A Concise History of the World

by Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks

  Muhammad's visions ordered him to preach a message of a single God and to become God's prophet, which he began to do in his hometown of Mecca. He gathered followers slowly, but also provoked resistance because he urged people to give up worship of local gods and challenged the power of the local elite. In 622 he migrated with his followers to Medina, an event termed the hijra that marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. At Medina Muhammad was more successful, gaining converts and forming the first umma, a community that united his followers from different tribes and set religious ties above clan loyalty.

  In 630 Muhammad returned to Mecca at the head of a large army, and he soon united the nomads of the desert and the merchants of the cities into an even larger umma of Muslims, a word meaning “those who comply with God's will.” The religion itself came to be called Islam, which means “submission to God,” and Mecca became its most holy city. By the time Muhammad died in 632, Muslim forces had taken all of the Arabian peninsula, and during the next century Muslim rule expanded further, from the Iberian peninsula in the west to Central Asia and the Indus River in the east along the trade routes that had long facilitated the movement of people and ideas.

  Like the conquests that established the empires of the ancient world, the political authority of Muslim rulers was spread by military victories, but the religious practices and ideas of Islam proved attractive to people both inside and outside Muslim states, partly because of the straightforward nature of its doctrines, and many converted. The strictly monotheistic theology outlined in the Qur'an has only a few central tenets: Allah, the Arabic word for God, is all-powerful and all-knowing. Muhammad, Allah's prophet, preached his word and carried his message. Muhammad described himself as the successor both of the Jewish patriarch Abraham and of Christ, and he asserted that his teachings replaced theirs. He invited and won converts from Judaism and Christianity, although Christians, Jews, and later also Zoroastrians and Hindus in Muslim states came to be regarded as “protected people” (dhimmis), who were allowed to maintain their religious practices as long as they recognized the political authority of Muslim rulers and paid their taxes.

  All Muslims had the obligation of jihad (literally, “self-exertion”), to strive to submit to God, spread God's rule, and lead a virtuous life. According to the Muslim shari'a, or sacred law, five practices—the profession of faith in God and in Muhammad as God's prophet, regular prayer, fasting during the sacred month of Ramadan, giving alms to the poor, and a pilgrimage to Mecca if possible—constitute what became known as the Five Pillars of Islam. In addition, the Qur'an forbids alcoholic beverages and gambling, as well as a number of foods, such as pork, a dietary regulation adopted from the Mosaic law of the Hebrews. It condemns business usury—that is, lending money at interest rates—but does not regard material wealth in itself as evil. The hadith discourage the depiction of living beings, and Islamic art tended to favor geometric designs and calligraphy, although in some places—including the Ilkhanate court at Tabriz—figurative art was created as well.

  Map 3.1 The spread of Islam

  In contrast to Buddhism and Christianity in which a celibate life as a monk or nun was viewed as spiritually superior, the Qur'an and the hadith recommend marriage for everyone, and approve of heterosexual sex within marriage for both procreation and pleasure. As in Judaism, most teachers, judges, and religious leaders in Muslim societies were married men. Men attracted to other men generally married and had children, although in some Muslim societies same-sex love between men was celebrated in poetry and literature. Polygyny was common in Arab society before Muhammad, though it was generally limited to wealthier families. The Qur'an restricted the number of wives a man could have to four, and prescribed that he treat them equitably. As elsewhere, marriages in Muslim societies were generally arranged by the family, and the production of children—especially sons—was viewed as essential, with rituals and prayers devised to help assure the procreation and survival of offspring.

