Morgan
Chapter 2: Ideas and Movements in Islamic History, by Shafik Ghorbal
(Shafik Ghorbal teaches at the Institute of Higher Arabic Studies of the Arab League, Cairo, Egypt)
Al-Ghazali, the great mystical philosopher, in his book The Rescuer from Error gives a vivid account of the spiritual crisis he endured until, by the mercy of God, his way was enlightened and he regained the power to guide himself to the truth. When he studied the lives of those who gave themselves to the search for truth, he saw that they might be classified in four groups: the scholastic theologians, who proclaimed themselves the followers of reason and speculation; the Isma‘ilis and other Shi‘as who held that to reach truth one must have an infallible living teacher, and that there always is such a teacher; the philosophers, who relied on logical and rational proofs; and the Sufis, who held that they, the chosen of God, could reach knowledge of Him directly in mystical insight and ecstasy. In his perceptive classification of the searchers for truth al-Ghazali has gone right to the heart of the matter.
We will be guided by his classification in this discussion of the ideas and movements in Islamic history.
Both the Muslim and the Christian have sought to bring as much as possible of the worldly affairs of their communities under the rule of the divine law and to make effective what their faiths teach about the origin and destiny of human society. It is generally admitted that the
realization of this hope has always been imperfect, or even, in the view of some members of their communities, undesirable. But the fact that the realization of this hope has been as imperfect in Islamic society as in Western Christian society is usually not clearly grasped. The real
difference between the two societies has been the tendency in the Islamic world to condemn or ignore the secular factors. One of the consequences of this attitude is the absence of terms for many human activities and relationships, such as church, secular, lay, ecclesiastical, state, political, social. Such key terms either do not exist or are rendered as approximately as possible, although people are aware of the existence of what these words stand for. In the course of this discussion we shall meet this difficulty and shall have to use such terms as "the ruling institution" and "the religious institution."
Professor H. A. R. Gibb has called attention to the fact that Islam spread in a series of rapid bounds. In slightly more than a century, between the years io and 133 (A.D. 632-750), the armies of the Caliphate carried the rule of Islam from Central Asia in the east to Morocco and Spain in the extreme west. Islam remained confined within these boundaries for some two and one-half centuries, and then between 400 and 500 (ca.
A.D. 1000- 1100) Muslim domination was extended to West Africa, Asia Minor, Central Asia and Northern India. Two centuries later there was another wave of expansion thrusting out into the Balkan Peninsula, the steppes of Russia and Siberia, the rest of India, and into Indonesia.
Thus by the beginning of the ninth century (A.D. 1400), the map of Islam was very much the same as it is today, except for the total disappearance of Islam from the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily, and except for minor advances which have been made since that time, chiefly in Africa.
It is significant to note that the faith and practice of Islam were fully matured in the period between 133 and 400 (A.D. 750-1000). Since that is the case, the regions to which Islam spread subsequent to that period cannot claim to have made an original contribution to the development of Islamic culture. That is why Islam in Indonesia and in Africa south of the Sahara have been dealt with separately here.
The Foundation of Islamic Society
The First and Second Centuries of the Hijrah (A.D. 622-750)
The Prophet Muhammad lived most of his life in the city of Mecca in
the Hijaz region of the Arabian peninsula. He was forty years old when he began to preach that Allah is the only God, the Almighty, the Creator of everything, the Lord of the Worlds, the Beneficent, the Merciful, the Sovereign of the Day of Judgment.
Mecca in the days of the Prophet was a city-state, a commercial
republic, and also a great religious center built around the Ka‘ba, which at that time attracted many pilgrims who came to worship the idols housed there. The Meccans made detailed arrangements for the safety of the pilgrimage routes to the city, for the sale of supplies to the visitors, and for the order and propriety of the elaborate rituals at the Ka‘ba.
