The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Frankopan, Peter

  This radical and impassioned message met with ferocious opposition from the conservative elite of Mecca, who were enraged by its criticism of traditional polytheistic practices and beliefs.59 Muammad was forced to flee to Yathrib (later renamed Medina) in 622 to escape persecution; this flight, known as the hijra, became the seminal moment in Islamic history, year zero in the Muslim calendar. As recently discovered papyri make clear, it was the point when Muammad’s preaching gave birth to a new religion and to a new identity.60

  Central to this new identity was a strong idea about unity. Muammad actively sought to fuse the many tribes of southern Arabia into a single bloc. The Byzantines and Persians had long manipulated local rivalries and played leaders off against each other. Patronage and funding helped create a series of dependent clients and elites who were regulated and rewarded by payments from Rome and Ctesiphon. The intense war left this system in tatters. Protracted hostilities meant that some of the tribes were deprived of ‘the thirty pounds of gold that they normally received by way of commercial gain through trade with the Roman Empire’. Worse, their requests to have their obligations fulfilled were clumsily dealt with. ‘The emperor can barely pay his soldiers their wages,’ one agent stated, ‘much less [you] dogs.’ When another envoy told the tribesmen that the prospects of future trade were now limited, he was killed and sewn up inside a camel. It was not long before the tribes took matters into their own hands. The answer was to ‘lay waste to the Roman land’ in revenge.61

  It was not for nothing then that the new faith was being preached in the local language. Behold, says one of the verses in the Qurān; here are the words from above – in Arabic.62 The Arabs were being presented with their own religion, one that created a new identity. This was a faith designed for the local populations, whether nomad or urban, whether members of one tribe or another, and regardless of ethnic or linguistic background. The many loan-words from Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew and Persian in the Qurān, the text that recorded the revelations handed down to Muammad, point to a polyglot milieu where emphasising similarity, rather than difference, was important.63 Unity was a core tenet, and a major reason for Islam’s imminent success. ‘Let there not be two religions in Arabia’ were to be Muammad’s last words, according to the investigation of one respected Islamic scholar writing in the eighth century.64

  Muammad’s prospects did not look promising when he was holed up in Yathrib, with his small group of early followers. Efforts to evangelise and add to the umma – the community of believers – were slow, and the situation was precarious as forces closed in from Mecca to attack the renegade preacher. Muammad and his followers turned to armed resistance, targeting caravans in a series of increasingly ambitious raids. Momentum built up quickly. Success against superior numbers and against the odds such as at the battle of Badr in 624 provided compelling evidence that Muammad and his men enjoyed divine protection; lucrative spoils likewise made onlookers take notice. An intense round of negotiations with leading members of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca finally resulted in an understanding being reached, since known as the treaty of al-udaybiya, which provided for a ten-year truce between Mecca and Yathrib, and lifted restrictions previously placed on Muammad’s supporters. The number of converts now began to swell.

  As the number of followers grew, so did their aspirations and ambitions. Crucial in this was the designation of a clear religious centre. The faithful had previously been told to face Jerusalem when they prayed. In 628, however, following further revelation, it was apparently announced that this instruction had been a test and should now be amended: the direction or qibla to face when praying was nowhere else but Mecca.65

  Not only that, but the Kaba, the old focal point of the polytheistic, pagan religion in Arabia, was identified as the cornerstone for prayer and pilgrimage within the city. This was revealed as having been set up by Ishmael, the son of Abraham and the putative ancestor of twelve Arab tribes. Visitors to the city were told to process around the sacred site, chanting God’s name. By doing so, they would be fulfilling the order given to Ishmael that men should be told to come from Arabia and from faraway lands, on camel and on foot, to make a pilgrimage to the place where a black stone at the heart of the monument had been brought by an angel from heaven.66 By confirming the Kaba as sacred, continuity was affirmed with the past, generating a powerful sense of cultural familiarity. In addition to the spiritual benefits offered by the new faith, there were obvious advantages in establishing Mecca as a religious centre par excellence – politically, economically and culturally. It defused antagonism with the Quraysh to the point that senior members of the tribe pledged their allegiance to Muammad – and to Islam.