  Many scholars note that the Qur'an holds men and women to be fully equal in God's eyes; both are capable of going to heaven and responsible to carry out the duties of believers for themselves. They argue that restrictions on women under Islam came from pre-Muslim practices and are thus not essential to the faith. Men veiled their wives on marriage, for example, as early as the third millennium BCE in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, and well-to-do women were secluded in Byzantine and Persian lands before Islam developed. They note that Muhammad's first wife, Khadija, convinced him to take his religious visions seriously; she was never veiled and the Prophet did not marry other wives until after her death. Other scholars point out that the Qur'an does make clear distinctions between men and women. It allows men to have up to four wives and to divorce a wife quite easily, sets a daughter's share of inheritance at half that of a son's, orders that the Prophet's later wives be secluded, and prescribes that wives be obedient to their husbands. Debates about how to interpret the Qur'an are extremely important in Islam because of the book's special stature, but gender distinctions and other social hierarchies also have other bases, including shari'a. Though women played a major role in the early development of Islam—as they had in Christianity—and appear to have prayed and attended religious ceremonies in public, after the first generation the seclusion of women became more common in the Muslim heartland and commentators on the Qur'an interpreted its statements about women in increasingly patriarchal ways. Men were to fulfill their religious obligations publicly, at mosques and other communal gatherings, and women in the home, though they generally had access to a separate section of the mosque unless they were ritually unclean because of menstruation or childbirth. Muslim law did allow women more rights to property than was common in other contemporary law codes, however, and wealthy Muslim women used their money to establish schools, shrines, hospitals, and mosques.

  Conflict, diversity, and blending in the Muslim world

  Muhammad called for unity within the umma, but this was not to be. In both the Arabian heartland and elsewhere, political conflicts and cultural blending led to increasing diversity within Islam, just as they did in Buddhism and Christianity. Shortly after Muhammad's death his followers split over the valid line of succession, which resulted in assassinations and civil war. One faction asserted that Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali was the valid successor because the Prophet had designated him as imam, or leader in community prayer. These supporters of Ali—termed Shi'a from Arabic terms meaning “supporters” or “partisans” of Ali—saw Ali and subsequent imams as the divinely inspired leaders of the community and the true successors. The larger body of Muslims thought that other members of Muhammad's extended family chosen by his closest followers as caliph—leader and deputy—after his death were the legitimate successors. This group came to be called Sunnis, a word derived from Sunna, the practices of the community based on Muhammad's example. In Sunni Islam, proper interpretation of the Qur'an comes from the consensus of a group of scholars and caliphs who are regarded as having authority over all Muslims, while in Shi'a Islam the statements of an individual imam understood to be invested with divine insight carry great weight. Over the centuries other differences developed, and enmity between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims sometimes erupted into violence, mixing with political and economic disputes to create conflicts that took various forms and continue today.

  This split did not halt the expansion of Islam, but as the Dar-al-Islam—the “abode of Islam”—grew, laws and practices that had been developed in the Arabian peninsula mixed with existing traditions and new teachings emerged, creating a broad range of practices, rituals, and norms of behavior among both Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. In the 660s, forceful leaders of the Umayyad clan moved the caliphate to Damascus in Syria and made the position of caliph hereditary, handed down from father to son just as in other ruling dynasties rather than to a leader chosen for his piety and virtue. They were overthrown by the ‘Abbasid dynasty (r. 750–1258), who built a new capital with a huge palace a
nd many mosques at Baghdad on the Tigris River. This was in the heart of what had been the Persian Empire, and though the ‘Abbasids were Arab, many of their officials were Persian, and the scholars, scientists, poets, philosophers, and mathematicians who mingled in Baghdad came from many different backgrounds. Such cosmopolitan interaction was also true at the other end of the Dar-al-Islam in Spain, where the Umayyads retained power and Córdoba became a center of culture and learning for Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars and Europe's largest and most prosperous city. Just as well-educated thinkers in early Christianity drew on Greek philosophy and Roman traditions to develop more complex ideas and institutions, so creative Muslim thinkers in both cities built on Greek, Persian, and Indian knowledge, translating works into and out of Arabic and writing new works. And just as Christian incorporation of classical culture had provoked a reaction by those who thought it had strayed from its original teachings, so did these developments, with conservative moralists urging a return to what they saw as the simpler forms and stricter norms of Muhammad's day. Their calls for a “return” sometimes brought in new ideas that had not actually been part of earlier teachings, but they were described as traditions, a pattern that is common in other conservative religious and political movements as well.

