Almost immediately, the Prophet’s death unleashed two contradictory yet reinforcing developments. On the one hand, under the rule of his successors, the territories under the control of Islamic armies grew rapidly and dramatically. The early expansion was on two fronts, against the Byzantine Empire in Syria and from there on to North Africa, and against the Sassanids in Iraq and Iran. Damascus capitulated in 635, and Jerusalem was occupied in 638. A military encampment named Fustat was built on the Nile in 641, from which the fall of Alexandria was secured the following year. By 661 most of Byzantine Africa (Libya and Tunisia) was in Muslim hands, and Muslim domination over all of North Africa was complete by 700. The armies of Islam crossed into Spain via the Strait of Gibraltar beginning in 710, and Cordoba was captured in 712. The campaign against the Sassanids was similarly swift and decisive: the Persian armies suffered defeat in 637 and then again in 642. By 653, Muslim control over Iran was complete, and by the early decades of the eighth century it reached as far as western China.30
On the other hand, these expansions only magnified the multiple divisions within the Muslim community that the Prophet’s death had brought to the surface. Geographic and ethnolinguistic divisions proliferated as the abode of Islam expanded. But there were initially far more serious divisions over the question of the umma’s leadership and the legitimacy of the Prophet’s successors (caliphs).31 Upon the Prophet’s death, the leadership of the Muslim community passed on to four caliphs, collectively referred to as the Rashidun, or Rightly Guided Ones, because of their close companionship with the Prophet and their early conversion to Islam: Abu Bakr (632–34), Umar (634–44), Uthman (644–56), and Ali (656–61). However, as the empire grew and the economic and territorial stakes became higher, policy disagreements arose, and opposition, both from within and from the outside, grew. Uthman’s policies aimed at centralizing tax collection, along with his preferential treatment of Meccan notables, provoked his murder by a group of disenchanted Arabs. His successor, Ali, suffered a similar fate at the hands of a man belonging to a group of zealots called the Kharajis (secessionists), who faulted him for agreeing to a council hearing on the murder of Uthman.32
Two civil wars would soon erupt, largely but not solely over the festering issue of succession, from 656 to 661 and again from 680 to 692. The cumulative result of these two wars was the emergence of an unbridgeable chasm between a minority of “partisans,” the Shiʿites, and the majority of “traditionalists,” the Sunnis. Ali was the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, as well as one of the earliest converts to Islam. His caliphate caused a major conflict between two approaches to the question of succession, one “devoid of notions of hereditary sanctity” based on lineage ties to the Prophet and the other emphasizing these notions. Along with practical political and economic considerations, the notion of succession based on blood ties was later to become the most divisive issue separating Shiʿites and Sunnis.33 At the core of the conflict was the question of who should succeed Ali and what his proper functions ought to be: the Shiʿites maintained that Ali was the only rightful caliph and that only his descendants should follow him; the Sunnis, on the other hand, accepted the caliphate rule of Muʿawiya, Uthman’s cousin and the governor of Damascus, who had declared himself caliph.
Upon Ali’s death in 661, Muʿawiya prevailed and moved the seat of the Islamic state from Medina to Damascus. Hailing from the Umayyad clan within the Quraysh, he established the Umayyad caliphate, which lasted for nearly a century, until 750. Thanks in large measure to the efforts of the dynasty’s founder, the Umayyads established a centralized, de facto dynasty, initiated administrative measures for running their expanding domain, issued gold and silver coins (the dinar and the dirham, respectively), introduced fiscal reforms and institutionalized tax collection, and significantly added to the size of the territory under their control. This is not to suggest that the Umayyads were able to establish a stable caliphate or ruled over quiescent populations. In fact, many of their development projects, which enriched members of the political elite and raised the tax burden on ordinary people, were so deeply resented that Yezid III (r. 744) promised not to undertake the construction of new buildings or canals.34
With the gradual routinization of the dynasty came new challenges, many of which the later Umayyad caliphs were ill prepared to handle. One of these challenges revolved around the treatment, and in turn the loyalty, of the growing population of non-Muslim and recent converts to Islam (mawali) under Umayyad suzerainty.35 Although some individuals from these groups could reach very high offices in the Umayyad court, they were still subject to discrimination and at times even maltreatment. Adam Mez, the German scholar of Islam, has observed about the status of religious minorities during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates that “the most amazing feature of the Islamic Government is the number of non-Muslim officers in state service. In his own Empire the Muslim was ruled by Christians. Old is the complaint that the decision over the life and property of Muslims lay in the hand of protected subjects. . . . Twice in the 3/9 century even the war Ministers were non-Muslims with the result that the ‘defenders of the faith’ had to kiss their hands and obey their commands.”36 In fact, it was from among the mawali in eastern Iran that a movement to unseat the Umayyads was set in motion, leading to the eventual establishment of the Abbasid dynasty in 750, this time in a newly built city, the magnificent Baghdad. The Umayyads, however, did not completely disappear. Abd al-Rahman I, a member of the extended Umayyad family, found his way to North Africa and then Spain, where he established a rival Islamic state.
