This paper is a historical survey examining the nature of Islamic civilization and the factors underlying its expansion, peak and decline. It is not meant to provide answers to every obscure question that may arise regarding Muslim history. Nor is it meant to give prescriptions to cure every problem associated with the rise of contemporary radical Islam. However, there are a number of implications that the reader might want to seriously consider.
Educational reform should be an urgent priority in the western world. Understanding history objectively is essential if the civilization-killing bias infecting the education establishment is to end. As Bat Yeor puts it:
What I see and hear today I recognize it, as it is endlessly repeated in past chronicles. Maybe we should start to learn this history to understand what is happening to us, as a first step to find a solution, to retrieve our lost basic liberties to life and security, and our self-esteem.[1]
Energy independence is essential. Reducing our dependence on foreign oil would be a good thing for many reasons, not the least of which would be to reduce the financial means through which Islam expands.
The fragile democracies of the West cannot, indefinitely, withstand the massive transfer of excess population from lands that refuse to implement responsible demographic policies. Such large movements of population would be a serious problem in and of itself. When combined with a large Muslim component such migration is a sure recipe for disaster. Immigration reform including an indefinite moratorium on Muslim immigration is necessary for the survival of Western culture.
A realistic foreign policy regarding the Islamic world is also essential. Western style democracy cannot be imposed on populations suffering with a legacy of centuries of the Islamic slave mentality. Of course, there should be encouragement and support given to true Muslim reformers and secularists within Islamic countries. Accompanying that should be the ending of the Western “jizya” in terms of foreign aid. Wealthy Muslim nations should bear the burden of aiding their impoverished co-religionists without any fundamentalist strings attached. In addition mutual respect and forbearance should be expected on the part of Muslim states claiming to seek friendship. They should be required to cease financial support for terrorists, seek good relations with their neighbors, cease funding propaganda, replace sharia with modern law, implement a true separation of mosque and state, cease persecuting minorities and provide the latter with equal rights of citizenship.
The basic theory of expansion and decline in the Islamic world as presented in previous chapters may be recapitulated as follows.
All Muslim societies show remarkable similarities in the patterns of expansion and decline occurring during and subsequent to the political establishment of Islam. In the majority of cases Islam expands via conquest, usually by vigorous recently converted nomadic warriors. Islam is in essence a powerful meme with great appeal to nomads and other primitive peoples.
Muhammad, the founder of Islam was a charismatic leader with many admirable qualities and a clear sense of an obligation to elevate his violent and primitive countrymen to a higher level of culture. Unfortunately, he was unable to overcome a number of personal flaws. The religion he founded was inextricably contaminated with the shortcomings of its great prophet.
However, the ideology expressed in the Prophet’s meme became the most powerful and successful engine of conquest in history, right up to the modern era. Arab Muslim imperialists, in an amazingly brief period of time conquered the entire Middle East, North Africa, most of Spain and parts of India and Central Asia. The ideology of Islam and holy war provided powerful incentives in terms of material and sexual advantages for its male followers. At a later date the Islamic meme was carried primarily by various Turco-Mongolian peoples originating in north central Asia. The latter spread Islam further into Central Asia, conquered most of India, overthrew the ancient Byzantine Empire and brought the frontiers of Islam deep into central Europe and southern Russia. Other Islamic expansions followed a more peaceful course; these were carried by merchants and missionaries into sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and China. Nevertheless, the latter history of these peaceful expansions usually saw the rise of jihads carried out by local Muslim settlers or by converted native rulers who used the holy war ideology as a means of subduing their neighbors and expanding their territory.
Of course, Islamic imperialism, like all others, eventually reaches geographic limits. Its lines of communication and supply are overextended and a spirit of grim resistance arises on the part of yet unconquered nations. Thus, the expansions of the various Muslim empires were eventually halted and in many cases other civilizations adopted parts of the martial spirit of holy war in imitation of the Islamic meme.
However, the learning curve on the part of those living on the Islamic frontier was distressingly protracted. This is shown by a repeated pattern of treachery and betrayal on the part of factions and religious minorities in the bordering lands. In other cases unscrupulous politicians sought to utilize the Islamic warrior zeal to serve their own ambitions. The shortsightedness of these ethnic, religious and factional leaders in underestimating the power and permanence of Islam is a recurring feature in the history of Islamic conquest.
Such shortsightedness did not take account of a number of characteristics in the ideology and development of Islam that made it both more contagious and tenacious than was true of other imperialisms before or since. In the first place, Islam had an inherent tendency toward proselytism and conversion. This tendency was not expressed in the wake of the earliest years of the Arab Empire; but eventually it came to the fore. When combined with the economic and social disabilities inflicted on the conquered population, conversion to Islam was an attractive option for vast numbers of non-Muslims. The Muslim breeding system was another important factor making for the permanence of Islam. Polygamy and the legalized rape represented by the system of sexual slavery and concubinage solidified the hold of Islamic culture in the generations following the initial conquests. Slavery was the third major reason for the spread and tenacity of Islam. Vast numbers of slaves accompanied by the movement of large populations was a permanent characteristic of Islamic civilization. These immense deracinated slave populations having their own cultural traditions erased adopted in total the culture and religion of their conquerors and masters.
Inevitably, despite the success of the Islamic meme, the erasure of long-established cultures was never complete. The older traditions of the conquered survived in various Islamic cults which were often highly syncretistic as well as in many cultural survivals which were sometimes only slightly altered to conform to Islamic norms. The most successful cultural survival occurred in Iran. The early conversion of many of the Persian elite was accompanied by a strategy whereby Islamic military might became the means of spreading Iranian civilization to the tribes of central Asia who ultimately carried it into India. In addition, one of these central Asian peoples, the Turks, helped settle the ancient Persian grudge against Greece and Rome by conquering Byzantium. In much of the Islamic world, in fact, Persian culture eventually rivaled that of the Arabs in importance.
All Islamic civilizations followed, with minor variations, the same basic pattern of political evolution. This would start with a period of tribal egalitarianism, which did not, of course, extend to the conquered masses. This would be followed by a phase of increasing Oriental despotism, the first part of which might often be marked by a liberal outlook of tolerance and learning. Inevitably, however, there would follow a decline into a rigid and repressive despotism.
Islamic societies were invariably parasitic, consuming the economic and intellectual resources of indigenous non-Muslim populations. Under the conditions of an early Pax Islamica following the initial conquest, these resources, now liberated from chronic warfare and disorder, could engender a brilliant flowering of civilization which historians somewhat deceptively refer to as an ‘Islamic golden age’. The most brilliant of such golden ages occurred, a century after the first Arab conquests, in Baghdad. However, as the resources were consumed, Islam became more widespread and entrenched, and the pre-Islamic civilization was submerged, these golden ages always ended in a period of irreversible decline. There were additional reasons for the decline of Islamic civilization. The increasingly repressive political despotism sapped the energy and destroyed the initiative of both Muslims and dhimmis. The slave mentality inherent in Muslim theology became more ingrained. The fatalism of Islam eventually undermined intellectual curiosity. The continuing dependence on vast numbers of slaves destroyed the incentive for invention and innovation. The Muslim system of sexual slavery working at the highest levels of the governing class created a chronic condition of harem intrigue which weakened the administration of the state.
After three centuries of quiescence due to the technological dominance of the West, Islam is once again on the offensive. The re-emergence of Islam is due to the exhaustion of the West after a century of war, the petroleum windfall and the demographic explosion in Islamic countries at the same time as demographic collapse in the West. The most important factor, however, is the social suicide of the West. The betrayal of western civilization by members of its own elite is reminiscent of the pattern of treason that has, throughout history, facilitated the triumph of Islam.
Finally, reforming Islamic society is not a task that can be imposed from the outside. The most troublesome characteristics of Islam are deeply rooted within Muslim society since these are the very factors underlying Islam’s historic success. Furthermore, in the absence of any strong opposition, these factors give promise to the adherents of the Islamic meme of the ultimate attainment of world-wide domination. The jihad ideology of war and violence, present in the root scriptures of Islam, has not diminished over time. The fatalism and anti-intellectualism of these scriptures are still potent in modern times. The legacy of slavery, concubinage and the dhimmi system continues to exist even where these institutions have, in theory, been abolished.
Muslims, themselves, must be open to both scriptural reinterpretation and to embracing a secular society with all citizens having equal rights under the law and freedom from persecution. To truly enter the modern world, they must follow in the footsteps pioneered by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and critically examine their own institutions and history. Above all, they must be willing to embrace and not belittle the long and glorious achievements of their pre-Islamic ancestors.
[1] Bat Yeor, in Symposium: The Death of Multiculturalism? FrontPageMagazine.com, September 8, 2006.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Chapter 14: The Fire This Time
After three centuries of suspended animation the Islamic meme has re-awakened with a vengeance. Muslim self-assertiveness has been on the rise throughout the 20th century and particularly so during the last three decades. There are a number of self-calming assertions touted by the progressive intelligentsia regarding the causes of the modern Islamic resurgence and the consequent strife and terrorism. The most fashionable theory, of course, is that Muslim grievances are almost entirely a result of the maltreatment of Palestinians by Israel. Occasionally, it is conceded that the Indian occupation of Kashmir, the Russian oppression of Chechnya or the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo by the Serbs are additional contributing factors. While this point of view may be ideologically comforting, it ignores the obvious fact that these local conflicts are too widespread to serve as an explanation for Muslim rage. Wherever the Muslim population reaches some critical mass, conflict follows. One is required to believe that Muslims are uniquely oppressed by whatever culture they live in the midst of, or adjacent to. Thus they are oppressed by Jews in Palestine, Orthodox Christian Serbs in the Balkans, Russians in Chechnya, Catholic Filipinos, Timorese Christians, Australian tourists in Bali, Hindus in Kashmir and India, Ibo Christians in Nigeria, Buddhists in Thailand, Communists in Sinkiang, secular authorities in Western Europe, Danish cartoonists, Lebanese Maronites, Greek Cypriots, Armenians in the Caucasus and, of course, office workers in New York. Furthermore, one must believe that Muslim Palestinians have lately been subject to oppression by their erstwhile Christian Palestinian allies, Egyptian Muslims are suffering at the hands of the Coptic minority and Arab Sudanese Muslims are oppressed by black Christians and animists and even by non-Arab black Muslims. Occam’s razor, it would seem, requires a more parsimonious explanation.
Another favorite reason purported to be the cause of Muslim rage is European and American imperialism. This ignores the obvious historical fact that the conflict between Islam and the West predates modern European imperialism as well as the very existence of the American nation. Equally spurious is the contention of some conservatives that Islamic fury is a result of the decadent life style characteristic of the modern West. In fact the anger of modern Islamist thinkers at the freedom of expression and at the easier relations between the sexes that characterizes western culture began decades before the beginning of the era of ‘anything goes’.
The real factors underlying the rise of modern Islam are more opportunistic. Moreover, the modern jihadist spirit was not caused by these factors, but simply released from centuries long suppression. Intra-civilizational western warfare which characterized much of the last century severely weakened the fabric of western civilization in the same way as the long Peloponnesian War fatally weakened the civilization of the Greek city states. These conflicts led to the twilight of European imperialism which allowed Muslim peoples to resume their cultural imperatives without external constraint. The end of European imperial might was accompanied by the last conflict within western civilization, that of the Cold War. American and Russian Cold War exhaustion, like the chronic Byzantine-Sasanian conflict, opened up a new avenue for Islamic expansion. Interestingly, during the course of this Cold War, both America and Russia, armed and empowered various Muslim and Arab clients, in the same way as Byzantium and Persia cultivated and armed various Arab tribal allies along their borders.
Also of great importance is the fortuitous accident of geology which caused a massive accumulation of petrodollars in the hands of certain Muslim ruling elites. The latter were often fanatical fundamentalists who used their windfall to fund Islamic proselytism, purchase the services of greedy western political, business and media leaders, and finance extremist Muslim groups. Another cause of the Islamic resurgence is demographic. The rapid growth of Muslim populations has been facilitated by modern technology and medicine brought to them by the hated West.
Above all, however, the revival of Islam in modern times is a direct result of western psychological and spiritual weakness. French novelist Jean Raspail emphasizes the importance of more subtle spiritual factors to the course of conflict between nations and cultures:
At every level – nations, races, cultures, as well as individuals – it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles. It is only the soul that forms the weave of gold and brass from which the shields that save the strong are fashioned.[1]
Unraveling of Western Society
The Western soul has been winning very few battles in recent decades. On the contrary, many time-honored institutions have been unraveling with the willing connivance of Western elites. Accompanying this self destruction is an almost dhimmi-like accommodation to Muslim powers abroad and to the growing Muslim population at home. It is evocative of the crippling of Byzantine institutions in Anatolia under Muslim rule. The Turkish “conquests reduced the church to a state of extreme penury, which in turn barred it from effective social and economic action. The crippling of the ecclesiastical administrative apparatus left the demoralized Christian communities leaderless in a period of great psychological and economic crisis.”[2]
Of course, subsequent to the Islamic military conquest, the institutions of the conquered continued to exist only with the acquiescence of Muslim authorities. These authorities pursued policies that eventually led to the extinction of dhimmi institutions over wide areas. The conversion of the native population, though not always through force, had a strong element of intimidation for dhimmis subject to humiliation and persecution implemented by the Muslim ruling class. At this time in the West, however, the wounds are self-inflicted.
Premonitions of Cultural Extinction: The Social Death Wish
Many modern western intellectuals indulge themselves in the conceit that they are special and unique in their self-reflection and embrace of the “other”. However, the modern cults of multiculturalism, political correctness and so-called diversity are not particularly special. In fact, the modern ideology of rejecting one’s own society and embracing other cultures as equal, and even superior, has many historical precedents. The effect of such social self-abnegation is to ease the way for the total elimination of one’s own nation or civilization. There are, of course, different means by which this phenomenon finds expression. Sometimes it takes the form of myth, legend or prophecy. At other times it may occur as part of social criticism or of movements for reform.
One historical expression of this peculiar tendency, which is of particular relevance today, was the Byzantine epic of Digenes Akrites. This legend prepared the way for later events by reconciling the inhabitants of Anatolia to the ultimate and inevitable triumph of Islam many years before this event actually occurred. In this epic poem, Digenes “accomplishes great deeds and fights for” Christianity and Byzantium. However, the “original prototype … has been said to be not Christian but the half-legendary champion of Islam, Saiyid Battal Ghazi.” Furthermore, “extremely interesting connections have been discovered between the Byzantine epic and Arabian and Turkish epics.”[3] This legend, in fact, easily passed from the conquered Greeks into the folklore of the Turks. “In later tradition, as Sayyid Ghazi, al Battal became one of the Turkish national heroes. … His was another instance of ‘an illustrious Moslem for whom Christians have raised a statue in one of their churches.”[4] The legend of Digenes may well be an expression of the severe war weariness which must have afflicted the Christian population of Anatolia who were chronically beleaguered by the attacks of one Muslim group after another. It was, in some sense, a wish for some kind of ethnic and religious reconciliation. “The intense life on the eastern border with its almost incessant warfare offered a wide field for brave deeds and dangerous adventures. The deepest and most durable impression was left in the memory of the people by the hero of these border provinces, Basil Digenes Akrites.” The name ‘Digenes’ indicates that his father was an Arab Muslim and his mother a Greek Christian.[5]
A more famous example of a mythical premonition of the fall of a civilization, and one unrelated to Islamic expansion, comes from pre-Columbian Mexico. When Cortes landed in Mexico, his way was eased by the legend of Quetzalcoatl.
So certain was the king of Texcoco that the prophecy of the blond, blue-eyed god was about to become a reality that he abandoned his reign, dismissed his armies, and told everyone to enjoy what little time was left. And the emperor [Moctezuma]… went into penance, sweeping his palace with a broom and dressed only in a loincloth, as omens of disaster accumulated over the terrified city. …a messenger arrived from the coast and told him that floating houses had approached from the east, bearing men … These men were white, bearded, some of them even blond and blue-eyed. … The gods had returned, the prophecy had been fulfilled.[6]
Another such prophecy from the New World, which was also most convenient to the Spanish conquistadors, occurred in Peru. The downfall of the Incas was also prefigured and facilitated by myth and prophecy. The Inca king Huayna Capac “prophesied that bearded men would soon come over the sea and destroy the world of the Incas. These men would be messengers of the Incan god, Viracocha, who like Quetzalcoatl, created humanity and then sailed off to the west, promising to return.”[7] Naipaul notes that the Arab penetration into India was facilitated by prophecies similar to those of the Aztecs and Incas eight centuries later. He writes that “interestingly, both in Mexico in 1519 and in Sind in 710 people were weakened by prophecies of conquest.”[8]
An even starker instance of myth-based social suicide occurred among the Xhosa people of southern Africa. Archaeologist David Webster documented this example of civilizational collapse due to ‘ideological pathology’.
’Late in the summer of 1856, the Xhosa, a Bantu-speaking people of southeast Africa, began to methodically kill their cattle, horses, goats, sheep, and fowl. They also consumed or threw away all the grain in their storage bins and stopped preparations to plant crops.’ … They had listened to the prophecies of a girl who claimed to hear messages from beyond, telling her that once her people had stripped themselves down to nothing ‘the world would be reborn.’ Of course, what actually happened was that ‘untold thousands starved’ in one of the ‘greatest self-inflicted immolations in all of history.’
The case of the Xhosa ‘shows that under extraordinary circumstances whole societies can virtually will themselves out of existence.’[9]
A more rational variety of the phenomenon of self-willed social extinction is the embrace of the cult of xenophilia by both well-meaning social critics and by demoralized or disaffected citizens. Such are well characterized by the satirist W. S. Gilbert in the Mikado as “the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.” In first century Rome, Tacitus “compared the noble simplicity of the Germans with the vices of contemporary Rome.”[10] In his eagerness to instruct his fellow citizens, Tacitus greatly exaggerates the virtues of the Germanic tribes and the freedom enjoyed by individual Germans, while deprecating the civilization and political system of his own country.
Tacitus’s anger at the fashionable immorality of contemporary Rome leads him to idealize German life … Their avoidance of unnecessary display … manifests a seriousness clearly opposed to the frivolity of Roman society.
The Germania also emphasizes the political freedom of the Germans who … make all-important decisions collectively: the power of kings is neither absolute nor arbitrary.[11]
Tacitus’ writings were an early example of a phenomenon that afflicted Rome in later centuries and was an important factor in the re-barbarization of the Roman West. Roman citizens admiringly adopted the customs of their barbarian neighbors. This began at a time when Rome was still militarily strong and long before the occupation of large swaths of Roman territory by barbarian invaders. Classical historian Michael Grant notes a law enacted as early as the year 370 that “set a total veto on intermarriage” and even prohibited Roman citizens from adopting barbarian dress.[12] The enactment of such a law must have been in response to widespread behavior of that sort.
This tendency to imitating the customs of the barbarians, of course, increased after the migration of large numbers of invaders into Roman territory and the establishment of autonomous barbarian kingdoms. Nevertheless, even under such circumstances, Roman culture was largely intact and might easily have survived if it were not that Romans themselves willed their civilization to die. Historian Edward James notes that “by the sixth century it was becoming quite fashionable for Romans, even aristocratic Romans to take Germanic names” and, furthermore, “in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries … Gallo-Romans and other subjects of the Frankish kings adopted” the customs of the Franks.[13] The depth of admiration for barbarian customs and consequent rejection of Roman culture were expressed by the writer Sidonius. “Such men as Sidonius described had formed the backbone of the Roman armies in northern Gaul for a long time, and Sidonius seems to be describing these Franks with the enthusiasm of many civilians for a well-turned out troop of soldiers.”[14]
Enlightenment Philosophers
The philosophers and social critics of early modern Europe have followed in the footsteps of their Roman predecessors, Tacitus and Sidonius. The myth of the brilliant flowering of Islamic civilization among western academics and intellectuals had its origin in the sixteenth century and reached its height during the Enlightenment. Certain philosophers, such as Montesquieu and Voltaire, needed a means of criticizing their society by introducing a supposedly objective non-Western viewpoint. They chose the neighboring civilization of Islam and exaggerated its moral and intellectual achievements as a stick with which to beat their complacent fellow Europeans. Religious warfare and persecution characterizing relations between Catholics and Protestants was one of the primary reasons for the disaffection of European intellectuals. In reaction to intra-European war and institutions such as the Inquisition, European philosophers contrived the invention of the “noble savage” followed by that of the wise Muslim. They were apparently unaware of the barbarism and incessant warfare that marked the primitive existences of the “noble savages.” However, these philosophers had even less excuse for their willful ignorance of Muslim warfare, atrocities and persecutions, for the ravaging of Constantinople and Timur’s massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hindus were both recent and well-attested. As the Enlightenment unfolded, the general myth of the wise Muslim turned into that of the open-minded and tolerant Turk. Alyssa Lappen remarks on the misapprehension of Muslim Turks by Enlightenment philosophers:
Actually, 18th century Turkey was no interfaith utopia. In 1758, a British ambassador noted that Sultan Mustafa III had non-Muslim Christians and Jews executed for wearing banned clothing. In 1770, another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.
‘The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam,’ Bernard Lewis wrote in 1968 in the Encyclopedia of Islam. ‘The myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christians—and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.’[15]
The myth of the noble savage was first invented by Montaigne and was later popularized by Rousseau. Montaigne invented this myth as early as 1580 “based on dubious secondhand information in order to condemn his own civilization. … Later writers substituted Islam for savages to condemn Christendom and materialism.”[16] As Warraq points out, the “uncritical attitude to Islam and the genesis of the myth of Islamic tolerance must be seen against the general intellectual background of Europe’s first encounter with non-European civilizations especially in the sixteenth century … when the notion of the ‘noble savage’ was first fully developed.”[17]
Huguenot pastor Pierre Jurieu was among the first to tout the relative tolerance of Islam. In the late 17th century, in an amazing exaggeration, he “exclaimed that Christians had spilt more blood on St. Bartholemew's Day than had the Saracens in all their persecutions of Christians.”[18] The seventeenth century philosopher Pierre Bayle joined Jurieu in apologizing for Islam as a means of social criticism; in particular comparing the persecutions inflicted by the Catholic Church with the alleged tolerance of Islam.[19]
Jurieu and Bayle were soon followed by Henri de Boulainvilliers who promoted the “myth of Muhammad as a wise and tolerant ruler” in an “apologetic biography of Muhammad” which “appeared posthumously in London in 1730. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book in shaping Europe’s view of Islam and its founder, Muhammad; it certainly much influenced Voltaire and Gibbon.”[20]
The great historian Gibbon, who was a deist, viewed Islam as both a rational and priest-free faith with Muhammad as the wise and tolerant lawgiver rather like Solon. His view “enormously influenced the way all Europe perceived their sister religion for years to come.”[21] Voltaire joined these philosophers in idealizing Muslim society as a foil for exposing the hypocrisies in their own societies. Thus, at the conclusion of Voltaire’s Candide, the travelers encounter an irritable but wise dervish followed by an old Turkish gentleman imparting further words of wisdom for the benefit of the confused Europeans. Voltaire’s fellow philosophe, Montesquieu, in the Persian Letters utilizes the fictional experiences of two exotic outsiders as a means of critiquing European society. While neither Voltaire nor Montesquieu meant to apologize for the neighboring Islamic culture, the result of these works was to help create the impression of Islam as being a reservoir of wisdom, or at the least a certain innocent and objective outlook which was lacking in Europe.
The Treason of the Historians
Enlightenment philosophers have admiring and willing followers in modern academic circles. The former, however imperfect their knowledge or methods, at least had some dedication to the truth. Willful denial of the truth along with demonizing those heretics who dare depart from the modern historical dogma, characterize the latter. Bostom quotes the philosopher and theologian Jacques Ellul, who in Les Chretientes d’Orient entre Jihad et Dhimmitude. VIIe - XXe siecle, (1991) shows this whitewashing of Islam by contemporary historians:
In a major encyclopedia, one reads phrases such as: ‘Islam expanded in the eighth or ninth centuries…’; ‘This or that country passed into Muslim hands…’ But care is taken not to say how Islam expanded, how countries ‘passed into [Muslim] hands’…Indeed, it would seem as if events happened by themselves, through a miraculous or amicable operation…Regarding this expansion, little is said about jihad. And yet it all happened through war!
…the jihad is an institution, and not an event, that is to say it is a part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world…The conquered populations change status (they become dhimmis), and the shari’a tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply change ‘owners’.[22]
Objectivity and pursuit of truth have reached new lows among scholars currently active in Islamic history. However, as shown in the following examples, even long established and authoritative historians feel the need to whitewash Islam. The cases cited are, of course, a minuscule sample typical of recent historical scholarship.
The eminent historian Albert Hourani describes Muhammad’s relations with the Jewish tribes of Arabia as follows:
The development of the Prophet’s teaching may have been connected with changes in his relations with the Jews of Madina. Although they had formed part of the original alliance, their position became more difficult as Muhammad’s claim for his mission expanded. They could not accept him as a genuine messenger of God within their own tradition, and he in turn is said to have accused them of perverting the revelation given to them: ‘you have concealed what you were ordered to make plain.’ Finally some of the clans were expelled and others killed.[23]
It is interesting to note the matter of fact way in which Hourani cursorily relates this historical account. There is no detailed description of the events, no note of who or how many were killed and no mention of the rape and enslavement of the surviving women and children. Above all, there is no expression of irony that such an event could occur with the permission or even under the direction of the founder of one of the world’s great religions.
In another example, Hourani, in discussing the intellectual flowering taking place during the Arab ‘golden age’, writes:
The motives of the translators and of their patrons, the caliphs, may have been partly practical; medical skill was in demand, and control over natural forces could bring power and success. There was also, however, a wide intellectual curiosity … These words express not only the excitement which the discovery of the Greek tradition could arouse, but also the self confidence of an imperial culture…[24]
Hourani’s paragraph is typical of the patronizing of most historians as they incessantly point out Islamic civilization’s intellectual advances – almost as if they have no real confidence in the reality of such achievements. As we have seen, the intellectual curiosity regarding such theoretical activity as Greek philosophy was due to its practical use. Abstract Greek philosophical thought was not valued for itself, but only for its use in advancing the Islamic dogma to more intellectually oriented Muslims and to the large non-Muslim subject population.
Bernard Lewis, probably the foremost modern western scholar in the field of Islamic history, gives every indication that he is aware of the shortcomings of Islam. However, he writes of the Prophet as follows:
Much righteous indignation has been expressed … at the spectacle of an Apostle of God leading the faithful in predatory raids … but in the conditions of the time and to the moral ideas of the Arabs raiding was a natural and legitimate occupation, and no discredit attaches to the Prophet for having adopted it.[25]
Thus, even that most authoritative contemporary historian of Islam, feels impelled to whitewash the record of Muhammad, having no thought that a holy man ought to set an example by behavior that is at least slightly above the standards of his time and culture. Lewis follows by using one brief and almost dismissive sentence to describe Muslim behavior following the victory over the Quraish after the battle of the ditch. “This victory was followed by the extermination of the Jewish tribe of Quraiza.”[26]
In another work Bernard Lewis writes regarding the Turks:
Even the much-condemned devshirme levy had its positive aspects. By this means the humblest villager could rise to the highest and most powerful offices in the state. Many did so and also brought their families with them - a form of social mobility impossible in the aristocratic societies of contemporary Christendom.[27]
As he did with the Prophet’s massacre of the Jews, Lewis dismisses the suffering and humiliation attendant on an institution which was of questionable legality even by the less than sterling standards of Muslim law. He makes the devshirme sound so attractive that perhaps we should consider reviving this practice in modern times.
Huston Smith, the eminent scholar of comparative religion also writes of Muhammad’s rise to power and the massacre of the Jews:
Exercising superb statecraft, he welded the five heterogeneous and conflicting tribes of the city, two of which were Jewish, into an orderly confederation. The task was not an easy one and despite the freedom he permitted the Jews considerable blood was spilt in the process. But in the end he succeeded in awakening in the citizens a spirit of union unknown in the city’s history.[28]
Indeed he did! The willful refusal of western scholars to truthfully and fully characterize the behavior of Muhammad and his successors goes back a long way. It can only be compared to the denial exhibited by a codependent in justifying the behavior of a beloved addict.
In discussing the Barbary slave trade in a turn of phrase reminiscent of southern apologists for the ‘peculiar institution’, social historian Reuben Levy writes: “Yet the lot of many, both in private possessions and in the public service, was in many respects tolerable enough, and reports of some travelers and monks seem to be exaggerated, if comparison is made with those of others who visited the corsairs’ headquarters.” In the very next sentence Levy belies what he has just written. “Perhaps the most famous of the pirates’ captives was Cervantes, who spent five years loaded with chains and in circumstances of the greatest wretchedness.”[29] Such artful shifting and dodging, exemplified in the passages by Smith and Levy is a necessity for those scholars who wish to offer excuses for Islam while, at the same time maintaining their credibility.
Lord Kinross, the great historian of the Ottoman Empire writes:
The process of enslavement was applied to prisoners of war and the inhabitants of captured places. A law gave to the Ottoman soldier an absolute right to the possession of captives unless they consented to profess and practice Islam. He might keep them … he might sell them … subject to the government’s right to a fifth of the market value of the total captured.[30]
Note his facile mention of ‘a law’, as if it were some minor statute peculiar to the Ottomans and presumably recently enacted, instead of a principle enshrined within the Sharia itself, the holy law and foundation of Islam.
Finally, typical of the presentation of Islam in many modern popular historical anthologies and reference books is the following in the Life World History series penned by Desmond Stewart. He cavalierly dismisses the Ottoman institution of the devshirme which enslaved uncounted children over a period of centuries. “A cross between the guardians of Plato’s Republic and the Praetorian Guard of the Roman emperors, the members of the Janissary corps were recruited from the strongest and most agile Christian children in the empire.”[31] There is no mention of the pain caused to parents or children during this ‘recruitment’. No historian would dare refer to the institution of Southern slavery in this manner.
Nevertheless, a number of modern historians are willing and eager to pursue the truth about Islamic history wherever it may lead. The specialist in central Asian history, Svat Soucek, is representative of those historians willing to reveal Islam’s blemishes. He writes regarding the advantages the warlike Islamic meme had with respect to the more peaceful and civilized Chinese:
…but the main cause of Muslim success and Chinese failure lay in the fact that the Celestial Empire was not fired by any comparable proselytizing zeal. In contrast, the Arabs were driven by the ideal of the jihad or Holy War, and the fact that the fruits of victory also brought the conquerors great material rewards…[32]
The famous historian Will Durant also had a refreshing sense of reality in contrast to very many contemporary scholars. Writing about the plight of India at the bloody hands of the Muslim conquerors he writes: “The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry.”[33]
One of the foremost social thinkers and philosophers of the Middle Ages was the great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. He was a devout Muslim who, nevertheless, saw no reason to deceive his readers regarding the nature of Islam. Khaldun is brutally honest when compared with many modern western historians. “In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the Islamic mission and the obligation” to convert “everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force … the other religions had no such universal mission and the holy war was [therefore] not a religious duty to them apart from self defense.”[34] Similarly uncompromising in his reporting of the facts is the modern Sudanese Arab historian Yusuf Fadl Hasan, the author of The Arabs and The Sudan, who documents the enslavement and ethnic cleansing practiced by the Arabs in the Sudan since the inception of Islam and which accelerated during the 14th century.
The Demographic Imperative
The rapid growth of the Muslim population provides a vast reservoir of angry young males susceptible to the temptations of the jihad. The simultaneous depopulation of western nations creates a vacuum waiting to be filled by the burgeoning populations of the Islamic world. The following estimates were given in the 2001 World Population Prospects of the UN Population Division:
Of Europe’s forty-seven nations, only one, Muslim Albania, was by 2000, maintaining a birthrate sufficient to keep it alive indefinitely. … In 2000, the total population of Europe, from Iceland to Russia, was 728 million. At present birthrates, however, without new immigration, her population will crash to 600 million by 2050.[35]
Moreover, Islam is on the verge of replacing Christianity as the world’s largest religion.
In 2000, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians comprised 30 percent of the global population and Muslims 19 percent. But one estimate predicts that if present trends continue, by 2025 Muslims will substantially outnumber Christians, comprising 30 percent of the world’s people, with Christians constituting 25 percent.[36]
The West’s downward demographic spiral is accompanied by the ill-conceived lowering of barriers to immigration.
Demographers project the Middle East alone (including Iran) could reach a population of three-hundred to four-hundred million by 2030. … If large numbers of Middle Eastern and African migrants swarm into Europe in the 2000s and beyond, the result will not only be a migration of individuals, it will be a migration of Islam. … Europe won’t be the only place Muslim refugees will flock to. Many will cross the Atlantic Ocean to join the millions of Muslims already in the United States.[37]
Thus, according to Spencer “if demographic trends continue, jihad may not be necessary. The Islamicization of the West will happen, but in a slower, less dramatic way.” By the year 2002 the Muslim population of France stood at 7%, Germany’s Muslim population was approaching 4% and 4.4 percent of the Netherlands population was Muslim. Furthermore there were one million Muslims in Italy and one-half million in Spain.[38] Of course, the Muslim population of Europe has been steadily increasing in the years since.
Ominous Parallels
The tragedies of history may not always repeat themselves as farce. The long march of Islam through the history of three continents has not ended. There are a number of chilling parallels in the contemporary world to those factors that brought about the past triumphs of Islam.
The long mutually debilitating war between Sasanian Persia and Byzantium, which was quickly fatal to Persia and ultimately fatal to the Byzantines, was repeated in the first half of the twentieth century in the destructive intra-European conflicts. This was followed by the Cold War which dismantled the Soviet Union and weakened even the fabulously productive United States. At about the same time as the Arab invasions Byzantium was also weakened by the incessant migration of Slavs and central Asian tribes crossing the Danube frontier. Eerily the United States today is attempting to cope with a massive number of Hispanics illegally crossing the Rio Grande frontier. In addition to Muslims, there are massive numbers of non-Islamic immigrants to both the U.S. and Europe with an inevitable weakening of the sociopolitical order.
Muslims today are the beneficiaries of the windfall of petroleum. The petrodollar accumulation available to Muslim nations in the Persian Gulf is reminiscent of circumstances in ancient Arabia. “Mecca was close to the seaport of Jeddah and about halfway between Yemen and Syria, which enabled it to develop as an important trading center connecting the caravans from India and Persia with those from the West.” In addition since Mecca’s shrines were a major pilgrimage destination, religion made east-central Arabia an important center bringing great prosperity.[39] Once Muhammad gained control of that part of Arabia, its wealth became available for financing the initial Arab campaigns. Today, of course, it is the great wealth from petroleum to Muslim countries, mostly on that same Arabian Peninsula, which is financing the present day expansion of Islam though both violent and peaceful means.
