting a challenge to unravel the complexities these refinements impose upon the mosque's space" (12).
he had been forced to flee his native Syria: For Abd al-Rahman's remarkable story, see Chapter 3.
Almanzor, a ruthless vizier: As I stated in "Notes on Usage," I have opted, wherever reasonable, to use the Latinized form of Arabic and Turkish names, in the interest of making the roll call of names and historical figures less daunting for the reader. It is particularly useful in this case, for al-Mansur, the vizier's sobriquet as transliterated properly from Arabic, was used by many figures in Islamic history. It means "the Conqueror" or "the Victorious." Almanzor's story is told in Chapter 3.
Santiago Matamoros: In the early ninth century, in obscure circumstances, a body was discovered in Compostela, which was quickly claimed to be that of James the Apostle, "miraculously transported across the sea to the north-west coast of Spain. James was traditionally credited with the conversion of the Iberian peninsula. The discovery of his relics gave a patriarchal status to the Church in the kingdom of the Asturias (because it was 'founded' by an Apostle), and a primal quality which allowed it to compete with other great Christian centres such as Rome, Alexandria, Antioch or Constantinople. . . . The pilgrimage to Santiago rapidly assumed a warlike aspect: early in its course, the route of the Camino circumnavigated an area that was in places quite close to the 'no-man's land' dividing Christians from Muslims. It was claimed that during the battle of Clavijo in 844 James the Apostle appeared in dazzling robes, on the back of a snow-white charger, and guided the Christians as they fought the enemy: he was thenceforth called the 'Moor Slayer', Matamoros" Franco Cardini, Europe and Islam, trans. Caroline Beamish (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 37, 38-39.
When the monarch who authorized the church: Charles V (1500-58), king of Spain, king of Aragon (and its Italian possessions), duke of Burgundy, and Holy Roman emperor. This monarch, the greatest of the Habsburgs, was rivaled only by Suleyman the Magnificent, the Ottoman emperor who ruled from Kostantiniyye. See Chapter 10.
"You have built here . . .": Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 3.
"a great blister of tiresomeness": Michel Butor, The Spirit of Mediterranean Places, trans. Lydia Davis (Evanston, 111.: Marlboro/Northwestern, 1997), n. The notion of a Christian carbuncle recurs in other writings on the cathedral.
"Solomon, I have surpassed thee": John Julius Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium (New York: Vintage, 1997), 66.
"In the name of God the Merciful and Pitiful; God is the light of Heaven and Earth . . .": John Freely, Istanbul (London: A&C Black, 2000), 88.
"clouds pinned down by the enormous needles of their minarets": John Ash, A Byzantine Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 28.
the idea of an inevitable civilizational clash: In response to Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civiliiations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1996) and other books with a pessimistically binary view, a few works of recent scholarship have emerged to rebut or at least refine the crusader-vs.-jihadist view of contemporary Christian-Muslim relationships. To my mind, the best of the lot is Richard W. Bulliett's The Case for Islamo-Christian Civiliiation (New York: Columbia University, 2004), a short, lively, and provocative book that underlines one of this present work's central tenets: that Christianity and Islam are in fact siblings, with all the complicity and rivalry that such an idea entails. Those wishing to link what they take from Sea of Faith to present-day problems would be well advised to read Bulliett.
"Simply looking at the Mediterranean . . .": Fernand Braudel, Memory and the Mediterranean, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Vintage, 2001), 3.
Akdeniz: Not all Turks agree on calling the sea white or even on considering Istanbul a Mediterranean city. Orhan Pamuk, "The White Sea Is Azure," Istanbul, Many Worlds, Mediterraneans 10 (Winter 1997—98), 487—91.
Monophysitism, Arianism, Nestorianism: Briefly, monophysitism is the belief that Jesus had one nature and that it was divine. Arianism, named after the Libyan-Egyptian cleric Arius, held that within the Holy Trinity the Son (Jesus) was a creation of the Father; thus Jesus was a supernatural being but not the creator of the universe. Nestorianism, thus called after the Anti-ochene bishop Nestorius, held that Jesus was two distinct persons. Adherents of this belief were persecuted, and many fled to Mesopotamia.
"Everywhere, in humble homes . . .": Gregory of Nyssa, cited in Rene Guerdan, Byzantium: Its Triumphs and Tragedy, trans. D.L.B. Hartley (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1957). I have seen many translations of this famous passage; the one I selected seemed to me the most congenial to modern ears.
"No wild beasts . . .": Quoted in G. W Bowersock, "Seeing the Voice of the Lord," New York Times Book Review, April 6, 2003, p. 22.
"I believe in God . . .": The opening of the Apostles' Creed.
"when modern man ceased to accord first place to religion . . .": Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Basic, 2003), 136.