THE HIGH CALIPHATE
Historians have generally referred to the reigns of the Umayyads and the Abbasids as the era of the high caliphate, a designation based on the scope of their rule; the unity they fostered among their subjects, albeit not always successfully; the magnificence of their capital cities; and, especially for the Abbasids, their patronage of the arts and the sciences. With the rise of the Abbasids came significant changes in the social and political life of the empire and, consequently, new challenges. With the caliphate’s encouragement, Baghdad became an important intellectual center, and the imperial court patronized many artistic and scientific endeavors. By the same token, differing religious opinions and trends, a relic of Umayyad rule, proliferated, and the differences among them deepened. As a dynasty heavily reliant on religion as its primary source of legitimacy, the Abbasids grew increasingly sensitive to such ongoing debates and found themselves having to take sides among the different theoreticians to protect their reign.37 As a general rule, the Abbasid caliphs went to great lengths to portray themselves as pious Muslims. The legendary caliph Harun al-Rashid once even walked from Medina to Mecca to earn divine merit.38 But the royal court also became infamous for its pursuit of worldly pleasures, including wine and women.39 Equally detrimental to the power and popularity of the Abbasids was the deliberate distance they cultivated between themselves and the populace. In many ways, the Abbasid caliph came to view himself in the same light as the old Persian kings: the King of Kings, or, alternatively, the Shadow of God on Earth. In either case, the Abbasids became distant, regal elites ruling over subject populations. The historian G.E. Von Grunebaum writes of them: “The court, the family of the caliph, his household servants, guards and administrators were the center of the empire; the standing with the ruler determines rank and influence. His favour raises the menial from nothing, his disfavour plunges him back into nothing.”40
Before long, these developments had combined to weaken the Abbasids from within. As their rule was racked by rebellions and secessionist movements, as well as doctrinal and intellectual disputes, their power, prestige, and influence declined markedly after 945. First, the powerful Buyid family of northwestern Iran established itself as the “protector” of the Abbasid caliph from 945 to 1055, essentially turning the caliphal clan into mere figureheads. The Turkish Saljuqs similarly dominated Baghdad from 1055 until the middle of the twelfth century. The Abbasids, or what remaine
d of them, were finally overrun in 1258 by the invading Mongols. By then, the Abbasid Empire had already started coming apart. Ruling clans within the different territories had begun to exercise considerable local autonomy. A revived Umayyad dynasty ruled Spain. Abbasid hegemony was also challenged in North Africa, where a Shiʿite group eventually conquered Egypt in 969, established the Fatimid dynasty, and built a new capital city called Cairo (al Qahirah, the conqueror) along the Nile. The conquerors of Egypt were soon caught up by what may be called the “Pharaoh syndrome,” which appears to have plagued many of Egypt’s rulers, both ancient and contemporary. Their court was replete with splendor and ritual, the center of a city victorious and grand.41
Meanwhile, the first wave of Crusaders was sent from Europe to Jerusalem to protect the Christian Byzantine emperor in Constantinople from the menacing Muslims, further weakening the Abbasids and even the Fatimids. Here a Kurdish general by the name of Salah al-Din (Saladin) distinguished himself in bravery and eventually became the sultan of Egypt after the death of the last Fatimid caliph in 1171. Saladin’s control of Egypt was initially in the name of the Abbasid caliph. In 1175, Baghdad recognized his sultanate over Egypt, Yemen, Palestine, and Syria, areas where Saladin was already in de facto control. On October 2, 1178, he also occupied Jerusalem and wrested its control from the Crusaders. But the Ayyubid dynasty that he established did not last long, having to rely on ex-slave soldiers, called Mamluks, to defend itself against the invading Mongols. The Mongol conquest had started in earnest in Asia Minor in 1219, overrunning Iran and in turn establishing the Ilkhanid dynasty there from 1256 to 1336. The Mamluks, meanwhile, established a dynasty of their own in Egypt in 1250, not to be overthrown until the advent of the Ottomans in 1517.