There was throughout Muslim history a long list, in the infidel camp, of political dissidents and ambitious politicians who thought they could make use of and channel the forces of Islam. This phenomenon may be termed the Cantacuzene syndrome, after the Byzantine noble who gave the Turks their European foothold. In most cases, of course, it was Islam that ended up making use of these numerous Cantacuzenes. The West today abounds with politicians, government officials, businessmen, media luminaries and academics who suffer from this same syndrome. Melanie Phillips writes of a British intellectual elite who were “persuaded to sing from the same subversive hymn-sheet so that the moral beliefs of the majority would be replaced by the values of those on the margins of society, the perfect ambience in which the Muslim grievance culture could be fanned into the flames of extremism.” The left “says it can put aside its differences with the Islamists simply because they too are against the state.”[40]
Unfortunately, it is not simply a case of deluded leftist intellectuals in search of a new and highly aggressive revolutionary vanguard that is at work. Conservative pundits have persuaded themselves that Muslims are natural allies in their conflict with a degenerate left. They are joined by pandering politicians scrounging for votes and businessmen in search of lucrative contracts with the holders of petrodollars. There is also a class of politicians and advocates of Arab Christian origin who see themselves as power brokers mediating between recent Muslim immigrants and the Western establishment. Possibly of greatest importance is an army of paid propagandists feeding at the Arab oil trough. These include former politicians and officials, well paid for their lobbying and speaking on behalf of Arab paymasters, and assorted public relations experts.
Revolutionary ardor, political advantage and commercial greed, however, do not explain the full depth of collaboration. “Beyond that is outright cultural self-hatred, as manifested by Karen Armstrong in her tendency to blame Christianity for all the misdeeds of Islam, and by Bill Clinton when he blamed the Crusades and American slavery for the September 11 terrorist attacks.”[41] Thus, there exists a modern cult of the “Other” which sees the Western elites, like the Aztec ruler Montezuma or the aristocrats of declining Rome, welcoming their own dispossession at the hands of invaders.
Religious dissidents, ethnic minorities, exploited lower classes and disestablished political factions have been profitably utilized by Muslim invaders since the Arab armies first stormed out of Arabia. Disaffected groups in the modern West are, similarly, potential allies in the modern Islamic revival.
Converts to Islam are a growing element. …religious nomads; former drug addicts and petty thieves; and blacks, Latinos and persons of mixed race. … Drug addicts and thieves are seeking structure and support. Some young blacks and Latinos find radical Islam a ‘rebuke’ to a European or American society they feel has rejected them.[42]
Historically, the long term consequences of Islamic dominance were often underestimated by those elements of the indigenous population who, because of class, ethnic or religious conflict was disaffected. The same may be happening today. “Such is the moral and intellectual fallout of Londonistan, where, to a dismaying extent, the indigenous British have signed up to the false narrative of those who are laying siege to their society.”[43]
The legacy of the Harem Culture and Islamic slavery is beginning to gain a foothold in the contemporary West. This can be seen, for instance in the sexually charged terrorism resulting from radical Islamic indoctrination into the more lurid scriptural passages describing the Muslim paradise. Film-maker Pierre Rehov describes this quite well in the following excerpt:
The result of all this pathology is that you end up with 16 to 20 year old men, with a strong libido, who have never approached a woman, don't even know what they look like, consider them as evil, and have this high level of energy, literally ready to blow themselves up out of frustration. It then becomes very easy to convince them that they have a duty to destroy impurity, symbolized by the Occidental world, and that they will be rewarded by 72 virgins in the afterlife. Their entire society is built on the absolute belief in this afterlife, so much better than the miserable life they have on earth -- thanks to the teachings of their leaders.[44]
Another modern manifestation of the Harem Culture is the rape epidemic perpetrated by young Muslim men in the West. A Norwegian commentator describes this phenomenon in contemporary Europe:
The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations are so extremely high that it is difficult to view them only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. Muhammad himself had forced sex (rape) with several of his slave girls/concubines. This is perfectly allowed, both in the sunna and in the Koran. If you postulate that many of the Muslims in Europe view themselves as a conquering army and that European women are simply war booty, it all makes perfect sense and is in full accordance with Islamic law. Western women are not so much regarded by most Muslims as individuals, but as "their women," the women who "belong" to hostile Infidels. They are booty, to be taken, just as the land of the Infidels someday will drop, it is believed, into Muslim hand. This is not mere crime, but ideologically-justified crime or rather, in Muslim eyes, attacks on Infidels scarcely qualify as crime. Western women are cheap and offensive. We Muslims are here, here to stay, and we have a right to take advantage of this situation. It is our view of the matter that should prevail. Western goods, like the land on which we now live, belong to Allah and to the best of men -- his Believers. Western women, too, essentially belong to us -- our future booty. No wonder there is a deep and increasing suspicion against Muslims in the Swedish and European public.[45]
In Australia as well, rapes committed by Muslim youths are on the rise, in some cases leading to retaliation on the part of young Whites. “Lebanese were in the habit of loitering around bikini-clad white girls, calling them prostitutes and exhorting them to ‘cover up,’ as have they been implicated in a string of racially motivated, gang-rapes of young white girls.”[46]Honor killings of Muslim females by their male relatives are still another manifestation of the Islamic sexual system to be imported into the West.
The institution of Muslim sexual slavery, as reported by the Denver Post, has now appeared in America. In 2004, Saudi national Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, a linguistics doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. A jury convicted Al-Turki on reduced charges of false imprisonment and unlawful sexual contact. Al-Turki kept a 24-year-old woman from Indonesia as a virtual slave forcing her to perform domestic service and take care of his five children at almost no pay. In addition Al-Turki forced the woman to perform sex acts and ultimately raped her.
Another case of slavery was reported in the Los Angeles Times on July 2, 2006:
An Irvine man and his former wife pleaded guilty Thursday to forcing a 12-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt to work as their domestic slave.
Under terms of a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim, 45, and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, 43, each face up to three years in prison.
The girl, whose name was not released, was brought to the United States in 2000. Every morning she helped the couple's youngest children get ready for school, washed clothes, cleaned the house and prepared food. Following up on an anonymous tip, police in 2002 found the girl living in squalor in a 12-by-8-foot converted area of the family's garage.
Ibrahim and Motelib, who were married at the time and have five children, had both slapped the girl at least once and told her that if police saw her outside their home alone, they would arrest her, prosecutors said.
The girl, now 16, is living with a foster family in Southern California and attending a public high school where "she is doing great," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert J. Keenan. She has received a green card granting her permanent residency.
The case shed light on a common though illegal practice in Egypt in which children from poor families are sent to work for the well-to-do. The servants, known as Khadamah, usually range in age from 9 to 18 and often are forced to sleep in kitchens.
Western cultural self hatred is rapidly approaching a social death wish. Free speech is under siege throughout Europe and even in the United States. In the same ways as the Aztecs were conditioned by prophecy to accept their demise, and as the Byzantines were reconciled to future Muslim rule by means of folklore, so it is that Western populations are being prepared for a new Islamic ascendancy long before the Muslims themselves are strong enough to impose it. While Western institutions are denigrated and traditional cultural practices are forbidden, Islamic indoctrination is not only permitted but even in some instances required. The following excerpt from an interview with Abby Nye, recently graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis illustrates the preference given to Islamic culture at a college in the American heartland. Such exaggerated deference to Islam has become commonplace at all levels of American education.
Nye: I've had professors say Jesus was a homosexual, the god of Islam is the same god of Christianity, and sneer at the Bible calling it a book of myth - "that book with the talking snake and magic fruit." These statements were made in core content classes required by all students.
...
Nye: In terms of the professors who engage in this behavior are, first and foremost, chicken. They know that Christians are a safe target. By and large, we take that "love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44)" seriously. On the other hand, they know Muslims offer a quite different response.
In terms of the hypocrisy, it doesn't make sense to me. They don't even try to hide it. For example, all students at Butler were required to take a course on Islam. We were required to purchase the Koran and handle it with respect. If we were carrying a stack of books the Koran had to be on top. One day, my professor even had us act out the five pillars of Islam in class. If you ask me, that's going too far. It'd be equivalent to having a required course on the Bible (which, like you said, would never happen) and partaking in communion or baptism during class.[47]
Regarding such trends geographer Lee Madland sounds a warning. “A question remaining to be resolved in the West is whether a turnaround in its own cultural self esteem will come in time to save intact the essence of Western civilization and American culture.”[48]
As we have seen, throughout the long and triumphal march of Islamic imperialism, Muslim rulers and warriors were dependent on the learning, skills and energy of non-Muslims. The wealth looted and the taxes extracted from vanquished dhimmis financed Muslim armies. Non-Muslim scientists, craftsmen and military engineers provided Islamic generals and admirals with the technology needed for battle. Even Muslim propagandists found the writings of Greek philosophers useful for winning hearts and minds to the cause of Islam. The parasitic dependence on non-Muslim science and technology continues, as Victor Davis Hanson notes, to this day:
They obviously want Western technology--whether the Internet or the plastic munition--but never the decadence of freedom, democracy, and tolerance that creates the very appurtenances they crave. It is like sacking European Constantinople and then moving into it as your new Window-on-the-West capital, with the requisite minarets plopped on Santa Sophia.
Such parasitism proves no lasting palliative, but only the goad for more envy and frustration. The stark truth is that the radical Middle East is religiously observant, but spiritually poor. Naturally wealthy, it is mostly materially impoverished--and as anti-Western in ideology as addicted in fact to Western attention and consumerism.[49]
Unfinished Business
Empowered by an accident of geology, augmented in numbers by western medical science, equipped by means of foreign technology and encouraged by corrupt non-Muslim leaders and self-hating Western intellectuals, the Islamic meme is once again on the march. The immediate target, of course, is the state of Israel. But the expulsion or slaughter of the Jews inhabiting the onetime territory of Palestine will not appease the ravenous meme for more than a brief time. Even before the accomplishment of that goal, war, terrorism or threats are directed at a number of lands that once were within the dar-al-Islam.
The following lands, once ruled by Muslims or with large Muslim minorities are, even now, within the sights of the Jihadists: India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Philippines, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Spain, and the non-Muslim parts of Lebanon, Indonesia, Sudan and Nigeria. The short-run objective is the re-conquest of Palestine; the intermediate goal is to be the restoration of Muslim rule to, and the conversion, expulsion or restoration of dhimmi status for non-Muslims in the above-mentioned territories. The ultimate goal, however, is to bring to the whole world the dubious benefits of Islamic rule.
[1] Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints, Petoskey Michigan, The Social Contract Press, 1987, p. xv.
[2] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 351.
[3] Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, pp. 369-70.
[4] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 203.
[5] Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 369.
[6] Fuentes, Buried Mirror, p. 110.
[7] Ibid, pp. 119-20.
[8] Naipaul, Among the Believers, p. 133.
[9] Tom Andres, “The Maya Fall And Our Own?” in The Social Contract, Spring 2005, p. 218.
[10] Alyssa A Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[11] Ronald Mellor, Tacitus, London, Routledge, 1993, pp. 15-16.
[12] Michael Grant, History of Rome, USA, Scribners, 1978, p. 452.
[13] Edward James, The Franks, Oxford, Blackwell, 1988, p. 8.
[14] Ibid, p. 75.
[15] Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[16] Ibid
[17] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 16.
[18] Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[19] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 18.
[20] Ibid, p. 19.
[21] Ibid, p. 21.
[22] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine.
[23] Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p. 18.
[24] Ibid, p. 77.
[25] Lewis, The Arabs in History, p. 44.
[26] Ibid, p. 45.
[27] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 128.
[28] Smith, The Religions of Man, p. 226.
[29] Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, p. 82.
[30] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 47.
[31] Desmond Stewart, Life World Library Turkey, p. 44.
[32] Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, p. 70.
[33] Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 463.
[34] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 62.
[35] Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West, New York, Thomas Dunne, 2002, p. 12.
[36] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 171.
[37] Morgan Norval, Triumph of Disorder, Bend Oregon, Sligo Press, 1999, p. 42.
[38] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, pp. 170-72.
[39] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 24.
[40] Melanie Phillips, Londonistan, New York, Encounter Books, 2006, pp. 118-9.
[41] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 174.
[42] Tony Blankley, The West’s Last Chance, Washington, DC, Regnery, 2005, p. 50.
[43] Phillips, Londonistan, p. 115.
[44] Pierre Rehov, in Jamie Glazov, Suicide Killers, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 12, 2005.
[45] Fjordman, Muslim Rape Wave in Sweden, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 15, 2005.
[46] Ilana Mercer, What A Riot, Mate!, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 19, 2005.
[47] Dhimmi Watch - www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch October 24, 2006.
[48] Lee G. Madland, “But Is it Right?” The Social Contract, Summer 2006, p. 267.
[49] Victor Davis Hanson, Will the West Stumble? FrontpageMagazine.com, November 21, 2006.
Another favorite reason purported to be the cause of Muslim rage is European and American imperialism. This ignores the obvious historical fact that the conflict between Islam and the West predates modern European imperialism as well as the very existence of the American nation. Equally spurious is the contention of some conservatives that Islamic fury is a result of the decadent life style characteristic of the modern West. In fact the anger of modern Islamist thinkers at the freedom of expression and at the easier relations between the sexes that characterizes western culture began decades before the beginning of the era of ‘anything goes’.
The real factors underlying the rise of modern Islam are more opportunistic. Moreover, the modern jihadist spirit was not caused by these factors, but simply released from centuries long suppression. Intra-civilizational western warfare which characterized much of the last century severely weakened the fabric of western civilization in the same way as the long Peloponnesian War fatally weakened the civilization of the Greek city states. These conflicts led to the twilight of European imperialism which allowed Muslim peoples to resume their cultural imperatives without external constraint. The end of European imperial might was accompanied by the last conflict within western civilization, that of the Cold War. American and Russian Cold War exhaustion, like the chronic Byzantine-Sasanian conflict, opened up a new avenue for Islamic expansion. Interestingly, during the course of this Cold War, both America and Russia, armed and empowered various Muslim and Arab clients, in the same way as Byzantium and Persia cultivated and armed various Arab tribal allies along their borders.
Also of great importance is the fortuitous accident of geology which caused a massive accumulation of petrodollars in the hands of certain Muslim ruling elites. The latter were often fanatical fundamentalists who used their windfall to fund Islamic proselytism, purchase the services of greedy western political, business and media leaders, and finance extremist Muslim groups. Another cause of the Islamic resurgence is demographic. The rapid growth of Muslim populations has been facilitated by modern technology and medicine brought to them by the hated West.
Above all, however, the revival of Islam in modern times is a direct result of western psychological and spiritual weakness. French novelist Jean Raspail emphasizes the importance of more subtle spiritual factors to the course of conflict between nations and cultures:
At every level – nations, races, cultures, as well as individuals – it is always the soul that wins the decisive battles. It is only the soul that forms the weave of gold and brass from which the shields that save the strong are fashioned.[1]
Unraveling of Western Society
The Western soul has been winning very few battles in recent decades. On the contrary, many time-honored institutions have been unraveling with the willing connivance of Western elites. Accompanying this self destruction is an almost dhimmi-like accommodation to Muslim powers abroad and to the growing Muslim population at home. It is evocative of the crippling of Byzantine institutions in Anatolia under Muslim rule. The Turkish “conquests reduced the church to a state of extreme penury, which in turn barred it from effective social and economic action. The crippling of the ecclesiastical administrative apparatus left the demoralized Christian communities leaderless in a period of great psychological and economic crisis.”[2]
Of course, subsequent to the Islamic military conquest, the institutions of the conquered continued to exist only with the acquiescence of Muslim authorities. These authorities pursued policies that eventually led to the extinction of dhimmi institutions over wide areas. The conversion of the native population, though not always through force, had a strong element of intimidation for dhimmis subject to humiliation and persecution implemented by the Muslim ruling class. At this time in the West, however, the wounds are self-inflicted.
Premonitions of Cultural Extinction: The Social Death Wish
Many modern western intellectuals indulge themselves in the conceit that they are special and unique in their self-reflection and embrace of the “other”. However, the modern cults of multiculturalism, political correctness and so-called diversity are not particularly special. In fact, the modern ideology of rejecting one’s own society and embracing other cultures as equal, and even superior, has many historical precedents. The effect of such social self-abnegation is to ease the way for the total elimination of one’s own nation or civilization. There are, of course, different means by which this phenomenon finds expression. Sometimes it takes the form of myth, legend or prophecy. At other times it may occur as part of social criticism or of movements for reform.
One historical expression of this peculiar tendency, which is of particular relevance today, was the Byzantine epic of Digenes Akrites. This legend prepared the way for later events by reconciling the inhabitants of Anatolia to the ultimate and inevitable triumph of Islam many years before this event actually occurred. In this epic poem, Digenes “accomplishes great deeds and fights for” Christianity and Byzantium. However, the “original prototype … has been said to be not Christian but the half-legendary champion of Islam, Saiyid Battal Ghazi.” Furthermore, “extremely interesting connections have been discovered between the Byzantine epic and Arabian and Turkish epics.”[3] This legend, in fact, easily passed from the conquered Greeks into the folklore of the Turks. “In later tradition, as Sayyid Ghazi, al Battal became one of the Turkish national heroes. … His was another instance of ‘an illustrious Moslem for whom Christians have raised a statue in one of their churches.”[4] The legend of Digenes may well be an expression of the severe war weariness which must have afflicted the Christian population of Anatolia who were chronically beleaguered by the attacks of one Muslim group after another. It was, in some sense, a wish for some kind of ethnic and religious reconciliation. “The intense life on the eastern border with its almost incessant warfare offered a wide field for brave deeds and dangerous adventures. The deepest and most durable impression was left in the memory of the people by the hero of these border provinces, Basil Digenes Akrites.” The name ‘Digenes’ indicates that his father was an Arab Muslim and his mother a Greek Christian.[5]
A more famous example of a mythical premonition of the fall of a civilization, and one unrelated to Islamic expansion, comes from pre-Columbian Mexico. When Cortes landed in Mexico, his way was eased by the legend of Quetzalcoatl.
So certain was the king of Texcoco that the prophecy of the blond, blue-eyed god was about to become a reality that he abandoned his reign, dismissed his armies, and told everyone to enjoy what little time was left. And the emperor [Moctezuma]… went into penance, sweeping his palace with a broom and dressed only in a loincloth, as omens of disaster accumulated over the terrified city. …a messenger arrived from the coast and told him that floating houses had approached from the east, bearing men … These men were white, bearded, some of them even blond and blue-eyed. … The gods had returned, the prophecy had been fulfilled.[6]
Another such prophecy from the New World, which was also most convenient to the Spanish conquistadors, occurred in Peru. The downfall of the Incas was also prefigured and facilitated by myth and prophecy. The Inca king Huayna Capac “prophesied that bearded men would soon come over the sea and destroy the world of the Incas. These men would be messengers of the Incan god, Viracocha, who like Quetzalcoatl, created humanity and then sailed off to the west, promising to return.”[7] Naipaul notes that the Arab penetration into India was facilitated by prophecies similar to those of the Aztecs and Incas eight centuries later. He writes that “interestingly, both in Mexico in 1519 and in Sind in 710 people were weakened by prophecies of conquest.”[8]
An even starker instance of myth-based social suicide occurred among the Xhosa people of southern Africa. Archaeologist David Webster documented this example of civilizational collapse due to ‘ideological pathology’.
’Late in the summer of 1856, the Xhosa, a Bantu-speaking people of southeast Africa, began to methodically kill their cattle, horses, goats, sheep, and fowl. They also consumed or threw away all the grain in their storage bins and stopped preparations to plant crops.’ … They had listened to the prophecies of a girl who claimed to hear messages from beyond, telling her that once her people had stripped themselves down to nothing ‘the world would be reborn.’ Of course, what actually happened was that ‘untold thousands starved’ in one of the ‘greatest self-inflicted immolations in all of history.’
The case of the Xhosa ‘shows that under extraordinary circumstances whole societies can virtually will themselves out of existence.’[9]
A more rational variety of the phenomenon of self-willed social extinction is the embrace of the cult of xenophilia by both well-meaning social critics and by demoralized or disaffected citizens. Such are well characterized by the satirist W. S. Gilbert in the Mikado as “the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.” In first century Rome, Tacitus “compared the noble simplicity of the Germans with the vices of contemporary Rome.”[10] In his eagerness to instruct his fellow citizens, Tacitus greatly exaggerates the virtues of the Germanic tribes and the freedom enjoyed by individual Germans, while deprecating the civilization and political system of his own country.
Tacitus’s anger at the fashionable immorality of contemporary Rome leads him to idealize German life … Their avoidance of unnecessary display … manifests a seriousness clearly opposed to the frivolity of Roman society.
The Germania also emphasizes the political freedom of the Germans who … make all-important decisions collectively: the power of kings is neither absolute nor arbitrary.[11]
Tacitus’ writings were an early example of a phenomenon that afflicted Rome in later centuries and was an important factor in the re-barbarization of the Roman West. Roman citizens admiringly adopted the customs of their barbarian neighbors. This began at a time when Rome was still militarily strong and long before the occupation of large swaths of Roman territory by barbarian invaders. Classical historian Michael Grant notes a law enacted as early as the year 370 that “set a total veto on intermarriage” and even prohibited Roman citizens from adopting barbarian dress.[12] The enactment of such a law must have been in response to widespread behavior of that sort.
This tendency to imitating the customs of the barbarians, of course, increased after the migration of large numbers of invaders into Roman territory and the establishment of autonomous barbarian kingdoms. Nevertheless, even under such circumstances, Roman culture was largely intact and might easily have survived if it were not that Romans themselves willed their civilization to die. Historian Edward James notes that “by the sixth century it was becoming quite fashionable for Romans, even aristocratic Romans to take Germanic names” and, furthermore, “in the course of the sixth and seventh centuries … Gallo-Romans and other subjects of the Frankish kings adopted” the customs of the Franks.[13] The depth of admiration for barbarian customs and consequent rejection of Roman culture were expressed by the writer Sidonius. “Such men as Sidonius described had formed the backbone of the Roman armies in northern Gaul for a long time, and Sidonius seems to be describing these Franks with the enthusiasm of many civilians for a well-turned out troop of soldiers.”[14]
Enlightenment Philosophers
The philosophers and social critics of early modern Europe have followed in the footsteps of their Roman predecessors, Tacitus and Sidonius. The myth of the brilliant flowering of Islamic civilization among western academics and intellectuals had its origin in the sixteenth century and reached its height during the Enlightenment. Certain philosophers, such as Montesquieu and Voltaire, needed a means of criticizing their society by introducing a supposedly objective non-Western viewpoint. They chose the neighboring civilization of Islam and exaggerated its moral and intellectual achievements as a stick with which to beat their complacent fellow Europeans. Religious warfare and persecution characterizing relations between Catholics and Protestants was one of the primary reasons for the disaffection of European intellectuals. In reaction to intra-European war and institutions such as the Inquisition, European philosophers contrived the invention of the “noble savage” followed by that of the wise Muslim. They were apparently unaware of the barbarism and incessant warfare that marked the primitive existences of the “noble savages.” However, these philosophers had even less excuse for their willful ignorance of Muslim warfare, atrocities and persecutions, for the ravaging of Constantinople and Timur’s massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hindus were both recent and well-attested. As the Enlightenment unfolded, the general myth of the wise Muslim turned into that of the open-minded and tolerant Turk. Alyssa Lappen remarks on the misapprehension of Muslim Turks by Enlightenment philosophers:
Actually, 18th century Turkey was no interfaith utopia. In 1758, a British ambassador noted that Sultan Mustafa III had non-Muslim Christians and Jews executed for wearing banned clothing. In 1770, another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.
‘The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam,’ Bernard Lewis wrote in 1968 in the Encyclopedia of Islam. ‘The myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christians—and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.’[15]
The myth of the noble savage was first invented by Montaigne and was later popularized by Rousseau. Montaigne invented this myth as early as 1580 “based on dubious secondhand information in order to condemn his own civilization. … Later writers substituted Islam for savages to condemn Christendom and materialism.”[16] As Warraq points out, the “uncritical attitude to Islam and the genesis of the myth of Islamic tolerance must be seen against the general intellectual background of Europe’s first encounter with non-European civilizations especially in the sixteenth century … when the notion of the ‘noble savage’ was first fully developed.”[17]
Huguenot pastor Pierre Jurieu was among the first to tout the relative tolerance of Islam. In the late 17th century, in an amazing exaggeration, he “exclaimed that Christians had spilt more blood on St. Bartholemew's Day than had the Saracens in all their persecutions of Christians.”[18] The seventeenth century philosopher Pierre Bayle joined Jurieu in apologizing for Islam as a means of social criticism; in particular comparing the persecutions inflicted by the Catholic Church with the alleged tolerance of Islam.[19]
Jurieu and Bayle were soon followed by Henri de Boulainvilliers who promoted the “myth of Muhammad as a wise and tolerant ruler” in an “apologetic biography of Muhammad” which “appeared posthumously in London in 1730. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this book in shaping Europe’s view of Islam and its founder, Muhammad; it certainly much influenced Voltaire and Gibbon.”[20]
The great historian Gibbon, who was a deist, viewed Islam as both a rational and priest-free faith with Muhammad as the wise and tolerant lawgiver rather like Solon. His view “enormously influenced the way all Europe perceived their sister religion for years to come.”[21] Voltaire joined these philosophers in idealizing Muslim society as a foil for exposing the hypocrisies in their own societies. Thus, at the conclusion of Voltaire’s Candide, the travelers encounter an irritable but wise dervish followed by an old Turkish gentleman imparting further words of wisdom for the benefit of the confused Europeans. Voltaire’s fellow philosophe, Montesquieu, in the Persian Letters utilizes the fictional experiences of two exotic outsiders as a means of critiquing European society. While neither Voltaire nor Montesquieu meant to apologize for the neighboring Islamic culture, the result of these works was to help create the impression of Islam as being a reservoir of wisdom, or at the least a certain innocent and objective outlook which was lacking in Europe.
The Treason of the Historians
Enlightenment philosophers have admiring and willing followers in modern academic circles. The former, however imperfect their knowledge or methods, at least had some dedication to the truth. Willful denial of the truth along with demonizing those heretics who dare depart from the modern historical dogma, characterize the latter. Bostom quotes the philosopher and theologian Jacques Ellul, who in Les Chretientes d’Orient entre Jihad et Dhimmitude. VIIe - XXe siecle, (1991) shows this whitewashing of Islam by contemporary historians:
In a major encyclopedia, one reads phrases such as: ‘Islam expanded in the eighth or ninth centuries…’; ‘This or that country passed into Muslim hands…’ But care is taken not to say how Islam expanded, how countries ‘passed into [Muslim] hands’…Indeed, it would seem as if events happened by themselves, through a miraculous or amicable operation…Regarding this expansion, little is said about jihad. And yet it all happened through war!
…the jihad is an institution, and not an event, that is to say it is a part of the normal functioning of the Muslim world…The conquered populations change status (they become dhimmis), and the shari’a tends to be put into effect integrally, overthrowing the former law of the country. The conquered territories do not simply change ‘owners’.[22]
Objectivity and pursuit of truth have reached new lows among scholars currently active in Islamic history. However, as shown in the following examples, even long established and authoritative historians feel the need to whitewash Islam. The cases cited are, of course, a minuscule sample typical of recent historical scholarship.
The eminent historian Albert Hourani describes Muhammad’s relations with the Jewish tribes of Arabia as follows:
The development of the Prophet’s teaching may have been connected with changes in his relations with the Jews of Madina. Although they had formed part of the original alliance, their position became more difficult as Muhammad’s claim for his mission expanded. They could not accept him as a genuine messenger of God within their own tradition, and he in turn is said to have accused them of perverting the revelation given to them: ‘you have concealed what you were ordered to make plain.’ Finally some of the clans were expelled and others killed.[23]
It is interesting to note the matter of fact way in which Hourani cursorily relates this historical account. There is no detailed description of the events, no note of who or how many were killed and no mention of the rape and enslavement of the surviving women and children. Above all, there is no expression of irony that such an event could occur with the permission or even under the direction of the founder of one of the world’s great religions.
In another example, Hourani, in discussing the intellectual flowering taking place during the Arab ‘golden age’, writes:
The motives of the translators and of their patrons, the caliphs, may have been partly practical; medical skill was in demand, and control over natural forces could bring power and success. There was also, however, a wide intellectual curiosity … These words express not only the excitement which the discovery of the Greek tradition could arouse, but also the self confidence of an imperial culture…[24]
Hourani’s paragraph is typical of the patronizing of most historians as they incessantly point out Islamic civilization’s intellectual advances – almost as if they have no real confidence in the reality of such achievements. As we have seen, the intellectual curiosity regarding such theoretical activity as Greek philosophy was due to its practical use. Abstract Greek philosophical thought was not valued for itself, but only for its use in advancing the Islamic dogma to more intellectually oriented Muslims and to the large non-Muslim subject population.
Bernard Lewis, probably the foremost modern western scholar in the field of Islamic history, gives every indication that he is aware of the shortcomings of Islam. However, he writes of the Prophet as follows:
Much righteous indignation has been expressed … at the spectacle of an Apostle of God leading the faithful in predatory raids … but in the conditions of the time and to the moral ideas of the Arabs raiding was a natural and legitimate occupation, and no discredit attaches to the Prophet for having adopted it.[25]
Thus, even that most authoritative contemporary historian of Islam, feels impelled to whitewash the record of Muhammad, having no thought that a holy man ought to set an example by behavior that is at least slightly above the standards of his time and culture. Lewis follows by using one brief and almost dismissive sentence to describe Muslim behavior following the victory over the Quraish after the battle of the ditch. “This victory was followed by the extermination of the Jewish tribe of Quraiza.”[26]
In another work Bernard Lewis writes regarding the Turks:
Even the much-condemned devshirme levy had its positive aspects. By this means the humblest villager could rise to the highest and most powerful offices in the state. Many did so and also brought their families with them - a form of social mobility impossible in the aristocratic societies of contemporary Christendom.[27]
As he did with the Prophet’s massacre of the Jews, Lewis dismisses the suffering and humiliation attendant on an institution which was of questionable legality even by the less than sterling standards of Muslim law. He makes the devshirme sound so attractive that perhaps we should consider reviving this practice in modern times.
Huston Smith, the eminent scholar of comparative religion also writes of Muhammad’s rise to power and the massacre of the Jews:
Exercising superb statecraft, he welded the five heterogeneous and conflicting tribes of the city, two of which were Jewish, into an orderly confederation. The task was not an easy one and despite the freedom he permitted the Jews considerable blood was spilt in the process. But in the end he succeeded in awakening in the citizens a spirit of union unknown in the city’s history.[28]
Indeed he did! The willful refusal of western scholars to truthfully and fully characterize the behavior of Muhammad and his successors goes back a long way. It can only be compared to the denial exhibited by a codependent in justifying the behavior of a beloved addict.
In discussing the Barbary slave trade in a turn of phrase reminiscent of southern apologists for the ‘peculiar institution’, social historian Reuben Levy writes: “Yet the lot of many, both in private possessions and in the public service, was in many respects tolerable enough, and reports of some travelers and monks seem to be exaggerated, if comparison is made with those of others who visited the corsairs’ headquarters.” In the very next sentence Levy belies what he has just written. “Perhaps the most famous of the pirates’ captives was Cervantes, who spent five years loaded with chains and in circumstances of the greatest wretchedness.”[29] Such artful shifting and dodging, exemplified in the passages by Smith and Levy is a necessity for those scholars who wish to offer excuses for Islam while, at the same time maintaining their credibility.
Lord Kinross, the great historian of the Ottoman Empire writes:
The process of enslavement was applied to prisoners of war and the inhabitants of captured places. A law gave to the Ottoman soldier an absolute right to the possession of captives unless they consented to profess and practice Islam. He might keep them … he might sell them … subject to the government’s right to a fifth of the market value of the total captured.[30]
Note his facile mention of ‘a law’, as if it were some minor statute peculiar to the Ottomans and presumably recently enacted, instead of a principle enshrined within the Sharia itself, the holy law and foundation of Islam.
Finally, typical of the presentation of Islam in many modern popular historical anthologies and reference books is the following in the Life World History series penned by Desmond Stewart. He cavalierly dismisses the Ottoman institution of the devshirme which enslaved uncounted children over a period of centuries. “A cross between the guardians of Plato’s Republic and the Praetorian Guard of the Roman emperors, the members of the Janissary corps were recruited from the strongest and most agile Christian children in the empire.”[31] There is no mention of the pain caused to parents or children during this ‘recruitment’. No historian would dare refer to the institution of Southern slavery in this manner.
Nevertheless, a number of modern historians are willing and eager to pursue the truth about Islamic history wherever it may lead. The specialist in central Asian history, Svat Soucek, is representative of those historians willing to reveal Islam’s blemishes. He writes regarding the advantages the warlike Islamic meme had with respect to the more peaceful and civilized Chinese:
…but the main cause of Muslim success and Chinese failure lay in the fact that the Celestial Empire was not fired by any comparable proselytizing zeal. In contrast, the Arabs were driven by the ideal of the jihad or Holy War, and the fact that the fruits of victory also brought the conquerors great material rewards…[32]
The famous historian Will Durant also had a refreshing sense of reality in contrast to very many contemporary scholars. Writing about the plight of India at the bloody hands of the Muslim conquerors he writes: “The bitter lesson that may be drawn from this tragedy is that eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry.”[33]
One of the foremost social thinkers and philosophers of the Middle Ages was the great Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. He was a devout Muslim who, nevertheless, saw no reason to deceive his readers regarding the nature of Islam. Khaldun is brutally honest when compared with many modern western historians. “In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the Islamic mission and the obligation” to convert “everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force … the other religions had no such universal mission and the holy war was [therefore] not a religious duty to them apart from self defense.”[34] Similarly uncompromising in his reporting of the facts is the modern Sudanese Arab historian Yusuf Fadl Hasan, the author of The Arabs and The Sudan, who documents the enslavement and ethnic cleansing practiced by the Arabs in the Sudan since the inception of Islam and which accelerated during the 14th century.
The Demographic Imperative
The rapid growth of the Muslim population provides a vast reservoir of angry young males susceptible to the temptations of the jihad. The simultaneous depopulation of western nations creates a vacuum waiting to be filled by the burgeoning populations of the Islamic world. The following estimates were given in the 2001 World Population Prospects of the UN Population Division:
Of Europe’s forty-seven nations, only one, Muslim Albania, was by 2000, maintaining a birthrate sufficient to keep it alive indefinitely. … In 2000, the total population of Europe, from Iceland to Russia, was 728 million. At present birthrates, however, without new immigration, her population will crash to 600 million by 2050.[35]
Moreover, Islam is on the verge of replacing Christianity as the world’s largest religion.
In 2000, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians comprised 30 percent of the global population and Muslims 19 percent. But one estimate predicts that if present trends continue, by 2025 Muslims will substantially outnumber Christians, comprising 30 percent of the world’s people, with Christians constituting 25 percent.[36]
The West’s downward demographic spiral is accompanied by the ill-conceived lowering of barriers to immigration.
Demographers project the Middle East alone (including Iran) could reach a population of three-hundred to four-hundred million by 2030. … If large numbers of Middle Eastern and African migrants swarm into Europe in the 2000s and beyond, the result will not only be a migration of individuals, it will be a migration of Islam. … Europe won’t be the only place Muslim refugees will flock to. Many will cross the Atlantic Ocean to join the millions of Muslims already in the United States.[37]
Thus, according to Spencer “if demographic trends continue, jihad may not be necessary. The Islamicization of the West will happen, but in a slower, less dramatic way.” By the year 2002 the Muslim population of France stood at 7%, Germany’s Muslim population was approaching 4% and 4.4 percent of the Netherlands population was Muslim. Furthermore there were one million Muslims in Italy and one-half million in Spain.[38] Of course, the Muslim population of Europe has been steadily increasing in the years since.
Ominous Parallels
The tragedies of history may not always repeat themselves as farce. The long march of Islam through the history of three continents has not ended. There are a number of chilling parallels in the contemporary world to those factors that brought about the past triumphs of Islam.