CHAPTER 1: YARMUK 636
"after ten centuries, at one stroke of the Arab scimitar . . .": This stirring passage is quoted, unsourced, in Fernand Braudel, Memory and the Mediterranean, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York: Vintage, 2001), Evanston, 250. The critique leveled at such sentiments was crystallized in Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), the must-read text for any westerner v
enturing east.
"Is it thus, O wretch . . .": Quoted in Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius: Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 50.
October 5, 610: Heraclius arrived in the Golden Horn on October 3. Two days passed before the terrified Phocas was brought before him.
each district being known as a theme: Kaegi, in Heraclius, argues that Heraclius did not undertake this reorganization before taking the field against Chosroes. This assertion flies in the face of the standard assumption made in most histories of the Byzantine Empire. I am not qualified to adjudicate the disagreement—I mention the theme system primarily because its later dismantling prior to Manzikert (see Chapter 4) proved to be so disastrous.
"[Iran] is the navel [of the world], because our land lies in the midst of other lands . . .": The Letter of Tansar, ca. sixth century c.e. (trans. Mary Boyce), in Bernard Lewis, ed., A Middle Eastern Mosaic: Fragments of Life, Letters and History (New York: Modern Library, 2001), 7.
"Noblest of the Gods . . .": Quoted in John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Early Centuries (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 284. The correspondence was reported by the Armenian chronicler Sebeos.
At Jerusalem, Shahrbaraz torched the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: This occurred in 614. The Persian general, Shahrbaraz, massacred all the Christians of the city and destroyed all its Christian shrines. In addition to the True Cross, the Holy Lance and Sponge were spirited away into captivity.
Accordingly, in 622: The first great victory of the Byzantines over the Persians occurred at an unidentified site either in Cappadocia or Bithynia, both provinces of Anatolia.
Ganzak: George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byiantine State, trans. Joan Hussey (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968), 91.
In September of that year: As calculated by the old Julian calendar, the hijra began around September 20, 622. Muhammad is thought to have arrived in Yathrib on September 24. An error is to date his movements to July 16, 622, which is indeed the very first day of the Muslim calendar. But the Muslim era begins not on the precise day of the hijra but on the first day of the lunar (Islamic) year in which Muhammad emigrated.
the oasis town now known to us as Madina: Maxime Rodinson, Muhammad, trans. Anne Carter (New York: New Press, 2002), offers a surprising etymology of the city's name change: "The Jewish name for Yathrib was the Aramaic medinta, which simply means 'the city'; this became in Arabic al-madina, from which we get Medina. That the Koran itself calls it by this name is proof that Yathrib did not, as has often been claimed, take its second name from the phrase madinat an-nabi, 'the city of the Prophet' " (p. 139). For this section I have relied extensively on Rodinson as well as on F. Buhl, "Muhammad," Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 7:360—76, for a discussion of the historical Muhammad.
the mortal portion of it that everyone can concede as having occurred: Not quite everyone: see jesusneverexisted.com.
the Quran . . . was compiled within a generation or two of his death in 632: This statement can be construed as presumptuous, since more than a billion people believe that the Quran, as the word of God, is an uncreated book that has existed in the presence of God for all eternity. In the interests of harmony, the phrase here—and the ones to follow concerning the Quran's composition—may be taken as referring to its mundane diffusion following the lifetime of Muhammad.
a benevolent uncle: Abu Talib was an important figure because Muhammad, once wealthy, adopted Abu Talib's son Ali. Later Ali married Muhammad's daughter Fatima. It is this Ali, who was to be the fourth caliph, that the shia claim as the one true inheritor of Muhammad's mantle of spiritual leadership. His descendants, not the Umayyads, in their view, should have been rulers of the umma. Hence the schism that endures to the present day.
The Prophet's first biographer: Muhammad Ibn Ishaq's eighth-century The Life of the Messenger of God was edited in the ninth century by Abd al-Malik Ibn Hisham. It remains an influential book, even if scholars of the hadith (traditions, or stories told about the Prophet and his life) reject many of its stories. The Bosra incident has a certain Bahira, who could have been a monophysite monk, recognizing the "seal of prophethood" between Muhammad's shoulder blades. This story does not appear in the Quran. The legend might have been given currency to show Christian recognition of the Prophet. Contrariwise, Christian polemicists, starting as early as the time of John of Damascus (eighth century) and continuing well into the medieval period, used the Bosra story to discredit Muhammad; they claimed that the monk Bahira was a heretic who fed the Prophet the dogmatic misinformation that was later to be articulated in Islam. I mention the story in this chapter because it is still widely accepted in some quarters—and because of Bosra's connection to Khalid Ibn al Walid and the Battle of Yarmuk.
four daughters: None of Muhammad's sons, by any of his wives, would survive into adulthood. Were it not for the constraints of nonfiction, the parlor game of "what if" would here be irresistible.