  Muammad’s genius as a leader did not end here. With barriers and opposition melting away in Arabia, expeditionary forces were dispatched to exploit opportunities opening up elsewhere that were too good to miss. The timing could not have been better either: between 628 and 632, Persia’s dramatic collapse worsened as anarchy took hold. During this short period, there were no fewer than six kings who claimed royal authority; one well-informed Arab historian writing later put the number at eight – in addition to two queens.67

  Success attracted new supporters, whose numbers grew as cities, towns and villages on Persia’s southern frontier were swallowed up. These were locations that were unused to defending themselves, and folded under the first sign of pressure. Typical was the town of al-īra (located in what is now south-central Iraq), which capitulated immediately, agreeing to pay off attackers in return for guarantees of peace.68 Utterly demoralised, senior Persian commanders likewise counselled giving money to the advancing Arab column, ‘on condition that they would depart’.69

  Securing greater resources was important, for it was not just the spiritual rewards on offer that won people over to Islamic teaching. Since the appearance of Muammad, one general is purported to have told his Sasanian counterpart, ‘we are no longer seeking worldly gains’; the expeditions were now about spreading the word of God.70 Clearly, evangelical zeal was vital to the success of early Islam. But so too was the innovative way that booty and finances were shared out. Willing to sanction material gain in return for loyalty and obedience, Muammad declared that goods seized from non-believers were to be kept by the faithful.71 This closely aligned economic and religious interests.72

  Those who converted to Islam early were rewarded with a proportionately greater share of the prizes, in what was effectively a pyramid system. This was formalised in the early 630s with the creation of a dīwān, a formal office to oversee the distribution of booty. A share of 20 per cent was to be presented to the leader of the faithful, the Caliph, but the bulk was to be shared by his supporters and those who participated in successful attacks.73 Early adopters benefited most from new conquests while new believers were keen to enjoy the fruits of success. The result was a highly efficient motor to drive expansion.

  As the newly formed armies continued to establish political and religious authority over the nomadic tribesmen known collectively as the ‘desert people’, or Bedouin, they made enormous inroads, bringing huge swathes of territory under their control at great speed. Although the chronology of events is difficult to re-establish with certainty, recent scholarship has convincingly shown that the expansion into Persia took place several years earlier than previously thought – at the moment Sasanian society was imploding between 628 and 632, rather than after it had done so.74 This redating is significant, for it helps contextualise the rapid gains made in Palestine, where all the cities submitted in the mid-630s – including Jerusalem, which had only recently been recovered by the Romans.75

  Both Rome and Persia responded to the threat too late. In the case of the latter, a crushing Muslim victory at Qādisiyyah in 636 was a huge boost for the surging Arab armies and for Islamic self-confidence. The fact that a swathe of Persian nobles fell in the course of the battle heavily compromised future resistance, and served to put an already teetering state on the canvas.76 The R
oman response was no more effective. An army under the command of the Emperor’s brother Theodore was heavily defeated in 636 at the River Yarmuk, south of the Sea of Galilee, after he had seriously underestimated the size, capability and determination of the Arab force.77

  The heart of the world now gaped open. One city after another surrendered, as the attacking forces bore down on Ctesiphon itself. After a lengthy siege, the capital eventually fell, its treasury being captured by the Arabs. Persia had been broken by the spectacular rearguard action of the Romans, but it had been swallowed up by Muammad’s followers. Momentum was gathering fast for a disparate group of believers who had accepted their prophet’s teachings, alongside opportunists and chancers who had joined them in the hope of rewards to come. With interests aligned and success following success, the only question now was how far Islam would spread.