Since the care of the pilgrims and the conduct of commercial
transactions were the main occupations of the Meccans, the life of the city was dominated by a class of able administrators and negotiators, men who distrusted violence and were suspicious of enthusiasm.
Mecca remained a city-state because Arabia had never been effectively controlled by a central authority. The influence of the geographic environment has always militated against the growth of centralized control in the Arabian peninsula. The chief characteristics of that environment have been the unstable relations between a settled and a nomadic society, the constant interpenetration of those two societies, the extension of those conditions northward into the desert areas between Syria and Iraq, and finally, the international relations of the Arabian fringes of the peninsula with the outside world and the transpeninsular traffic created by those fringe areas.
The distinction between the commercial and agricultural settlements and the nomadic way of life is due mainly to climatic conditions. Nomadic life is tribally organized, with the tribal unit being neither too large nor too small for the conditions of existence in the desert. While a tribe is held together by ties of blood relationship, strangers can be attached to a tribe as "clients" or "allies." Because of the mobility and instability of the nomadic society, the settlements are greatly affected by what happens to their Bedouin neighbors. Usually, the people of the
established communities have descended from nomadic tribes which settled down. After they have settled as traders or agriculturists they try to control by force and persuasion the neighboring Bedouin tribes in an effort to maintain some measure of peace and order. While they may succeed for some time, they often are overpowered by a new wave of nomadic unrest and the settled community is engulfed in nomadism.
Sometimes the nomadic conquerors settle down and adopt the way of
life of the conquered -- and the cycle starts again.
It is important to remember that even when the Bedouins have settled down to a new way of life they preserve many of their old ways and much of their old instability of character. There are many illustrations of their nostalgic attachment to the old ways, such as their tendency to escape into the desert for sports and physical and spiritual refreshment, the practice of sending their children to be reared in Bedouin
encampments to protect them from the effects of city life, and the legends of the desert which beguile their evening hours.
It is important to note the role of the interpenetration of the settled and the nomadic life because it is not confined to Arabia or to the days before Islam. It runs through the history of Islamic society. The history of Islamic North Africa, or Egypt, Syria, or Iraq cannot be understood without a clear understanding of the role which this interpenetration has played.
Mecca, the birthplace of Muhammad, is a good illustration of the phenomenon of interpenetration. The clans of Mecca belonged to the tribe of Quraish, which traced its descent to Ishmael, son of Abraham, both of whom are recognized in the Qur’an as prophets of God. The building of the Ka‘ba as a House of the Lord and sanctuary and place of pilgrimage is attributed to Ishmael and Abraham. The clan of the
Prophet was descended from Hashim, and a closely related clan was descended from his brother Umayyah. The Umayyads were more
wealthy and influential than the Hashimids. It was Abu Talib, the leader of the Hashimids, who cared for Muhammad in his youth; his son, Ali, one of the first converts to Islam, married Muhammad’s daughter, Fatimah, and was one of the stalwart champions of Islam. He and his descendants were destined to occupy a unique place m the history of Islam. Another uncle of Muhammad was Abbas, the ancestor of the Abbasids who were Caliphs of Islam for five centuries.
In order to understand the position of Mecca in the days of the Prophet, it is necessary to consider not only the role of the nomads and their clans but also to know something of the external relations of Arabia.
Arabia provided the neighboring areas with such desired products as frankincense and livestock, and Arabian ports were links in international trade, with goods moving back and forth between Mediterranean areas and India by transpeninsular trade routes, many of which went through Mecca. The instability of Arabian nomadic society and the rivalry
between Persia and the Byzantine Empire caused those two powers to create satellite states on their borders for the security of their frontiers and as a means of intervening in Arabian politics. The Byzantine
Empire sought to counteract Persian influence in eastern Arabia, and to advance Christianity by overcoming Judaism in southern Arabia by encouraging Abyssinia to invade the Yemen. As is well known, the Abyssinians used the Yemen as the basis for an attempted attack on Mecca to destroy the Ka’ba. By divine mercy the expedition was an utter failure. Because the Abyssinians used African elephants in the attack, the year of the expedition is known as the "Year of the Elephant." It is the year of the Prophet’s birth, according to some sources.