The long mutually debilitating war between Sasanian Persia and Byzantium, which was quickly fatal to Persia and ultimately fatal to the Byzantines, was repeated in the first half of the twentieth century in the destructive intra-European conflicts. This was followed by the Cold War which dismantled the Soviet Union and weakened even the fabulously productive United States. At about the same time as the Arab invasions Byzantium was also weakened by the incessant migration of Slavs and central Asian tribes crossing the Danube frontier. Eerily the United States today is attempting to cope with a massive number of Hispanics illegally crossing the Rio Grande frontier. In addition to Muslims, there are massive numbers of non-Islamic immigrants to both the U.S. and Europe with an inevitable weakening of the sociopolitical order.
Muslims today are the beneficiaries of the windfall of petroleum. The petrodollar accumulation available to Muslim nations in the Persian Gulf is reminiscent of circumstances in ancient Arabia. “Mecca was close to the seaport of Jeddah and about halfway between Yemen and Syria, which enabled it to develop as an important trading center connecting the caravans from India and Persia with those from the West.” In addition since Mecca’s shrines were a major pilgrimage destination, religion made east-central Arabia an important center bringing great prosperity.[39] Once Muhammad gained control of that part of Arabia, its wealth became available for financing the initial Arab campaigns. Today, of course, it is the great wealth from petroleum to Muslim countries, mostly on that same Arabian Peninsula, which is financing the present day expansion of Islam though both violent and peaceful means.
There was throughout Muslim history a long list, in the infidel camp, of political dissidents and ambitious politicians who thought they could make use of and channel the forces of Islam. This phenomenon may be termed the Cantacuzene syndrome, after the Byzantine noble who gave the Turks their European foothold. In most cases, of course, it was Islam that ended up making use of these numerous Cantacuzenes. The West today abounds with politicians, government officials, businessmen, media luminaries and academics who suffer from this same syndrome. Melanie Phillips writes of a British intellectual elite who were “persuaded to sing from the same subversive hymn-sheet so that the moral beliefs of the majority would be replaced by the values of those on the margins of society, the perfect ambience in which the Muslim grievance culture could be fanned into the flames of extremism.” The left “says it can put aside its differences with the Islamists simply because they too are against the state.”[40]
Unfortunately, it is not simply a case of deluded leftist intellectuals in search of a new and highly aggressive revolutionary vanguard that is at work. Conservative pundits have persuaded themselves that Muslims are natural allies in their conflict with a degenerate left. They are joined by pandering politicians scrounging for votes and businessmen in search of lucrative contracts with the holders of petrodollars. There is also a class of politicians and advocates of Arab Christian origin who see themselves as power brokers mediating between recent Muslim immigrants and the Western establishment. Possibly of greatest importance is an army of paid propagandists feeding at the Arab oil trough. These include former politicians and officials, well paid for their lobbying and speaking on behalf of Arab paymasters, and assorted public relations experts.
Revolutionary ardor, political advantage and commercial greed, however, do not explain the full depth of collaboration. “Beyond that is outright cultural self-hatred, as manifested by Karen Armstrong in her tendency to blame Christianity for all the misdeeds of Islam, and by Bill Clinton when he blamed the Crusades and American slavery for the September 11 terrorist attacks.”[41] Thus, there exists a modern cult of the “Other” which sees the Western elites, like the Aztec ruler Montezuma or the aristocrats of declining Rome, welcoming their own dispossession at the hands of invaders.
Religious dissidents, ethnic minorities, exploited lower classes and disestablished political factions have been profitably utilized by Muslim invaders since the Arab armies first stormed out of Arabia. Disaffected groups in the modern West are, similarly, potential allies in the modern Islamic revival.
Converts to Islam are a growing element. …religious nomads; former drug addicts and petty thieves; and blacks, Latinos and persons of mixed race. … Drug addicts and thieves are seeking structure and support. Some young blacks and Latinos find radical Islam a ‘rebuke’ to a European or American society they feel has rejected them.[42]
Historically, the long term consequences of Islamic dominance were often underestimated by those elements of the indigenous population who, because of class, ethnic or religious conflict was disaffected. The same may be happening today. “Such is the moral and intellectual fallout of Londonistan, where, to a dismaying extent, the indigenous British have signed up to the false narrative of those who are laying siege to their society.”[43]
The legacy of the Harem Culture and Islamic slavery is beginning to gain a foothold in the contemporary West. This can be seen, for instance in the sexually charged terrorism resulting from radical Islamic indoctrination into the more lurid scriptural passages describing the Muslim paradise. Film-maker Pierre Rehov describes this quite well in the following excerpt:
The result of all this pathology is that you end up with 16 to 20 year old men, with a strong libido, who have never approached a woman, don't even know what they look like, consider them as evil, and have this high level of energy, literally ready to blow themselves up out of frustration. It then becomes very easy to convince them that they have a duty to destroy impurity, symbolized by the Occidental world, and that they will be rewarded by 72 virgins in the afterlife. Their entire society is built on the absolute belief in this afterlife, so much better than the miserable life they have on earth -- thanks to the teachings of their leaders.[44]
Another modern manifestation of the Harem Culture is the rape epidemic perpetrated by young Muslim men in the West. A Norwegian commentator describes this phenomenon in contemporary Europe:
The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations are so extremely high that it is difficult to view them only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. Muhammad himself had forced sex (rape) with several of his slave girls/concubines. This is perfectly allowed, both in the sunna and in the Koran. If you postulate that many of the Muslims in Europe view themselves as a conquering army and that European women are simply war booty, it all makes perfect sense and is in full accordance with Islamic law. Western women are not so much regarded by most Muslims as individuals, but as "their women," the women who "belong" to hostile Infidels. They are booty, to be taken, just as the land of the Infidels someday will drop, it is believed, into Muslim hand. This is not mere crime, but ideologically-justified crime or rather, in Muslim eyes, attacks on Infidels scarcely qualify as crime. Western women are cheap and offensive. We Muslims are here, here to stay, and we have a right to take advantage of this situation. It is our view of the matter that should prevail. Western goods, like the land on which we now live, belong to Allah and to the best of men -- his Believers. Western women, too, essentially belong to us -- our future booty. No wonder there is a deep and increasing suspicion against Muslims in the Swedish and European public.[45]
In Australia as well, rapes committed by Muslim youths are on the rise, in some cases leading to retaliation on the part of young Whites. “Lebanese were in the habit of loitering around bikini-clad white girls, calling them prostitutes and exhorting them to ‘cover up,’ as have they been implicated in a string of racially motivated, gang-rapes of young white girls.”[46]Honor killings of Muslim females by their male relatives are still another manifestation of the Islamic sexual system to be imported into the West.
The institution of Muslim sexual slavery, as reported by the Denver Post, has now appeared in America. In 2004, Saudi national Homaidan Al-Turki, 37, a linguistics doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder was charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. A jury convicted Al-Turki on reduced charges of false imprisonment and unlawful sexual contact. Al-Turki kept a 24-year-old woman from Indonesia as a virtual slave forcing her to perform domestic service and take care of his five children at almost no pay. In addition Al-Turki forced the woman to perform sex acts and ultimately raped her.
Another case of slavery was reported in the Los Angeles Times on July 2, 2006:
An Irvine man and his former wife pleaded guilty Thursday to forcing a 12-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt to work as their domestic slave.
Under terms of a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Abdel Nasser Eid Youssef Ibrahim, 45, and his former wife, Amal Ahmed Ewis-abd Motelib, 43, each face up to three years in prison.
The girl, whose name was not released, was brought to the United States in 2000. Every morning she helped the couple's youngest children get ready for school, washed clothes, cleaned the house and prepared food. Following up on an anonymous tip, police in 2002 found the girl living in squalor in a 12-by-8-foot converted area of the family's garage.
Ibrahim and Motelib, who were married at the time and have five children, had both slapped the girl at least once and told her that if police saw her outside their home alone, they would arrest her, prosecutors said.
The girl, now 16, is living with a foster family in Southern California and attending a public high school where "she is doing great," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert J. Keenan. She has received a green card granting her permanent residency.
The case shed light on a common though illegal practice in Egypt in which children from poor families are sent to work for the well-to-do. The servants, known as Khadamah, usually range in age from 9 to 18 and often are forced to sleep in kitchens.
Western cultural self hatred is rapidly approaching a social death wish. Free speech is under siege throughout Europe and even in the United States. In the same ways as the Aztecs were conditioned by prophecy to accept their demise, and as the Byzantines were reconciled to future Muslim rule by means of folklore, so it is that Western populations are being prepared for a new Islamic ascendancy long before the Muslims themselves are strong enough to impose it. While Western institutions are denigrated and traditional cultural practices are forbidden, Islamic indoctrination is not only permitted but even in some instances required. The following excerpt from an interview with Abby Nye, recently graduated from Butler University in Indianapolis illustrates the preference given to Islamic culture at a college in the American heartland. Such exaggerated deference to Islam has become commonplace at all levels of American education.
Nye: I've had professors say Jesus was a homosexual, the god of Islam is the same god of Christianity, and sneer at the Bible calling it a book of myth - "that book with the talking snake and magic fruit." These statements were made in core content classes required by all students.
...
Nye: In terms of the professors who engage in this behavior are, first and foremost, chicken. They know that Christians are a safe target. By and large, we take that "love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44)" seriously. On the other hand, they know Muslims offer a quite different response.
In terms of the hypocrisy, it doesn't make sense to me. They don't even try to hide it. For example, all students at Butler were required to take a course on Islam. We were required to purchase the Koran and handle it with respect. If we were carrying a stack of books the Koran had to be on top. One day, my professor even had us act out the five pillars of Islam in class. If you ask me, that's going too far. It'd be equivalent to having a required course on the Bible (which, like you said, would never happen) and partaking in communion or baptism during class.[47]
Regarding such trends geographer Lee Madland sounds a warning. “A question remaining to be resolved in the West is whether a turnaround in its own cultural self esteem will come in time to save intact the essence of Western civilization and American culture.”[48]
As we have seen, throughout the long and triumphal march of Islamic imperialism, Muslim rulers and warriors were dependent on the learning, skills and energy of non-Muslims. The wealth looted and the taxes extracted from vanquished dhimmis financed Muslim armies. Non-Muslim scientists, craftsmen and military engineers provided Islamic generals and admirals with the technology needed for battle. Even Muslim propagandists found the writings of Greek philosophers useful for winning hearts and minds to the cause of Islam. The parasitic dependence on non-Muslim science and technology continues, as Victor Davis Hanson notes, to this day:
They obviously want Western technology--whether the Internet or the plastic munition--but never the decadence of freedom, democracy, and tolerance that creates the very appurtenances they crave. It is like sacking European Constantinople and then moving into it as your new Window-on-the-West capital, with the requisite minarets plopped on Santa Sophia.
Such parasitism proves no lasting palliative, but only the goad for more envy and frustration. The stark truth is that the radical Middle East is religiously observant, but spiritually poor. Naturally wealthy, it is mostly materially impoverished--and as anti-Western in ideology as addicted in fact to Western attention and consumerism.[49]
Unfinished Business
Empowered by an accident of geology, augmented in numbers by western medical science, equipped by means of foreign technology and encouraged by corrupt non-Muslim leaders and self-hating Western intellectuals, the Islamic meme is once again on the march. The immediate target, of course, is the state of Israel. But the expulsion or slaughter of the Jews inhabiting the onetime territory of Palestine will not appease the ravenous meme for more than a brief time. Even before the accomplishment of that goal, war, terrorism or threats are directed at a number of lands that once were within the dar-al-Islam.
The following lands, once ruled by Muslims or with large Muslim minorities are, even now, within the sights of the Jihadists: India, Ethiopia, Thailand, Philippines, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Spain, and the non-Muslim parts of Lebanon, Indonesia, Sudan and Nigeria. The short-run objective is the re-conquest of Palestine; the intermediate goal is to be the restoration of Muslim rule to, and the conversion, expulsion or restoration of dhimmi status for non-Muslims in the above-mentioned territories. The ultimate goal, however, is to bring to the whole world the dubious benefits of Islamic rule.
[1] Jean Raspail, The Camp of the Saints, Petoskey Michigan, The Social Contract Press, 1987, p. xv.
[2] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 351.
[3] Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, pp. 369-70.
[4] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 203.
[5] Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 369.
[6] Fuentes, Buried Mirror, p. 110.
[7] Ibid, pp. 119-20.
[8] Naipaul, Among the Believers, p. 133.
[9] Tom Andres, “The Maya Fall And Our Own?” in The Social Contract, Spring 2005, p. 218.
[10] Alyssa A Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[11] Ronald Mellor, Tacitus, London, Routledge, 1993, pp. 15-16.
[12] Michael Grant, History of Rome, USA, Scribners, 1978, p. 452.
[13] Edward James, The Franks, Oxford, Blackwell, 1988, p. 8.
[14] Ibid, p. 75.
[15] Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[16] Ibid
[17] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 16.
[18] Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[19] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 18.
[20] Ibid, p. 19.
[21] Ibid, p. 21.
[22] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine.
[23] Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p. 18.
[24] Ibid, p. 77.
[25] Lewis, The Arabs in History, p. 44.
[26] Ibid, p. 45.
[27] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 128.
[28] Smith, The Religions of Man, p. 226.
[29] Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, p. 82.
[30] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 47.
[31] Desmond Stewart, Life World Library Turkey, p. 44.
[32] Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, p. 70.
[33] Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 463.
[34] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 62.
[35] Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West, New York, Thomas Dunne, 2002, p. 12.
[36] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 171.
[37] Morgan Norval, Triumph of Disorder, Bend Oregon, Sligo Press, 1999, p. 42.
[38] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, pp. 170-72.
[39] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 24.
[40] Melanie Phillips, Londonistan, New York, Encounter Books, 2006, pp. 118-9.
[41] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 174.
[42] Tony Blankley, The West’s Last Chance, Washington, DC, Regnery, 2005, p. 50.
[43] Phillips, Londonistan, p. 115.
[44] Pierre Rehov, in Jamie Glazov, Suicide Killers, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 12, 2005.
[45] Fjordman, Muslim Rape Wave in Sweden, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 15, 2005.
[46] Ilana Mercer, What A Riot, Mate!, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 19, 2005.
[47] Dhimmi Watch - www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch October 24, 2006.
[48] Lee G. Madland, “But Is it Right?” The Social Contract, Summer 2006, p. 267.
[49] Victor Davis Hanson, Will the West Stumble? FrontpageMagazine.com, November 21, 2006.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Chapter 13: Myth and Reality
A number of misconceptions regarding Muslim history prevail in the West. Probably the most important of these myths concerns the alleged toleration Muslim society had for practitioners of other faiths. Since it is undeniable that Islam, like other monotheistic religions, is less tolerant than the faiths practiced in India and East Asia, the proponents of this view usually fall back on the idea that, at the very least, Islam is more tolerant than Christianity. This notion of a superior Muslim tolerance as compared to Christianity feeds the legend of peace-loving Muslims victimized by barbaric Christian crusaders. And this idea, in turn, is related to the assertion that at a time that western Europeans led a squalid and brutish existence, Muslims were cultured lovers of learning whose cities were the “ornaments of the world.” The myth of Muslim achievement was exposed in a previous chapter[1], therefore, the relative primitiveness of Dark Ages Europe warrants a closer examination. One additional assertion, which is that of Muslim society being free of racism, has also been effectively refuted in a preceding chapter.[2]
The Myth of Muslim Tolerance
There are a number of excellent works questioning the prevailing myth of a tolerant Islam, so that the issue will be only briefly dealt with here. Ibn Warraq, for one, gives many examples of persecution of religious dissenters and heretics throughout the Islamic world.[3] Bat Yeor also discusses in depth the intolerant treatment of minority religions at all times in Muslim history.[4] Robert Spencer also examines the question of Muslim tolerance and concludes with the following:
Did Muslims treat Christians and Jews better than Christians treated Muslims and Jews? …both sides have a lot to answer for. But this much is clear: the conventional wisdom that religious minorities had a better quality of life in the House of Islam than in Christendom is at least open to question.[5]
The favorable treatment meted out to Jews in Islamic society is one example of tolerance that is often cited. This is, however, contradicted by the documented persecution undergone by such prominent figures as Maimonides. Bostom describes the experience of a less renowned Jewish philosopher:
Moreover, we cannot ignore the testimony of Isaac b. Samuel of Acre (1270-1350 C.E.), one of the most outstanding Kabbalists of his time. Conversant with Islamic theology and often using Arabic in his exegesis, Isaac nevertheless believed that it was preferable to live under the yoke of Christendom rather than that of Islamdom.[6]
Thus, Isaac b. Samuel fled from the Holy Land to Italy and ultimately to Christian Spain. There he wrote as follows:
The word ziz in Arabic is derogatory, for when they wish to say in that tongue, ‘Strike him upon the head,’ ‘Give him a blow upon the neck,’ they say zazzhu (‘hit him’)…Indeed, on account of our sins they strike upon the head the children of Israel who dwell in their lands and they thus extort money from them by force. For they say in their tongue, mal al-yahudi mubah, ‘it is lawful to take money of the Jews.’ For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew.[7]
All religious minorities were subject to humiliation and extortion. Far worse were the sporadic pogroms and massacres:
The myth of Islamic tolerance is defied by the massacre and extermination of the Zoroastrians in Iran; the million Armenians in Turkey; the Buddhists and Hindus in India; the more than six thousand Jews in Fez, Morocco, in 1033; hundreds of Jews killed in Cordoba between 1010 and 1013; the entire Jewish community of Granada in 1066; the Jews in Marrakesh in 1232; the Jews of Tetuan, Morocco in 1790; the Jews of Baghdad in 1828; and so on ad nauseum.[8]
Even into modern times, Western ambassadors frequently remarked on the persecution suffered by religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire. In the 18th century “Turkey was no interfaith utopia.” In 1758, the British ambassador observed the Sultan executing Christians and Jews for violating the Dhimmi dress code. Twelve years later “another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.”[9] Bernard Lewis notes that the so-called “golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause” of Jewish sympathy for Islamic societies. Furthermore, the “myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christians—and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.”[10]
Furthermore, the primary reason for whatever Muslim tolerance may have existed is that it was realized by pragmatic Islamic leaders, following the initial conquests that persecuting the large conquered population would have had a number of unfortunate results. Any attempt by Muslims to forcibly convert or drive out all infidels would have led to mass rebellion and a stiffened military resistance on the part of the yet unconquered population. It would have also destroyed the economic base of the conquered territories which provided Muslim warriors with the resources for further expansion. And, in fact, once enough of the population became Muslim, the possibility of rebellion receded and the economic dependence on non-Muslims lessened. Under these circumstances, Muslim authorities became less accommodating and put increased pressure on the remaining non-Muslims to emigrate or convert.
In addition, the nature of Islamic expansion was quite unlike the history of Christian expansion in Europe. In their rapid conquests Muslims found many different sects of nonbelievers in the conquered population. Muslim leaders found it advantageous to play off one set of infidels against another. They also found it advantageous to cultivate alliances with persecuted sects against the governing authorities in the still unconquered dar-al-harb. This would, naturally, give the illusion that Muslims were more tolerant, when in fact those infidel groups presently favored were simply pawns in a greater political game.
Fabled Andalusia was supposedly the very model of Islamic tolerance. The prevailing view is that “Andalusia under Islamic rule was a proto-multiculturalist paradigm” which is “all the more appealing to modern post-Christian Westerners because this paradise of tolerance was not constructed under the auspices of Christianity, thereby seeming to vindicate their long insistence that all cultures are equal and that some – particularly non-Christian ones – are more equal than others.”[11] This myth of “Andalusia” is summed up by Yeor.
Andalusia represents the paradisiacal life of Jews and Christians living under the shari’a in the Moorish caliphate of the early Middle Ages. … Jews and Christians were grateful to be protected and to learn from the achievements of Muslim scholars … This vision propagates and imposes the theory that only in Islamic lands did science, art and civilization flourish while Christendom was still immersed in barbarism and illiteracy.[12]
Both Spencer and Yeor effectively demolish the myth of the “tolerant Andalusia.” Stillman, a specialist in the history of the Jews under Islam provides an additional perspective. In iconic Spain there was a “depth of anti-Jewish sentiment” as seen in “the rabble-rousing poetry of Abu Ishaq of Elvira.” Following the assassination of the Jewish vizier Joseph ha-Nagid “a mob went on a rampage in the Jewish quarter of Granada, slaughtering its inhabitants and razing the quarter to the ground.”[13] The Almohad rulers ended whatever small degree of toleration of the Jews still remained in Spain. By 1172 the Almohads “tolerated neither Jews nor Christians within their empire. There were mass conversions of Jews to Islam. Many fled over the frontier into Christian Spain, while others made their way to the more tolerant Muslim East. … Jewish life in … Islamic Spain ceased to exist altogether.”[14] Thus, Jews were expelled from Muslim Spain centuries before their more famous expulsion at the hands of the Christians.
Muslim Spain, therefore, was no paragon of religious toleration for the “peoples of the book”. However, the circumstances for Christians and Jews in the Maghreb were far worse. In fact Christianity in the land of St. Augustine ultimately became extinct under Muslim rule. Thus in “contemporary North Africa, however, there were no native Christians to absorb some of the Muslim hostility against nonbelievers.” For that reason, the persecution of the Jews of North Africa paralleled that occurring anywhere in medieval Christian Europe.[15] In Almohad North Africa the “urban Jewish population from Tunisia to Morocco had outwardly professed Islam during the height of the Almohad terror. Those communities that resisted were put to the sword.” The Almohad regime also dealt the final blow to North African Christianity. “The Jews became the dhimmis par excellence in North African society, for no native Christian population seems to have survived the Almohad persecution.”[16]
Muslim persecution of the Jews in the Maghreb, however, eased somewhat under the Merinids of 14th century Morocco who found the Jews to be useful allies and go-betweens with respect to the rising Portuguese power. The Merinids “employed Jews in their service because of the latter’s extreme vulnerability and, hence, according to Islamic political psychology, dependability.”[17] Christians in conflict with Muslims, of course, were equally capable of playing that game. In 16th century Morocco “most of the Jewish newcomers seem to have preferred living in the Portuguese-held coastal towns rather than the Islamic interior. They joined in the defense of these enclaves against Muslim attacks.” The practical-minded Portuguese were “notably tolerant toward the Jews in their African possessions” long after Jews were expelled from Portugal proper in 1497.[18]
Egypt differed from the rest of North Africa, in that a strong Christian minority survived; the consequence was a slight mitigation in the situation of the Jews. “In the Mamluk Empire, the Jews were not the only infidels. The Copts more frequently and more immediately took the brunt of anti-dhimmi persecution.” [19] Muslim rulers often found it useful to play one group of dhimmis off against another.
The Real Imperialism
A fantasy almost unique to modern western intellectuals of a “progressive” outlook is that Muslims are natural allies in the struggle against “imperialism”. This conceit ignores the fact that it is Islamic imperialism that was by far the most successful version. “It turns out that the Arabs were the most successful imperialists of all time, since to be conquered by them (and then to be like them) is still, in the minds of the faithful, to be saved.”[20]
Muslim imperialism was much more durable and robust than any existing in the ancient world. The ancient Persians conquered a large territory but were content to leave the native cultures in place or even, as in the case of the return of the Jews from exile, to preserve them. The Macedonian Greek conquests were as rapid and extensive as that of the early Arabs. However, their effect on the conquered population was superficial and their empire ephemeral. The Romans also conquered a vast territory. But in contrast to the Arab conquests, the Roman Empire took three centuries to build. Moreover, while Roman culture penetrated all of Western Europe, modern Europeans, even those speaking Latin languages do not regard themselves as ‘Roman’. On the other hand, Muslim descendants of Egyptians, Babylonians and Berbers consider themselves Arab:
Arabic penetrated the conquered peoples to such an extent that at the beginning of the eighth century it had evolved into the official imperial language. … by adopting the Arabic language, the conquered peoples – Iranians, Syrians, Greeks, Copts, Berbers, Jews and Christians – placed their abundant talents and learning at the service of their conquerors …[21]
The ultimate adoption of the Arabic language and Islamic religion by indigenous populations was accompanied by the neglect and erasure of ancient traditions. A similar process followed the later Turkish conquests. Even where native languages were preserved, the adoption of Islam by the conquered led to the extirpation of much of the pre-existing culture at the hands of the Muslim imperialists.
Five centuries later the Mongols conquered an empire as large as that of the Arabs in a similar short amount of time. However, their imperialism was a failure in comparison. The Mongols wrought much devastation, but the civilization of the vanquished survived; there was no mass adoption of Mongol language or culture.
The modern empires of Western Europe encircled the globe. However, with the exception of certain sparsely populated lands, mostly in North America and Australia, there was no irrevocable displacement of aboriginal cultures. Even in the superficially Christianized lands conquered by the Spaniards the native Aztec, Mayan and Incan outlooks remain strong and have even undergone something of a modern revival. European imperialism was, paradoxically, beneficial to certain native cultures which were under attack by Islam. The British and French put an end to the African slave trade. British rule in India protected many Hindus from further Muslim depredations. And, far from attempting to replace Hindu culture, many Britons became ardent students and popularizers of Indian culture and the Hindu classics.
Furthermore, according to the historian Paul Fregosi, even the recent colonial experience of Islamic lands under European rule was much milder than that of Christian lands conquered by Muslims. When he compares “the Muslim occupation of Christian lands in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa to European colonialism, he finds that the latter was much briefer and less culturally pervasive.”[22]
“Civilized” Arabs and “Barbarian” Europeans
The apologists for Islam point to the high level of civilization in the Muslim world when compared to that of early medieval Europe. They would be rather more convincing in their assertion, if the Muslim raids and conquests themselves were not a major cause of decline in the civilization of an already beleaguered West.
The effect of the Arab conquests in the Mediterranean and their continued raids and incursions on Western Europe was severe. When the Roman Empire fell into the hands of the barbarians, there was a period of upheaval. Within a short time, however, civilization in the West began to recover. Then for a few centuries beginning with the seventh, new waves of barbarians descended on Europe. From the north seafaring Vikings began their destructive incursions and at the same time Europe was attacked from the east by nomadic horsemen from the steppes. In both of these cases the invaders were eventually contained and then absorbed into the Christian civilization of Europe. However there was a third wave of invaders from the east and south. These were, of course, the Arabs, whose religion of Islam, was a much more formidable threat and was to constitute a continuing disruptive force to western European civilization and to Byzantium. The almost permanent war, the disruption of trade and the sundering of the Mediterranean were a constant drain on the economy of Europe and retarded the full recovery of western civilization right up to the time of the Renaissance. The noted authority on medieval Europe, Christopher Dawson notes the following regarding the dark ages in Europe.
But the worst had not yet come. In the seventh century the Arabs conquered Byzantine Africa, the most civilized province of the West … Early in the eighth century the tide of Moslem invasion swept over Christian Spain and threatened Gaul itself. Christendom had become an island isolated between the Moslem south and the Barbarian north.[23]
The Muslim invasion was, thus, a primary factor in the slow recovery of civilization in Europe after the shock resulting from the fall of Rome. Other distinguished historians also note the importance of continual warfare brought by Muslims in causing the decline of civilization in Europe. According to Henri Pirenne the Arab advance “changed the face of the world.” The rapid Arab advance destroyed the classical civilization of Europe and “put an end to the Mediterranean commonwealth in which it had gathered its strength.”[24] Historian Walter Kircher asserts that “with the conquests of the Moslems and their domination of Mediterranean trade routes, large-scale commercial activity, and with it the coining and use of money almost ceased in Western Europe.”[25]
The Arab assault upon the west continued into later centuries. The navy of the Aghlabids of North Africa (800-909), “harried the coasts of Italy, France, Corsica and Sardinia.” They conquered Sicily in 902. “Besides Sicily, Malta and Sardinia were seized mainly by pirates whose raids extended as far as Rome.”[26] Moreover, as we have seen, there were continuing raids by Muslim corsairs seeking booty and slaves on the coasts and shipping of Western Europe. Despite this harassment, civilization in the West recovered and eventually far surpassed that of Islam.
Therefore, the temporary superiority of Muslim civilization in the seventh through the tenth century is irrelevant. Islam came into possession of the most advanced and civilized lands in the world. And, as was shown in Chapter 11, after a brief period of high culture, Muslims squandered this advantage. At the same time, Muslim predation helped to cause and then to prolong the European dark ages.
Western Europe was not the only region whose civilization was retarded by Islamic aggression. Byzantium was also under constant pressure from Muslims. This may, at least partly, explain the long stagnation of Byzantine civilization. This Byzantine stagnation continued until the later middle ages. The late Byzantine renaissance that then occurred, ironically, may have been due to a deep recognition on the part of cultured Byzantines that their end at the hands of the implacable Muslims was inevitable leading them to devote resources to one final amazing effort. Without the constant Islamic attacks one can only speculate what heights the Byzantine genius might have attained. As it turned out the last Byzantine renaissance was effectively displaced to safer soil in Italy and the West. The unfortunate fate of the ancient Hindu civilization is still another example of the destructive nature of the Islamic meme with respect to adjacent cultures.
In general, any non-Muslim population subject either to razzias or to direct Muslim rule suffered from cultural atrophy. Any intellectual resources arising in such cultures were appropriated, through conversion, slavery or dhimmitude, to serve the interests of the Islamic state. In Ottoman ruled Europe there was an absence of any great achievement at the very time that the neighboring European nations were experiencing rapid advancement. The historian A. H. Lybyer notes the disincentive to achievement experienced by populations subjected to Muslim warfare or conquest:
The Ottoman system took children forever from parents, discouraged family cares among its members through their most active years, allowed them no certain hold upon property, gave them no definite promise that their sons and daughters would profit by their success and sacrifice, raised and lowered them with no regard for ancestry or previous distinction, taught them a strange law, ethics and religion, and ever kept them conscious of a sword raised above their heads which might put an end at any moment to a brilliant career.[27]
That the Balkans, once the site of the last brilliant Byzantine renaissance, “did not produce great art and science under the Ottomans is no mystery.”[28]
The Myth of the Crusades
Few things are more certain to put Westerners on the defensive than the mention of the Crusades. “Virtually all Westerners have learned to apologize for the Crusades. Less noted is the fact that these campaigns have an Islamic counterpart for which no one is apologizing and of which few are even aware.”[29]
The notion of hordes of violent barbaric Europeans descending on civilized Muslims who had, since time immemorial, lived in peace on their ancestral lands is a fabrication. In the late eleventh century, as we have seen, western Christendom finally imbibed the ideology of holy war from its longtime Muslim adversaries – the speech of Pope Urban at Clermont in 1095 initiating both the crusades and the gathering speed of the Spanish reconquista. Christians were certainly no slackers when it came to warfare and violence, but the condemnation of such actions in the New Testament presented Christian religious leaders with an almost insurmountable obstacle in finding scriptural sanction for unleashing war on distant lands. Trifkovic describes the dilemma:
What the Crusaders did to the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem in 1099 was as bad as what the Muslims had done to countless Christian cities before and after that time, but the carnage was less pardonable because, unlike the Muslims’, it was not justifiable by Christian religious tenets. From the distance of almost a millennium, however, it is time to see the phenomenon as Christendom’s reaction to Muslim aggression. It was a reconquest of something taken by force from its rightful owners …[30]
This alleged Western aggression was, therefore, simply a retaking of lost Christian territory for if “Westerners had no right to invade these putative Muslim places, then Muslims had no right to conquer them to begin with.”[31] It is, of course, true that
…these sins of the Muslims do not excuse the sins that the Christians committed against them in return. One massacre doesn’t cancel out another. But clearly what we now call ‘human rights abuses’ have not come only from the Western side, and the recent defensiveness of the West before the House of Islam and the world on this issue is hardly justified by the facts.[32]
Furthermore, the Crusades were ineffective in ending Muslim aggression against Christian lands. Long after the Crusades “had become a distant memory in the West, the warriors of jihad continued to press into the heart of Europe.” The fall of the Crusader stronghold of Acre in 1291 put an end to crusading activity in the Muslim east. “Through the next four centuries, however, Muslim armies solidified their hold on southeastern Europe and kept advancing whenever and wherever it was possible to do so.”[33]
Islam and Christianity
It is one of the delights of modern historians to unfavorably compare Christianity with Islam. Both religions, of course, are the offspring of Judaism. However, their early histories could not be more different. Christianity came to power after centuries as a marginal and often persecuted sect. Islam, after less than a decade of persecution, became a distinct religion at the same time that it assumed political power. Islam from its beginning was always more of a political than a religious movement.
The difference between the two faiths is exemplified by the activities of pious reformers. Pietistic and monastic movements arising within the framework of Christian society were invariably pacific and quietist, seeking a return to the basic New Testament principles. Similar movements within Islam, however, were usually warlike, aggressive and militant in conformity with basic Koranic doctrine. One need only compare and contrast the activities of St. Francis and his followers with those of the communal military sects of North Africa founded by pious Muslim scholars. Warlike, angry and violent Christians, while marking most of Christian history acted in direct contradiction to the teachings of the founder of the religion. Similar warlike and violent Muslims behaved according to the precepts of their Prophet.
Furthermore, the experience of the newly triumphant Christianity following the conversion of the emperor Constantine contrasts with that of conquering Islam. The early Muslim rulers had to deal with the existence of populations following other higher religions. Christians, on the other hand, were only confronted by an outmoded paganism and a small population of Jews. Muslim rulers, as a practical matter, had to tolerate large non-Muslim populations for many years. Similarly, as a practical matter, Christian rulers had to tolerate paganism for several centuries after assuming political power. Long afterward, paganism continued to exist in a subterranean manner sometimes surfacing as witchcraft, or as the Neo-Platonism which openly emerged during the Renaissance. Christianity also adopted many pagan practices, as Islam inevitably incorporated beliefs and practices of preceding religions.
While Muslims ruled over both Christian and Jewish dhimmis, Christian rulers only had to contend with the existence of Jews as a rival religion. The experience of dhimmis under Islam paralleled that of Jews under Christianity. Christian and Jewish dhimmis were sometimes persecuted and sometimes protected or even utilized by Muslim rulers. Similarly, Jews in Christian Europe were often persecuted but also often protected or even favored by tolerant or practical secular or religious leaders. Often their talents and international connections were utilized by Christian monarchs as they were by Muslim sultans. There were times that Christian reformers, e.g. Cromwell and the Puritans, showed friendship to Jews as a way of making theological points. Also in some instances, as in Byzantium and Venice, itinerant Muslims were granted some measure of tolerance. Similarly in Reconquista Spain up until the 16th century, various Muslim populations lived under the protection of Christian rulers in a sort of reverse dhimmitude. On the whole, therefore, the experience of other religious groups living under both Christianity and Islam were similar.
Although established Christian and Muslim societies share many common features, with respect to proselytism and conversion, the historical experience of the two religions were quite different. The initial spread of Christianity was peaceful, whereas that of Islam was the result of violence. Walter Brandmüller outlines the different ways that Christianity and Islam began:
For the Christians, conversion was something that must be voluntary and individual, obtained primarily through preaching and example, and this is how Christianity did in fact spread during its first centuries. Obviously, we must immediately note that this conception of early Christianity underwent changes in later eras, connected with the diffusion of a spirit of religious intolerance in Western culture. John Paul II himself acknowledged that in this regard the Church’s children ‘must return with a spirit of repentance [for] the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of truth.’ (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 35).
