|
On Early Islam
The Gates of Damascus
In the
fourth-century CE, three centuries before the advent of Islam, the Roman
historian Ammianus Marcellinus, a native of
Syria, had this to say for the people of the northern steppes of the
time:
"The
inhabitants of all the districts are savage and warlike, and take such
pleasure in war and conflict, that one who loses his life in battle is
regarded as happy beyond all others. Those who depart from this life by
a natural death they assail with insults, as degenerate and cowardly.
"
|
These
were the Turks. Of the desert dwellers to the south, the Arabs, he
said, ' ... we never found [them] desirable either as friends or as
enemies'. It seems that neither the Persians, nor the Romans—the two dominant powers of the time in
the Middle-East—took much interest in conquering these
semi-nomadic tribal peoples. Instead, both empires followed that
most pragmatic of imperial policies: turn these 'semi-civilized'
folks into allies and use them opportunistically to score against
their main rival. |
 |
At stake, besides territorial control, ♣
were the trade routes to the East for Chinese silk and Indian
spices, which either went through the northern Turkish lands, or
across the Sinai and the Red sea, or over the caravan routes hugging
the western Arabian coast down to Aden and beyond by sea. The
Persians, in times of conflict, had the habit of blocking overland eastern access for
the Romans.
So
the two empires behaved like modern corporations doling out
'contributions' to contending politicians, and the Arabs and the Turks
learnt to exploit the situation to their advantage, extracting a variety
of military and economic subsidies from both empires. The caravan
trade soon supported several small towns and kingdoms in Arabia. ♣
The imperial powers, by and large, sought to maintain some form of
indirect rule or clientage. The Romans, after a botched military campaign
to gain a foothold at the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula and the
Red sea, preferred thereafter to rely on the principalities of Arabia for
the safer overland route to Aden.
Arabia was thus sustained by the
intrigues of the two empires. Its hostile interior remained empty but the
coastal towns, or those centered on oases, thrived on trade and shifting
alliances. Until early 3rd century CE, the most powerful economic and
political power on the peninsula was the relatively independent southern
kingdom of the Yemen. The Yemenis with their understanding of the monsoon
winds, had evolved an extensive and profitable knowledge of trade routes
to Africa and India in addition to Iraq, Syria, and across the
Mediterranean to Iberia. |
|
The
people on the pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula practiced polygamy and a form of paganism—they venerated a black meteoric stone
in Mecca, the Ka'ba, their major pilgrimage site. They were organized in
tribes under a chief who was usually chosen from a single family seen as
noble but with no fixed rule of succession. An oral culture—they had no writing (except in the
deep south which had a written language)—spoken Arabic became the basis of
perhaps their only cultural expression: a terse, epigrammatic, poetic
manner of speech. Hence the 'miraculous character' of the style of
composition of the Qur'an. The nomads among them, the Bedouin, referred to
themselves as 'arab. According to Philip
K. Hitti, a leading historian of Islam, ♣
The
clan is the basis of Bedouin society. Every tent represents a family;
members of one encampment constitute a clan. A number of kindred clans
grouped together make a tribe ... [The Bedouin's] ideals of devotion to
the common good have not gone beyond that which pertains to his tribe.
Discipline, respect for order and authority are not among his
ideals.
The
Bedouin
had the vast empty interior of the peninsula to themselves and led a
fiercely independent existence, influenced no doubt by the harsh
environment, living by raising sheep, goats and camels, and skirmishing
often with rival tribes. The Bedouins were the people who, in the words of
Caliph Umar, 'furnished Islam with its raw material'.
Unfortunately
for the sedentary Arabs in trading towns, a widespread economic decline
between the fourth and early sixth centuries dried up trade and brought
peace between the two superpowers. Suddenly, all subsidies ceased and
caravan traffic came to an end. In Arabia, |
|
 |
'The
drying up of trade and the reverting to nomadism lowered the
standard of living and of culture generally, and left Arabia far
more isolated from the civilized world than it had been for a long
time ... Nomadism ... now became predominant. This is the period to
which the Muslims give the name Jahiliyya, the Age of
Ignorance, meaning by that of course to contrast it with the Age of
Light, Islam. It was a dark age not only in contrast with what
followed but also with what went before. And the advent of Islam in
this sense may be seen and is indeed presented as such in the Qur'an —as a restoration of the religion of
Abraham.' ♣ |
Meanwhile, in Europe, Rome had been sacked by the northern
barbarians—as warlike and primitive of culture as
the Arabs and Turks of the time—who established kingdoms in what is
now Germany, France, England, and northern Italy. But they did preserve a notion of the old empire—a new 'Holy Roman Empire' was later
proclaimed in Germany—they were
eventually absorbed into Latin Christianity and became its dominant
population. The
eastern Romans were replaced by the 'Byzantines'—a modern appellation. They, of course,
called themselves Romans, although they said it not in Latin (romani) but
in Greek (rhomaioi) and were Christians, not pagans. Early monarchs used
titles like Imperator, Caesar and Augustus, later two Greek terms:
Basileus and Autocrator. |
Until
emperor Constantine's move to Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch were
the two Bishoprics in the east. From being the second language of the
unified Roman empire, Greek became the first language of Byzantium, of
government and culture, after its political split with the west in 395 CE.