  5

  The Road to Concord

  Strategic genius and tactical acumen on the battlefield enabled Muammad and his followers to achieve a series of stunning successes. The support of the Quraysh tribe and the dominant political elite in Mecca had been crucial too, providing a platform for persuading the tribes of southern Arabia to hear and accept the message of the new faith. The opportunities that opened up with the collapse of Persia likewise came at the right moment. But two other important reasons also help explain the triumph of Islam in the early part of the seventh century: the support provided by Christians, and above all that given by Jews.

  In a world where religion seems to be the cause of conflict and bloodshed, it is easy to overlook the ways in which the great faiths learnt and borrowed from each other. To the modern eye, Christianity and Islam seem to be diametrically opposed, but in the early years of their coexistence relations were not so much pacific as warmly encouraging. And if anything, the relationship between Islam and Judaism was even more striking for its mutual compatibility. The support of the Jews in the Middle East was vital for the propagation and spread of the word of Muammad.

  Although the material for the early Islamic history is complicated, an unmistakable and striking theme can be consistently teased from the literature of this period – whether Arabic, Armenian, Syriac, Greek or Hebrew – as well as from the archaeological evidence: Muammad and his followers went to great lengths to assuage the fears of Jews and Christians as Muslim control expanded.

  When Muammad was cornered in Yathrib in southern Arabia in the 620s, soliciting the help of the Jews had been one of his key strategies. This was a town – and a region – that was steeped in Judaism and Jewish history. Barely a century earlier, one fanatical Jewish ruler of imyar had overseen the systematic persecution of the Christian minority, which crystallised a broad pattern of alliances that still held firm: Persia had come in to support the imyarites against the alliance of Rome and Ethiopia. Muammad was eager to conciliate with the Jews of southern Arabia – starting with the elders of Yathrib.

  Leading Jews in the town, later renamed Medina, pledged their support to Muammad in return for guarantees of mutual defence. These were laid out in a formal document that stated that their own faith and their possessions would be respected now and in the future by Muslims. It also set out a mutual understanding between Judaism and Islam: followers of both religions pledged to defend each other in the event that either was attacked by any third party; no harm would come to Jews, and no help would be given to their enemies. Muslims and Jews would co-operate with one another, extending ‘sincere advice and counsel’.1 It helped then that Muammad’s revelations seemed not only conciliatory but familiar: there was much in common with the Old Testament, for example, not least the veneration for the prophets and for Abraham in particular, and there was obvious common ground for those who repudiated Jesus’ status as the Messiah. It was not just that Islam was not a threat to Judaism; there were elements that seemed to go hand in glove with it.2

  Word soon began to spread among Jewish communities that Muammad and his followers were allies. An extraordinary text written in North Africa in the late 630s records how news of the Arab advances was being welcomed by Jews in Palestine because it meant a loosening of the Roman – and Christian – grip on power in the region. There was heated speculation that what was going on might be a fulfilment of ancient prophecies: ‘they were saying that the prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens, and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ that was to come’.3 This, some Jews concluded, was the coming of the Messiah – perfectly timed to show that Jesus Christ was a fraud and that the last days of man had arrived.4 Not all were persuaded, however. As one learned rabbi put it, Muammad was a false prophet, ‘for the prophets do not come armed with a sword’.5

  The fact that there are other texts that say that the Arabs were welcomed by Jews as liberators from Roman rule provides important corroborating evidence about positive local reactions to the rising profile of Islam. One text about this period written a century later reports how an angel came to Rabbi Shim’on b. Yoai after he became disturbed by the suffering inflicted in the wake of Heraclius’ recovery of Jerusalem and the forced baptism and persecution of the Jews that followed. ‘How do we know [the Muslims] are our salvation,’ he purportedly asked. ‘Do not be afraid,’ the angel reassured him, for God is ‘bringing about the kingdom of [the Arabs] only for the purpose of delivering you from that wicked [Rome]. In accordance with His will, He shall raise up over them a prophet. And he will conquer the land for them, and they shall come and restore it with grandeur.’ Muammad was seen as the means of fulfilling Jewish messianic hopes. These were lands that belonged to the descendants of Abraham – which meant solidarity between Arab and Jew.6