But on the part of the Muslims, from the earliest times, even while Mohammed was still alive, conversion was imposed through the use of force. The expansion and extension of Islam’s sphere of influence came through war with the tribes that did not accept conversion peacefully, and this went hand in hand with submission to Islamic political authority. Islamism, unlike Christianity, expressed a comprehensive religious, cultural, social, and political strategy. While Christianity spread during its first three centuries in spite of persecution and martyrdom, and in many ways in opposition to Roman domination, introducing a clear separation between the spiritual and political spheres, Islam was imposed through the power of political domination.[34]
Moreover, neither religion had a monopoly on either toleration or persecution of religious minorities. The continued existence of Jews in Europe could not have occurred if there were no philosemitic or at least pragmatic members of the ruling elite. Practical Christian rulers also tolerated Muslims in reconquered territory as was the case in Sicily and early Reconquista Spain and later in Russia and the Balkans. And, of course, mercantile minded Christian rulers as in Constantinople and Venice mandated freedom of worship for Muslim merchants.
Muslims were quite as capable of persecuting Jews as were Christians. The rabbi Isaac b. Samuel (cf. above) wrote the following:
For this reason our rabbis of blessed memory have said, ‘Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that of Ishmael.’ They plead for mercy before the Holy One, Blessed be He, saying, ‘Master of the World, either let us live beneath Thy shadow or else beneath that of the children of Edom’ (a Talmudic verse)[35]
Thus, Muslims were not always more tolerant of Jews than were Christians nor was the flow of Jewish refugees as between Christian and Muslim lands always one way, as the conventional wisdom would have us believe. Indeed, under the fanatical Almohads the position of both Christians and Jews in Spain became quite untenable.
The succeeding Almohads (1130-1232) wrought tremendous destruction upon both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastation—massacre, captivity, and forced conversion—was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim “inquisitors” (i.e., antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed the children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators. …
These brutal, discriminatory practices resulted in a massive emigration of Jews and Jewish converts to Islam to the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, from both Muslim-controlled Al-Andalus and the North African Maghreb. During the first half of the 13th century, Jaime I of Aragon, in particular, advanced policies of protecting Jews within his territories, granting safe-conduct and letters of naturalization to all Jews who made their way by land or sea, and established themselves in the states of Majorca, Catalonia, and Valencia. Jewish converts to Islam were permitted to return to Judaism if they wished so. Within 250 years, however, the descendants of these Jews who had escaped the Muslim Almohad depredations would be subjected to the fanatical rage of the Spanish Inquisition, and some of them would find refuge under the suzerainty of the Muslim Ottoman empire, especially in the region of Salonika, at the end of the 15th century. To complete this morose cycle of persecution, the vacuum filled by Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition was created when their co-religionist counterparts—the Jews living under Byzantine (and Venetian) rule in Thrace—were subjected to massacre, pillage, enslavement, and deportation by these same Ottoman conquerors, during their jihad campaigns of the early to mid-15th century.[36]
Both religions zealously persecuted heretics and apostates. However, centuries before the inquisition was institutionalized, Muslim rulers were executing and often burning heretics. In 742 Dja’d Ibn Dirham was put to death for believing in free will and that the Koran was created. Ibn al-Muqaffa, well known for his rational and unorthodox religious views, was burned in 760. Furthermore under the caliph “Mansur’s successors, al-Mahdi (775-785 C.E.) and al-Hadi (785-786 C.E.) repression, persecution, and executions were applied with even greater ferocity. Special magistrates were appointed to pursue the heretics, and the whole inquisition was masterminded by the Grand Inquisitor, called the Sahih al-Zanadiqa. It was enough for a simple rumor to be aired for the Inquisitor to take immediate steps to incriminate the suspect.”[37] It is noteworthy that the Catholic country where the Inquisition was practiced with the most zeal and greatest effect was Spain, which had been under Muslim rule for centuries. Even the family of the prophet, the Hashimites, was not safe from this early inquisition. “Several members of the family were executed or died in prison.”[38] The scholar Al-Sarakhsi was executed in 899 after “he incurred the wrath of the caliph” for his public discussion of heretical doctrines.[39]
As demonstrated by the Crusades, Christianity was also able to mount religious war. Warfare, in general, among Christians was frequent. However, neither “Christianity nor any other religion has ever had a doctrine like jihad. … Ibn Khaldun acknowledges this … ‘The other religious groups … did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty to them, save only for purposes of defense.’ … Islam is ‘under obligation to gain power over other nations.’”[40] It is an undeniable fact that “the Crusaders who pillaged Jerusalem were transgressing the bounds of their religion in all sorts of ways.” However, the Muslim warriors who “murdered, raped, pillaged and enslaved”, were following Muhammad’s example.[41]
Modern progressives are profuse in their condemnation of the treatment of women in Christian societies. However, the condition of women in Muslim ruled lands is incomparably worse. Bernard Lewis makes the following succinct, but apt, cultural comparison:
The women of Christian Europe were very far from achieving any kind of equality, but they were not subject to polygamy or legal concubinage. Even the limited measure of freedom and participation that they enjoyed never failed to shock a succession of Muslim visitors – all of them male – to Western lands. Western civilization was richer for women’s presence; Muslim civilization poorer by their absence.[42]
The institution of Muslim slavery was discussed at length.[43] The difference between Christian and Muslim attitudes toward this institution is also noted by Lewis:
Although it was known in medieval Europe, slavery was of minor importance there, far less significant in the social and economic life of Europe than in pre-Columbian America or in Muslim and non-Muslim Africa. … The inventiveness and cupidity of Europe, learning from and drawing on the plantation systems and the slave trade of Africa and the Islamic world, found this answer. Colonial slavery and the seaborne slave trade became a major factor in the crisscrossing interchanges between the four shores of the Atlantic – western Europe, western Africa, North America, and South America.
But it was Europe, too, that first decided to set the slaves free: at home, then in the colonies, and finally in all the world. Western technology made slavery unnecessary; Western ideas made it intolerable. There have been many slaveries, but there has been only one abolition, which eventually shattered even the rooted and ramified slave systems of the Old World.[44]
Moreover, it is of interest to note that the Spanish and Portuguese, the Christians most influenced by Islamic culture, were the first to apply large scale colonial slavery and whose traders introduced it to other western colonial powers.
In the next chapter, the origins of these prevailing myths regarding Islam are considered. In addition, the reasons for the abrupt revival of the aggressive Islamic meme, after several centuries of somnolence are examined.
[1] Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization.
[2] Chapter 8: The Slave Society.
[3] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, pp. 278-81.
[4] Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude.
[5] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 155.
[6] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine.
[7] Ibid
[8] Alyssa A. Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All, FrontPageMagazine.com, April 11, 2005.
[9] Ibid
[10] Bernard Lewis, in the Encyclopedia of Islam, 1968 quoted in Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[11] Spencer, Onward Muslim Soldiers, p. 186.
[12] Bat Yeor, Eurabia, USA, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005, p. 191.
[13] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 59.
[14] Ibid, p. 61.
[15] Ibid, p. 75.
[16] Ibid, pp. 76-77.
[17] Ibid, p. 79.
[18] Ibid, p. 82.
[19] Ibid, p. 75.
[20] Naipaul, Among the Believers, p. 142.
[21] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, pp. 26-7.
[22] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 140.
[23] Christopher Dawson, The Making of Europe, Cleveland, Meridian, 1956, p. 171.
[24] Quoted in Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 390.
[25] Walter Kircher, Western Civilization to 1500, New York, Harper Perennial, 1991, p. 157.
[26] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 451.
[27] Quoted in Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 364.
[28] Ibid
[29] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 132.
[30] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 102.
[31] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 139.
[32] Ibid, p. 137.
[33] Ibid, p. 140.
[34] Walter Brandmüller, Christianity and Islam in History, Frontpagemag.com, December 27, 2005.
[35] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine.
[36] Andrew Bostom, Jihad in Europe: Past as Prologue?, FrontPageMagazine.com, February 20, 2006.
[37] Warraq, Leaving Islam, p. 44.
[38] Ibid
[39] Ibid, p. 49.
[40] Spencer, Onward Muslim Soldiers, p. 174.
[41] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 137.
[42] Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, p. 24.
[43] Chapter 8: The Slave Society.
[44] Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, p. 72.
The Myth of Muslim Tolerance
There are a number of excellent works questioning the prevailing myth of a tolerant Islam, so that the issue will be only briefly dealt with here. Ibn Warraq, for one, gives many examples of persecution of religious dissenters and heretics throughout the Islamic world.[3] Bat Yeor also discusses in depth the intolerant treatment of minority religions at all times in Muslim history.[4] Robert Spencer also examines the question of Muslim tolerance and concludes with the following:
Did Muslims treat Christians and Jews better than Christians treated Muslims and Jews? …both sides have a lot to answer for. But this much is clear: the conventional wisdom that religious minorities had a better quality of life in the House of Islam than in Christendom is at least open to question.[5]
The favorable treatment meted out to Jews in Islamic society is one example of tolerance that is often cited. This is, however, contradicted by the documented persecution undergone by such prominent figures as Maimonides. Bostom describes the experience of a less renowned Jewish philosopher:
Moreover, we cannot ignore the testimony of Isaac b. Samuel of Acre (1270-1350 C.E.), one of the most outstanding Kabbalists of his time. Conversant with Islamic theology and often using Arabic in his exegesis, Isaac nevertheless believed that it was preferable to live under the yoke of Christendom rather than that of Islamdom.[6]
Thus, Isaac b. Samuel fled from the Holy Land to Italy and ultimately to Christian Spain. There he wrote as follows:
The word ziz in Arabic is derogatory, for when they wish to say in that tongue, ‘Strike him upon the head,’ ‘Give him a blow upon the neck,’ they say zazzhu (‘hit him’)…Indeed, on account of our sins they strike upon the head the children of Israel who dwell in their lands and they thus extort money from them by force. For they say in their tongue, mal al-yahudi mubah, ‘it is lawful to take money of the Jews.’ For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew.[7]
All religious minorities were subject to humiliation and extortion. Far worse were the sporadic pogroms and massacres:
The myth of Islamic tolerance is defied by the massacre and extermination of the Zoroastrians in Iran; the million Armenians in Turkey; the Buddhists and Hindus in India; the more than six thousand Jews in Fez, Morocco, in 1033; hundreds of Jews killed in Cordoba between 1010 and 1013; the entire Jewish community of Granada in 1066; the Jews in Marrakesh in 1232; the Jews of Tetuan, Morocco in 1790; the Jews of Baghdad in 1828; and so on ad nauseum.[8]
Even into modern times, Western ambassadors frequently remarked on the persecution suffered by religious minorities in the Ottoman Empire. In the 18th century “Turkey was no interfaith utopia.” In 1758, the British ambassador observed the Sultan executing Christians and Jews for violating the Dhimmi dress code. Twelve years later “another ambassador reported that Greeks, Armenians and Jews seen outside their homes after dark were hanged. In 1785, a third noted that Muslim mobs had dismantled churches after Christians had secretly repaired them.”[9] Bernard Lewis notes that the so-called “golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause” of Jewish sympathy for Islamic societies. Furthermore, the “myth was invented in 19th century Europe as a reproach to Christians—and taken up by Muslims in our own time as a reproach to Jews.”[10]
Furthermore, the primary reason for whatever Muslim tolerance may have existed is that it was realized by pragmatic Islamic leaders, following the initial conquests that persecuting the large conquered population would have had a number of unfortunate results. Any attempt by Muslims to forcibly convert or drive out all infidels would have led to mass rebellion and a stiffened military resistance on the part of the yet unconquered population. It would have also destroyed the economic base of the conquered territories which provided Muslim warriors with the resources for further expansion. And, in fact, once enough of the population became Muslim, the possibility of rebellion receded and the economic dependence on non-Muslims lessened. Under these circumstances, Muslim authorities became less accommodating and put increased pressure on the remaining non-Muslims to emigrate or convert.
In addition, the nature of Islamic expansion was quite unlike the history of Christian expansion in Europe. In their rapid conquests Muslims found many different sects of nonbelievers in the conquered population. Muslim leaders found it advantageous to play off one set of infidels against another. They also found it advantageous to cultivate alliances with persecuted sects against the governing authorities in the still unconquered dar-al-harb. This would, naturally, give the illusion that Muslims were more tolerant, when in fact those infidel groups presently favored were simply pawns in a greater political game.
Fabled Andalusia was supposedly the very model of Islamic tolerance. The prevailing view is that “Andalusia under Islamic rule was a proto-multiculturalist paradigm” which is “all the more appealing to modern post-Christian Westerners because this paradise of tolerance was not constructed under the auspices of Christianity, thereby seeming to vindicate their long insistence that all cultures are equal and that some – particularly non-Christian ones – are more equal than others.”[11] This myth of “Andalusia” is summed up by Yeor.
Andalusia represents the paradisiacal life of Jews and Christians living under the shari’a in the Moorish caliphate of the early Middle Ages. … Jews and Christians were grateful to be protected and to learn from the achievements of Muslim scholars … This vision propagates and imposes the theory that only in Islamic lands did science, art and civilization flourish while Christendom was still immersed in barbarism and illiteracy.[12]
Both Spencer and Yeor effectively demolish the myth of the “tolerant Andalusia.” Stillman, a specialist in the history of the Jews under Islam provides an additional perspective. In iconic Spain there was a “depth of anti-Jewish sentiment” as seen in “the rabble-rousing poetry of Abu Ishaq of Elvira.” Following the assassination of the Jewish vizier Joseph ha-Nagid “a mob went on a rampage in the Jewish quarter of Granada, slaughtering its inhabitants and razing the quarter to the ground.”[13] The Almohad rulers ended whatever small degree of toleration of the Jews still remained in Spain. By 1172 the Almohads “tolerated neither Jews nor Christians within their empire. There were mass conversions of Jews to Islam. Many fled over the frontier into Christian Spain, while others made their way to the more tolerant Muslim East. … Jewish life in … Islamic Spain ceased to exist altogether.”[14] Thus, Jews were expelled from Muslim Spain centuries before their more famous expulsion at the hands of the Christians.
Muslim Spain, therefore, was no paragon of religious toleration for the “peoples of the book”. However, the circumstances for Christians and Jews in the Maghreb were far worse. In fact Christianity in the land of St. Augustine ultimately became extinct under Muslim rule. Thus in “contemporary North Africa, however, there were no native Christians to absorb some of the Muslim hostility against nonbelievers.” For that reason, the persecution of the Jews of North Africa paralleled that occurring anywhere in medieval Christian Europe.[15] In Almohad North Africa the “urban Jewish population from Tunisia to Morocco had outwardly professed Islam during the height of the Almohad terror. Those communities that resisted were put to the sword.” The Almohad regime also dealt the final blow to North African Christianity. “The Jews became the dhimmis par excellence in North African society, for no native Christian population seems to have survived the Almohad persecution.”[16]
Muslim persecution of the Jews in the Maghreb, however, eased somewhat under the Merinids of 14th century Morocco who found the Jews to be useful allies and go-betweens with respect to the rising Portuguese power. The Merinids “employed Jews in their service because of the latter’s extreme vulnerability and, hence, according to Islamic political psychology, dependability.”[17] Christians in conflict with Muslims, of course, were equally capable of playing that game. In 16th century Morocco “most of the Jewish newcomers seem to have preferred living in the Portuguese-held coastal towns rather than the Islamic interior. They joined in the defense of these enclaves against Muslim attacks.” The practical-minded Portuguese were “notably tolerant toward the Jews in their African possessions” long after Jews were expelled from Portugal proper in 1497.[18]
Egypt differed from the rest of North Africa, in that a strong Christian minority survived; the consequence was a slight mitigation in the situation of the Jews. “In the Mamluk Empire, the Jews were not the only infidels. The Copts more frequently and more immediately took the brunt of anti-dhimmi persecution.” [19] Muslim rulers often found it useful to play one group of dhimmis off against another.
The Real Imperialism
A fantasy almost unique to modern western intellectuals of a “progressive” outlook is that Muslims are natural allies in the struggle against “imperialism”. This conceit ignores the fact that it is Islamic imperialism that was by far the most successful version. “It turns out that the Arabs were the most successful imperialists of all time, since to be conquered by them (and then to be like them) is still, in the minds of the faithful, to be saved.”[20]
Muslim imperialism was much more durable and robust than any existing in the ancient world. The ancient Persians conquered a large territory but were content to leave the native cultures in place or even, as in the case of the return of the Jews from exile, to preserve them. The Macedonian Greek conquests were as rapid and extensive as that of the early Arabs. However, their effect on the conquered population was superficial and their empire ephemeral. The Romans also conquered a vast territory. But in contrast to the Arab conquests, the Roman Empire took three centuries to build. Moreover, while Roman culture penetrated all of Western Europe, modern Europeans, even those speaking Latin languages do not regard themselves as ‘Roman’. On the other hand, Muslim descendants of Egyptians, Babylonians and Berbers consider themselves Arab:
Arabic penetrated the conquered peoples to such an extent that at the beginning of the eighth century it had evolved into the official imperial language. … by adopting the Arabic language, the conquered peoples – Iranians, Syrians, Greeks, Copts, Berbers, Jews and Christians – placed their abundant talents and learning at the service of their conquerors …[21]
The ultimate adoption of the Arabic language and Islamic religion by indigenous populations was accompanied by the neglect and erasure of ancient traditions. A similar process followed the later Turkish conquests. Even where native languages were preserved, the adoption of Islam by the conquered led to the extirpation of much of the pre-existing culture at the hands of the Muslim imperialists.
Five centuries later the Mongols conquered an empire as large as that of the Arabs in a similar short amount of time. However, their imperialism was a failure in comparison. The Mongols wrought much devastation, but the civilization of the vanquished survived; there was no mass adoption of Mongol language or culture.
The modern empires of Western Europe encircled the globe. However, with the exception of certain sparsely populated lands, mostly in North America and Australia, there was no irrevocable displacement of aboriginal cultures. Even in the superficially Christianized lands conquered by the Spaniards the native Aztec, Mayan and Incan outlooks remain strong and have even undergone something of a modern revival. European imperialism was, paradoxically, beneficial to certain native cultures which were under attack by Islam. The British and French put an end to the African slave trade. British rule in India protected many Hindus from further Muslim depredations. And, far from attempting to replace Hindu culture, many Britons became ardent students and popularizers of Indian culture and the Hindu classics.
Furthermore, according to the historian Paul Fregosi, even the recent colonial experience of Islamic lands under European rule was much milder than that of Christian lands conquered by Muslims. When he compares “the Muslim occupation of Christian lands in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa to European colonialism, he finds that the latter was much briefer and less culturally pervasive.”[22]
“Civilized” Arabs and “Barbarian” Europeans
The apologists for Islam point to the high level of civilization in the Muslim world when compared to that of early medieval Europe. They would be rather more convincing in their assertion, if the Muslim raids and conquests themselves were not a major cause of decline in the civilization of an already beleaguered West.
The effect of the Arab conquests in the Mediterranean and their continued raids and incursions on Western Europe was severe. When the Roman Empire fell into the hands of the barbarians, there was a period of upheaval. Within a short time, however, civilization in the West began to recover. Then for a few centuries beginning with the seventh, new waves of barbarians descended on Europe. From the north seafaring Vikings began their destructive incursions and at the same time Europe was attacked from the east by nomadic horsemen from the steppes. In both of these cases the invaders were eventually contained and then absorbed into the Christian civilization of Europe. However there was a third wave of invaders from the east and south. These were, of course, the Arabs, whose religion of Islam, was a much more formidable threat and was to constitute a continuing disruptive force to western European civilization and to Byzantium. The almost permanent war, the disruption of trade and the sundering of the Mediterranean were a constant drain on the economy of Europe and retarded the full recovery of western civilization right up to the time of the Renaissance. The noted authority on medieval Europe, Christopher Dawson notes the following regarding the dark ages in Europe.
But the worst had not yet come. In the seventh century the Arabs conquered Byzantine Africa, the most civilized province of the West … Early in the eighth century the tide of Moslem invasion swept over Christian Spain and threatened Gaul itself. Christendom had become an island isolated between the Moslem south and the Barbarian north.[23]
The Muslim invasion was, thus, a primary factor in the slow recovery of civilization in Europe after the shock resulting from the fall of Rome. Other distinguished historians also note the importance of continual warfare brought by Muslims in causing the decline of civilization in Europe. According to Henri Pirenne the Arab advance “changed the face of the world.” The rapid Arab advance destroyed the classical civilization of Europe and “put an end to the Mediterranean commonwealth in which it had gathered its strength.”[24] Historian Walter Kircher asserts that “with the conquests of the Moslems and their domination of Mediterranean trade routes, large-scale commercial activity, and with it the coining and use of money almost ceased in Western Europe.”[25]
The Arab assault upon the west continued into later centuries. The navy of the Aghlabids of North Africa (800-909), “harried the coasts of Italy, France, Corsica and Sardinia.” They conquered Sicily in 902. “Besides Sicily, Malta and Sardinia were seized mainly by pirates whose raids extended as far as Rome.”[26] Moreover, as we have seen, there were continuing raids by Muslim corsairs seeking booty and slaves on the coasts and shipping of Western Europe. Despite this harassment, civilization in the West recovered and eventually far surpassed that of Islam.
Therefore, the temporary superiority of Muslim civilization in the seventh through the tenth century is irrelevant. Islam came into possession of the most advanced and civilized lands in the world. And, as was shown in Chapter 11, after a brief period of high culture, Muslims squandered this advantage. At the same time, Muslim predation helped to cause and then to prolong the European dark ages.
Western Europe was not the only region whose civilization was retarded by Islamic aggression. Byzantium was also under constant pressure from Muslims. This may, at least partly, explain the long stagnation of Byzantine civilization. This Byzantine stagnation continued until the later middle ages. The late Byzantine renaissance that then occurred, ironically, may have been due to a deep recognition on the part of cultured Byzantines that their end at the hands of the implacable Muslims was inevitable leading them to devote resources to one final amazing effort. Without the constant Islamic attacks one can only speculate what heights the Byzantine genius might have attained. As it turned out the last Byzantine renaissance was effectively displaced to safer soil in Italy and the West. The unfortunate fate of the ancient Hindu civilization is still another example of the destructive nature of the Islamic meme with respect to adjacent cultures.
In general, any non-Muslim population subject either to razzias or to direct Muslim rule suffered from cultural atrophy. Any intellectual resources arising in such cultures were appropriated, through conversion, slavery or dhimmitude, to serve the interests of the Islamic state. In Ottoman ruled Europe there was an absence of any great achievement at the very time that the neighboring European nations were experiencing rapid advancement. The historian A. H. Lybyer notes the disincentive to achievement experienced by populations subjected to Muslim warfare or conquest:
The Ottoman system took children forever from parents, discouraged family cares among its members through their most active years, allowed them no certain hold upon property, gave them no definite promise that their sons and daughters would profit by their success and sacrifice, raised and lowered them with no regard for ancestry or previous distinction, taught them a strange law, ethics and religion, and ever kept them conscious of a sword raised above their heads which might put an end at any moment to a brilliant career.[27]
That the Balkans, once the site of the last brilliant Byzantine renaissance, “did not produce great art and science under the Ottomans is no mystery.”[28]
The Myth of the Crusades
Few things are more certain to put Westerners on the defensive than the mention of the Crusades. “Virtually all Westerners have learned to apologize for the Crusades. Less noted is the fact that these campaigns have an Islamic counterpart for which no one is apologizing and of which few are even aware.”[29]
The notion of hordes of violent barbaric Europeans descending on civilized Muslims who had, since time immemorial, lived in peace on their ancestral lands is a fabrication. In the late eleventh century, as we have seen, western Christendom finally imbibed the ideology of holy war from its longtime Muslim adversaries – the speech of Pope Urban at Clermont in 1095 initiating both the crusades and the gathering speed of the Spanish reconquista. Christians were certainly no slackers when it came to warfare and violence, but the condemnation of such actions in the New Testament presented Christian religious leaders with an almost insurmountable obstacle in finding scriptural sanction for unleashing war on distant lands. Trifkovic describes the dilemma:
What the Crusaders did to the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem in 1099 was as bad as what the Muslims had done to countless Christian cities before and after that time, but the carnage was less pardonable because, unlike the Muslims’, it was not justifiable by Christian religious tenets. From the distance of almost a millennium, however, it is time to see the phenomenon as Christendom’s reaction to Muslim aggression. It was a reconquest of something taken by force from its rightful owners …[30]
This alleged Western aggression was, therefore, simply a retaking of lost Christian territory for if “Westerners had no right to invade these putative Muslim places, then Muslims had no right to conquer them to begin with.”[31] It is, of course, true that
…these sins of the Muslims do not excuse the sins that the Christians committed against them in return. One massacre doesn’t cancel out another. But clearly what we now call ‘human rights abuses’ have not come only from the Western side, and the recent defensiveness of the West before the House of Islam and the world on this issue is hardly justified by the facts.[32]
Furthermore, the Crusades were ineffective in ending Muslim aggression against Christian lands. Long after the Crusades “had become a distant memory in the West, the warriors of jihad continued to press into the heart of Europe.” The fall of the Crusader stronghold of Acre in 1291 put an end to crusading activity in the Muslim east. “Through the next four centuries, however, Muslim armies solidified their hold on southeastern Europe and kept advancing whenever and wherever it was possible to do so.”[33]
Islam and Christianity
It is one of the delights of modern historians to unfavorably compare Christianity with Islam. Both religions, of course, are the offspring of Judaism. However, their early histories could not be more different. Christianity came to power after centuries as a marginal and often persecuted sect. Islam, after less than a decade of persecution, became a distinct religion at the same time that it assumed political power. Islam from its beginning was always more of a political than a religious movement.
The difference between the two faiths is exemplified by the activities of pious reformers. Pietistic and monastic movements arising within the framework of Christian society were invariably pacific and quietist, seeking a return to the basic New Testament principles. Similar movements within Islam, however, were usually warlike, aggressive and militant in conformity with basic Koranic doctrine. One need only compare and contrast the activities of St. Francis and his followers with those of the communal military sects of North Africa founded by pious Muslim scholars. Warlike, angry and violent Christians, while marking most of Christian history acted in direct contradiction to the teachings of the founder of the religion. Similar warlike and violent Muslims behaved according to the precepts of their Prophet.
Furthermore, the experience of the newly triumphant Christianity following the conversion of the emperor Constantine contrasts with that of conquering Islam. The early Muslim rulers had to deal with the existence of populations following other higher religions. Christians, on the other hand, were only confronted by an outmoded paganism and a small population of Jews. Muslim rulers, as a practical matter, had to tolerate large non-Muslim populations for many years. Similarly, as a practical matter, Christian rulers had to tolerate paganism for several centuries after assuming political power. Long afterward, paganism continued to exist in a subterranean manner sometimes surfacing as witchcraft, or as the Neo-Platonism which openly emerged during the Renaissance. Christianity also adopted many pagan practices, as Islam inevitably incorporated beliefs and practices of preceding religions.
While Muslims ruled over both Christian and Jewish dhimmis, Christian rulers only had to contend with the existence of Jews as a rival religion. The experience of dhimmis under Islam paralleled that of Jews under Christianity. Christian and Jewish dhimmis were sometimes persecuted and sometimes protected or even utilized by Muslim rulers. Similarly, Jews in Christian Europe were often persecuted but also often protected or even favored by tolerant or practical secular or religious leaders. Often their talents and international connections were utilized by Christian monarchs as they were by Muslim sultans. There were times that Christian reformers, e.g. Cromwell and the Puritans, showed friendship to Jews as a way of making theological points. Also in some instances, as in Byzantium and Venice, itinerant Muslims were granted some measure of tolerance. Similarly in Reconquista Spain up until the 16th century, various Muslim populations lived under the protection of Christian rulers in a sort of reverse dhimmitude. On the whole, therefore, the experience of other religious groups living under both Christianity and Islam were similar.
Although established Christian and Muslim societies share many common features, with respect to proselytism and conversion, the historical experience of the two religions were quite different. The initial spread of Christianity was peaceful, whereas that of Islam was the result of violence. Walter Brandmüller outlines the different ways that Christianity and Islam began:
For the Christians, conversion was something that must be voluntary and individual, obtained primarily through preaching and example, and this is how Christianity did in fact spread during its first centuries. Obviously, we must immediately note that this conception of early Christianity underwent changes in later eras, connected with the diffusion of a spirit of religious intolerance in Western culture. John Paul II himself acknowledged that in this regard the Church’s children ‘must return with a spirit of repentance [for] the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of truth.’ (Tertio Millennio Adveniente, 35).
But on the part of the Muslims, from the earliest times, even while Mohammed was still alive, conversion was imposed through the use of force. The expansion and extension of Islam’s sphere of influence came through war with the tribes that did not accept conversion peacefully, and this went hand in hand with submission to Islamic political authority. Islamism, unlike Christianity, expressed a comprehensive religious, cultural, social, and political strategy. While Christianity spread during its first three centuries in spite of persecution and martyrdom, and in many ways in opposition to Roman domination, introducing a clear separation between the spiritual and political spheres, Islam was imposed through the power of political domination.[34]
Moreover, neither religion had a monopoly on either toleration or persecution of religious minorities. The continued existence of Jews in Europe could not have occurred if there were no philosemitic or at least pragmatic members of the ruling elite. Practical Christian rulers also tolerated Muslims in reconquered territory as was the case in Sicily and early Reconquista Spain and later in Russia and the Balkans. And, of course, mercantile minded Christian rulers as in Constantinople and Venice mandated freedom of worship for Muslim merchants.
Muslims were quite as capable of persecuting Jews as were Christians. The rabbi Isaac b. Samuel (cf. above) wrote the following:
For this reason our rabbis of blessed memory have said, ‘Rather beneath the yoke of Edom [Christendom] than that of Ishmael.’ They plead for mercy before the Holy One, Blessed be He, saying, ‘Master of the World, either let us live beneath Thy shadow or else beneath that of the children of Edom’ (a Talmudic verse)[35]
Thus, Muslims were not always more tolerant of Jews than were Christians nor was the flow of Jewish refugees as between Christian and Muslim lands always one way, as the conventional wisdom would have us believe. Indeed, under the fanatical Almohads the position of both Christians and Jews in Spain became quite untenable.
The succeeding Almohads (1130-1232) wrought tremendous destruction upon both the Jewish and Christian populations in Spain and North Africa. This devastation—massacre, captivity, and forced conversion—was described by the Jewish chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, and the poet Abraham Ibn Ezra. Suspicious of the sincerity of the Jewish converts to Islam, Muslim “inquisitors” (i.e., antedating their Christian Spanish counterparts by three centuries) removed the children from such families, placing them in the care of Muslim educators. …
These brutal, discriminatory practices resulted in a massive emigration of Jews and Jewish converts to Islam to the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, from both Muslim-controlled Al-Andalus and the North African Maghreb. During the first half of the 13th century, Jaime I of Aragon, in particular, advanced policies of protecting Jews within his territories, granting safe-conduct and letters of naturalization to all Jews who made their way by land or sea, and established themselves in the states of Majorca, Catalonia, and Valencia. Jewish converts to Islam were permitted to return to Judaism if they wished so. Within 250 years, however, the descendants of these Jews who had escaped the Muslim Almohad depredations would be subjected to the fanatical rage of the Spanish Inquisition, and some of them would find refuge under the suzerainty of the Muslim Ottoman empire, especially in the region of Salonika, at the end of the 15th century. To complete this morose cycle of persecution, the vacuum filled by Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition was created when their co-religionist counterparts—the Jews living under Byzantine (and Venetian) rule in Thrace—were subjected to massacre, pillage, enslavement, and deportation by these same Ottoman conquerors, during their jihad campaigns of the early to mid-15th century.[36]
Both religions zealously persecuted heretics and apostates. However, centuries before the inquisition was institutionalized, Muslim rulers were executing and often burning heretics. In 742 Dja’d Ibn Dirham was put to death for believing in free will and that the Koran was created. Ibn al-Muqaffa, well known for his rational and unorthodox religious views, was burned in 760. Furthermore under the caliph “Mansur’s successors, al-Mahdi (775-785 C.E.) and al-Hadi (785-786 C.E.) repression, persecution, and executions were applied with even greater ferocity. Special magistrates were appointed to pursue the heretics, and the whole inquisition was masterminded by the Grand Inquisitor, called the Sahih al-Zanadiqa. It was enough for a simple rumor to be aired for the Inquisitor to take immediate steps to incriminate the suspect.”[37] It is noteworthy that the Catholic country where the Inquisition was practiced with the most zeal and greatest effect was Spain, which had been under Muslim rule for centuries. Even the family of the prophet, the Hashimites, was not safe from this early inquisition. “Several members of the family were executed or died in prison.”[38] The scholar Al-Sarakhsi was executed in 899 after “he incurred the wrath of the caliph” for his public discussion of heretical doctrines.[39]
As demonstrated by the Crusades, Christianity was also able to mount religious war. Warfare, in general, among Christians was frequent. However, neither “Christianity nor any other religion has ever had a doctrine like jihad. … Ibn Khaldun acknowledges this … ‘The other religious groups … did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty to them, save only for purposes of defense.’ … Islam is ‘under obligation to gain power over other nations.’”[40] It is an undeniable fact that “the Crusaders who pillaged Jerusalem were transgressing the bounds of their religion in all sorts of ways.” However, the Muslim warriors who “murdered, raped, pillaged and enslaved”, were following Muhammad’s example.[41]
Modern progressives are profuse in their condemnation of the treatment of women in Christian societies. However, the condition of women in Muslim ruled lands is incomparably worse. Bernard Lewis makes the following succinct, but apt, cultural comparison:
The women of Christian Europe were very far from achieving any kind of equality, but they were not subject to polygamy or legal concubinage. Even the limited measure of freedom and participation that they enjoyed never failed to shock a succession of Muslim visitors – all of them male – to Western lands. Western civilization was richer for women’s presence; Muslim civilization poorer by their absence.[42]
The institution of Muslim slavery was discussed at length.[43] The difference between Christian and Muslim attitudes toward this institution is also noted by Lewis:
Although it was known in medieval Europe, slavery was of minor importance there, far less significant in the social and economic life of Europe than in pre-Columbian America or in Muslim and non-Muslim Africa. … The inventiveness and cupidity of Europe, learning from and drawing on the plantation systems and the slave trade of Africa and the Islamic world, found this answer. Colonial slavery and the seaborne slave trade became a major factor in the crisscrossing interchanges between the four shores of the Atlantic – western Europe, western Africa, North America, and South America.
But it was Europe, too, that first decided to set the slaves free: at home, then in the colonies, and finally in all the world. Western technology made slavery unnecessary; Western ideas made it intolerable. There have been many slaveries, but there has been only one abolition, which eventually shattered even the rooted and ramified slave systems of the Old World.[44]
Moreover, it is of interest to note that the Spanish and Portuguese, the Christians most influenced by Islamic culture, were the first to apply large scale colonial slavery and whose traders introduced it to other western colonial powers.
In the next chapter, the origins of these prevailing myths regarding Islam are considered. In addition, the reasons for the abrupt revival of the aggressive Islamic meme, after several centuries of somnolence are examined.
[1] Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization.
[2] Chapter 8: The Slave Society.
[3] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, pp. 278-81.
[4] Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude.
[5] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 155.
[6] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine.
[7] Ibid
[8] Alyssa A. Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All, FrontPageMagazine.com, April 11, 2005.