  3.1 In a thirteenth-century ‘Abbasid illuminated astrological manuscript, the archer associated with the zodiac constellation Sagittarius, flanked by Jupiter and the moon, shoots toward a beast that is his own tail. Astronomy, astrology, science, and medicine flourished at the ‘Abbasid court, where the caliphs supported learning and experimentation.

  The ‘Abbasid caliphate also saw the beginning of the mystical movement known as Sufism, which emphasized personal spiritual experience. Sufis taught that divine revelation could come not only to scholars studying the Qur'an, but also to certain holy individuals who could fully lose themselves and unite with God. This radically different line of thought could have developed into a separate branch of Islam, but most Sufis taught that those who gained knowledge of God through mysticism still had to obey the shari'a, and Sufism became part of orthodox Islam, in both its Shi'a and Sunni branches. Sufis were often wandering ascetics, venerated for their wisdom and austere lifestyle, and some were poets. Religious orders gathered around them or at shrines dedicated to their memory, where people engaged in distinctive rituals and ceremonies, often involving music, dance, or the recitation of sacred texts. Some Sufis came to be regarded as saints, recognized because of miraculous deeds or post-mortem communications with the living. Sufi saints were the focus of popular devotion, sometimes over large areas; as in Christianity, people read or heard stories about their lives and miracles, prayed to them for assistance, and made pilgrimages to their shrines. Learned theologians and imams sometimes objected to the emotional rituals and pilgrimages favored by Sufis and their adherents, arguing that they led people away from the essentials of Islam. Sufi orders provided important social links, however, and their ceremonies were generally more popular than the more formal and reserved services in mosques. For these reasons, and because many rulers and other powerful people were members of Sufi orders, opposition to Sufi teachings rarely had much effect.

  During the ninth and tenth centuries, Turkic peoples in the steppes of Western and Central Asia converted to Islam. When they subsequently conquered northern India they brought the religion with them, although much of the population remained Hindu, and when they conquered much of the Byzantine Empire they spread Islam as well, although much of the population remained Christian. The Mongols who conquered much of Asia in the thirteenth century primarily practiced an indigenous shamanist polytheistic religion centered on the sky god Tengri (though some were Buddhist or Christian), but as they settled down to rule many in the western parts of the Mongol realm converted to Islam. Merchants and teachers carried Islam to West Africa on the camel caravan routes that crossed the Sahara, and to the East African Swahili (Arabic for “people of the coast”) coast and Southeast Asia on the ships that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean. People living in coastal cities from Melaka on the Malay peninsula to Mombasa in East Africa, or in land-based trading centers from the West African city of Timbuktu to the Silk Road city of Samarkand were attracted by Islam's validation of commerce, spiritual and moral teachings, and global connections. Timbuktu, Samarkand, Córdoba, and other far-flung cities became centers of Islamic learning, where teachers opened schools that taught boys basic reading in Arabic and recitation of the Qur'an, and scholars provided advanced philosophical, theological, and legal training at schools and universities attached to mosques. Thus when Rashid al-Din opened a university in Tabriz, he was following a well-established pattern.

  Islam also appealed to many rulers for a combination of religious, political, and commercial reasons. Not only did the rulers of the Ilkhanate become Muslim, but so did those of the West African kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, the city-states along the East African coast, and the coastal states on the Malay peninsula and island Southeast Asia. Intermarriage between Muslim traders from distant lands and local women was often essential to its growth, with women providing access to economic and political power through their kin networks and serving as brokers between indigenous and imported cultures.