It is clear, therefore, that Mecca was not a cultural backwater at the time of the Prophet. Its leaders were men who had traveled far conducting important commercial transactions, who had dealt with Roman and Persian officials as well as with their sophisticated fellow Arabs, and were skilled in managing Bedouin tribesmen. There were Christian and Jewish communities in many parts of Arabia; Medina, which figured prominently in the life of the Prophet, was particularly influenced by the Jews who settled there.
The tradition of Islam refers to the age in which the Prophet was born as the age of ignorance, Jahiliya, but the ignorance here is not to be taken as the antithesis of knowledge. Rather, it is used in the sense of
"lawlessness" or "not being aware of something better." Some scholars have thought that the word refers to a relapse into barbarian or nomadic customs some time before the apostleship of Muhammad, but it should be taken to mean the falling away from the pure monotheism of
Abraham and Ishmael to the idolatry which, more than anything else, the Prophet denounced with all his power.
This aspect of the situation in Mecca at the time of the Prophet must be clearly understood if one is to see the mission of the Prophet in the right perspective. For while his message was a reaffirmation and renewing of what earlier prophets, named and unnamed, had been instructed to convey to various peoples, in a very special sense it was a restoration of the religion of Abraham. The central theme of his message was above all the creation of a community dedicated to the worship of Allah and to righteousness. It was Muhammad’s ardent hope that his own people, the Quraish, could be transformed into a community which would restore the Ka‘ba to its pristine purity.
But it was not to be, for the Meccans did not respond to his preaching.
In fact, they were temperamentally opposed to religious zeal and, being businessmen, tried to make Muhammad see sense by placing the
Hashimids under an economic and social boycott! The weak and lowly among the early converts to Islam were subjected to physical torture, but the Meccans did not dare inflict such punishment on those who had strong connections. It is a measure of the strength of kinship solidarity that men stood by their converted relatives even when they disapproved of their change of religion. Muhammad eventually saw that it was hopeless to expect the conversion of the Quraish, and withdrew to Medina.
Muhammad in Medina went on with the building up of the community under a new set of circumstances. His objective, his cherished ideal, was to make Mecca the spiritual center of the community and to extend the community to include all humanity. To achieve this end he merged two constituent elements, the Meccan emigrants (Muhajirun) and the
Medinese helpers (Ansar), into the brotherhood of Islam, a new
relationship which was destined to transcend every other relationship of family, clan, tribe, or nation. The community was to be made secure by an elaborate system of alliances based on a recognition of mutual
interests and even by covenants with non-Muslims. Until the brotherhood of Islam should include all humanity, the "striving" to make the Word of Allah supreme over all should never cease. But
"striving" never meant compulsion. In the thought of the Founder, and after him in the thought of the community, the main objective is the security and supremacy of the Islamic community. Any particular good must be subjected to the general good. The treatment of non-Muslims within the community or outside it, the relations of peace and war with the rest of the world -- all must be governed by the supreme good of the community as a whole.
For ten years the Prophet toiled to turn his followers into a society of the Select, the community described in the Qur’an, "You are the best
community that hath been raised up for mankind. You enjoin what is right and forbid what is reproachable, and you believe in Allah." The Qur’an embodied the tenets of the faith, the principles of righteous living and social relations. The Prophet, by word and deed, sought to set before his followers the living model, never sparing himself, never finding anything too trivial for his attention. The system of traditions created by his sayings and deeds, the spirit which permeates all that he did, and the outlook on things sacred and profane which was revealed in
his life form the Sunnah of the Prophet, the binding force of Islamic society.