[9] Ibid
[10] Bernard Lewis, in the Encyclopedia of Islam, 1968 quoted in Lappen, And Dhimmitude For All.
[11] Spencer, Onward Muslim Soldiers, p. 186.
[12] Bat Yeor, Eurabia, USA, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005, p. 191.
[13] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 59.
[14] Ibid, p. 61.
[15] Ibid, p. 75.
[16] Ibid, pp. 76-77.
[17] Ibid, p. 79.
[18] Ibid, p. 82.
[19] Ibid, p. 75.
[20] Naipaul, Among the Believers, p. 142.
[21] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, pp. 26-7.
[22] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 140.
[23] Christopher Dawson, The Making of Europe, Cleveland, Meridian, 1956, p. 171.
[24] Quoted in Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 390.
[25] Walter Kircher, Western Civilization to 1500, New York, Harper Perennial, 1991, p. 157.
[26] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 451.
[27] Quoted in Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 364.
[28] Ibid
[29] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 132.
[30] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 102.
[31] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 139.
[32] Ibid, p. 137.
[33] Ibid, p. 140.
[34] Walter Brandmüller, Christianity and Islam in History, Frontpagemag.com, December 27, 2005.
[35] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine.
[36] Andrew Bostom, Jihad in Europe: Past as Prologue?, FrontPageMagazine.com, February 20, 2006.
[37] Warraq, Leaving Islam, p. 44.
[38] Ibid
[39] Ibid, p. 49.
[40] Spencer, Onward Muslim Soldiers, p. 174.
[41] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 137.
[42] Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, p. 24.
[43] Chapter 8: The Slave Society.
[44] Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, p. 72.
Chapter 12: The Islamic Reformation
Conventional wisdom holds that the problems brought by Islam to its own adherents and to non-Muslims alike, can only be mitigated through a reformation similar to that which occurred in Christianity beginning in the 16th century. However, the fundamentalist “back to scripture” radical Wahhabi sect is the closest modern Islamic analogue to the Protestant Reformation. And that is certainly not what is meant when the call for reformation is discussed. This chapter contains an outline of those movements in Islamic history which, in one sense or another, have attempted to reform Islam.
Kharijites
These separatists, responsible for the assassination of the caliph Ali, viewed “with hostile eyes the political developments occurring behind the scenes among the Moslem leaders” and “concluded that the only sure way of getting the right caliph was to let the whole Moslem world” participate in his election. “It was natural that these fierce puritans” should be slaughtered by the Umayyads.[1] Thus, Kharijitism represented a reaction by Arab grass roots warriors against an increasingly remote ruling elite. They embodied the early spirit of tribal “republicanism” against increasing autocracy. Despite the religious fanaticism of this early Wahhabi like group, they in some sense represent the last significant political activity of the free Bedouin spirit.
Mu’tazilites
In the first centuries following the Arab conquests, increasing numbers of non-Arab converts embraced Islam bringing with them their Hellenistic outlook. Thus, there were spawned within early Islam several movements influenced by pre-Islamic philosophy and theology. The Mu’tazilites “took it for granted that the theological doctrines … were subject to rational testing. Their reading of translations of works of Greek philosophy made it seem to them a foregone conclusion that no doctrine could be true which did not survive such a test.”[2] However, despite a period of support from certain more enlightened rulers, Mu’tazilism could not withstand the inevitable Islamic reaction. Although “the Mu’tazilites did manage to teach the orthodox theologians the value of using a rational method of exposition, the weight of opinion turned against them and the 10th century saw their school come to an end.”[3]
The Qadarites were another briefly flourishing movement influenced by pre-Islamic Greek ideas. They “represent a reaction against the harsh predestinarianism of Islam … and betray Christian Greek influence.”[4]
Ismailites
Following the political dispute leading to Shi’ism, a number of extremist Shi’ite sects emerged which presented a challenge to Islamic orthodoxy. These radical Shi’ite mystical movements posed a more enduring attack on orthodox Islam than their rationalist opposites were able to do. These groups often embodied an anti-Arab reaction and a reassertion of Mesopotamian and Persian national aspirations.
Ismail, the first son of the sixth Imam, accused of drunkenness was barred from the succession. His followers, the Ismailites or Seveners remained loyal. They believe that Ismail never died but would return as the Mahdi. “In their fervid belief, Ismail was the very incarnation of God himself, and would soon return.” Interpreting the Koran allegorically, they “arrived at an esoteric, hidden doctrine, which was so heretical that they spread it to others only through secret missionary activity.”[5]
The Qarmatians were a radical Ismailite offshoot that in the 9th century established a state on the western shore of the Persian Gulf in defiance of the Abbasid caliphate. “Before they finally fell, the Qarmatians set a record of a century of revolutionary violence and bloodshed – all at bottom a kind of vengeance of the Persians upon the Arabs … a vengeance disguised … as religious obedience to the will of a divine Imam descended from Muhammad.”[6]
Another violent offshoot of the Ismailites was the famous “Assassins” who specialized in political terrorism directed against both Muslims and Crusaders. They now survive as a rather more peaceful sect, half of whose members “have acknowledged as their rightful heads a fabulous line of Khans” including the famous Agha Khan.[7]
Sufis
Of all the existing Muslim sects, none evokes as much hopeful admiration on the part of non-Muslims as the contemplative and relatively tolerant Sufis. They softened the hard edges of legalistic Islam; many Sufi masters and disciples attempted to humanize Islam’s remote and implacable deity. Sufism’s vaunted tolerance may be due, in part, to its being a continuance in Islamic guise of older mystical traditions. The modern Sufi popularizer, Idries Shah, contends that Sufism, in a variety of forms long predated the Muslim conquest. “The breakup of the old order in the Near East, according to Sufi tradition, reunited the ‘beads of mercury’ which were the esoteric schools operating in the Egyptian, Persian and Byzantine empires into the ‘stream of quicksilver’ which was intrinsic, evolutionary Sufism.”[8] Thus, the Sufi “innovation” was a result of the same cross cultural fertilization that resulted in a temporary renaissance of science and technology in the early Muslim empires.
Sufism embodied a number of non-Islamic influences. Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Buddhism, and Hinduism provided Sufism with its philosophical foundations. Christian monasticism gave the Sufis a model for organization. Theosophical and pantheistic thought was incorporated into Sufi teachings.[9]
Christian teachings influenced Sufism to such an extent that many early Sufis were regarded by orthodox Muslims as crypto-Christians. Besides an almost unseemly affection for the prophet Jesus, the veneration of saints characterized many Sufi orders “especially … in places where Christians … embraced Islam more or less superficially.” Such saint worship was in direct conflict with Koranic doctrine.[10] Moreover, the “Sufi eschatological traditions with their Antichrist suggest that the fraternities found many recruits among those newly converted to Islam from the older forms of monotheism.”[11] The first great Sufi mystic was Ma’ruf al-Karkhi who before embracing Islam was either a Christian or from the closely related Sabian sect; the Sabians or Mandaeans claimed John the Baptist as their prophet. Another famous early Sufi mystic was “dhu-al-Nun (Man of the fish) al-Misri (the Egyptian), of Nubian parents who died … in 860.”[12] At that time since Nubia was still a Christian land it is likely that al-Misri was also a convert.
The influence of Zoroastrianism, like Christianity, manifested itself in the saint-worship condemned by the orthodox.[13] One famous early Persian Sufi was al-Bistani (ca. 875) whose grandfather was a Zoroastrian priest.[14]
Sufi mystical and meditative practices show great similarity to those practiced by Hindu yogis. Buddhist teachings were another school of thought originating in India that was adopted by certain Sufi schools. Al-Bistani, in addition to Zoroastrian influences, brought certain Buddhist doctrines into Sufi thought. “The Aghani has preserved for us at least one portrayal of an unmistakable Buddhistic view of life.” The Persian al-Bistani, grandson of a Magian, “probably introduced the doctrine of fana, self-annihilation ... a reflection of Buddhist Nirvana."[15] In addition, the school established by an early Sufi of Central Asia, ibn Adham, had “features reminiscent of the asceticism of Buddhist monks.”[16]
Since Buddhism was an alien and non-monotheistic religion, those Sufis studying Buddhist ideas were more likely to run afoul of the ulema than were those who stayed with more familiar Christian or Zoroastrian ideas. Noss observes that “a few mystics were not theists. They substituted the realm of truth for Allah; and when the Buddhist influences penetrated Iraq, the Sufis there moved perilously close to atheism … These and others among the more extreme Sufis were recognized by the Orthodox Moslems as heretics.”[17]
At a later time, the Sufism practiced in Anatolia combined Christian teachings with more primitive strains. In Turkey “besides inheriting the old religions of Asia Minor the dervish orders … have preserved the traces of shamanism which the early Turks brought with them from Central Asia.”[18] Sufism in Anatolia also evinced the very opposite tendency. Greek philosophical notions existed alongside the more primal Central Asian shamanism. The famous Bektashi “was a missionary, semiheretical order with Neoplatonic tendencies toward pantheism and mysticism” and “used wine frankly as a means to spiritual intoxication.” Their heretical doctrine that was probably most shocking to the orthodox was the unprecedented equality they gave to women.[19]
Syncretism was the inevitable result of the many methods and beliefs that Sufism adopted from other religions and philosophies. This was particularly evident in newly conquered Anatolia. The account of the funeral of the great Sufi saint Rumi “indicates quite clearly that a powerful process of religious syncretism was in dynamic motion by which Christians and Jews were accommodating themselves to this particular Muslim religious fraternity. The very syncretism and mutual accommodation of dervishes and Christians would eventually result in the absorption of a great many Christians through conversion.”[20]
In general, Sufism is strongest in those areas where ancient pre-Islamic cultural traits are best preserved. The Sufis continue “to uphold the validity of personal religious response, intuition, the practices of their religious orders, and reverence for sainted leaders. This is true especially in the non-Arab areas and particularly among the Berbers, Persians and Turks.” However, Sufism has always been and remains to this day under relentless attack from the champions of orthodoxy. “But even the Sufis have been chastened by Wahhabi puritanism and orthodoxy; in fact they have abandoned many a practice to which they were once devoted.”[21]
A long history of Sufi martyrs attests to the pressure brought to bear by the forces of orthodoxy. The Persian al-Hallaj was executed in 922 for having declared ‘I am the truth’. “His crucifixion made him the great Sufi martyr.”[22] A later Sufi martyr, al-Suhrawardi, was executed in 1191 at the behest of the normally tolerant Saladin. Apparently, the forbearance of that great Muslim ruler could not extend to someone whose “impassioned prayer” with Neo-Platonic and Christian elements, was regarded by the orthodox as apostasy.[23] A later powerful ruler, Mehmed the Conqueror was unable to save his Persian dervish friend who was burned at the stake by a fanatical crowd instigated by the Mufti. Shortly afterward, the Persian savant’s heretical followers were also slaughtered.[24]
One of the most renowned of the Sufi masters was more fortunate, but still barely escaped with his life. Ibn El-Arabi, (ca 1200) despite his outward conformity to Islamic norms was “accused of heresy and worse in Egypt. He narrowly escaped an attempt by a fanatic to murder him.”[25]
The history of Sufi persecution demolishes one other myth which passes as conventional wisdom; that being the contention that the official execution of heretics originated under Christianity. As Darlington observes heretics “were crucified by sultans before they were burnt by popes; the first Sufi to die was Al-Hallaj in Baghdad in A.D. 922; and 500 years later there was Badr el-Din” who in 1420 was executed in Konya.[26]
Many Sufi savants and sects eventually accommodated themselves to the implacable forces of orthodox Islam, thereby deflecting persecution. There arose, therefore, what may be termed the other face of Sufism; Sufism has its dark sides. Some Sufi masters with their followers reconciled their mystical doctrines with those of orthodox Islam. Other Sufi sects went beyond simply conforming to theological orthodoxy. Sufis have been generally pacific in contrast to the violent mystical Shi’ite sects. However, certain Sufi sects fully embraced and even exceeded the bellicosity characteristic of Islam in general.
Al-Ghazali was the principal figure who began the redirection of the mystical energies diverted to Sufism into the service of orthodox Islamic scholarship. The masterpiece of this one-time Sufi mystic was Ihya Ulam al-Din. “The mysticism of this work vitalized the law, its orthodoxy leavened the doctrine of Islam.” Fundamentally he “employed Greek dialectic to found a pragmatic system and made philosophy palatable to the orthodox school of theologians.” Furthermore, in Hitti’s view, the “scholastic shell constructed by al-Ash’ari and al-Ghazzali has held Islam to the present day” while western Christendom succeeded in breaking through its own version of scholasticism.[27] However, as shown in a previous chapter[28] the inability of Islam to advance appears to be more fundamental than that of being enclosed in a scholastic shell. As Spencer puts it:
Al-Ghazali’s masterwork heralded the beginning of the decline of Islamic philosophy … Although al-Ghazali himself probably would have disapproved … The Incoherence of the Philosophers helped reinforce an anti-intellectual strain of thought that was present in Islam from the beginning.[29]
Nevertheless, despite his mystical leanings and his ending the period of creative Islamic philosophy, al-Ghazali became one of the most acclaimed authorities in theology and law. “So successful was this heretic in becoming the virtual father of the Moslem church, that even the most orthodox still call him by the highest academic title known, the Authority of Islam.”[30]
Furthermore, al-Ghazali’s attitude toward holy war illustrates that not all Sufis were pacific contemplatives:
Indeed, even al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the famous theologian, philosopher, and paragon of mystical Sufism, (who, as noted by the great scholar of Islam W.M. Watt, has been ‘…acclaimed in both the East and West as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad…”), wrote the following about jihad:
‘…one must go on jihad (i.e., warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year...one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them...If a person of the Ahl al-Kitab [People of The Book – Jews and Christians, typically] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked…One may cut down their trees...One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide...they may steal as much food as they need...’[31]
It was among the Turks that the idea of the warrior Sufi attained its highest development. The ghazis of Anatolia, following the collapse of the Seljuk state were reinforced by “‘holymen,’ sheikhs and dervishes of an unorthodox Moslem persuasion … and who rekindled Turkish enthusiasm for war against the infidel.”[32] A.E. Vacalopoulos also notes the importance of Sufis both in participating in jihad and in inciting Seljuk and Ottoman ghazis to embark on further conquests:
...fanatical dervishes and other devout Muslim leaders…constantly toiled for the dissemination of Islam. They had done so from the very beginning of the Ottoman state and had played an important part in the consolidation and extension of Islam. These dervishes were particularly active in the uninhabited frontier regions of the east. Here they settled down with their families, attracted other settlers, and thus became the virtual founders of whole new villages, whose inhabitants invariably exhibited the same qualities of deep religious fervor. From places such as these, the dervishes or their agents would emerge to take part in new military enterprises for the extension of the Islamic state. In return, the state granted them land and privileges under a generous prescription which required only that the land be cultivated and communications secured.[33]
Under the Ottomans one of the most important dervish orders, the Bektashi, was particularly “noted for its connection with the Janissaries.”[34] However, despite their co-option by orthodox Islam, in some Sufis, even among the militant Bektashis, unconventional views regarding jihad could still be found. One dervish in 1690 went among Ottoman troops on the eve of battle calling them fools for believing in the heavenly rewards promised to jihadists. The story “reflects a widespread suspicion of the dervish orders” and the questioning on the part of the orthodox clergy of Sufism’s commitment to basic Islamic doctrine.[35]
Heretical Muslim Sects
Some sects have embraced such eccentric theological views that they are regarded by many of the more conventional Muslims as, not merely heretics, but apostates. These sects often provide an expression of the submerged national feelings of peoples conquered by Muslim invaders. Shi’ism has been the source of many of these heretical and apostate movements. Some of these extremist Shi’ite sects are Takhtajis, Qizil-bash and Bektashis of Turkey and the Ali-deifiers of Persia and Turkestan. These sects along with Nusayris, Assassins, Druses and Qarmatians are considered beyond the pale of mainstream Islam even by more conventional Shiites.[36] Some of these Shi’ite sects, like the Sufis, have adopted many doctrines from Christianity. In fact, at least one of these mystical sects, the Bektashi is sometimes regarded as a Sufi fraternity instead of as an independent Shi’ite sect (see above). Other sects add syncretistic elements from Buddhism, Hinduism and shamanism.
The Nusayris or Alawites, “followers of ibn-Nusayr present a remarkable example of a group passing directly from paganism to Isma’ilism.” They “consider Ali the incarnation of the deity”, possess a liturgy and celebrate a number of Christian festivals particularly that of Christmas and Easter.[37]
Another extreme Shi’ite manifestation is represented by the Druses. These began as an “Ismailite sect which originated from the adulation given to the mad Fatimid caliph, Hakim al Mansur, … by two of his ministers, who declared him to be a return in the flesh of the hidden Imam, and in fact an incarnation of God himself.”[38]
The Ahmadiya, another movement with strong syncretistic elements, regarded as distinctly heretical by the orthodox, was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad who at the end of the 19th century proclaimed himself both Messiah and avatar of the Hindu god Krishna. “But he remained a Moslem in the sense that he said he was not a prophet in himself but only in and through Muhammad.” Ahmad rejected the concept of holy war and his followers are both pacifists and “ardent missionaries.” The Lahore splinter branch has returned to the Moslem fold by rejecting Ahmad’s extreme claims, although they still revere him as a “genuine renewer of religion.”[39]
Syncretism
Several religions were founded with certain marked Islamic influences, but are to such a large extent combined with other religious doctrines that they have transcended Islam altogether. Sikhism is a syncretistic religion combining elements of Hinduism and Islam. Sikhism had its start with certain reformers of Hinduism who appeared in India and whose “recurrent efforts of reform were the indirect effects of the severe and militant monotheism of the Moslems.” One such was Kabir (1440-1518) who “caught from the Moslems their hatred of idols.” Adopting monotheism “he declared that the love of God was sufficient to free anyone of any class or race from the Law of Karma.”[40] Kabir was followed by Nanak (1469 – 1538) whose doctrine was “an attempt to combine the insights of two widely differing faiths.” He “called his God the True Name, because he meant to avoid any delimiting name … like Allah, Rama, Shiva or Ganesha.” He also removed the Hindu proscription against meat eating. [41] Moreover, although Nanak’s sect began as both contemplative and pacific, “yet it was the singular fate of the religion … to change with the years into a vigorously activist political faith.” Under the impetus of Islamic persecution there developed “in full strength a military ardor, a self dedication to the arbitrament of the sword.”[42]
Bahaism, a syncretistic offshoot of Ismailism became, like Sikhism, a separate faith. The Persian Mirza Ali Muhammad, calling himself Bab-ud-Din proclaimed that his mission “was to prepare the way for a greater than himself who should come after him and complete the work of reform and righteousness which he had begun.” Bab-ud-Din was executed as a heretic in 1850. The next leader, who took the name of Baha‘u’Llah, was imprisoned by the Turks. The Bahais “call upon all religions to unite, for every religion contains some truth.”[43]
Prospects for Reform
There are, thus, severe impediments to Islamic reform. Following the example of the early Protestants by returning to scriptural roots leads to the rise of fundamentalist sects, such as Wahhabism which are even more fanatically committed to warlike and repressive doctrines. On the other hand, attempts at doctrinal reform seem destined to failure. The movements established by such reformers have either been forced to accommodate themselves to Sunni or Shi’ite orthodoxy, or else have been formally ejected from the main body of Islam as apostasies.
Some of the most troublesome aspects of Islam are deeply embedded within the Islamic meme and, therefore, are very difficult to reform. These include the violence inherent in the doctrine of jihad, the sexual ideology depending on the oppression of women and the intolerance inherent in the doctrine of Muslim supremacy and destiny. There is also the attitude toward labor, the stifling of initiative and innovation and the intellectual atrophy resulting from fatalism, parasitism and slavery. All of these are the very factors responsible for Islam’s historical success and growth. Consequently, they have become crystallized in Islamic culture and are, thus, extraordinarily difficult to uproot or to drastically modify.
Perhaps what is needed as a prerequisite of real reform is a raising of consciousness among the masses in the territories conquered by Arabs and their Turkish or Mogul successors which would lead them to embrace with pride the buried and suppressed achievements of their pre-Islamic ancestors. It may be necessary for Muslims to recognize and mourn for the oppression, enslavement, rape and indignities that one fraction of their ancestors imposed on the greater part, often the overwhelmingly greater part, of their ancestral lineage. Secularism and the political disestablishment of Islam would necessarily follow. As Warraq puts it:
…this process of historical education … would lead to a much needed broadening of the intellectual life, a deeper tolerance for other ways of life, a simple expansion of historical knowledge that has remained so limited and narrow. Greater knowledge of the pre-Islamic past can only lead to the lessening of fanaticism. … The ideas of change and continuity will also have to become a part of the Muslim’s consciousness if Muslim societies are to move forward – this will only occur with the recognition of the pre-Islamic past…[44]
Thus far there has been only one Muslim nation, Turkey, where such a program has achieved any real success. Even there, the failure of the Kemalist elite to fully acknowledge their own history and to disestablish Islam in the village culture of Anatolia, may be leading to an Islamic revival. Other secularizing movements, usually established by dictators, have recognized the regressive nature of orthodox Islam on economic and social development. However, the modern personality cults of despots, even fairly benevolent ones like Ataturk, and the superficialities of certain secular elements within the governing and intellectual elite have not, so far, been sufficient for major and lasting reform.
The promoters of change have often recognized that a return to pre-Islamic roots is an essential condition for removing the debilitating effects of Islam. Ataturk and less palatable secularizers like Saddam or Nasser have attempted to undermine Islam by returning to an older pre-Islamic substrate as the basis of a new nationalism. So Ataturk emphasized the Hittite ancestry of the Anatolian Turks; of course he conveniently ignored the more important Greek ancestry because the Greeks were regarded as the current enemy. The Shah held a massive party to celebrate the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great. Nasser decorated Cairo with replicas of colossal Egyptian statuary. Saddam fancied himself the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar who will, literally, rebuild Babylon. These attempts to uproot and minimize the effects of Islam have, for a number of reasons, seen rather mixed results.
One of the problems with such attempts at reform is that the reformers have always held back from fully acknowledging their history and have been unwilling to confront Islamic attitudes that are firmly rooted in rural villages or urban souks. Thus, the Turks have embraced and mythologized the quite remote history of the Hittites, even claiming against all evidence that the latter were an offshoot of the Central Asian Turkish “sun” people. At the same time, they reject their much more recent Greco-Roman, Byzantine and Armenian heritage. They even refuse to acknowledge their recent history of genocide against Armenian Christians, or their ethnic cleansing of the numerous Greek speaking population of Anatolia which occurred shortly thereafter.
The failures of other secularizing despots have been even greater. Saddam might have seen himself as leading the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar and Nasser may have thought of himself as carrying on the ancient tradition of the Pharaohs, but neither of them were willing to discard all of the old Arab and Muslim resentments against the western powers and against Christians and Jews. The late Shah may have viewed himself as successor to the ancient Persian emperors, but he was unwilling to accommodate himself to more liberal secular forces and, thereby, helped to bring his radical Shi’ite enemies to power.
Erasure of the pre-Islamic past occurred in almost all conquered lands. It is noteworthy that Muslim peoples, with the partial exception of the Persians, have a singular lack of curiosity regarding the pre-Islamic traditions of their ancestors. This distinguishes Islam from the other supra-national proselytizing religions, Christianity and Buddhism. While the path was sometimes indirect, the last two religions ultimately came to terms with the pre-existing civilizations in the lands in which they triumphed. Islam, however,
…adamantly required conquered people to scorn their own past and love their Islamic Arab conquerors by striving to imitate them. More importantly, the Koran is written in Arabic and Islam's sacred places, Mecca and Medina, are in Arabia. It was clear that the conquered and newly converted had to accept the primacy of the Arabic language, Arabic values and above all Arabia itself.[45]
Thus, it may be said that the “vanquished were ‘culturally disemboweled,’ condemned to the enforced psychosis of renouncing their old and highly developed identities for a crude and violent desert blueprint that regulated the minutest details of their lives.”[46]
Iran was the one great exception to this almost complete erasure of the past. As we have seen, the Persians at a very early time endeavored mightily to preserve their national consciousness and even succeeded to a small degree in using Islam as a means of reasserting their culture. Thus, the efforts made by the modern dynasty of Shahs are consistent with the history of Iran under Islam. Bassi describes these efforts as follows:
There have been times when Iran has dared to remember its past. In 1926, Reza Khan was crowned the first Pahlavi King of Iran and as part of his reforms he made it clear that he regarded Islam as a foreign imposed faith that should not determine Iran’s identity. As part of his attack on Islam, Reza Khan connected his new Iran with the ancient Zoroastrian past. The Farsi language was purged of Arabic words, architecture began to take inspiration from ancient Achaemenian styles and schoolbooks were re-written to enhance an Iranian identity. Cities were renamed with Iranian names, parents were encouraged to give Iranian, and not Arabic, names to their children. In 1935 Persia itself was replaced with Iran, as it was known in the days of Cyrus the Great. These reforms were of course reversed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.[47]
However, these “attempts to restore Persian national pride met only bewilderment and anger. … Rather than evoke pride, this past greatness inspired contempt, as the creation of infidel predecessors.”[48] There is one notable exception to the trashing of ancient Iranian history by fanatical Shi’ites. Even the latter still maintain and cultivate the ancient anger and resentment against the West that goes back to Alexander’s invasion and the wars with the Romans.
Iranian Shi’ites reversal of the reforms of the Pahlavi dynasty has been matched by a more general fundamentalist reaction against modern secularism; a reaction often directed against the pre-Islamic artifacts cherished by secular nationalists. One example is that of the Pakistani militants who want to use the archaeological site of Mohenjo-Daro, not as a celebration of the achievements of their ancestors, but as a “teaching opportunity” for the truth of Islam triumphing over barbaric idolaters. Even the secular Turks are not exempt from a desire to uproot pre-Islamic culture; in Cyprus “Muslims attempted to use the fourth century monastery of San Makar as a hotel.” In Libya Tripoli’s Catholic cathedral was recently converted into a mosque.[49] In Afghanistan there was, of course the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas.
However, for most of Muslim history it was neglect and indifference that played the most significant role in the erasure of the past. The actions of the Ottoman authorities are illustrative. These include the use of the Parthenon as an ammunition storage depot. There was also the permission granted by various Turkish authorities to Europeans to dismantle and export archaeological treasures in exchange for relatively small payments or bribes.
Thus, a true hope for Islamic reforms must wait for actions such as the following throughout most of the Muslim world. One such action might be for a future Iranian regime to resume the secular reforms begun by the Shahs, albeit under more democratic auspices. Another would be for Turkey to acknowledge its Greek and Armenian cultural and genetic heritage. Only by accepting the Hellenic heritage common to western civilization can the Turkish elite truly reach their long desired goal of becoming modern Europeans. The Turks would also do well to acknowledge their past history of jihad, persecution and genocide, and integrate these into their modern national consciousness. Still another such action would be for Egyptians to truly embrace their great past and reject the parochial calls of fanatical Muslim scholars. At the same time they would do well to recognize the Coptic minority as the purest embodiment of that past and cease the persecution to which that group is still subjected. Similarly, true reform can only be achieved in Iraq when all persecution of the Assyrian and Chaldean Christians ceases. Also, reform in Pakistan can only come about with the recognition of their past as part of Indian civilization and an end to discrimination against Hindus and other minorities.
Another requirement for reform would be acknowledging the truth of Islamic history on the part of both Muslim and Western scholars. The next chapter examines some of the myths about that history which are widely believed and disseminated.
[1] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 747.
[2] Ibid, p. 748.
[3] Ibid, p. 750.
[4] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 245.
[5] Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 765-66.
[6] Ibid, p. 766.
[7] Ibid, p. 767.
[8] Idries Shah, The Sufis, Garden City, NY, Anchor Books, 1971, p. 35.
[9] Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 753-54.
[10] Ibid, p. 769.
[11] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 433.
[12] Ibid, pp. 434-35.
[13] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 769.
[14] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 435.
[15] Ibid
[16] Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, p. 228.
[17] Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 754-55.
[18] Hitti, History of the Arabs, pp. 437-38.
[19] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 282.
[20] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 391.
[21] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 772.
[22] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 435.
[23] Ibid, p. 439.
[24] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 90.
[25] Shah, The Sufis, p. 163.
[26] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 346.
[27] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 432.
[28] Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization.
[29] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, pp. 122-23.
[30] Shah, The Sufis, p.167.
[31] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 7, 2004.
[32] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 19.
[33] Quoted in Andrew G. Bostom, Eurabia’s Morass Elicits Mythical “Solutions”, American Thinker, November, 24, 2005.
[34] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 432.
[35] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 238.
[36] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 449.
[37] Ibid, pp. 448-49.
[38] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 770.
[39] Ibid, pp. 775-76.
[40] Ibid, p. 311.
[41] Ibid, p. 315.
[42] Ibid, p. 317.
[43] Ibid, p. 776.
[44] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 207.
[45] Paolo Bassi, The Iranian Identity Crisis: Islam v. Iranian Identity.
[46] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 90.
[47] Bassi, The Iranian Identity Crisis: Islam v. Iranian Identity.
[48] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, pp. 125-26.
[49] Ibid, p. 173.
Kharijites
These separatists, responsible for the assassination of the caliph Ali, viewed “with hostile eyes the political developments occurring behind the scenes among the Moslem leaders” and “concluded that the only sure way of getting the right caliph was to let the whole Moslem world” participate in his election. “It was natural that these fierce puritans” should be slaughtered by the Umayyads.[1] Thus, Kharijitism represented a reaction by Arab grass roots warriors against an increasingly remote ruling elite. They embodied the early spirit of tribal “republicanism” against increasing autocracy. Despite the religious fanaticism of this early Wahhabi like group, they in some sense represent the last significant political activity of the free Bedouin spirit.
Mu’tazilites
In the first centuries following the Arab conquests, increasing numbers of non-Arab converts embraced Islam bringing with them their Hellenistic outlook. Thus, there were spawned within early Islam several movements influenced by pre-Islamic philosophy and theology. The Mu’tazilites “took it for granted that the theological doctrines … were subject to rational testing. Their reading of translations of works of Greek philosophy made it seem to them a foregone conclusion that no doctrine could be true which did not survive such a test.”[2] However, despite a period of support from certain more enlightened rulers, Mu’tazilism could not withstand the inevitable Islamic reaction. Although “the Mu’tazilites did manage to teach the orthodox theologians the value of using a rational method of exposition, the weight of opinion turned against them and the 10th century saw their school come to an end.”[3]
The Qadarites were another briefly flourishing movement influenced by pre-Islamic Greek ideas. They “represent a reaction against the harsh predestinarianism of Islam … and betray Christian Greek influence.”[4]
Ismailites
Following the political dispute leading to Shi’ism, a number of extremist Shi’ite sects emerged which presented a challenge to Islamic orthodoxy. These radical Shi’ite mystical movements posed a more enduring attack on orthodox Islam than their rationalist opposites were able to do. These groups often embodied an anti-Arab reaction and a reassertion of Mesopotamian and Persian national aspirations.
Ismail, the first son of the sixth Imam, accused of drunkenness was barred from the succession. His followers, the Ismailites or Seveners remained loyal. They believe that Ismail never died but would return as the Mahdi. “In their fervid belief, Ismail was the very incarnation of God himself, and would soon return.” Interpreting the Koran allegorically, they “arrived at an esoteric, hidden doctrine, which was so heretical that they spread it to others only through secret missionary activity.”[5]
The Qarmatians were a radical Ismailite offshoot that in the 9th century established a state on the western shore of the Persian Gulf in defiance of the Abbasid caliphate. “Before they finally fell, the Qarmatians set a record of a century of revolutionary violence and bloodshed – all at bottom a kind of vengeance of the Persians upon the Arabs … a vengeance disguised … as religious obedience to the will of a divine Imam descended from Muhammad.”[6]
Another violent offshoot of the Ismailites was the famous “Assassins” who specialized in political terrorism directed against both Muslims and Crusaders. They now survive as a rather more peaceful sect, half of whose members “have acknowledged as their rightful heads a fabulous line of Khans” including the famous Agha Khan.[7]
Sufis
Of all the existing Muslim sects, none evokes as much hopeful admiration on the part of non-Muslims as the contemplative and relatively tolerant Sufis. They softened the hard edges of legalistic Islam; many Sufi masters and disciples attempted to humanize Islam’s remote and implacable deity. Sufism’s vaunted tolerance may be due, in part, to its being a continuance in Islamic guise of older mystical traditions. The modern Sufi popularizer, Idries Shah, contends that Sufism, in a variety of forms long predated the Muslim conquest. “The breakup of the old order in the Near East, according to Sufi tradition, reunited the ‘beads of mercury’ which were the esoteric schools operating in the Egyptian, Persian and Byzantine empires into the ‘stream of quicksilver’ which was intrinsic, evolutionary Sufism.”[8] Thus, the Sufi “innovation” was a result of the same cross cultural fertilization that resulted in a temporary renaissance of science and technology in the early Muslim empires.
Sufism embodied a number of non-Islamic influences. Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Buddhism, and Hinduism provided Sufism with its philosophical foundations. Christian monasticism gave the Sufis a model for organization. Theosophical and pantheistic thought was incorporated into Sufi teachings.[9]
Christian teachings influenced Sufism to such an extent that many early Sufis were regarded by orthodox Muslims as crypto-Christians. Besides an almost unseemly affection for the prophet Jesus, the veneration of saints characterized many Sufi orders “especially … in places where Christians … embraced Islam more or less superficially.” Such saint worship was in direct conflict with Koranic doctrine.[10] Moreover, the “Sufi eschatological traditions with their Antichrist suggest that the fraternities found many recruits among those newly converted to Islam from the older forms of monotheism.”[11] The first great Sufi mystic was Ma’ruf al-Karkhi who before embracing Islam was either a Christian or from the closely related Sabian sect; the Sabians or Mandaeans claimed John the Baptist as their prophet. Another famous early Sufi mystic was “dhu-al-Nun (Man of the fish) al-Misri (the Egyptian), of Nubian parents who died … in 860.”[12] At that time since Nubia was still a Christian land it is likely that al-Misri was also a convert.