  When people at any social level converted, they often blended in their existing religious ideas and rituals, which they passed on to their children, and very diverse patterns of Islamic beliefs and practices developed. People carried out rituals to ward off evil spirits or cure illness that invoked the assistance of both local good spirits and Muslim saints, maintained household shrines to their ancestors, honored Hindu gods in ceremonies, or went on pilgrimages to places that were holy to Sufis, Christian saints, bodhisattvas, and local deities. Religious officials denigrated such practices and periodically attempted to prohibit them, but men and women who considered themselves good Muslims believed firmly in their efficacy. Social practices also varied widely. Among Arabs and Persians, women's presence in public was restricted, and in South Asia both Islam and a stricter Hinduism favored the seclusion of women—termed purdah. The strictness and exact rules of this varied according to social status and location, however; wealthy urban women were generally the most secluded, while poor rural women—the vast majority of the population—worked alongside male family members. In western Africa, Southeast Asia, and the central Asia steppes, women often worked, socialized, and traveled independently and in public view, sometimes to the horror of male merchants or scholars visiting from areas where women's activities were more restricted.

  The spread of Islam was accompanied by political disunity in its heartland. Regional dynasties, some of them Shi'a, broke away from the Sunni ‘Abbasid caliphate and established their own Muslim states in Spain, North Africa, Egypt, and elsewhere, which themselves fought with one another and saw ruling families rise and fall. In the eleventh century, Seljuk Turks who had adopted Islam conquered much of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, made the caliphs puppets of the ruling Turkish sultan—a word that means “he who has authority”—and then divided into smaller states themselves. In the thirteenth century the Mongols reached Muslim lands in their campaign of conquest, and killed the last ‘Abbasid caliph. They were stopped in Syria in 1260 by armies of the Turkic dynasty that ruled Egypt and the surrounding area, provoking the outreach to Europe by Öljaitü and other Ilkhanate rulers described at the beginning of this chapter.

  Soldiers, slaves, and social mobility

  The expansion and decline of states and empires is a familiar story, but embedded within these developments is a more unusual social feature of the Muslim world. The rulers of Egypt and their troops were Mamluks, slave soldiers of Turkish and other steppe origins who formed a military caste in many Muslim states and sometimes rose to become political as well as military leaders. This slave system was thus very different from those of ancient Athens or Rome. In the Mamluk system, begun in the ninth century by the ‘Abbasid caliphs, non-Muslim boys and young men were purchased or taken
as war captives, brought to the ruler's court, and systematically trained. Although arming slaves as soldiers might seem foolish—and there were examples of Mamluks revolting against their owners—this practice gave the ruler troops who were dependent only on him, not on their own clan leaders, and who as foreigners had no local social or familial ties. Intensive training built up their loyalty to the ruler and to one another, as did the possibilities for advance through the ranks and manumission when they converted to Islam. Regional Muslim rulers in many parts of the Dar-al-Islam and those vying to take over rule increasingly relied on slave soldiers as well, with armies of tens of thousands.

  In Egypt, Mamluks became the actual sultans as well as the chief commanders in the middle of the thirteenth century, in a complex set of circumstances that provides an example of the ways in which family and sexual dynamics as well as shifting social hierarchies drove political change. In 1250, Shajar al-Durr, the widow of the previous sultan who had herself originally been a slave, was declared the ruler by Mamluk officers who had assassinated the previous sultan's son by another wife. She appears to have been an able ruler. During her reign Christian forces on the Seventh Crusade led by King Louis VII of France attacked Cairo, but were defeated; Louis was captured and then ransomed for a huge amount of money that went into the royal coffers. Some regional leaders refused to recognize her as monarch, however, so she married Aybak, one of the Mamluk officers, and made him the sultan. Suspicions grew between the spouses and the Mamluks loyal to each of them and she had him murdered, but the Mamluks loyal to Aybak's memory installed his son by another woman as sultan. He then had Shajar al-Durr murdered, as the story goes beaten to death by his female slaves and those of his mother. Despite this inauspicious beginning, successive dynasties of Mamluks ruled Egypt from this point until they were defeated by the Ottoman Turks in 1517, and Mamluks continued to have economic and military power in Egypt until thousands of them were killed in a struggle for power in the early nineteenth century.