The Mongol conquests simply facilitated the release throughout the Middle East of centrifugal forces that had made their presence felt as early as the middle of the tenth century. In fact, many of these tendencies had never quite disappeared but had simply been obscured as peoples rallied around the common banner of Islam. The Mongol invasion of Iran was intense, bloody, and devastating. When the Mongols captured the city of Marv, for example, they reportedly killed some seven hundred thousand inhabitants, laying farmlands and entire cities to waste and carrying off thousands of Muslim artisans to Mongolia as slaves.42 But in larger historical terms the invasion was relatively brief. Before long, the Mongols had established an increasingly Persianized dynasty of their own in Iran, the Ilkhanids, which tried to reverse some of the devastation of the earlier decades by encouraging public works and patronizing the arts. Under their patronage, painting and manuscript illustration, the recording of history, and the building of monuments, especially tombs, flourished.43 The Ilkhanids collapsed by 1336, and a succession of smaller states emerged in areas previously under their control. A similar fate had befallen the earlier Saljuqs, who in the middle of the eleventh century had taken control of most of Anatolia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, only to be broken up into smaller states soon afterward. Geographic circumstances and other administrative and bureaucratic limitations had forced both the Saljuqs and the Ilkhanids to rely on local, mostly landed elites to maintain their suzerainty.44 This very decentralization and diffusion of power would not only germinate their own collapse but also facilitate conditions for the rise of their eventual successors, the Ottomans in Anatolia and the Safavids in Iran.
THE OTTOMANS
One of the more significant side effects of the radical political shifts in the Middle East was the steady ascent to power of a small Turkic tribe known by the name of one of its earliest leaders. The Ottomans originated in northwestern Anatolia, not far from the city that most rulers had dreamt of conquering one day, the magnificent Constantinople. The Ottomans were the beneficiaries of the declining powers of the Saljuqs in Anatolia, where in 1281 a chieftain’s son named Osman conquered new territories and set out to defeat the Byzantine Empire. The Ottomans expanded quickly throughout Anatolia and by 1345 had crossed over the narrow Bosphorus Straits into Europe. In 1389 they scored a decisive victory in the Battle of Kosovo and established control over the western Balkans. Historical record indicates that the Ottoman advances into Europe, reinforced by the frequent settlement in major Balkan cities of Anatolians accompanying the troops, were not always deeply resented by the local populations. In fact, “The Balkan peasant soon came to appreciate that conquest by the Moslem invader spelled for him liberation from Christian feudal power, whose manifold exactions and abuses had worsened with the increase of monastic lands. Ottomanization was now conferring upon him unforseen benefits. Not the least of them were law and order. As a French traveller was to write, ‘The country is safe, and there are no reports of brigands or highwaymen’—more than could be said, at that time, of other realms in Christendom.”45 The grand prize remained elusive, however. Only in 1453, after a harrowing two-month siege, was Constantinople finally captured by the twenty-two-year-old Sultan Mehmet II, the Conqueror (Fatih), who declared it his new capital. The city gradually came to be called Istanbul. The new name was a corruption of the original “Constantinople,” which was later pronounced Stinopol, Stinpol, Estanbul, and, eventually, Istanbul.