"Recite: in the name of thy Lord . . .": This passage occurs at the beginning of the ninety-sixth of the Quran's 114 suras. Although it is undoubtedly the first of the Prophet's revelations, its placement is a result of the Quran's nonchronological organization. The suras appear according to length (the longest is first; the shortest, last); each is composed of ayas, or verses. Thus Quranic notation for this passage is 96:1-4.1 have used A. J. Arberry's translation of the Quran, The Koran Interpreted(London: Allen & Unwin, 1955).
Allah: Lest a fundamental misapprehension be allowed to persist, it should be pointed out that Allah is simply a contraction of the Arabic word al-ilah, which means "the god." It is not uniquely a Muslim term; Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use it as well. Arabians of pre-Islamic times used it. The Allah of Muhammad is most definitely not a new, different god. He (for god is construed as masculine) is the god that the other faiths worship, the god of creation.
attention is usually lavished on the five pillars of Islam: Some lavishing is nonetheless in order. The first pillar is shahada, or Islam's admirably concise profession of faith: "There is no God but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God." This phrase—la ilaha ill 'Allah, Muhammad ra-sul Allah—should be a believer's incantatory reflex, from cradle to grave. The second pillar, salat, concerns the performance of ritual prayer, five times daily—at dawn, midday, late afternoon, sunset, and nighttime. These prayers, involving ablutions and repeated prostrations, may be performed anywhere that is clean. Zakat, the third pillar, is the obligation to give of one's surplus wealth to charity. This is one of the most arresting features of Muhammad's message—its emphasis on almsgiving. Over time percentages have varied, as has the definition of surplus wealth, but charity, discreetly doled out, is a religious obligation. Also, beyond the canonically determined handout, voluntary giving—sadaqa—is encouraged. The fourth pillar is the fast, sawm, during the daylight hours of Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar calendar. From daybreak to nightfall, Muslim adults must abstain from food, drink, and sexual intercourse. The restrictions are lifted at night. The fifth pillar concerns a pilgrimage. At least once a lifetime the Muslim, if sound of body and purse, is enjoined to perform the hajj to Mecca, a ritual visit to that city that must be undertaken in the second week of the twelfth month (Dhu l-hijjd) of the lunar year. (A less important pilgrimage to Mecca, the umra, can be performed at any time.) Islam is often compared to a house—these five pillars rest on the solid foundation of the Quran. For a clear and brief discussion, see Neal Robinson, Islam: A Concise Introduction (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1999), 96-148.
Muhammad was the conduit of a god: Of course, Muhammad was more than just a loudspeaker. He was God's greatest messenger, and in time Islamic tradition saw him as the ideal man. But he most emphatically was not a god. Christian writers labored for well over a millennium under the misapprehension that Muhammad is to Islam what Christ is to Christianity. Hence the use of the term "Mohammedism" to describe Islam and "Mohammedan" for Moslem or Muslim. These terms should be trimmed from any lexicon, unless the write
r is striving for archaic effect or is still wearing a pith helmet.
"satanic verses": Nothwithstanding the worldwide notoriety given this phrase by the furor over Salman Rushdie's novel of the same name, the words have always been used in describing the relevant ayas of sura 22. The idea is that Muhammad referred to the goddesses thus: "These are high-flying ones [literally, cranes] / w h o s e intercession is to be hoped for." The henotheists were delighted and prostrated themselves with the Muslims, until Gabriel arrived from heaven to clear up the mistake. See Buhl, "Muhammad," 365, and for more on this vexed subject, F. E. Peters, A Reader on Classical Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 177.
some of the Quraysh finally had their fill of this monotheist innovator: For more on the merchants' dismay at their loss of revenue, see Buhl, "Muhammad," 364.
two pagan tribes of Madina: They were the Aws and Khazraj, composed of eight clans altogether. They were said to be of Yemeni origin.
converting the Madinans wholesale: There was some resistance, quickly overcome by force. A poet, Asma bint Marwan, derided her fellow clansmen (the proper names in the text) for accepting Muhammad:
Fucked men of Malik and of Nabit And of Awf, fucked men of Khasraj:
You obey a stranger who does not belong among you, Who is not of Murad, nor of Madh'hij [Yemenite tribes].
Do you, when your own chiefs have been murdered, put your hope in him Like men greedy for meal soup when it is cooking?
Is there no man of honor who will take advantage of an unguarded moment
And cut off the gulls' hopes?
The poem comes from Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad, as quoted in Rodinson, Muhammad, 157—58.
Helpers: There are several distinctions in the names given the earliest Muslims. Ansar (Helpers) describes the Madinans who sheltered and supported the Prophet. They were not Qurayshi. The Qurayshi who made the hijra with Muhammad from Mecca to Madina, in many ways the elite of the umma, were known as muhajirun, or Emigrants. I have opted for the vaguer Companions to indicate all those Muslims who actually saw or knew the Prophet. Pecking orders are important, perhaps inevitable, but they slow narratives.