Eight years after the Prophet’s withdrawal from Mecca (in A.D. 629) he returned to his native town in triumph. During those eight years he had managed by war and diplomacy to isolate Mecca so that it fell into his power like ripe fruit. He forgave his people for their past bitterness and cleared all the idols from the Ka‘ba; then he returned to Medina, his adopted home. He died in Medina in the tenth year of the Hijrah (A.D.
632), after a short illness. Muhammad was a great-hearted man of
supreme vision, the greatness of his vision equaled only by the extent of his delicacy of feeling and genuine humility.
The responsibility for guiding the fortunes of the community in the difficult times following the death of the Prophet fell to two men, Abu Bakr and Umar, who, although different from each other in almost everything, were singularly united in outlook and aim. Abu Bakr
"succeeded" the Prophet as guide and leader and was known as
"successor (or Caliph) to the Apostle of God." It was abundantly clear that general opinion in the community would accept only Abu Bakr as the first successor to the Prophet. Two years after he became the leader he designated Umar as his successor and the two men carried the
evolution of the community a stage further.
Abu Bakr declared war to the bitter end against the assertion of some of the tribes that their covenants with the Prophet were not valid after his death and that therefore they were free to shape their attitude toward the community as they saw fit. He denounced such claims and crushed by force those who made them. In addition, he began the policy of
expansion outside Arabia which was carried on so vigorously under Umar, and under the third Caliph, Uthman, that within ten years the Arabs became masters of Syria, Iraq, Upper Mesopotamia, Armenia, Persia, Egypt, and Cyrenaica. These conquests served later as bases for further expansion in the east into Central Asia and the Indus Valley, and in the west to North Africa, Spain, and some of the islands of the
Mediterranean.
Abu Bakr and Umar continued the work of the Prophet in founding the Islamic community, looking upon their responsibilities as a trust, a calling to guidance and leadership, with the supreme authority residing in the community. They were undoubtedly chosen by the general
agreement of the community. They belonged to two of the less powerful
clans of Mecca. There was general reluctance to have as Caliph a man belonging to the Umayyads or the Hashimids, for it was feared that a Caliph enjoying the support of the Umayyads or the prestige of the Hashimids would have too much power. Abu Bakr and Umar showed a combination of just dealing and severity in their relations with the
others who had been close associates of the Prophet. Umar, particularly, did not hesitate to break any man who fell short of the required
standards of integrity and devotion to duty. The two men had their way because it was obvious that in not sparing others they spared themselves least in serving the community.
Abu Bakr and Umar were faced with many problems of which the most pressing were the question of the position of the community after Mecca had become the spiritual center, the decisions as to the kind of
governmental organization to be adopted, and the necessity for striking a balance between conservatism and change in the conduct of practical affairs. They met the first problem by deciding on a policy of expansion which resulted in the creation of an Islamic world reaching from Spain to the Indus. In evaluating their motives it is impossible to ignore the view that the desirability of employing the newly converted tribesmen in military expeditions outside Arabia influenced the decision of the Caliphs. It is also necessary to consider the view that Meccan
statesmanship counseled expansion. But the chief motive that led to the dispatch of the expeditions was the fact that the security and prosperity of a community confined to the Hijaz would have been precarious indeed unless their domain was extended to the bordering Arab
territories which were under Byzantine and Persian control. It was the surprising ease of the earliest conquests which encouraged Umar and the Meccan generals to extend the operations much further afield.
It is important to note the great care with which the Caliphs and
generals prevented the economic ruin of the conquered territories. They refused to partition the agricultural lands among the Arabian tribesmen, for those Bedouins would have ruined the land and impoverished the treasury. Care was taken to isolate the Arabian conquerors in garrison towns and to provide them with regular pensions and their share of the spoils of war. Some of the new garrison towns were founded on direct desert routes communicating with Medina, such as Basra and Kufa in southern Iraq, or Fustat just south of modern Cairo; others were old Syrian cities like Homs.
Although Islam theoretically denounced the loyalties of the pagan