  There were other, tactical reasons to co-operate with the advancing armies. At Hebron, for instance, Jews offered to cut a deal with the Arab commanders: ‘grant us security so that we would have a similar status among you’, and allow us ‘the right to build a synagogue in front of the entrance to the cave of Machpelah’ where Abraham was buried; in return, Jewish leaders stated, ‘we will show you where to make a gateway’ in order to get past the city’s formidable defences.7

  Support from the local population was a crucial factor in the successes of the Arabs in Palestine and Syria in the early 630s, as we have seen. Recent research on the Greek, Syriac and Arabic sources has shown that, in the earliest accounts, the arrival of the attacking armies was welcomed by the Jews. This was not surprising: if we peel back the colourful later additions and venomous interpretation (such as claims that the Muslims were guilty of ‘satanic hypocrisy’), we read that the military commander who led the army to Jerusalem entered the Holy City in the humble dress of a pilgrim, keen to worship alongside those whose religious views were apparently seen as being if not compatible, then at least not entirely dissimilar.8

  There were other groups in the Middle East who were not disillusioned by the rise of Islam. The region as a whole was filled with religious non-conformists. There was a plethora of Christian sects that took issue with decisions made at church councils or objected to doctrines that they deemed heretical. This was particularly true in Palestine and Sinai, where there were many Christian communities violently opposed to the conclusions reached at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 about the precise meaning of the divine nature of Jesus Christ, and who had been the subject of formal persecution as a result.9 These Christian groups found themselves no better off following Heraclius’ spectacular recovery against the Persians thanks to the assertive orthodox religious posturing that accompanied the Emperor’s reconquests.

  As such, some saw the successes as a means to an end, but also as being religiously sympathetic. John of Dasen, the metropolitan of Nisibis, was told by one astute Arab commander wanting to establish himself in the city that if the former provided his backing, he in turn would not just help the cleric depose the leading figure in the Christian church in the east, but install him in his place.10 A letter sent in the 640s by a prominent cleric reports that the new rulers not only did not
fight against Christians, ‘but even commend our religion, show honour to the priests and monasteries and saints of our Lord’, and make gifts endowing religious institutions.11

  In this context, the messages of Muammad and his followers earned the solidarity of local Christian populations. For one thing, Islam’s stark warnings about polytheism and the worship of idols had an obvious resonance with Christians, whose own teachings mirrored these views precisely. A sense of camaraderie was also reinforced by a familiar cast of characters such as Moses, Noah, Job and Zachariah who appear in the Qurān alongside explicit statements that the God who gave Moses the scriptures, and who sent other apostles after him, was now sending another prophet to spread the word.12

  Awareness of common ground with Christians and Jews was reinforced by the use of familiar reference points and by accentuating similarities in matters of custom and religious doctrine. God had not chosen to reveal messages only to Muammad: ‘He has already revealed the Torah and the Gospel for the guidance of mankind,’ reads one verse in the Qurān.13 Remember the words of the angels told to Mary, mother of Jesus, says another verse. Echoing the Hail Mary, Islam’s holy book teaches the words ‘God has chosen you [Mary]. He has made you pure and exalted you above womankind. Mary, be obedient to your Lord; bow down and worship with the worshippers.’14

  For Christians who were mired in arguments about the nature of Jesus and of the Trinity, perhaps most striking was the fact that Muammad’s revelations contained a core message that was both powerful and simple: there is one God; and Muammad is his messenger.15 It was easy to understand and chimed with the basis of the Christian faith that God was all-powerful, and that from time to time apostles were sent to pass on messages from above.

  Christians and Jews who argued with each other about religion were crazy, records another verse in the Qurān; ‘have you no sense?’16 Division was the work of Satan, Muammad’s text warned; never allow disagreements to take hold – instead, cling together to God, and never be divided.17 Muammad’s message was one of conciliation. Believers who follow the Jewish faith or are Christians who live good lives ‘have nothing to fear or regret’, says the Qurān on more than one occasion.18 Those who believed in one God were to be honoured and respected.