The influence of Zoroastrianism, like Christianity, manifested itself in the saint-worship condemned by the orthodox.[13] One famous early Persian Sufi was al-Bistani (ca. 875) whose grandfather was a Zoroastrian priest.[14]
Sufi mystical and meditative practices show great similarity to those practiced by Hindu yogis. Buddhist teachings were another school of thought originating in India that was adopted by certain Sufi schools. Al-Bistani, in addition to Zoroastrian influences, brought certain Buddhist doctrines into Sufi thought. “The Aghani has preserved for us at least one portrayal of an unmistakable Buddhistic view of life.” The Persian al-Bistani, grandson of a Magian, “probably introduced the doctrine of fana, self-annihilation ... a reflection of Buddhist Nirvana."[15] In addition, the school established by an early Sufi of Central Asia, ibn Adham, had “features reminiscent of the asceticism of Buddhist monks.”[16]
Since Buddhism was an alien and non-monotheistic religion, those Sufis studying Buddhist ideas were more likely to run afoul of the ulema than were those who stayed with more familiar Christian or Zoroastrian ideas. Noss observes that “a few mystics were not theists. They substituted the realm of truth for Allah; and when the Buddhist influences penetrated Iraq, the Sufis there moved perilously close to atheism … These and others among the more extreme Sufis were recognized by the Orthodox Moslems as heretics.”[17]
At a later time, the Sufism practiced in Anatolia combined Christian teachings with more primitive strains. In Turkey “besides inheriting the old religions of Asia Minor the dervish orders … have preserved the traces of shamanism which the early Turks brought with them from Central Asia.”[18] Sufism in Anatolia also evinced the very opposite tendency. Greek philosophical notions existed alongside the more primal Central Asian shamanism. The famous Bektashi “was a missionary, semiheretical order with Neoplatonic tendencies toward pantheism and mysticism” and “used wine frankly as a means to spiritual intoxication.” Their heretical doctrine that was probably most shocking to the orthodox was the unprecedented equality they gave to women.[19]
Syncretism was the inevitable result of the many methods and beliefs that Sufism adopted from other religions and philosophies. This was particularly evident in newly conquered Anatolia. The account of the funeral of the great Sufi saint Rumi “indicates quite clearly that a powerful process of religious syncretism was in dynamic motion by which Christians and Jews were accommodating themselves to this particular Muslim religious fraternity. The very syncretism and mutual accommodation of dervishes and Christians would eventually result in the absorption of a great many Christians through conversion.”[20]
In general, Sufism is strongest in those areas where ancient pre-Islamic cultural traits are best preserved. The Sufis continue “to uphold the validity of personal religious response, intuition, the practices of their religious orders, and reverence for sainted leaders. This is true especially in the non-Arab areas and particularly among the Berbers, Persians and Turks.” However, Sufism has always been and remains to this day under relentless attack from the champions of orthodoxy. “But even the Sufis have been chastened by Wahhabi puritanism and orthodoxy; in fact they have abandoned many a practice to which they were once devoted.”[21]
A long history of Sufi martyrs attests to the pressure brought to bear by the forces of orthodoxy. The Persian al-Hallaj was executed in 922 for having declared ‘I am the truth’. “His crucifixion made him the great Sufi martyr.”[22] A later Sufi martyr, al-Suhrawardi, was executed in 1191 at the behest of the normally tolerant Saladin. Apparently, the forbearance of that great Muslim ruler could not extend to someone whose “impassioned prayer” with Neo-Platonic and Christian elements, was regarded by the orthodox as apostasy.[23] A later powerful ruler, Mehmed the Conqueror was unable to save his Persian dervish friend who was burned at the stake by a fanatical crowd instigated by the Mufti. Shortly afterward, the Persian savant’s heretical followers were also slaughtered.[24]
One of the most renowned of the Sufi masters was more fortunate, but still barely escaped with his life. Ibn El-Arabi, (ca 1200) despite his outward conformity to Islamic norms was “accused of heresy and worse in Egypt. He narrowly escaped an attempt by a fanatic to murder him.”[25]
The history of Sufi persecution demolishes one other myth which passes as conventional wisdom; that being the contention that the official execution of heretics originated under Christianity. As Darlington observes heretics “were crucified by sultans before they were burnt by popes; the first Sufi to die was Al-Hallaj in Baghdad in A.D. 922; and 500 years later there was Badr el-Din” who in 1420 was executed in Konya.[26]
Many Sufi savants and sects eventually accommodated themselves to the implacable forces of orthodox Islam, thereby deflecting persecution. There arose, therefore, what may be termed the other face of Sufism; Sufism has its dark sides. Some Sufi masters with their followers reconciled their mystical doctrines with those of orthodox Islam. Other Sufi sects went beyond simply conforming to theological orthodoxy. Sufis have been generally pacific in contrast to the violent mystical Shi’ite sects. However, certain Sufi sects fully embraced and even exceeded the bellicosity characteristic of Islam in general.
Al-Ghazali was the principal figure who began the redirection of the mystical energies diverted to Sufism into the service of orthodox Islamic scholarship. The masterpiece of this one-time Sufi mystic was Ihya Ulam al-Din. “The mysticism of this work vitalized the law, its orthodoxy leavened the doctrine of Islam.” Fundamentally he “employed Greek dialectic to found a pragmatic system and made philosophy palatable to the orthodox school of theologians.” Furthermore, in Hitti’s view, the “scholastic shell constructed by al-Ash’ari and al-Ghazzali has held Islam to the present day” while western Christendom succeeded in breaking through its own version of scholasticism.[27] However, as shown in a previous chapter[28] the inability of Islam to advance appears to be more fundamental than that of being enclosed in a scholastic shell. As Spencer puts it:
Al-Ghazali’s masterwork heralded the beginning of the decline of Islamic philosophy … Although al-Ghazali himself probably would have disapproved … The Incoherence of the Philosophers helped reinforce an anti-intellectual strain of thought that was present in Islam from the beginning.[29]
Nevertheless, despite his mystical leanings and his ending the period of creative Islamic philosophy, al-Ghazali became one of the most acclaimed authorities in theology and law. “So successful was this heretic in becoming the virtual father of the Moslem church, that even the most orthodox still call him by the highest academic title known, the Authority of Islam.”[30]
Furthermore, al-Ghazali’s attitude toward holy war illustrates that not all Sufis were pacific contemplatives:
Indeed, even al-Ghazali (d. 1111), the famous theologian, philosopher, and paragon of mystical Sufism, (who, as noted by the great scholar of Islam W.M. Watt, has been ‘…acclaimed in both the East and West as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad…”), wrote the following about jihad:
‘…one must go on jihad (i.e., warlike razzias or raids) at least once a year...one may use a catapult against them [non-Muslims] when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire to them and/or drown them...If a person of the Ahl al-Kitab [People of The Book – Jews and Christians, typically] is enslaved, his marriage is [automatically] revoked…One may cut down their trees...One must destroy their useless books. Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide...they may steal as much food as they need...’[31]
It was among the Turks that the idea of the warrior Sufi attained its highest development. The ghazis of Anatolia, following the collapse of the Seljuk state were reinforced by “‘holymen,’ sheikhs and dervishes of an unorthodox Moslem persuasion … and who rekindled Turkish enthusiasm for war against the infidel.”[32] A.E. Vacalopoulos also notes the importance of Sufis both in participating in jihad and in inciting Seljuk and Ottoman ghazis to embark on further conquests:
...fanatical dervishes and other devout Muslim leaders…constantly toiled for the dissemination of Islam. They had done so from the very beginning of the Ottoman state and had played an important part in the consolidation and extension of Islam. These dervishes were particularly active in the uninhabited frontier regions of the east. Here they settled down with their families, attracted other settlers, and thus became the virtual founders of whole new villages, whose inhabitants invariably exhibited the same qualities of deep religious fervor. From places such as these, the dervishes or their agents would emerge to take part in new military enterprises for the extension of the Islamic state. In return, the state granted them land and privileges under a generous prescription which required only that the land be cultivated and communications secured.[33]
Under the Ottomans one of the most important dervish orders, the Bektashi, was particularly “noted for its connection with the Janissaries.”[34] However, despite their co-option by orthodox Islam, in some Sufis, even among the militant Bektashis, unconventional views regarding jihad could still be found. One dervish in 1690 went among Ottoman troops on the eve of battle calling them fools for believing in the heavenly rewards promised to jihadists. The story “reflects a widespread suspicion of the dervish orders” and the questioning on the part of the orthodox clergy of Sufism’s commitment to basic Islamic doctrine.[35]
Heretical Muslim Sects
Some sects have embraced such eccentric theological views that they are regarded by many of the more conventional Muslims as, not merely heretics, but apostates. These sects often provide an expression of the submerged national feelings of peoples conquered by Muslim invaders. Shi’ism has been the source of many of these heretical and apostate movements. Some of these extremist Shi’ite sects are Takhtajis, Qizil-bash and Bektashis of Turkey and the Ali-deifiers of Persia and Turkestan. These sects along with Nusayris, Assassins, Druses and Qarmatians are considered beyond the pale of mainstream Islam even by more conventional Shiites.[36] Some of these Shi’ite sects, like the Sufis, have adopted many doctrines from Christianity. In fact, at least one of these mystical sects, the Bektashi is sometimes regarded as a Sufi fraternity instead of as an independent Shi’ite sect (see above). Other sects add syncretistic elements from Buddhism, Hinduism and shamanism.
The Nusayris or Alawites, “followers of ibn-Nusayr present a remarkable example of a group passing directly from paganism to Isma’ilism.” They “consider Ali the incarnation of the deity”, possess a liturgy and celebrate a number of Christian festivals particularly that of Christmas and Easter.[37]
Another extreme Shi’ite manifestation is represented by the Druses. These began as an “Ismailite sect which originated from the adulation given to the mad Fatimid caliph, Hakim al Mansur, … by two of his ministers, who declared him to be a return in the flesh of the hidden Imam, and in fact an incarnation of God himself.”[38]
The Ahmadiya, another movement with strong syncretistic elements, regarded as distinctly heretical by the orthodox, was founded by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad who at the end of the 19th century proclaimed himself both Messiah and avatar of the Hindu god Krishna. “But he remained a Moslem in the sense that he said he was not a prophet in himself but only in and through Muhammad.” Ahmad rejected the concept of holy war and his followers are both pacifists and “ardent missionaries.” The Lahore splinter branch has returned to the Moslem fold by rejecting Ahmad’s extreme claims, although they still revere him as a “genuine renewer of religion.”[39]
Syncretism
Several religions were founded with certain marked Islamic influences, but are to such a large extent combined with other religious doctrines that they have transcended Islam altogether. Sikhism is a syncretistic religion combining elements of Hinduism and Islam. Sikhism had its start with certain reformers of Hinduism who appeared in India and whose “recurrent efforts of reform were the indirect effects of the severe and militant monotheism of the Moslems.” One such was Kabir (1440-1518) who “caught from the Moslems their hatred of idols.” Adopting monotheism “he declared that the love of God was sufficient to free anyone of any class or race from the Law of Karma.”[40] Kabir was followed by Nanak (1469 – 1538) whose doctrine was “an attempt to combine the insights of two widely differing faiths.” He “called his God the True Name, because he meant to avoid any delimiting name … like Allah, Rama, Shiva or Ganesha.” He also removed the Hindu proscription against meat eating. [41] Moreover, although Nanak’s sect began as both contemplative and pacific, “yet it was the singular fate of the religion … to change with the years into a vigorously activist political faith.” Under the impetus of Islamic persecution there developed “in full strength a military ardor, a self dedication to the arbitrament of the sword.”[42]
Bahaism, a syncretistic offshoot of Ismailism became, like Sikhism, a separate faith. The Persian Mirza Ali Muhammad, calling himself Bab-ud-Din proclaimed that his mission “was to prepare the way for a greater than himself who should come after him and complete the work of reform and righteousness which he had begun.” Bab-ud-Din was executed as a heretic in 1850. The next leader, who took the name of Baha‘u’Llah, was imprisoned by the Turks. The Bahais “call upon all religions to unite, for every religion contains some truth.”[43]
Prospects for Reform
There are, thus, severe impediments to Islamic reform. Following the example of the early Protestants by returning to scriptural roots leads to the rise of fundamentalist sects, such as Wahhabism which are even more fanatically committed to warlike and repressive doctrines. On the other hand, attempts at doctrinal reform seem destined to failure. The movements established by such reformers have either been forced to accommodate themselves to Sunni or Shi’ite orthodoxy, or else have been formally ejected from the main body of Islam as apostasies.
Some of the most troublesome aspects of Islam are deeply embedded within the Islamic meme and, therefore, are very difficult to reform. These include the violence inherent in the doctrine of jihad, the sexual ideology depending on the oppression of women and the intolerance inherent in the doctrine of Muslim supremacy and destiny. There is also the attitude toward labor, the stifling of initiative and innovation and the intellectual atrophy resulting from fatalism, parasitism and slavery. All of these are the very factors responsible for Islam’s historical success and growth. Consequently, they have become crystallized in Islamic culture and are, thus, extraordinarily difficult to uproot or to drastically modify.
Perhaps what is needed as a prerequisite of real reform is a raising of consciousness among the masses in the territories conquered by Arabs and their Turkish or Mogul successors which would lead them to embrace with pride the buried and suppressed achievements of their pre-Islamic ancestors. It may be necessary for Muslims to recognize and mourn for the oppression, enslavement, rape and indignities that one fraction of their ancestors imposed on the greater part, often the overwhelmingly greater part, of their ancestral lineage. Secularism and the political disestablishment of Islam would necessarily follow. As Warraq puts it:
…this process of historical education … would lead to a much needed broadening of the intellectual life, a deeper tolerance for other ways of life, a simple expansion of historical knowledge that has remained so limited and narrow. Greater knowledge of the pre-Islamic past can only lead to the lessening of fanaticism. … The ideas of change and continuity will also have to become a part of the Muslim’s consciousness if Muslim societies are to move forward – this will only occur with the recognition of the pre-Islamic past…[44]
Thus far there has been only one Muslim nation, Turkey, where such a program has achieved any real success. Even there, the failure of the Kemalist elite to fully acknowledge their own history and to disestablish Islam in the village culture of Anatolia, may be leading to an Islamic revival. Other secularizing movements, usually established by dictators, have recognized the regressive nature of orthodox Islam on economic and social development. However, the modern personality cults of despots, even fairly benevolent ones like Ataturk, and the superficialities of certain secular elements within the governing and intellectual elite have not, so far, been sufficient for major and lasting reform.
The promoters of change have often recognized that a return to pre-Islamic roots is an essential condition for removing the debilitating effects of Islam. Ataturk and less palatable secularizers like Saddam or Nasser have attempted to undermine Islam by returning to an older pre-Islamic substrate as the basis of a new nationalism. So Ataturk emphasized the Hittite ancestry of the Anatolian Turks; of course he conveniently ignored the more important Greek ancestry because the Greeks were regarded as the current enemy. The Shah held a massive party to celebrate the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great. Nasser decorated Cairo with replicas of colossal Egyptian statuary. Saddam fancied himself the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar who will, literally, rebuild Babylon. These attempts to uproot and minimize the effects of Islam have, for a number of reasons, seen rather mixed results.
One of the problems with such attempts at reform is that the reformers have always held back from fully acknowledging their history and have been unwilling to confront Islamic attitudes that are firmly rooted in rural villages or urban souks. Thus, the Turks have embraced and mythologized the quite remote history of the Hittites, even claiming against all evidence that the latter were an offshoot of the Central Asian Turkish “sun” people. At the same time, they reject their much more recent Greco-Roman, Byzantine and Armenian heritage. They even refuse to acknowledge their recent history of genocide against Armenian Christians, or their ethnic cleansing of the numerous Greek speaking population of Anatolia which occurred shortly thereafter.
The failures of other secularizing despots have been even greater. Saddam might have seen himself as leading the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar and Nasser may have thought of himself as carrying on the ancient tradition of the Pharaohs, but neither of them were willing to discard all of the old Arab and Muslim resentments against the western powers and against Christians and Jews. The late Shah may have viewed himself as successor to the ancient Persian emperors, but he was unwilling to accommodate himself to more liberal secular forces and, thereby, helped to bring his radical Shi’ite enemies to power.
Erasure of the pre-Islamic past occurred in almost all conquered lands. It is noteworthy that Muslim peoples, with the partial exception of the Persians, have a singular lack of curiosity regarding the pre-Islamic traditions of their ancestors. This distinguishes Islam from the other supra-national proselytizing religions, Christianity and Buddhism. While the path was sometimes indirect, the last two religions ultimately came to terms with the pre-existing civilizations in the lands in which they triumphed. Islam, however,
…adamantly required conquered people to scorn their own past and love their Islamic Arab conquerors by striving to imitate them. More importantly, the Koran is written in Arabic and Islam's sacred places, Mecca and Medina, are in Arabia. It was clear that the conquered and newly converted had to accept the primacy of the Arabic language, Arabic values and above all Arabia itself.[45]
Thus, it may be said that the “vanquished were ‘culturally disemboweled,’ condemned to the enforced psychosis of renouncing their old and highly developed identities for a crude and violent desert blueprint that regulated the minutest details of their lives.”[46]
Iran was the one great exception to this almost complete erasure of the past. As we have seen, the Persians at a very early time endeavored mightily to preserve their national consciousness and even succeeded to a small degree in using Islam as a means of reasserting their culture. Thus, the efforts made by the modern dynasty of Shahs are consistent with the history of Iran under Islam. Bassi describes these efforts as follows:
There have been times when Iran has dared to remember its past. In 1926, Reza Khan was crowned the first Pahlavi King of Iran and as part of his reforms he made it clear that he regarded Islam as a foreign imposed faith that should not determine Iran’s identity. As part of his attack on Islam, Reza Khan connected his new Iran with the ancient Zoroastrian past. The Farsi language was purged of Arabic words, architecture began to take inspiration from ancient Achaemenian styles and schoolbooks were re-written to enhance an Iranian identity. Cities were renamed with Iranian names, parents were encouraged to give Iranian, and not Arabic, names to their children. In 1935 Persia itself was replaced with Iran, as it was known in the days of Cyrus the Great. These reforms were of course reversed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.[47]
However, these “attempts to restore Persian national pride met only bewilderment and anger. … Rather than evoke pride, this past greatness inspired contempt, as the creation of infidel predecessors.”[48] There is one notable exception to the trashing of ancient Iranian history by fanatical Shi’ites. Even the latter still maintain and cultivate the ancient anger and resentment against the West that goes back to Alexander’s invasion and the wars with the Romans.
Iranian Shi’ites reversal of the reforms of the Pahlavi dynasty has been matched by a more general fundamentalist reaction against modern secularism; a reaction often directed against the pre-Islamic artifacts cherished by secular nationalists. One example is that of the Pakistani militants who want to use the archaeological site of Mohenjo-Daro, not as a celebration of the achievements of their ancestors, but as a “teaching opportunity” for the truth of Islam triumphing over barbaric idolaters. Even the secular Turks are not exempt from a desire to uproot pre-Islamic culture; in Cyprus “Muslims attempted to use the fourth century monastery of San Makar as a hotel.” In Libya Tripoli’s Catholic cathedral was recently converted into a mosque.[49] In Afghanistan there was, of course the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas.
However, for most of Muslim history it was neglect and indifference that played the most significant role in the erasure of the past. The actions of the Ottoman authorities are illustrative. These include the use of the Parthenon as an ammunition storage depot. There was also the permission granted by various Turkish authorities to Europeans to dismantle and export archaeological treasures in exchange for relatively small payments or bribes.
Thus, a true hope for Islamic reforms must wait for actions such as the following throughout most of the Muslim world. One such action might be for a future Iranian regime to resume the secular reforms begun by the Shahs, albeit under more democratic auspices. Another would be for Turkey to acknowledge its Greek and Armenian cultural and genetic heritage. Only by accepting the Hellenic heritage common to western civilization can the Turkish elite truly reach their long desired goal of becoming modern Europeans. The Turks would also do well to acknowledge their past history of jihad, persecution and genocide, and integrate these into their modern national consciousness. Still another such action would be for Egyptians to truly embrace their great past and reject the parochial calls of fanatical Muslim scholars. At the same time they would do well to recognize the Coptic minority as the purest embodiment of that past and cease the persecution to which that group is still subjected. Similarly, true reform can only be achieved in Iraq when all persecution of the Assyrian and Chaldean Christians ceases. Also, reform in Pakistan can only come about with the recognition of their past as part of Indian civilization and an end to discrimination against Hindus and other minorities.
Another requirement for reform would be acknowledging the truth of Islamic history on the part of both Muslim and Western scholars. The next chapter examines some of the myths about that history which are widely believed and disseminated.
[1] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 747.
[2] Ibid, p. 748.
[3] Ibid, p. 750.
[4] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 245.
[5] Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 765-66.
[6] Ibid, p. 766.
[7] Ibid, p. 767.
[8] Idries Shah, The Sufis, Garden City, NY, Anchor Books, 1971, p. 35.
[9] Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 753-54.
[10] Ibid, p. 769.
[11] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 433.
[12] Ibid, pp. 434-35.
[13] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 769.
[14] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 435.
[15] Ibid
[16] Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, p. 228.
[17] Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 754-55.
[18] Hitti, History of the Arabs, pp. 437-38.
[19] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 282.
[20] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 391.
[21] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 772.
[22] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 435.
[23] Ibid, p. 439.
[24] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 90.
[25] Shah, The Sufis, p. 163.
[26] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 346.
[27] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 432.
[28] Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization.
[29] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, pp. 122-23.
[30] Shah, The Sufis, p.167.
[31] Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad in Palestine, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 7, 2004.
[32] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 19.
[33] Quoted in Andrew G. Bostom, Eurabia’s Morass Elicits Mythical “Solutions”, American Thinker, November, 24, 2005.
[34] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 432.
[35] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 238.
[36] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 449.
[37] Ibid, pp. 448-49.
[38] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 770.
[39] Ibid, pp. 775-76.
[40] Ibid, p. 311.
[41] Ibid, p. 315.
[42] Ibid, p. 317.
[43] Ibid, p. 776.
[44] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 207.
[45] Paolo Bassi, The Iranian Identity Crisis: Islam v. Iranian Identity.
[46] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 90.
[47] Bassi, The Iranian Identity Crisis: Islam v. Iranian Identity.
[48] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, pp. 125-26.
[49] Ibid, p. 173.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Chapter 11: The Parasitic Civilization
Islam’s “golden age” and “splendors” is a topic of incessant fascination. It would, of course, be more accurate to speak of Islam’s “golden ages” since there were a number of such intellectual and artistic flowerings. The high civilizations of Abbasid Baghdad and of Moorish Spain, as well as the magnificence of the Ottoman and Mogul courts are well-known.
However, the Muslim efflorescence, like the financial underpinning for the Muslim military campaigns, depended on the wealth expropriated from, and on the continuing economic exploitation of, conquered non-Muslim populations. In addition, it must be acknowledged that the Muslim invaders were not, in general, total barbarians; they were not Huns or Mongols or Vandals. They valued the level of civilization that they encountered in their invasions and maintained a cultivated and often comfortable existence. However, one thing about the historical record is noteworthy; the various golden ages of Islamic civilization always occur early in the first few centuries in which a new territory is occupied. Wherever the various Muslim vanguards invaded, the vast majority of the population was non-Muslim. It would take many years for this population to be converted and assimilated. These non-Muslims or recent converts are the ones who carried on the work which many historians are prone to attribute to "Islamic" civilization. Thus, a distinction must be drawn between the so-called high Islamic civilization and the religion of Islam. Eventually as the process of Islamization proceeds the non-Islamic component of the population becomes a small minority and stagnation sets in. This process is evident in the first centuries of the Arab conquests where the process of Arabization and conversion to Islam took a few centuries to complete; this was the "Arab" golden age, a product of unconverted or recently converted Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. In Spain the golden age lasted longer, perhaps because the process of Islamization was never as complete in Moorish Spain as in the Arab East.
It is remarkable how closely this pattern was repeated in the subsequent expansions of Islam as a consequence of the Turkish and Mogul conquests. The initial splendors of the Seljuk and Ottoman empires were the result of unconverted or recently converted subjects. When the Islamization of the newly conquered territories was complete intellectual stagnation once again set in. Similarly, an initial flowering as an extension of the ancient Hindu culture followed the Mogul conquest of India.
It must, however, be granted that Islamic civilization did serve a valuable purpose as a bridge between the West and the ancient civilizations of India and China. This resulted in the transmission of science and technology from China and mathematics from India. It must also be noted that, as will be shown below, the so-called Arabic numerals are really Hindu in origin; algebra is a combination of Indian, Greek and pre-Islamic Mesopotamian mathematics. And while it is true that Muslim rulers did enable some of the knowledge of the classical world to be preserved, the importance of this work has been greatly exaggerated. In addition, the actual work of transcribing and preserving this classical knowledge was done by non-Muslims or by recent converts.
Plunder and Economic Exploitation
The first Muslim invaders were always invariably motivated by the desire for loot and, as we have seen in Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem, the lust for concubines. The Prophet himself “skillfully couched his worldly objectives in divine terms” and this “fusion of the sacred and the profitable was endorsed by future generations of Islamic leaders.”[1] Thus, Islamic scripture contains explicit promise of, and religious sanction for, plunder from infidels:
Fight against such of those who have been given the scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
Surah 9:29
Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.[2]
Surah 4:74
With vast territories conquered and large populations subdued, the early Arab leadership found it prudent to regularize and bureaucratize plunder. The caliph Umar instituted a register known as the Diwan “which remunerated the fighters out of the proceeds from the conquered lands and thus allowed them to continue prosecuting war operations without worrying about their subsistence.”[3] The necessity for caliphs to keep their supporters happy with a continuing distribution of loot is illustrated by the civil conflict that began in the reign of Caliph Uthman which was “exacerbated by the temporary halt of the conquests in the early 650s and the attendant reduction in the spoils of war.”[4]
Plunder also served Muslim rulers, from the time of the early Arabs to the end of the Muslim expansions, as the wherewithal for vast public works. For those rulers with pretensions to intellectual achievement plunder could also be used to attract scholars. Mahmud of Ghazni, for example, employed his plunder in adorning his capital and subsidizing a gathering of scholars at his court but “for Hindus, this paragon of valour and piety would ever be nothing but a monster of cruelty”.[5] Successive generations of Muslim ghazis became increasingly addicted to looting, with explosive results when the spigot was turned off as occurred when the Rajput leader Prithviraj had succeeded in bottling up the Muslims in the Punjab. “But this interdiction had served only to increase the pressure for a more decisive encounter. The Ghorids rose to the challenge because for them … plunder was a necessity.”[6]
As the Arab empire expanded and the rate of new conquest slowed, it became necessary for plunder from war to be replaced by the less violent form of plunder known as taxation. The conquering Muslim military elites were, thus, supported by the dhimmi populations “who had to pay special taxes” such as the kharaj or land tax and the jizya or poll tax.[7] Bat Yeor summarizes the Islamic view of the “collective booty” owed by the dhimmis to their conquerors:
The concept of fay – collective booty reserved for the upkeep of the Islamic community – constituted the legal argument which preserved the religions of the conquered peoples. This economic burden, which devolved on the disarmed vanquished people to the benefit of a warlike community destined to conquer the world, is very clearly set out by the Muslim jurisconsults.[8]
This concept of “fay” became very well entrenched within Muslim tradition, even long after the Arab heyday.
The economic surplus extracted from the vanquished population, on which the Muslim elite depended, did help to preserve infidel religions for many centuries. In many cases it was the dhimmis who “did the jobs Arabs were unwilling to do.” In early Abbasid times “the agricultural class, who constituted the bulk of he population … and the chief source of revenue, were the original inhabitants of the land, now reduced to the position of dhimmis. The Arab considered it below his dignity to engage in agricultural pursuits. … In country places and on their farms these dhimmis clung to their ancient cultural patterns and preserved their national languages.” These were Syriac, Aramaic, Iranian and Coptic. “Many of those who embraced Islam moved to the cities.”[9]
In the early days of a newly conquered territory the Muslim rulers found that practicality and efficiency required this system of extortion be administered by native bureaucrats or even by infidel clergy. These punitive exactions, despite the attempts by some officials to mitigate them, would inevitably lead to the decimation of non-Muslim populations.
The caliph entrusted to the patriarch the task of collecting the taxes extorted from his flock, leaving him only with a pittance. The chronicles record in detail these relationships based on money and violence and always involving torture, from the lowest social level to its summit. Equally, one should have few illusions about the appointment of high Christian officials, particularly to the Treasury. Integrated into this Islamic machinery for the destruction of Christendom, they could, by a gesture, temporarily slow it down, temper it, or exacerbate it, but could not abolish it.[10]
However, at some point it must have occurred to the more prescient caliphs, sultans and viziers that non-Muslims were essential as a source of taxes, expertise, and entrepreneurship and as go-betweens and emissaries with non-Muslim states; so conversions were no longer actively sought. These rulers did “endeavor to protect the dhimmi peasantry against uncontrolled extortions by governors or local tyrants.” Agriculture, being the source of wealth and power, the state was dependent for its revenues “on compulsory work by an abundant workforce.”[11] As the number of converts grew the remaining “infidel subjects were more oppressively mulcted and humiliated.” Over the objections of the devout, some rulers began to actively discourage conversions since the “treasury of the Sultan had come to depend on the contributions of the unbeliever.”[12] In fact, as occurred in Islamic Spain, officials sometimes shut off completely “this escape route from a miserable existence by forbidding Christians and Jews to convert to Islam. Too many converts would destroy the tax base.”[13]
In times of disorder when the caliph or the sultan could no longer protect them, the diminishing supply of dhimmis endured further extortion from rebellious nomads. “The wealth-producing dhimmi communities became a coveted prize and plunder to warring political forces.”[14] Vryonis observes how during the Turkish conquests this competition for the diminishing dhimmi resource was a cause of warfare among nomadic tribes.
The invasions had caused a certain disruption and decline in the Christian population of the Anatolian plateau. As a result … the various Turkish princes began to raid the land of one another and of the Christians and to carry away entire Christian towns and villages in order to repopulate their own domains.[15]
One enlightened nomad sultan, however, with all the attention to detail of a compulsive greenhouse proprietor, carefully nurtured his valuable stock of dhimmi farmers:
The great care the sultan [Kaykhusraw] lavished upon these Christian colonists is illustrative of the importance the Muslim rulers attached to repopulating their domains with Christian farmers. He had them carefully guarded so none would escape en route, and on arrival … he gave them land and seed to plant. He bestowed upon them a five year tax immunity … many who heard of the tax exemption migrated to the sultan’s domains because of the great disorder that had now enveloped the Byzantine Maeandrian regions.[16]
Nevertheless, despite the best efforts of some far-seeing Muslim rulers, in the long run the Islamic meme followed the logic inherent in its program. And once the dhimmi populations were sufficiently depleted through conversion, enslavement and displacement, the natural result was inevitably the stagnation of Islamic society.
Brief Renaissance and Permanent Decline
After the initial Arab conquests, it required about a century for peace and stability to become commonplace so that civilization could resume its advance. This lag was reinforced by the continuing Arab advance into North Africa and the easternmost territories of the Persians which continued into the eighth century and must have consumed considerable resources. All subsequent Muslim conquests resulted in lags of various lengths during which peace and security was being re-established and the still numerous non-Muslim population could resume the work of civilization. Trifkovic observes that “since dead bodies paid no taxes while the captives were economic assets, once the conquerors’ rule was firmly established a degree of normalcy was reestablished at the level of local communities.”[17]
The Dhimmi Roots of Early Muslim Civilizations
The achievements of the civilizations under Muslim rule were substantial. However, almost all of this occurred in the early periods of such rule, once peace and stability had been restored. Furthermore, these high periods of culture were almost exclusively the product of the conquered, and still not completely Islamized native populations. The observations, in this regard of Professor Darlington who looks at society with the eye of a trained biologist, are pertinent:
But while war accounts for the expansion of Islam it does not account for the sparkling creation of culture which followed the expansion. This … happened only where there was something valuable before the coming of Islam. And the sparkle in each instance lasted only half a dozen generations. It lasted evidently as long as the conquest of each ancient society brought about the recombination of valuable racial components.
So it was that successively in Damascus and Baghdad, in Cordoba and Marrakesh, in Isfahan and Delhi, we see the characteristic flame of the new hybrid Islamic civilizations always based on a precarious balance between conversion and non-conversion, hybridization and non-hybridization, a balance which Muslim violence was not fitted to sustain. When the conquest ceased … the intellectual and artistic … life of Islam came to a standstill. … When the limits of conquest had been reached … and new hybridization was excluded, decay set in, slow but everywhere irremediable.[18]
Other students of Islam contend that “Islamic science developed for a while despite Islam.” Only in those few areas and times when it was protected by freethinking or unorthodox elites could it flourish.[19] Such times usually occurred early in Muslim rule. Stillman, writing of the early Arab conquests makes the observation, applicable to Muslim polities in general, that Islamic civilizations are extensions of the pre-existing cultures modified for the service of the new faith:
Classical Islamic civilization was not Islam the religion, although the latter was an essential component. Islamic civilization was an amalgam of cultural elements that included Islamic religion, Arabic culture with its strong pre-Islamic roots, Greek humanism, and subtle remnants of the ancient heritage of the Near East.[20]
Hitti echoes these ideas with respect to the early post-conquest Arab dynasties in the east:
What we therefore call ‘Arab civilization’ was Arabian neither in its origins and fundamental structure nor in its principal ethnic aspects. The purely Arabian contribution in it was in the linguistic and to a certain extent in the religious fields. Throughout the whole period of the caliphate the Syrians, the Persians, the Egyptians and others, as Moslem converts or as Christians and Jews, were the foremost bearers of the torch of enlightenment and learning. … The Arab Islamic civilization was at bottom the Hellenized Aramaic and the Iranian civilizations as developed under the aegis of the caliphate and expressed through the medium of the Arabic tongue.[21]
It took almost three centuries for most of the vanquished population to convert to Islam and most such conversions were motivated by self interest and not by religious conviction. Islamic culture, thus, developed “on a substratum composed of the heritage of the Syro-Aramaean, Persian and Hellenistic civilizations which had preceded it. With Islam the Near Orient not only recaptured the whole of its former political domain but regained in the realm of culture its ancient intellectual preeminence.”[22] However, as we have seen, the price paid by the native non-Muslims for this reassertion of their submerged civilization under Arab domination was a steep one.
In the fields of science and philosophy the contributors were in large majority non-Arab and non-Muslim. As Hitti notes:
When we therefore speak of ‘Arab medicine’ or ‘Arab philosophy’ or ‘Arab mathematics’ we do not mean the medical science, philosophy or mathematics that are necessarily the product of the Arabian mind or developed by people living in the Arabian peninsula, but that body of knowledge enshrined in books written in the Arabic language by men who flourished chiefly during the caliphate and were themselves Persians, Syrians, Egyptians or Arabians, Christian, Jewish or Moslem and who may have drawn some of their material from Greek, Aramaean, Indo-Persian or other sources.[23]
The subjects dominated by Arab Muslims were specifically those that related to the Arabic language and the Islamic religion. Theology, jurisprudence, philology and linguistics were “those intellectual activities evoked by the predilections of the Arabs as Arabs and Moslems.” The scholars in this field were mostly of Arab descent “in contrast to the physicians, astronomers, mathematicians and alchemists … who were of Syrian, Jewish or Persian origin.”[24] Even so, the great theologian al-Bukhari was a Persian, while the founder of one of the four orthodox Muslim schools, abu-Hanifah, was the grandson of a Persian and presumably non-Muslim slave. It is also “noteworthy that many of the pioneering grammarians of the Arabic language were themselves non-Arabs.”[25] There was one great exception to the general rule that philosophy and science was the domain of the non-Arabs. This was Al-Kindi whose “pure Arabian descent earned him the title ‘the philosopher of the Arabs’, and indeed he was the first and last example of an Aristotelian student in the Eastern caliphate who sprang from Arabian stock.”[26] The acclaim Al-Kindi received from his fellow Arabs highlights the paucity of noteworthy philosophers and scientists of both Arab stock and Muslim religion.