It flourished in the major Byzantine cities along with the local Semitic
languages—Coptic in Egypt, Syriac or Aramaic in
Syria (the language of Christ), and Armenian in eastern Anatolia.♣ Arabic was the last major Semitic language to arrive in the region.♣ |
 |
In the great empire of the Persians,♣
Zoroastrianism had received a great boost under the Sasanid dynasty
(223-633 CE). It is perhaps the first example of a state religion
with a state imposed orthodoxy; it had a minutely regulated
caste-based hierarchy
—an essential part of the apparatus of
society and government. The Persian 'church' sanctified royal power,
exercising not only spiritual but also worldly authority, with
lands, tithes, and privileges. However, with religion this strongly
aligned with nationality, the appeal of Zoroastrianism to
non-Persians remained small. It made no pretensions to universalism,
nor did it seek to proselytize. When the Persian state was
overthrown by the Arabs, Zoroastrianism and its priestly class
perished with the state, never to be revived again.♣
The Byzantines, on the other hand, receded to their strongholds in
Anatolia and Greece, conceding Syria, Iraq and Egypt to the Arabs. |
|
After the
interregnum, the Perso-Byzanine conflict revived in the sixth
century, and Arabia was once again courted by both empires. Frontier
kingdoms sprouted in northern Arabia—the Ghassanids allied to Byzantium;
the Lakhmids allied to the Persians. They were peopled by Arabs who
were Christians; they learnt about the material tastes and mores of
their more sophisticated neighbors, acquired arms and military
tactics, created a script and began to write their own language.
From their neighbors' monotheisms, with their far more comprehensive
framework for moral behavior, they also developed an inferiority
complex about their own paganism—many craved for a brand new religion. |
|
By
early seventh century, both Byzantines and Persians were reeling from war
weariness, internal religious conflict, and plague epidemics. The Syrians
and Egyptians disliked the orthodox strictures of Byzantium and disagreed
over theological matters. Eastern Christianity had inherited the urge for
disputation and logical analysis from the ancient Greeks whereas a great
deal of western Christian theology was based on the spirit of Roman law.♣ The former butted heads over subtleties of a kind that didn't preoccupy
the latter, or the Jews—or the ancient Greeks for that matter
who hardly bothered with formal theology. This latest crisis concerned the
nature of Jesus: did the second person in the Trinity possess both divine
and human natures? ♣ Splinter
churches arose—they modified many doctrines of
official Orthodoxy while also giving expression to cultural and linguistic
resentments of the non-Greek speaking populace. |
By
this time, the Persian empire of the Sasanids too, with their capital at Ctesiphon in Iraq, had grown weak and its old feudal structure was broken. A new
type of military feudalism, dominated by generals, was emerging and
pointed towards a disintegration of the empire. 'Its characteristic
feature was an aristocratic society ... status derived wholly from
membership of the closed upper classes ... [with their] elaborate rituals
and ceremonies ... the old Persian feudal nobility had become militarily
inefficient ...' The privileged classes were immune from taxation. On the
religious front, Manicheanism and its offshoots—deeply ascetic in character—had challenged the ways of the
priestly and royal classes.♣ |
|
 |
Around
this time, an unschooled loner, 40, from the tribe of Quraysh in the
trading town of Mecca took to roaming the nearby hills, engaged in a
solitary spiritual quest.♣ Early
Islamic chronicles betray a sense of foreboding. 'Arabia was a world
waiting for a guide and a man was searching for a vocation.'♣ |
§
[The
Byzantines] did not guess that the marauders from Arabia who now began to
break across the borders farther than usual were more than casual raiders.
They quickly discovered that their foe had a new vigor and ... superior
mobility. The Arabian camel was bringing a new and irresistible element
into warfare. Ordered to go to the relief of Arab troops which were being
overpowered by the Byzantines, Khalid, 'the sword of Allah' ... went from
lower Iraq straight across the trackless desert with a body of veteran
fighters and appeared with dramatic suddenness in the neighborhood of
Damascus, the Syrian capital. Water for the troops was carried in bags,
but for the horses the paunches of old camels, which were slaughtered for
food, served as reservoirs.♣ Two
weeks later, with all Arab forces united under his command, Khalid stood
at the gate of the city.♣ |
|
The commanders of the Arab armies in the wake of Muhammad were townspeople
of Mecca and Medina. Overpopulation in Arabia had driven many to fertile
lands; parts of Syria and Iraq already had a substantial Arab population.