Had they not been separated in time from the Abbasids by some four centuries, the Ottomans, at least in their first century, would surely have deserved the esteemed designation of high caliphate as well. From the plains of Anatolia the Ottomans rose to become a world empire, uniting the Middle East under their rule from the Balkans in the northwest to the Hijaz in the south, going as far in North Africa as Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. The official government in Istanbul became known to Europeans as the Sublime Porte (first the Bab-i Homayun and then the Bab-i Ali in Ottoman Turkish, after one of the gates in the grand vizier’s residence), from where much of the Middle East and North Africa was administered. Only Iran remained outside the Ottomans’ control. There, in 1501, a militant Shiʿite Sufi named Ismail, at the time only thirteen years old, rose to prominence and established the Safavid dynasty.
The Ottoman centuries can generally be divided into three periods. The first period, from the early establishment of the dynasty around 1280 to the end of the reign of Suleyman I (r. 1520–66), was one of unprecedented growth in the power, prestige, and territorial size of the empire. This era coincides with the reign of the dynasty’s first ten sultans, all of whom were, on the whole, capable administrators, successful military commanders, and wise rulers. Also during this period the Ottomans emerged as a “gunpowder empire” par excellence because of their military tactics and their technology, conquering lands in Europe and in the Middle East.46 This military prowess was buttressed by a highly disciplined, well-trained corps of infantrymen called the janissaries, many of whom were drafted into the service of the empire at childhood and were raised as either future administrators or soldiers. The janissaries were provided with firearms and “used phalanx tactics to combine massed musket firepower with artillery.”47
The second period, beginning approximately after 1566 and lasting until the early 1800s, was in many ways the beginning of the end. This was a time of frequent military defeats, territorial retreat and retrenchment, administrative decay, and industrial underdevelopment. Most of the territorial and military reversals occurred in Europe: the failure to capture Vienna in 1683; the surrender of Hungary to the Hapsburgs and the Aegean coast to the Venetians in 1699; another massive territorial concession in a 1718 treaty; the loss of the Crimea to Russia in 1774; and the loss of Egypt to Napoléon in 1798.48 When Egypt was reclaimed in 1801, its military governor, the modernizing Muhammad Ali, grew so strong as to challenge Ottoman suzerainty over Egypt and Syria. Only with European help were the Ottomans able to regain Syria, but their loss of Egypt was permanent. Muhammad Ali was to establish an Egyptian dynasty that lasted until 1952.
There were, to be certain, occasional victories. In 1711, the Ottomans forced the surrender of the Russians at the river Pruth, and in 1715, the Greek provinces were recovered from Venice. B
ut, in the words of the historian Andrew Wheatcroft, “Whenever an Ottoman army met a European army on roughly equal terms the result was invariably a defeat for the Turks.”49 This was not a product of the Ottoman soldiers’ lack of bravery or, on occasion, the ingenuity of their commanders. More often, it was a product of the innate conservatism and lack of adaptability that permeated the whole Ottoman system of rule, including warfare and conquest. Toward the end of their rule, it seemed as if the Ottomans had turned their backs on innovation. “By the end of the eighteenth century,” Wheatcroft continues, “the sultan’s soldiers had not varied their equipment or method of war for more than two hundred years.”50
There were multiple causes for the steady decline of the once Mighty empire. Principally, however, decay began at the top, with the royal court and the janissaries. The janissaries increasingly lost their strict discipline, and the quality of their training deteriorated as many began using their positions for other, often personal pursuits. At one point they grew so powerful that they massacred most male members of the dynasty for fear of being disbanded, and it was not until 1826 that they were successfully attacked by the sultan and neutralized. The end came after the janissaries mutinied a second time against proposed reforms, when in a surprise move Sultan Mahmud ordered palace troops to open fire on the advancing janissary corps and then bombarded the barracks to which they had retreated. In the coming months, thousands of janissaries were killed, and the sultan proclaimed the formation of a new army, to be called “the Victorious Muhammaden Soldiery.”51
There was also an unfortunate string of incompetent sultans who ascended to the throne beginning in the second half of the sixteenth century, many often far more interested in the pursuit of worldly pleasures than in attending to the affairs of the state. There were, of course, exceptions. Mahmud II (r. 1808–39), for example, implemented major reforms in the latter part of his reign. A number of reforming grand viziers also made their mark on the royal court, especially from the 1840s to the 1860s, and brought about significant improvements to the functions of the caliphate state. Nevertheless, on the whole, the overall quality of government saw a precipitous decline over time.52
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