The early Arab rulers were able to capitalize on the different specializations of the conquered groups and there arose a division of labor based largely on ethnicity. It is ironic that in the first years of the conquest mosques were built by Greek-speaking Christians. Greeks and Aramaeans continued to dominate the field of architecture for many years. Although they eventually adopted the Arabic tongue “they continued the style and inherited the mathematics, and the ability to use it, of their Greek or … of their Babylonian ancestors.”[27] Persian, Coptic and Hindu designers found a niche in architectural decoration. When al-Walid built his famous grand mosque in Damascus, he “employed Persian and Indian craftsmen as well as Greek artisans provided by the emperor of Constantinople. Papyri … show that material and skilled workmen were imported from Egypt.”[28]
Jews were valued “for their medical skill and general literacy” and unlike the Greeks and Persians “were able to exert their influence largely without conversion” for a long period of time.[29] Indians were also valued for their medical skills. The Barmakid minister Yahya “paid an Indian scholar called Manka to translate an Indian medical book … the book of Sasard into Arabic.”[30] Hindus were also valued for their skills in astronomy and mathematics. “The same Hindu scholar who brought to the court of al-Mansur the astronomical work Sindhind is credited with having also introduced Hindu arithmetical lore with its numeral system (called in Arabic Hindi) and the zero.”[31] Personal tutors usually consisted of practicing Christians or those recent converts adopted by Arab tribes as clients. “After the time of ‘Abd-al-Malik the tutor or preceptor, usually a client or Christian became a standing figure in the court.”[32]
The maritime trades were dominated by those of Greek or Phoenician descent; a situation that continued under succeeding Muslim rulers for a thousand years. These seamen
…were by origin Phoenician and Greek and by ancestry much hybridized. … they must have willingly converted … For so we must understand the fall of Cyprus … to be followed by Sicily and Sardinia, Crete and Malta. Another Muslim advance in the Mediterranean was delayed until the fifteenth century. Then the annexation of Greece was followed by the incorporation and conversion of the Greek and Dalmatian … sea-faring populations in the Ottoman Empire.[33]
During the reign of the Umayyad caliphs Abd-al-Malik (685-705) and al-Walid (705-715) the Arabization of the state administration occurred by “changing the language of the public registers from Greek to Arabic in Damascus and from Pahlawi to Arabic in al-Iraq and the eastern provinces and in the creation of an Arabic coinage.”[34] However, this caused no end to the state’s dependence on the skills of non-Arabs. Under the Abbasids the appointment of non-Muslims to high office continued into the latter half of the ninth century. These appointments occurred even during times of the implementation of stringent regulations against dhimmis. Despite these persecutions, caliphs and other high officials were long dependent on non-Muslim expertise.
It was during the Abbasid caliphate that Arab Islamic civilization reached its height. It was at this time that the epoch of the translation of Greek works occurred. The caliphs and the Arab elite of Baghdad, remarkably open to the ideas of classical civilization, subsidized a great explosion of creativity:
The apogee of Greek influence was reached under al-Ma’mun. The rationalistic tendencies of this caliph and his espousal of the Mu’tazilite cause which maintained that religious texts should agree with the judgments of reason, led him to seek justification for his position in the philosophical works of the Greeks.[35]
Hitti observes that the “Abbasid dynasty, like others in Muslim history, attained its most brilliant period of political and intellectual life soon after its establishment.” Its height was reached during the reigns of Harun al-Rashid and his son al-Ma’mun (786-833).[36] The primary reason for the early occurrences of Muslim high culture, of course, is the continued existence of a large reservoir of dhimmis or of recent converts with specialized skills. Other reasons include the establishment of peace and stability after a long period of strife, the inclusion of newly conquered territories into an empire with expanded trade and the diffusion of ideas, and the need for new dynasties to consolidate their rule by including non-Muslims in the governing coalition.
The fertilization caused by the diffusion of ideas from distant parts of the Arab oecumene is illustrated by the most famous literary composition of the Islamic world. The so-called ‘Arabian Nights’ “was an old Persian work … containing several stories of Indian origin. … As time went on additions were made from numberless sources: Indian, Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian and the like.”[37]
The relative paucity of intellectual achievement, under Abbasid rule, in Syria and Egypt as compared to Iraq lends support to the thesis that dhimmis or recently converted Muslims were the driving force in intellectual achievement. For in those provinces:
Administration and secular arts and sciences depended to a very great extent on government employment and favor. In Egypt and Syria such employment and favoritism seems to have been directed more toward the Arab population than toward the indigenous convert community.[38]
Intellectual achievement in the late post-Abbasid Arab dynasties is but a pale reflection of the brilliance in early Baghdad. Under the minority sect Fatimid caliphs of Egypt, who cultivated the support of Christian elements, there was a minor renaissance. Hitti notes that as late as 1125 in Fatimid Egypt the façade of the al-Aqmar mosque “may have been due to some Armenian Christian architect.”[39] However, with the decline of Abbasid Baghdad and with the steady decrease in non-Muslim numbers, Islamic science began its terminal decline. Such science as existed was confined to previously peripheral areas, now under independent dynasties, like Syria, Egypt, Persia, central Asia and Spain. In addition these remnants of Islamic science were critically dependent on Mongol rulers, Persian scholars or the few remaining dhimmi intellectuals:
In science there were only two branches wherein the Arabs after the middle of the thirteenth century maintained their leadership: astronomy-mathematics, including trigonometry, and medicine, particularly ophthalmology. But in the first discipline the contribution was made mainly by Arabic-writing Persian scholars whose centre of activity was the Il-Khanid observatory; and library of Maraghah … It is interesting to find the Syrian Jacobite Catholicos …. (Barhebraeus, 1226-86) known as an historian and as the last classical author in Syriac literature lecturing there on Euclid in 1268 and on Ptolemy in 1272-3.[40]
There were a large number of significant scholarly figures[41] who were either non-Muslims, converts, or of recent non-Muslim and non-Arab ancestry. There were still others who, although nominally Muslim are reputed to be guilty of various forms of heresy, freethinking or atheism. In the years starting with the first caliphs and extending through the Umayyad dynasty, some of these scholars were as follows. Abdullah ibn Saba (ca 650), a Jewish convert from Yemen was a noted legal scholar. A quarter century later another converted Jew, Wahb ibn Munabbih, was well known as a writer in history. Another converted Jewish historian, Ka'b al-Ahbar, a contemporary of ibn Saba, was from the city of Hims in Syria. The poet al-Akhtal (640-710), a close friend and drinking companion of the caliph Yazid was a Syrian Christian. His fellow poet al-Farazdak was an Arab who was described by Muslims as dissolute and, therefore, likely a freethinker. Another Christian poet at the time was Jamil al-Udhri from Yemen. The city of Kufa in Iraq was the home of another poet, the Persian convert al-Rawiyah (713-72).
Music was an important art form in the early days of the Arab Empire. The Arabian Peninsula, in those early days before the full force of the sharia was felt, was a center of music and song. A surprising number of renowned musicians residing there were non-Arabs. Ibn-Surayj (640-726) was a Turkish convert and freed slave. Musajjah (ca 714) was a black African convert and client member of a Meccan tribe. His contemporary, al-Gharid was originally a half breed Berber slave. Another contemporary, ibn-Muhriz was from Persia and, thus, of recent non-Muslim background. Jamilah, also a contemporary is described as a Medinese freedwoman and therefore, also of probable non-Muslim origin; she is one of very few women in the Islamic world recognized for artistic or intellectual ability. Ma'bad (ca 720) was a Muslim of half African parentage. In this era Hunayn al-Hiri (ca 735) was a well known Christian musician in neighboring Iraq.
Medicine was the only science that was well established in Umayyad times. In the late seventh century ibn-Uthal, a famous Christian physician practiced in Damascus; Tayadhuq, another renowned practitioner in Iraq was a Greek Christian and Masarjawayh, a Persian Jew, was still another well-known Iraqi physician. Finally, there was one important philosopher in late Umayyad times. He was the famous Syrian Christian John Damascene who died in 748.
The early Abbasid dynasty was the high water mark for intellectual accomplishment in the Islamic world. Despite increasing repression, non-Muslim, convert and suspected heretic scholars were present in abundance. Baghdad, in those years, was one of the great centers for the study of astronomy. One famous astronomer was al-Fadl ibn-Nawbakht (ca 815) who was from Persia, and therefore of recent non-Muslim ancestry. His contemporary Isa al-Asturlabi, although described as an Arab Muslim was apparently of recent Christian background. Al-Farghani, who lived some thirty years later, was a Turkish Muslim and, therefore, either a convert or the descendant of recent converts. Abu-Ma’shar, (ca 886), like ibn-Nawbakht, a Persian Muslim, was a well known astrologer. Another Persian Muslim astronomer in the following century was al-Khazin. Sind ibn-'Ali (ca 830) was a converted Jew, who also left his mark in the field of astronomy. Al-Battani (877-918) also a respected astronomer was a Sabian (Mandean). From that obscure monotheistic Sabian religion emerged a famous family of translators specializing in Greek astronomy. The founder was Thabit ibn-Qurrah (836-901) who was followed by his son Sinan, his grandsons Thabit and Ibrahim, and his great grandson abu-al-Faraj.
Another famous family of translators was the Nestorian Christians Hunayn ibn-Ishaq, his son Ishaq and his nephew Hubaysh ibn-al-Hasan who all worked in the mid ninth century translating Greek medical and philosophical texts. Other famous translators were the Christian Thawafil ibn-Tuma (ca 785) who worked in literature, and the Syrian Christian Yuhanna ibn-Masawayh who translated medical texts. The Syrian Christian Qusta ibn-Luqa (ca 922) translated Greek mathematical and philosophical writings. Jacobite Christians Yahya ibn-Adi (893-974) and Isa ibn-Zu'rah (ca 1008) translated works of Greek philosophy. Indeed, according to the historian Franz Rosenthal, almost “all of the translators [from Greek into Syriac or Hebrew or from Greek, Syriac, or Hebrew into Arabic] were Christians.”[42] The aforementioned Sabian Thabit family plus a scattering of Jews were exceptions.
Another famous family worked in the field of medicine. These were the Nestorian Christians Jurjis ibn Bakhtishu (ca 771), his son Bakhtishu and grandson Jibril. A converted Christian from Persia, Ali al-Tabari (ca 850), also made his mark as a physician as did the Persian Zoroastrian convert Al-Majusi (ca 994). The eleventh century Christian physicians, Ali ibn-Isa, Ibn-Jazlah and ibn-Butlan also left their mark on the study of medicine. But, perhaps the most famous physician and medical theorist was the Persian Al-Razi (865-925), who although nominally Muslim was notorious as a freethinker condemned by Muslims for blasphemy.
Three additional freethinkers, known as the arch-heretics of Islam, were the Syrian philosophers Al-Rawandi (ca 915), Al-Tawhidi (ca 1023) and Al-Ma'ari (973-1057). Another famous heretic was the Turkish Sufi, Al-Farabi, the student of two Christian scholars, who died in 950. Al-Farabi, who was the model Muslim heretic, is described by Trifkovic as follows:
Greatly influenced by Baghdad’s Greek heritage in philosophy that survived the Arab invasion, and especially the writings of Aristotle, Farabi adopted the view — utterly heretical from a Moslem viewpoint — that reason is superior to revelation. He saw religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state. He engaged in rationalistic questioning of the authority of the Koran and rejected predestination. He wrote more than 100 works, notably The Ideas of the Citizens of the Virtuous City. But these unorthodox works no more belong to Islam than Voltaire belongs to Christianity.[43]
Non-Muslims, heretics and converts were also well represented in the natural sciences and geography. Al-Jahiz (ca 868), a member of the rationalist and soon to be declared heretical Mutazilite sect, was a renowned zoologist. A school of geography, dominated by Persians, flourished in the late ninth and early tenth centuries: ibn-Khurdadhbih (ca 912), al-Ya'qubi (ca 891), ibn-Rustah and al-Hamadhani (ca 903), al-Balkhi (ca 934), al-Istakhri and ibn-Hawqal (ca 950) worked in Iraq, Persia and Arabia. All were described as Persian Muslims and, thus, at that early period, presumably of recent non-Muslim family backgrounds. Qudamah (ca. 928), a converted Christian also did work in geography.
Another group of Persian Muslims dominated the study of history. Ibn-al-Muqaffa was active in historical studies soon after the Abbasids assumed power. A century later ibn-Qutaybah worked in Baghdad along with his younger contemporaries, al-Baladhuri and ibn-Dawud al-Dinawari. Al-Tabari (838-923) worked in Persia, as did his younger contemporary, Hamzah al-Isfahani. The above-mentioned Ibn-al-Muqaffa was a Persian Zoroastrian convert, whose suspect orthodoxy led to his being burned at the stake. A few years afterward in 783, the poet ibn-Burd, also well known in early Abbasid literary circles, was a Persian heretic, who was also put to death for his Zoroastrian apostasy. Abu-Nuwas, another Persian poet managed to avoid Burd’s unfortunate fate.
In the following century, Abu-Tammam, a converted Christian living in Syria also attained renown as a poet. Ibn-Ishaq, who died in 767, the grandson of a Christian slave achieved fame as a biographer. Two non-Arabs of recent non-Muslim family backgrounds achieved success in philology, a subject usually reserved for native Arabs. One was Al-Jawhari (ca 1008), a Turkish Muslim in Baghdad. His contemporary philologist was ibn-Jinni the son of a Greek slave who worked in Syria.
Following the “golden prime” of the early Abbasids, Islamic scholarship fell into a sharp decline. With the steady increase in converts and the decrease in the number of non-Muslims, the primary source of accomplished scholars dried up. With the passage of time, the descendants of earlier converts became far removed from the family and national traditions that promoted and sustained high scholarly achievement. The inner logic of the Islamic meme unfolded creating a climate of anti-intellectualism and a rigid pseudo scholarship; both of which were upheld by an increasingly powerful clerical class. Nevertheless, there were occasional intellectual revivals encouraged by some of the more enlightened rulers of the later local Arab dynasties. Non-Muslims, converts and heretics, once again, played a disproportionate role in these mini-renaissances.
Al-Biruni (973-1050), a famous astronomer in Afghanistan, was a Persian Shi'ite accused of agnostic leanings. Another Persian freethinking astronomer was Umar al-Khayyam (1038-1123) who attained even greater fame as a poet. Two centuries later the Syrian Jacobite Christian, Barhebraeus also did notable work in astronomy. One of the greatest Muslim philosophers also worked in Persia. This was al-Ghazzali, who before he achieved his great eminence was a practicing Sufi.
Two notable scholars worked in late Abbasid Iraq. One was the geographer Yaqut (1179-1229) who was a Greek converted Christian. The other was the historian Sibt ibn-al-Jawzi (1186-1257) the son of a converted Turkish slave.
Under the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties, Egypt which had been a scholarly backwater since the Muslim conquest, became the intellectual center of the Arab world. Of course, the minor intellectual flowerings, encouraged by new dynastic rulers, paled in comparison to the earlier Baghdad renaissance. Clearly the flame of Muslim learning was growing dim. The scholar Al-Kindi (d. 971) was described at this late date as an Egyptian and, therefore, was presumably from a family of recently converted Copts; he was noted for his historical works. Another Fatimid intellectual was the Vizier, Ibn-Killis, a converted Jew who established an academic institute. In the late 12th and 13th centuries three Egyptian Jews attained fame as physicians: Jami (ca 1190), his contemporary al-Naqid, and al-Kuhin al-Attar (ca 1260). Al-Khuzai al-Mawsali (ca 1310) was a converted Christian or Jew who achieved some literary eminence under the Mamluks. Finally, in late Mamluk times the noted historian ibn-Taghri-Birdi (1411-69), was the son of a Turkish slave woman.
Islamic Spain has a reputation for intellectual accomplishment almost as great as that of Baghdad at the height of Abbasid rule. But the experience of Islamic Spain is similar to that of Baghdad, with a brief period of creativity following re-establishment of peace and stability after the conquest, followed by a sharp decline. The founder of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty, Abd-al-Rahman, seized control half a century after the Moorish conquest and laid the foundation for the flowering of Andalusian civilization. He diligently strove to “fashion into a national mould Arabians, Syrians, Berbers, Numidians, Hispano-Arabs and Goths … and in more than one sense did he initiate that intellectual movement which made Islamic Spain from the ninth to the eleventh centuries one of the two centers of world culture.”[44]
However, there was a considerable lag until Spanish intellectual achievement reached its apogee. Most of the greatest figures of the Andalusian enlightenment only make their appearance beginning with the eleventh century, some three centuries after the initial conquest and over two centuries after the establishment of an independent dynasty. In the Arab East, on the contrary, the great age of achievement commenced within a century and a half of the conquest. One of the reasons for the Spanish lag was, undoubtedly, the continuing conflicts which plagued a territory that was only partially conquered. It was the continuing Christian resistance by Navarre, Leon and their Frankish allies that “generated Muslim distrust of the Christian majority and resulted in their widespread exclusion from governmental posts.”[45] Hence the Muslim rulers of Spain were not, at first, able to fully capitalize on the abilities of their large Christian population. In the Islamic east, on the other hand, the fully subdued non-Muslim population posed no such threat. Furthermore, in Spain “Muslim-Christian tensions were further exacerbated by the bitter enmity between Berbers and Arabs … as well as by a series of social and religious grievances … and numerous squabbles among the unruly slave soldiers” and the imported “rivalry between the two great tribal leagues of Qays and Yemen.”[46] It was only in the early tenth century that Abd-al-Rahman III temporarily suppressed these conflicts and felt strong enough to proclaim himself caliph. It was during his reign that the first great scholars appeared and began the fabled intellectual flowering of Moorish Spain.
One other reason for the lag may be that the Christians of Spain were at a lower level of learning and culture than were the Eastern Christians. This may well may account for the greater prominence of Jewish scholars in Spain’s golden age, as compared with that of the golden age of Baghdad. It was during the caliphates of Abd-al-Rahman III and of his son al-Hakam that “many Jews came from the East” and that “Cordova became the centre of a Talmudic school whose foundation marks the beginning of the flowering of Andalusian Jewish culture.”[47] These Jews were instrumental “in the translation process, which brought the fruits of medieval Islamic Hellenism into Europe.”[48]
These Jewish migrants illustrate once again a common Islamic pattern whereby the founder of a new dynasty will seek to enhance his prestige by attracting or inviting refugees including many scholars into his domains. Thus, Spain became a repository of high culture at times when various eastern scholars, Syrians, Jews or political refugees were subject to repression or persecution. Darlington notes this diffusion of intellectuals and artists to the periphery of the Islamic world:
And with the extension of Islam, repeated, under successive races of conquerors, the artisans of Damascus, Muslim or infidel, might be found in later generations practising their skills in Toledo or Samarkand and contributing to the uniform spread of what was now known as Islamic civilization.[49]
One such refugee intellectual was Ziryab who was forced to flee from his enemies at the court of Harun-al-Rashid. Seeking “to make of Cordova a second Baghdad”, Abd-al-Rahman welcomed the exiled young Persian minstrel who was also a poet, astronomer and geographer.[50]
Therefore, the relative lag and later efflorescence of intellectual activity in Spain and elsewhere on the Muslim periphery may also be due to the slow migration of artisans and intellectuals out to the Muslim frontier which offered better opportunities for patronage and a refuge from the gathering clouds of persecution in the heartland of Islam. The magnet offered by Umayyad Spain may also partly explain the relative paucity of intellectual achievement in Syria as compared to Iraq under the early Abbasids. This may be the result of the transfer of Syrian high culture to Spain. Under the Abbasids many Syrians would have found a Spain dominated by their kinsmen a more congenial place. Indeed Spain may in that period be regarded as an extension of Syria and its great period of intellectual achievement was partly due to displaced Syrian energy.
The following are significant scholars of non-Muslim origin or of heretical orientation who were from Muslim Spain or the neighboring Maghreb. These are, once again, obtained from Hitti’s thorough and authoritative History of the Arabs. The ninth century Cordovan writer Abd-Rabbih (860-940) was reportedly descended from a slave freed about sixty years before his birth. The seminal tenth century saw the rise of a school of philology in Cordova. One of its leading lights was al-Qali (901-67), an immigrant from Baghdad reputedly of Armenian birth. Another was the Jew Judah ben-David who died in 1010. Eleventh century Cordova, the capital of the now declining Umayyad caliphate witnessed a great upsurge in intellectual achievement. The historian Ibn-Hazm (994-1064), the grandson of a converted Christian was active at this time. Astronomical studies were pursued by Al-Majriti (ca 1007) and Al-Karmani (ca 1066), both described as Hispano-Muslims and, therefore, presumably of recent non-Muslim descent. Their contemporary, the astronomer Al-Zarkali, a Jew worked in the city of Seville. Another Jew, Ben-Shaprut (ca 1013), was active in the study of medicine in Cordova during this period.
At the height of the Umayyad caliphate the city of Seville was home to the poet Ibn-Hani (937-73), regarded as a heretic tainted with the opinions of the Greek philosophers. Three centuries later, during the decline of Spanish Islam, that city was home to another distinguished poet, the converted Jew, Ibn-Sahl.
The eleventh and early twelfth centuries witnessed the high point of intellectual activity in Muslim Spain. Beginning with the eleventh century, intellectual activity diffused away from the one-time center, Cordova. Although the relatively tolerant Umayyads and “party” kings were followed by the puritanical Almoravids and Almohads, the latter continued to patronize and tolerate Muslim scholars and philosophers. Non-Muslims, however, experienced a period of intense persecution with a consequent diminishment in scholarship. Before the advent of the fanatical Berber dynasties, the city of Valencia was home to the famous Jewish philosopher Ben-Gabirol (Avicebron) (1021-1058). A few decades later, the avowed atheist philosopher Ibn Bajjah (Avenpace), worked in Granada. One of the most renowned philosophers, the Jewish physician Maimonides was forced by the Almohads to flee to Cairo in 1165. At this time Seville was the site of the astronomer Ibn-Aflah, described as a Hispano-Muslim and presumably of recent non-Muslim background. Another Hispano-Muslim astronomer was Al-Bitruji, who worked a half century later. The Hispano-Muslim botanist Al-Ghafiqi, a contemporary of Ibn-Aflah did his work in the city of Cordova.
After 1150, the Andalusian flowering entered a period of terminal decline. However, while orthodox Muslims largely ceased their scholarly activities the large non-Muslim population joined by a number of heretical Muslims continued their intellectual pursuits in certain localities, notably the city of Seville. The latter location was home to the mystical Sufi philosopher Ibn-Arabi (1165-1240). Another Sufi philosopher, Ibn-Sab'in (1217-1269) worked in the city of Ceuta on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Seville also was the city of the greatest philosopher of the Muslim west. Ibn-Rushd (Averroes) (1126-1198) is widely regarded by orthodox Muslims as a heretic. Averroes is described by Trifkovic as follows:
On the other side of the Empire, in Spain, Averroës exercised much influence on both Jewish and Christian thinkers with his interpretations of Aristotle. While mostly faithful to Aristotle’s method, he found the Aristotelian "prime mover" in Allah, the universal First Cause. His writings brought him into political disfavor and he was banished until shortly before his death, while many of his works in logic and metaphysics had been consigned to the flames. He left no school…[51]
Averroes’ mentor, Ibn-Tufayl was a follower of the atheist Granadan philosopher Ibn-Bajjah.
A number of scholars from Spain and the Maghreb were patronized or granted refuge by nearby Christian rulers. Constantine the African (ca 1087), apparently a member of the rapidly vanishing Christian community of North Africa brought the medical learning preserved in the Islamic world to Italy. Two centuries later the Jew Faraj ben Salim translated the medical works of the heretic Razi under the auspices of the rulers of Sicily.
The Turkish conquerors also “mined” their non-Muslim population resources for their administrative, technical and intellectual skills. The Seljuk sultans maintained a chancellery manned by Greek bureaucrats with the Byzantine administrative title of notaran. This Greek bureau persisted for centuries following the Seljuk conquests. Greek scribes were “maintained not only in the Seljuk administration but also among some of the emirates that succeeded the Seljuk state.” Greeks also appeared as ambassadors, tax collectors and even court musicians.[52] Vryonis observes how the economic institutions of the conquering Turks were formed from those developed by Byzantines. At the height of the Seljuk sultanate “those elements of Christian agrarian, commercial and artisanal population which had remained in Anatolia took an increasingly active part in the expanding economic life of the Muslim portion of the peninsula.”[53] Moreover a “substantial element of the farming population, indeed the majority, in the Seljuk domains of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries consisted of Christians.” Even into the fifteenth century Christian peasants were apparently still a majority of the rural population in many areas as illustrated by the example of the renowned wine produced by Christian villagers in Begshehhir.[54]
Seljuk art was heavily dependent on, if not actually dominated by, Greek Christians and recent converts. The great Sufi master Rumi had within his circle the famous painters Kaloyani and ‘Ayn al-Dawla Rumi. The latter artist, who was elaborately praised by the Turkish chronicler Eflaki, was personally converted to Islam by Rumi. The textile industry was dominated by Greek, Armenian and Syrian craftsmen. Greeks, as well as Syrian Christians, served as physicians to the Seljuk ruling class.[55] Greek and Armenian technicians dominated the Seljuk mining and metallurgy industries. Greek shipwrights, sailors and navigators dominated both Seljuk and early Ottoman maritime activities. Vryonis observes that
Greek mining communities of Anatolia were quite active in Ottoman times… a Greek goldsmith … taught the craft of jewelry making to the sultan Selim I. It was Greeks who introduced the Turks to maritime life … It is everywhere discernible, from the first Turkish fleet that was built by Greek Smyrniotes in the eleventh century down to the establishment of the first Ottoman naval arsenal in Europe in the fourteenth century.[56]
It was the field of architecture that was the most important expression of Turkish high culture. By the time of the final Turkish conquests of Byzantium, the Muslim world had fallen behind the Europeans in science, technology and art. The days of the high Arab culture and scholarship were gone. However, architecture was one field in which the now Turkish led Muslim world could still excel. But, as was the case with Arab science, it was non-Muslims or recent converts that were also the driving force in this field. There is substantial “evidence that side by side with Muslim architects there were active certain Christian architects and architects who though Muslims were converts.”[57] The Sufi saint Rumi who employed a Greek architect and Greek masons for work on his house provides devastating testimony regarding the superiority of craftsmen of Christian origin over those of Turks. He is quoted, in once instance, explaining “the desirability of using Greek rather than Turkish masons.”[58]
There were a number of famous Christian architects in Seljuk and early Ottoman times as detailed by Vryonis. The Greek architect Thyrianus worked in the Seljuk domains in the early 13th century. In 1215 Sebastus rebuilt the walls of Sinope. Kaloyan al-Qunewi (ca 1270) worked in Konya. At a later date Nikomedianous was prominent in the court of the Ottoman sultan Orhan I. The architect Keluk ibn Abdullah was an Armenian convert.
The Turks were famous for the gulam and devshirme systems, an inventive addition to the existing Muslim institution of slavery. Vryonis notes that much “of the vitality of both the military and the administration derived from the system by which the Ottomans took the cream of the Christian youth, converted them to Islam, and then trained them to wield the sword and the pen.”[59] Large numbers of children were confiscated from their families and educated as administrators, artisans and soldiers in the employ of the Sultan’s government. “These gulams and devshirmes were fully integrated into the life of Muslim Anatolia, as is witnessed by their tremendous contribution to the military, administrative, religious, and cultural life of Anatolia.”[60] The following are some of the gulams of Greek origin who achieved fame and distinction in the 13th century. Karatay held a number of important posts under the Seljuk sultan. He was also a tutor to the royal children, a disciple of the mystic poet Rumi and a patron of architecture and learning. Amin al-Din Mikail was a Seljuk financial administration innovator who was also famous for his general great knowledge. Shams al-Din Hass Oguz was a writer and calligrapher who was renowned for his magnificent literary and artistic style.
Mehmed the conqueror of Constantinople made good use of infidel resources in achieving his great conquests. “The help the Ottomans received from Christian subjects, mercenaries, converts, and technical experts was a theme of repeated lament for the European chroniclers.”[61] The Slav troops that Mehmed drafted for the siege of Constantinople included a band of skilled miners. These included Saxon technicians whom Mehmed put to use in tunneling under Constantinople’s walls.[62] The Hungarian Orban went to work for Mehmed the conqueror as his chief cannon maker. “The Ottomans were probably already casting guns at Edirne by this time; what Orban brought was the skill to construct the molds and control the critical variables on a far greater scale.”[63] The historian of the siege, Crowley, notes the importance of non-Muslims in building the Conqueror’s navy:
The empire had acquired an experienced resource of shipwrights, sailors and pilots, both of Greek and Italian origin, as it rolled up the coasts of the Black Sea and Mediterranean, and this skilled manpower could be brought into play in naval reconstruction.[64]
Bernard Lewis confirms this dependence of the Ottomans on European military technology. It was “the Ottomans among Muslim states” that “made full and effective use of musketry and artillery, but even they … were dependent on Western technology and, to an increasing extent, relied on Western renegades and mercenaries to equip and direct their artillery.”[65]
Once his life’s ambition was accomplished through the use of both Islamic fanaticism and infidel greed, the irreligious and cynical Conqueror now saw that the Greeks “could be an asset to his empire, having an aptitude for industry, commerce, and seamanship which the Turks did not share.”[66] The relative incapacity of the Turks was, thus, acknowledged by their greatest warrior. When one considers the preponderant amount of Greek and other infidel blood flowing through the veins of Muslim Turks the suspicion naturally arises that this Turkish intellectual incapacity can only be explained as a result of Islam.
Mehmed, aspiring to the role of a Renaissance Italian duke, initiated and patronized a flurry of activity in architecture, painting, and sculpture. He encouraged scholarship and learning which flourished under the early Pax Ottomanica. Many of these scholars and artists were Greek; many others were Italian such as the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini. Medicine was also “largely undeveloped among the Turks, and the Sultan’s own medical advisers were for the most part Jews from Italy.”[67] One aristocratic captive from Trebizond, George Amirutzes “was a distinguished philosopher and scientist, and he became Fatih’s instructor in geography, astronomy and astrology.”[68] However, all of the Conqueror’s painstaking collecting and scholarly patronage tragically came to naught. “All these works of the Renaissance were to be removed as ‘indecent’ after Mehmed’s death by his iconoclastic son Bayezid II” and most of them vanished except for one portrait of the Conqueror which was, fortuitously, purchased by a Venetian merchant.[69]
The height of Ottoman civilization occurred in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent who “raised to its peak an oriental civilization deriving from nomadic, tribal and religious origins.”[70] Architecture was the expression of this height:
Here was the full flowering of that architectural tradition which Mehmed the Conqueror had first evolved from that of Byzantium … Providing a link between those two contrasting civilizations, it attained its peak with the work of a man who now ranks … as one of history’s great architects. This was Mirmar Sinan, the son of a Christian stonemason from Anatolia …[71]
In addition to the great Armenian architect Sinan, other leading lights of Suleiman’s court were of recent non-Muslim origin. These include the great admiral-corsair Barbarossa who was Greek. One of his grand viziers was also Greek while another was a Slav.[72]
The history of printing in the Ottoman lands illustrates both the disrepute into which innovation fell and the continuing dependence of progress on the efforts of men of non-Muslim origin. Islamic attitudes inevitably hardened with the passing of the more tolerant or at least more intellectually curious rulers, such as Mehmed. In fact, there were printing presses in the sixteenth century set up by Jewish exiles, Armenians and later Greeks. These were allowed to operate on the condition that they not be used for the sacred Arabic and Turkish languages.[73] However it was left to Ibrahim Muteferrika “a renegade from the Hungarian nobility” who in 1727 brought the first Muslim printing press to Turkey and cajoled or begged the authorities to permit its use. For a brief time “Ibrahim Muteferrika and his press propagated the new ideas and discoveries of European science.” However with Muteferrika’s death in 1745, printing was once again banned for an additional forty years. [74]
The use of windmills and watermills furnish yet another example of Muslim technological backwardness. Lewis notes how even “primitive” medieval Europe was more technologically sophisticated than many “golden age” Islamic societies. “A comparison between the Domesday Book and the Ottoman imperial registers … revealed the astonishing fact that there were proportionately more mills in Norman England than in the central Ottoman lands in the days of Suleyman the Magnificent.”[75]
In the Seljuk and early Ottoman periods, numerous Christian converts and slaves manned the highest ranks of the administrative bureaucracy. In later Ottoman times power “passed from a ruling institution of renegade Christians to one of predominantly Moslem-born officials” who were rather insular and parochial in outlook. This necessitated the creation of the institution of the dragoman. The high office of Dragoman of the Porte was created in 1669 as a sort of Secretary of State and was reserved for the Sultan’s Christian subjects. Around this high official numerous lesser Christian bureaucrats gathered. These Greek Phanariots “were to serve often as ambassadors or as governors of autonomous Christian provinces. Thus, with the passing of the Sultan’s Slave Household did the Ottomans continue, without either conscription or enforced conversion, to draw on the abilities of their Christian subjects.”[76]
Early Islamic Persia also had a brilliant cultural flowering fueled by non-Muslims and Muslim heretics. Indeed, as we have seen, Persian infidels or recent converts played a major role in the translation of Greek works in Abbasid Baghdad. There was a similar effort to translate Persian scientific and philosophical works into Arabic:
The transition from the Sasanian to the Islamic era in the sciences is marked by the period of translation from Graeco-Syriac, Pahlavi and Sanskrit sources into Arabic. In this very important process the majority of translators were Christian and Harranian, but the Persians also had a major role, especially in making available works of Pahlavi in the Arabic language, which the Persians … adopted rapidly as the scientific and philosophical language of discourse.[77]
Furthermore, certain powerful families of Persian converts, in particular the Barmakid and Naubakht families, acted as patrons and supporters of the scholars undertaking this work.[78] This work continued at a later time under the native Samanid dynasty. Jaihani the Samanid Prime Minister from 914 to 922 wrote on geography and patronized geographers, astronomers and other scholars. “Jaihani, who had been suspected of harbouring Shi’i beliefs or even Manichaean dualist tendencies … was removed from office.”[79]
The Muslim rulers of India, eventually found that utilizing the talents of the despised “idol worshippers” was more profitable than slaughtering them. In fact maintaining even a minimal level of civilized life depended on the effective exploitation of Hindus, heretics and recent converts. In the sultanate of Delhi, ca 1330, “most trade, most industry and all financial services remained in Hindu hands.”[80] The experience of the Delhi sultans paralleled the situation in the Ottoman Empire where such activities were most effectively carried out by Greeks, Armenians and Jews.
The fragmentation of Muslim authority in India opened up new opportunities for scholars and technicians:
As Delhi’s authority declined, aggressive new sultanates on India’s Islamic frontier in Bengal, Gujarat, Malwa and the Deccan boosted the market for military personnel and offered even better prospects for plunder… Scholars, jurists and artisans gravitated towards the more generous patronage on offer.[81]
This competition between Indian Muslim states creating a temporary ‘boom’ in intellectual achievement was similar to the circumstances creating the high level of scholarship that existed in Spain during the Umayyad caliphate. In Spain, the eagerness of the Umayyads to increase their prestige at the expense of their eastern rivals spurred them to collect Muslim, infidel and heretic scholars from all over the Islamic world.