Whether animated by the new creed or a simple love of plunder, many went
with the advancing Arab armies and received state lands confiscated from
earlier regimes. They lived like colonial bosses, employed local labor,
and resided in garrison towns, or military cantonments, from where Arab
influence radiated into the countryside. Such brand new settlements
included Kufa and Basra in Iraq, Qomm in Iran, Fustat in Egypt, and
Qayrawan in Tunisia. Around them grew outer towns with native peoples—artisans, shopkeepers, traders, who
benefited by association; some took up employment in the Arab
armies. In only a few decades, the Arabs had conquered lands from
Gibraltar to the Indus.
Here
is a modern historian's viewpoint on the Arabs' astonishing military
success, one of the most dramatic in human history: |
|
'...
they pressed their conquests to the limits of geographical
possibility or attractiveness, and sometimes their defeat showed
they had overstretched themselves. Even when they met formidable
opponents, though, the Arabs still had great military advantages.
Their armies were recruited from hungry fighters to whom the Arabian
desert had left small alternative; the spur of overpopulation was
behind them. Their assurance in the Prophet's teaching that death on
the battlefield against the infidel would be followed by certain
removal to paradise was a huge moral advantage They fought their
way, too, into lands whose peoples were often already disaffected
with their rulers; in Egypt for example, Byzantine religious
orthodoxy had created dissident and alienated minorities. Yet when
all such influences have been totted up, the Arab success remains
amazing. The fundamental explanation must lie in the movement of
large numbers of men by a religious ideal. The Arabs thought they
were doing God's will and creating a new brotherhood in the process;
they generated an excitement in themselves like that of later
revolutionaries.' ♣ |
 |
|
While
this may account for the military successes of the Arabs, what accounts
for the swift embrace of Islam by peoples with longer and richer religious
traditions? Historians have offered several reasons.
The
early Arabs didn't force conversion—monotheists recognized by the Qur'an,
the Dhimmis, were protected.♣ Instead, they focused on military conquest in the time honored tradition,
made vigorous by their new faith. Dissident and alienated minorities
already existed in Byzantine lands. In the Fertile Crescent and
Egypt, the Arabs were welcomed as
liberators by the locals who resented the 'oppressive yoke of
Constantinople, committed as it was to the defense of orthodoxy,
especially since the reign of Justinian (527-565)'♣ -
the Arabs had not evolved a significant doctrine or law as yet to pose
a parallel threat. 'The religion of the Qur'an had such
close affinities with both Judaism and Christianity that in the beginning
it must have appeared more like a heretic Christian sect than a distinct
religion.'♣ Both
the Christians and the Jews found their new masters more tolerant and
unconcerned with fervent theology. Being outsiders, as well as a minority
spread thin, the Arabs could not afford to behave any other way. |
 |
For
the vast majority, the coming of the Arabs amounted to exchanging
one set of masters for another, the deal made sweeter by the lower
Arab taxation across the board—lower still for those who converted.
Besides, there were the practical advantages of learning the
language and methods of the new imperial government and commerce.
With the terminal decline of organized Zoroastrianism, many
Persians, particularly of lower castes, found an alternative faith
with immediate advantages. The early Arabs, in fact, maintained
strict social, political and economic barriers between Arab and
non-Arab, irrespective of the latter adopting Islam (more on this in
the next section). Arab women were not allowed to marry non-Arabs
while the converse was permitted. In doing this, they blatantly
flouted the Qur'anic message of universal equality of all Muslims. |
In
the early centuries, Islam therefore spread without a big top-down
missionary drive and in spite of the conscious "ethnic" distance created by
the Arabs—if not an improvement, it was
perceived as no worse by most converts. Besides, the act of conversion was
easy, the Qur'an was the Word of God Himself, and most importantly, the
new faith promised 'no priests, no Church, no kings and no nobles, no
privileged orders or castes of any kind, save only for the self-evident
superiority of those who accept the true faith to those who willfully
reject it.' ♣ In addition to this
'socialism' which no doubt appealed to the masses, it called for a
submission to the will of Allah, the one and only Creator, and mandated
the adoption of a complete way of life with rules of personal conduct,
interpersonal relations, hygiene, clothing, and rituals. The law of the
land was based on the Qur'an—the Shari'ah, or the well
trodden path—with no territorial-political limits
to its jurisdiction, encompassing instead the community of all believers. ♣ |
Next:
The Pride of Haroon
|
|