The high civilization that existed under the Mughal sultans depended heavily on non-Muslims. The Mughal “synthesis of Indian and Islamic traditions and their eagerness to enlist the support of Hindu subjects” was crucial to their empire building as well as to their architecture, poetry, painting and music.[82]
Practicality of Early Muslim Rulers
One factor underlying the early accomplishment of Islamic civilizations was the pragmatism of the early conquerors. They were willing and even eager to partake of those ideas and technologies of the vanquished cultures that were of obvious practical use. During the period of translations from the Greek “the criterion of choice was usefulness; they translated what was useful … medicine, astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and also philosophy, which at that time was considered useful.”[83] Medicine has an obvious use and is valued in all civilizations. The sciences and mathematics have obvious uses in industry, agriculture, architecture, navigation and, of course, warfare. Philosophy was found useful by Muslim scholars for the defense, propagation and reinforcement of Islamic doctrine. However, Greek literature and art had no such use. As Lewis observes:
…we find no poets, no dramatists, not even historians. … you take what is useful from the infidel; but you don’t need to look at his absurd ideas or to try and understand his inferior literature, or to study his meaningless history.[84]
Hitti notes that no “close contact was … established between the Arab mind and Greek drama, Greek poetry and Greek history. In that field Persian influence remained paramount.”[85] Yet it is these unpractical subjects that give a culture its spirit and the ideological basis for advances in the more useful arts and sciences. The questions regarding man’s place in the universe, his relationship with the gods etc., raised by Greek dramatists and artists are instrumental in shaping the social attitudes that predispose a culture toward scientific and technological endeavors. As the philosopher Jacob Needleman puts it regarding the importance of the poetic impulse in science:
The impulse to understand, to learn the meaning of what is alive, whatever form it takes: surely this is what science once touched in us. Its power in the Western world does not originally come from the benefits of technology, but because it alone … once called forth this impulse in man to understand the whole of life…[86]
Indeed, it may be conjectured that without the impulse of great writers and artists, there was nothing to counteract the increasing rigidity that Islamic law imposed with the passage of time; a rigidity that ultimately stifled all expressions of Muslim accomplishment. The later Ottomans showed a similar pattern of pragmatism in their translation period from the 16th to the 18th centuries. However, among the Turkish elite philosophy was no longer considered useful and European history was.[87] By the 16th century, Islamic dogma was fully crystallized, so that philosophy was no longer regarded as useful, although a wayward sultan like Mehmed the Conqueror may have at one time indulged himself by dabbling in it. On the other hand, the successful Western counterattack made the study of their history a matter of some urgency.
Muslim scholars and scientists could attain considerable expertise in those fields of great interest and usefulness. “The study of the horse formed one conspicuous exception” to the lack of advancement in zoology “and was developed almost to the rank of a science.”[88] The example of such a narrow field of science demonstrates how Muslim curiosity was directed chiefly at utilitarian ends; knowledge of the horse having immediate advantages in warfare and trade. However, even in a subject of such intense interest, Arabs were still largely indebted to the work of non-Muslims. For “although the Arabs since Bedouin days possessed an extensive empirical knowledge of diseases of camels and horses, yet their more systematic knowledge and improved technique must have come from Byzantine sources.”[89]
The admission of exiled Jews into the Ottoman realm is an example, par excellence, of Islamic pragmatism. Sultan Bayezid II (1481-1512) was shrewd enough to recognize the benefits provided to his empire by the Jews expelled from Spain. He “welcomed the talented Sefardim into his realm … Bayezid and his courtiers are said to have considered Ferdinand of Spain a fool for impoverishing his own kingdom while enriching theirs. Some of the Sefardic immigrants … helped the Turks to produce their own cannon and powder.”[90]
Myth of the Western Debt to Islam
A persistent misconception, the debt western science and scholarship owes to Islam, has afflicted historians for many years, although never more so than at the present time. The historian Herbert Muller, writing at a time when academic candor was still common, debunks the belief in the preservation and transmission of science under Islam, as well as a few other widely cherished myths.
For the sake of understanding … I should say flatly that these high-minded apologists for Islam are talking about a fiction or a dream. The religion preached by Mohammed, and thereafter practiced in his name, is quite different from the Islam they describe. The prophet had nothing of the scientific outlook, and demanded absolute obedience to the law that he alone laid down. Islam never produced a democracy or a state in which the people were actually sovereign. In all states, past and present, economic inequality has been glaring. Its holy wars fought on principle, its degradation of women, and its formal acceptance of slavery make nonsense of its theoretical principle of equality, or any profession of universal human brotherhood.[91]
Other historians and philosophers echo Professor Muller’s viewpoint. Charles Burnett writing in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy refutes the belief that it was the Arabs who re-transmitted Plato’s Republic to Europe. “The Republic of Plato, though translated into Arabic, was not subsequently translated into Latin.”[92] Frederick Copleston in his History of Philosophy says that “it is a mistake to imagine that the Latin scholastics were entirely dependent upon translations from Arabic or even that translation from the Arabic always preceded translation from the Greek.” Moreover, “translation from the Greek generally preceded translation from the Arabic.”[93] Another historian of philosophy Peter Dronke concurs:
Note that Latin versions of a number of learned Greek works (Euclid, Ptolemy) came through translations from the Arabic; most of the works of Aristotle, however, were translated directly from the Greek, and only exceptionally by way of an Arabic intermediary...translations from the Arabic must be given their full importance, but not more. Another confirmation comes from Dod, according to whom the following were first translated from Greek: Categories, De interpretatione, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistici elenchi, Physics, De generatione et corruptione, Meteorologica (Book IV), De anima, De sensu, De memoria, De somno, De longitudine, De inventute, De respiratione, De morte, De animalibus (De progressu, De motu), Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Oeconomica, Rhetoric, Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, and Poetics. Only the following were first translated from Arabic: De caelo, Meteorologica (Books I-III), and De animalibus (Historia, De partibus, De generatione).[94]
Furthermore, as Franz Rosenthal points out, many of the works translated from the Arabic were not the work of Muslims. “Aristoteles latinus” by Bernard Dod, a chapter of The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, provides a comprehensive list of medieval translations of Aristotle from Arabic into Latin, none by Islamic scholars—unless by “Islamic” one means “Christian or Jewish.”[95] Indeed, in Islamic Spain it was Jewish scholars who were instrumental in translating Greek knowledge into Latin.[96] Carson sums up the reality of the translation process as follows:
So the great rescue of Greek philosophy by translation into Arabic turns out to mean no rescue of Plato and the transmission of Latin translations of Arabic translations of Greek texts of Aristotle, either directly or more often via Syriac or Hebrew, to a Christendom that already had the Greek texts and had already translated most of them into Latin, with almost all of the work of translation from any of these languages into any other having been done by Christians and Jews and none of it by Muslims.[97]
Moreover, the most important preservers and transmitters of classical knowledge were not Muslims, or even dhimmis working in Muslim lands. While much has been made of Muslim Spain as a transmitter of ancient Greek knowledge to the West few have remarked on how the Byzantines transmitted Greek knowledge to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The 11th century Byzantine scholar Psellus “remarked at the height of his career that Celts, Arabs, Persians and Ethiopians came to Constantinople to hear his lectures.”[98] And it was these same Byzantines, who at the time of the tragic destruction of their city, brought this knowledge to the West. As the famous historian Steven Runciman observes:
…these refugee Greek scholars … took trouble to collect and copy the Greek manuscripts that Byzantium had preserved. … It was from these scholars… that the men of the Renaissance learnt most of their philosophy. … They conserved ancient books … and transmitted what they had conserved for the benefit of European civilization.[99]
Imperial Consequences: Peace, Trade and Cross Fertilization
The victory of the holy warriors of Islam and the economic recovery of the conquered territory was followed by a resumption of the civilization of the native population under Muslim auspices. In addition, Muslim rulers were able to capitalize on the different specializations of the conquered groups and on a division of labor based largely on ethnicity. Furthermore, the inclusion of the new territory within the trading network of a much larger Muslim empire created a brief period of intellectual and technological advancement due to the cross fertilization of different cultures.
In the case of the Abbasid cultural flowering, Hourani notes that “as the Abbasid caliphate brought the lands of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea into a single trading area, so too the Greek, Iranian and Indian traditions were brought together, and it has been said that ‘for the first time in history, science became international on a large scale’.”[100] Of course, for this Islam must be given its’ due, however, this advancement was caused by the fact that for a while under the Pax Islamica different ideas cross-fertilized each other. It was not due to anything inherent in Muslim civilization itself, but it did give the appearance of a brilliant Islamic civilization for a brief period of time. Social scientist Charles Murray provides additional details regarding the process of this intellectual ferment:
The extraordinarily rapid rise of the Arabic empire provides a number of reasons for the ignition of the burst of activity. First, the empire brought the neglected raw materials of the ancient world under one roof. In the words of historian Thomas Goldstein, ‘A Muslim could study, from records preserved on his own soil, the astronomies of India, Babylon and Egypt; Indian and Persian mathematics; the philosophical concepts of the Greeks; the medicine, geography, astronomy, and mathematics of the Hellenistic age; the botanical, pharmacological, zoological, geological, and geographic lore amassed by the ancient world as a whole.’ The trade routes and commercial centers … of the Arab world made these materials accessible to scholars across the empire and encouraged cross-fertilization of ideas. … Initially, the Islamic elites engaged the cultures they conquered undefensively, flexibly, and curiously.[101]
Muslim empire builders were not unique in bringing about the cross fertilization of ideas from widely distant cultures. An apt comparison can be made to another extraordinary group of nomadic conquerors, the Mongols:
The energy and genius of the relatively small number of people who were at the core … have baffled historians … just as the effects, ranging from horrifying massacres and devastations to periods of admirable cross-cultural exchange and stimulation, have never ceased repelling and attracting them.[102]
The results of the conquests of these non-Muslim nomads were very similar to the various Islamic conquests. However, no historian would presume to write about the “brilliant Mongol civilization”.
It was under the Mongols that a Jewish convert to Islam, Rashid al-Din compiled a universal history at the behest of the khans Ghazan and Oljetu. “He assembled a team of collaborators, including two Chinese scholars, a Buddhist hermit … a Mongol specialist in tribal tradition, and a Frankish monk, as well as some Persian scholars, and with their aid, he wrote a vast history of the world from England to China.”[103]
In addition to the importance of non-Muslims and recent converts, this shows how, once peace was established, the Mongol empire also promoted intellectual advance through cross fertilization of ideas from its many conquered territories. Lewis notes that “the Mongols united, for the first time under one dynasty, the civilizations of the Middle East and of the Far East, with immediate and beneficial effects both for trade and culture.”[104] No one, however, attributes these achievements to Mongols or to Mongol culture or ideology.
Furthermore, the vaunted Muslim “tolerance” pales in comparison with that of the bloody-minded Mongol rulers.
Jewish and Christian officials served in the Mongol administration. The apogee … came during the reign of Arghun Khan (1284-91). … Only a few years before … the Jewish oculist and philosopher Sa’d b. Kammuna had written a comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam … The publication of such a book in Arabic would have been unthinkable when Islam was the ruling faith.[105]
Mongol tolerance could survive their savage conquests. But one thing it could not survive was their conversion to Islam. “The Jews and Christians of Iraq and Iran soon returned to their traditional dhimmi status when the Ilkhanid dynasty became Muslim once and for all in 1295.”[106]
An important spur to the subsequent development of Islamic civilization was the transmission of learning and technology from the distant lands of the East. Chinese technology, obtained through trade or capture, was of great importance. After the Chinese were defeated at Talas, for example, “many captives were brought to Samarkand, where, it is reported, they started a paper making industry.”[107]
Of equal or greater importance was the transmission of knowledge from the ancient civilization of India. The most famous and misunderstood example occurs in the field of mathematics. It is casually assumed that algebra and modern number notation were invented by the Arabs. The so-called Arabic numerals were simply systematized from Hindu texts. The famous Arab mathematician al-Khwarizmi
wrote two books on arithmetic and algebra … One of these … Concerning the Hindu Art of Reckoning … In this work, based presumably on an Arabic translation of Brahmagupta, al- Khwarizmi gave so full an account of the Hindu numerals that he probably is responsible for the widespread but false impression that our system of numeration is Arabic in origin. …when subsequently Latin translations of his work appeared in Europe, careless readers began to attribute not only the book but also the numeration to the author. ….ultimately the scheme of numeration making use of the Hindu numerals came to be called … algorithm, a word … derived from the name of al-Khwarizmi…[108]
Algebra had a more mixed origin; it was only partly derived from Hindu texts. The word algebra was also obtained from al-Khwarizmi’s book Al-jabr wa’l muqabalah. Moreover, in certain respects, the works of al-Khwarizmi were at a lower level than those of his Greek and Hindu predecessors:
…in two respects the works of al-Khwarizmi represented a retrogression from that of Diophantus. First it is on a far more elementary level … and second … [it] is thoroughly rhetorical, with none of the syncopation found [in the works of Diophantus] … or in Brahmagupta’s work. Even numbers were written out in words rather than symbols! … Nevertheless, the Al-Jabr comes closer to the elementary algebra of today than the works of Diophantus or Brahmagupta, for the book is not concerned with difficult problems in indeterminate analysis but with a straightforward and elementary exposition of the solution of equations, especially of second degree.[109]
Thus, the Arabs must be credited not with inventing algebra, but with making it more accessible for the solution of simple problems. As for the ultimate origin of modern algebra there are three schools of thought: “one emphasizes Hindu influences, another stresses the Mesopotamian, or Syriac-Persian, tradition, and the third points to Greek inspiration. The truth is probably approached if we combine the three theories.”[110] Historians of mathematics Boyer and Merzbach conclude:
It is probable that al-Khwarizmi typified the Arabic eclecticism that will so frequently be observed in other cases. His system of numeration most likely came from India, his systematic algebraic solution of equations may have been a development from Mesopotamia, and the logical geometric framework for his solutions palpably was derived from Greece.[111]
The example of algebra is an ideal case illustrating the role of cultural cross fertilization in the short-lived period of high civilization under the early Pax Arabica. Algebra was derived from a combination of ideas developed by the oriental culture superseded by Islam, the classical learning of ancient Greece, and an impetus from a far-off land, in this instance India that became accessible due to the vast extent of the Arab empire. And, of course, it reached its full development in a land that still contained a majority population of non-Muslims and recent converts who were well versed in their ancient traditions.
Furthermore, the Hindus had a continuing role in the development of algebra subsequent to al-Khwarizmi as the civilization of the Arabs ossified under the deepening influence of Islam. The “radical sign, and many algebraic symbols” appear to have been invented by the Hindu mathematician Bhaskara in the twelfth century. [112]
Mathematical knowledge was, by no means, the only contribution India made to the golden age of Arab culture. Will Durant notes how the Muslims “took much of this Hindu chemical science and industry to the Near East and Europe; the secret of manufacturing ‘Damascus’ blades, for example, was taken by the Arabs from the Persians, and by the Persians from India.” He also notes that India contributed much medical knowledge to the Arabs. “Haroun-al-Rashid accepted the preeminence of Indian medicine and scholarship and imported Hindu physicians to organize hospitals and medical schools in Baghdad.” The technique of vaccination was first developed in India as early as 550 A.D.[113] This practice was adopted by the Muslims and reportedly found its way into Europe from the Ottoman Empire.
There has been much written in certain modern academic circles regarding the “stealing” of ideas by one civilization from another. In no case was this truer than in the wholesale appropriation of India’s intellectual treasures by the early Arabs. Keay points out that India’s “scientific and mathematical discoveries, though buried amidst semantic dross and seldom released for practical application, were readily appreciated by Muslim scientists and then rapidly appropriated by them. Al-Biruni was a case in point: his scientific celerity in the Arab world would owe much to his mastery of Sanskrit and access to Indian scholarship.”[114] It is not a coincidence that the astronomer al-Biruni (973-1050), who worked in Afghanistan and is described as a Persian Shi'ite with agnostic leanings, would be quite open to the study of Hindu works.
Muslim Self Sufficiency
From its inception the Muslim community was preoccupied with the Islamic religion in general and the spiritually superior Arab people in particular. Indeed the one undeniable achievement of Islam was the elevation from barbarism of the tribes on the Arabian Peninsula itself; the achievement of which was one of the Prophet’s primary goals. As the scholar of comparative religion John Noss observes:
Muhammad gave much thought to the behavior of his followers, and must be said to have legislated for them so comprehensively, and with such a uniform purpose of elevating their morals to a higher level than before – the high level of an inclusive brotherhood instead of the lower level of divisive tribal organization…[115]
There can be no doubt that the “laws prohibiting wine and gambling as well as the regulations covering the relations of the sexes and granting a higher status to women, must have meant to his early followers a considerable change in their way of life.”[116] Considering the status of women under Islam, one can surmise that the condition of Arabian women’s lives must have been quite oppressive before Islam. From the commandments in the Qu’ran we can infer that female infanticide was widely practiced until prohibited by Muhammad. Unrestricted polygamy must also have been practiced; Muhammad limited this to four wives, required that the husband have sufficient means and that all wives be treated equitably. However, as shown in a previous chapter[117] there was no restriction on sexual slavery. He also regularized divorce and granted women the right to at least some fair treatment, presumably correcting the gross abuses that existed until his time.[118]
The Arab obsession with their own spiritual and cultural elevation was accompanied by a disdain and disinterest in other traditions, even that of the large numbers of conquered peoples over whom they ruled. For a brief period of time, certain members of the ruling elite patronized scholars to translate and interpret these other traditions, but for the most part this was limited to the immediately practical and useful arts and sciences. As Lewis notes until “the Mongol conquests, [Muslims] have virtually nothing to say about their neighbors in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and very little even about their own pagan ancestors.”[119] This doctrine of Arab supremacy prevented the higher philosophy of the ancient Greeks from becoming truly incorporated into Islamic culture. This was quite different from the attitude of the Romans and later western Europeans who were eager students of the higher Greek wisdom. The Muslims were content with useful technical and scientific knowledge. Some, though by no means all, Muslim schools of theology attempted to co-opt much of Greek philosophy in the service of Islam. A few Muslim rulers, like the quirky Ottoman Conqueror, even engaged Greek scholars in study and discussion. However, while some of the forms might be adopted, Islam had no use for the substance of Greek thought.
The tale of the burning of the Library at Alexandria illustrates Islam’s self imposed intellectual isolation. The story that the Library at Alexandria was burned at the orders of the caliph “is one of those tales that make good fiction but bad history. … Abd-al-Latif al Baghdadi who died as late as A.H. 629 (1231) seems to have been the first to relate the tale. Why he did it we do not know; however, his version was copied and amplified by later authors.”[120] The story, though not literal fact, does, however, express an important symbolic truth regarding the attitude the early Arab conquerors had to the accomplishments of earlier civilizations. That may be the reason why it gained such wide currency both within and outside of the Muslim world. Moreover, this early Arab attitude was bequeathed to later Muslim civilizations.
Intellectual Atrophy
With the passage of time, and with Islam becoming the dominant majority religion, there began the final phase of Islamic civilization. This phase is characterized by intellectual atrophy leading to economic and technological stagnation. The critic of Islam Robert Spencer is of the opinion that the demise of philosophy and of the rationalist sects such as Mu’tazilism was part of an ‘anti-intellectual rage’ which afflicted Arab Islam at the end of the golden ages of Baghdad and Andalusia. In addition “the impetus for such a reaction came from the Qur’an and Islamic tradition, or it wouldn’t have been so strong or long lasting.”[121] He theorizes that this reaction is a consequence of fundamental Islamic theology:
Jews and Christians believe that God created the universe to operate according to reliable, observable laws. While he can suspend those laws, ordinarily he does not do so … This way of thinking provided a foundation for the edifice of modern science … But to the Muslim who found all knowledge in the Qur’an and suspected philosophers of infidelity, that was tantamount to saying, ‘God’s hand is chained.’ Allah, they argued, could not be thus restricted. … If one could not rely on the universe to obey observable laws … science could not flourish.[122]
This view of Islam is echoed by Murray:
Islam, more than Christianity … saw God as sustaining the universe on a continuing basis, and as a deity who is not bound by immutable laws. To proclaim scientific truths that applied throughout the universe and throughout time could easily become blasphemy, implying limits to what God could and could not do.[123]
Stillman contends that it was in the thirteenth century that the “secular and humanistic tendencies of Hellenism … began to wane; at the same time the Islamic religious element in its most rigid form began to wax ever stronger.”[124] It would appear, however, that the strengthening of Islam was the cause and not the result of the decline in Hellenism which was the product of the dhimmi or recently converted elements in the population. By the thirteenth century those elements had become small minorities in most Arab lands and with the decline in the numbers of non-Muslims the well of Greek thought dried up.
The Islamic scholar G. E. Grunebaum also believed that it was the strengthening of Islam that put an end to the great period of Arab Islamic civilization:
Islam was never able to accept that scientific research is a means of glorifying God. … When the religious leadership began to oppose scientific inquiry … the internalized misgivings of the scientific elites led them to acquiesce. … During the golden age, the orthodox did not aggressively enforce those aspects of the Faith that discouraged free-flowing inquiry and debate; once they began to do so, Islamic contributions to the sciences effectively ended.[125]
Patai notes the deleterious effects of Islam on the Arab intellect and the premature termination of the Arab golden age:
The fact remains that under traditional Islam, efforts at human improvement have rarely transcended ineffectuality. In general, the Arab mind, dominated by Islam, has been bent more on preserving than innovating, on maintaining than improving, on continuing than initiating. In this atmosphere, whatever individual spirit of research and inquiry existed in the great age of medieval Arab culture became gradually stifled; by the fifteenth century, Arab intellectual curiosity was fast asleep.[126]
Another factor in Muslim intellectual degeneration was, undoubtedly, the end of imperial expansion. Once the Arab empire reached its maximum extent the temporary bubble in wealth caused by economic expansion, trade, and the flow of technology and expertise, in the early Islamic oecumene ceased. Furthermore, considering the extent of the Muslim domains, the wealth expropriated by the Muslim elites, and the number of technologies and variety of ideas available to them, it is remarkable how little in terms of human advancement and accomplishment was achieved by Muslims even at the height of their golden age. Muslim accomplishments were paltry when compared to what was achieved in the small and fragmented cities of Greece, in the divided states of the Indian subcontinent or in parochial and isolated China. Still another factor contributing to Islamic intellectual decline was the tendency toward increasing despotism and the lack of independent centers of power such as church, monarchy, landed aristocracy and urban bourgeoisie typical of many parts of Europe.
The decline in Arab culture occurred quite rapidly. Hitti contends that Arab culture in the eastern Mediterranean was already in decline at the time of the Crusades.[127] The physical sciences ceased to advance once the Abbasid caliphate entered its decline. “The Moslems of today, if dependent on their own books, would have even less than their distant ancestors in the eleventh century.”[128] The historical sciences also after the time of the historian Miskawayh (1030) began a rapid decline.[129] There was a simultaneous increase in less intellectually rigorous subjects during this time. “The whole period (11th –12th century) was marked by predominance of humanistic over scientific studies. Intellectually it was a period of decline.”[130]
It was the fate of fabled Andalusia that its golden age would be followed, like that of the Abbasids, by intellectual decline. The stage was set when the vizier al-Mansur burned the library of the scholar-caliph al-Hakam in order to please the increasingly powerful and rigidly anti-intellectual Muslim clergy. After another brief period of enlightenment under the party kings, Islamic anti-intellectualism resumed its course under the repressive Almoravids. Not one to be upstaged by the book burnings of al-Mansur, the devout Almoravid ‘Ali (1106-43) burned all of al-Ghazzali’s works that he could get his hands on in Spain and the Maghreb. The succeeding Almohads were slightly less hostile to scholarly pursuits, but were even more fanatical in driving many Christian and Jewish scholars into exile.
Also inevitable was the decline of the lesser intellectual renaissance that began in Fatimid Egypt, once a center of medical learning. “Egyptian medicine since Ayyubid days was dominated by Jewish physicians carrying on the glorious tradition of ibn-Maymun. But among neither Moslem nor Jewish physicians do we find creative activity.”[131] In 1448 the Mamluk Sultan Jaqmaq “prohibited Jewish and Christian physicians from treating Muslim patients. … Jaqmaq’s decree is indicative not only of the decline of the position of non-Muslims in the later Islamic Middle Ages, but also of the waning esteem for Hellenic science and its practitioners.”[132] In Muslim North Africa west of Egypt, there were no discernible golden ages at all; only the occasional isolated scholar like ibn-Khaldun or ibn-Battutah. This relative lack of intellectual activity in that part of North Africa was due to the continuing depredations of both Berber and Bedouin nomads and a consequent Islamization of the population that was even deeper than that of Spain or the Arab east.
Both the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks had brief periods of artistic and, to a lesser extent, intellectual glory during the period of stability subsequent to their conquests. However, as Muller notes, Islam was unable to sustain periods of enlightenment for more than a brief time. Their religion
made the nomadic Turks a great power … But it quickens chiefly the military virtues of courage, fortitude, loyalty, and obedience, not so much the qualities that make for sophistication, enlightenment, and creativity. It impedes the continued growth of its converts by the rigidity of its doctrine and discipline. The Ottoman Turks restored an empire to Islam and adorned it with suitable art; but they proved unable to extend or renew its culture, or create a high civilization of their own.[133]
Darlington observes how once the Ottoman Empire’s advance was halted, the lack of new dhimmi populations to exploit led to its inevitable decline. “As in other Muslim empires no one ever discovered how to organize a process of social promotion that would replace capture and conquest.”[134]
One question that remains is why the Ottomans were unable to attain the level achieved during the brilliant albeit brief flowering of Baghdad. To be sure, there was a slight initial efflorescence which expressed itself primarily in architecture and poetry, but few Ottoman subjects reached the level previously attained by many of the scholars of Abbasid Baghdad or Umayyad Spain. This is especially puzzling since the empire of the Ottoman Turks at its height covered an area equivalent in size to that of the early caliphs. One reason may be the chronic and slower nature of the Turkish conquest which exhausted and impoverished the vanquished population. In addition, many of the intellectual elite among the conquered had ample time and opportunity to flee, to the ultimate benefit of Italy and the West. However, the most important reason may be that during the era of the Turkish conquests Islamic thought attained its nadir of rigidity. In the early ages of Baghdad and Andalusia, on the other hand, Islam was still slightly flexible.
In India the high point of Mughal civilization came to an end with the repressive despotism of the bigoted sultan Aurangzeb. Under his intolerant rule discrimination “against Hindus and the active promotion of Islamic values were … revived.” It was no coincidence that during his time “the great tradition of Mughal building virtually ceased.”[135]
The inevitable closing of the Muslim mind is symbolized by the ultimate fate of the art collection that was painstakingly accumulated under the patronage of Mehmed the Conqueror. These works were destroyed or sold and dispersed by his pious son Bayezid. That sad event was a repeat of the earlier destruction of the scholarly library of the Umayyad caliph al-Hakam in Cordova at the instigation of the intolerant ulema. Even more tragic was the fate of the unfortunate scientist-sultan Ulugh Beg who, after presiding over a scientific renaissance in Samarkand, was executed at the insistence of the religious authorities. Equally typical of the ultimate fate of Islamic science was the destruction by the Chief Mufti of the great observatory built by Ottoman Sultan Murad III under the direction of the astronomer Taqi al-Din. Another example was the abrupt end of the Mughal renaissance with the death of the tolerant reformer Akbar.
The intellectual deficiency resulting from the Islamic meme continues up to the present day. Thierry Gattuso observes the following with respect to the underachievement of Muslim citizens of Britain:
The United Kingdom census of 2001 for the first time looked at the nation’s religious background. The findings showed that Muslims make up 2.8% of the UK population. Hindus 1%, Sikhs 0.6, Buddhists and Jews both make up 0.5% of the UK population. 31% of Muslims of working age have no qualifications, the highest of any religious group. As in many countries owning your own home is a major achievement and financial responsibility. 82% of Sikhs followed by 78% of Jews own their own home in the UK. Only 52% of Muslims own their own home, the lowest of any religious group. 14% of Muslims are unemployed, compared to 8% of Sikhs and 6% of Hindus. The underachievement of Muslims is even more bleak when you examine where most Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists in the UK come from. 75% of Muslims, 97% of Hindus, 98 % of Sikhs and 69% of Buddhists in the UK are from or have ancestral links to South Asia. Therefore any cultural factors can be largely ruled out when comparing the achievement of Muslims with people from other religious groups. Muslims complain that they have to overcome language difficulties and face discrimination in the UK and state this as a factor in their poor performance. Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs face the same language and discrimination issues as Muslims, yet their achievements and performance is much better than Muslims.
The underachievement of Muslims should come as no surprise to those of us who understand the true nature of Islam. Everything a Muslim needs to know is in the Koran, Hadith or Sunnah. Muslims are not encouraged to seek knowledge and better themselves. Muslims are against progress, modernity and science. Those that control Islam do not want to see Muslims educated as an educated Muslim will apply commonsense and logic to the Koran and see it for what its is, a collection of distorted Bible and Torah stories and in print the mind of a 7th century Bedouin bandit leader.[136]
The following analysis, and that in the next section, assumes a slight knowledge of statistics on the part of the reader. An analysis of IQ data lends support to Gattuso’s assertion. The following table compares IQ test data for Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria.[137]
The adjusted scores, which are the result of various studies, show higher scores for Greece and Bulgaria with respect to that of Turkey. The one exception is a study of Greek children from the early 1960s with a score in the middle of the Turkish range. The overall score which is a summary of the studies shows that Turkey lags her European neighbors by two to three points. The use of IQ data from these countries minimizes the effect due to heredity. Genetic factors are unlikely to account for these differences for the following reasons. As we have seen, there was in Turkey extensive hybridization with the Byzantine peoples of Anatolia and a large genetic infusion after the Ottoman conquests from peoples in the Balkans and all along the Black Sea. Similarly, there would have been an inevitable genetic infusion from the Turkish conquerors to the vanquished people of Bulgaria and Greece. The genetic studies of Cavalli-Sforza show the close relationship between modern Turks and adjacent Europeans as shown in his synthetic maps of principal components for Europe and western Asia.[138] Effects due to cultural factors are also minimized. With the exception of religion other aspects of culture and worldview are similar. Music, dance, cuisine, and other traits are likely the remnants of ancient underlying Aegean and Pontic cultures common to all three countries.
Two other observations from the IQ data are of interest. One is the lower scores attained by immigrant Turks as compared to those remaining in Turkey. It appears that immigrant Turks in Europe, who presumably come from smaller cities and rural areas, score somewhat lower than the Turkish population as a whole. Seventy years of Kemalism seems to have raised IQs among a portion of the population up to levels equivalent to those in neighboring Europe. The difference between the immigrant and home populations is noted by Seyran Ates a lawyer for family and criminal law and a women’s rights activist in Germany. She observes that the Turkish community in Berlin is very conservative and traditional, much more so than most people in Turkey proper. So there is, among immigrants a regression backwards towards Middle Ages Islam.[139] In addition, IQs in the adjacent countries of Iran and Iraq are lower than that of Turkey. The work of Cavalli-Sforza shows that the genetic distances between Iran, Iraq and Turkey are relatively close.[140] This slight gap may be due to the fact that in both Iran and Iraq Islam has existed many centuries longer than it has in Turkey. Also Turkey has had the benefit of eighty years of enforced secularism.
However, a sample size of three countries is too small to permit rigorous statistical verification. The sample size may be increased by adding those European and Muslim countries bordering or facing each other across the Mediterranean, as well as certain similar adjacent territories. The following table shows the IQs obtained for these countries by a number of studies..[141] These particular countries are chosen to hold genetic and non-religious cultural factors as close as possible. Most of the European and Muslim countries are of Mediterranean racial stock. In almost all of them there has been a long history of genetic interchange. Many of the European countries were partially or completely under Muslim rule for many centuries; others experienced briefer periods of Muslim occupation of or incursions into some of their provinces. In addition, many of the populations of these countries are made up of closely-related racial groups. Some populations are made up of similar Mediterranean racial components. Others have large Turco-Mongolian components in their ancestry: e.g. Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Russia.
The European countries have an average IQ of 94.6 with a standard deviation of 4.89. The Islamic countries have an average IQ of 85.9 with a standard deviation of 2.13. The difference between the two groups, as measured by a standard t test is highly statistically significant. It suggests a difference in IQs due to an Islamic effect of some eight points. This effect might be a result of the fatalistic attitude engendered by Islamic theology in its adherents. It might also result from Muslim child-rearing practices.[142] The long-lasting institution of Muslim slavery may have left an indelible residue by creating negative attitudes toward work and initiative, including that of intellectual effort. There is the possibility that the greater economic development north of the Mediterranean is the main factor, and if the economic gap narrows the IQ gap will close. However, most of the European countries in the sample are from the least developed parts of the continent, and it is only in the last few decades that they have begun to develop modern economies; a rather short amount of time to produce such a large differential. Of course, these results are only suggestive and further research is warranted.
Rise and fall of Islamic Scholarship
Scholarship, science and human accomplishment appear to follow the hypothesized general pattern over time, shown in the following chart, in all Islamic societies.
The general scheme shown above illustrates the changes in the level of civilization in a Muslim conquered territory. Stage A represents the level preceding the Muslim invasion. In stage B the level drops precipitously as the invasion proceeds bringing war, famine, slavery and displacement. In the following stage C, stability is restored under a new Islamic government. The majority of the population consists of non-Muslims and recent converts. The territory becomes part of the larger Islamic community and, with trade and the cross-fertilization of cultures, civilization rises to new heights in a golden age. However, in the following stage D, conversion reduces the non-Muslim population, Islamic law is more rigidly followed, despotism and persecution increase. The Muslim mind closes; the level of civilization declines. In the terminal stage E, there is a general cultural and economic stagnation causing the level of civilization to stabilize at a low level.
To test the above hypothesized path of Islamic intellectual accomplishment, the significant scholarly figures listed in Hitti’s authoritative History of the Arabs was compiled. These were arranged by subject matter and time period and it was usually possible to categorize the background of the scholar by the description in the text. The scholarly fields were grouped into the following categories:
S: Science, Math, Medicine, Philosophy
H: History, Geography, Social Science
L: Grammar, Literature, Arts
T: Theology, Law
The background of the significant figures fall into the following categories:
N: Non-Muslim, Heretic, Sufi, Non-believer, apostate, convert, child of convert
R: Recent: Grandson of Convert or Muslim of Non Arab ethnicity before end of Islamic 3rd century
M: Assumed long family history of Islam or Muslim of Arab ethnicity
The time pattern of numbers of significant figures makes it possible to test the above hypothesis of rise, golden age, decline and stagnation. The background categories measure the impact of non-Muslims, nominal Muslims or heretical Muslims in contributing to Islamic civilization and attainment. In Hitti’s terminology when a figure is referred to as, a ‘Hispano Muslim’, ‘Persian Muslim’, “Syrian Muslim’ etc., this is taken as an indication of relatively recent non-Arab and non-Muslim ancestry, and the figure is placed in category R. Of course, there is no certainty that this is always the case. However, on the other hand, this is probably balanced in that many of those figures referred to as ‘Arab Muslim’ or simply as Muslim may well be of non-Arab or recent non-Muslim background; these latter figures are placed in category M. Using this methodology, the following contention is tested:
The handful of famous intellectual figures in Islam, when examined, always turn out to have been either non-Muslim, or a generation or two away from being non-Muslims (so still raised in an intellectual environment of some non-Muslim mental freedom), or if Muslim and from a Muslim family, than very likely a heretic or a freethinker, like ar-Razi.[143]
The analysis is broken into two sets. The first part presents the significant figures from the eastern Arab provinces. Spain and the Maghreb, with their distinct historical experience are analyzed separately. There are 171 significant figures in the Arab east. The following table shows the change in the number of significant figures over time by field.
Literature and the arts peak early; these are heavily concentrated in the first Arab century and then precipitously drop in subsequent centuries. Theology and law are also concentrated in the early years. Undoubtedly this is due to the work on the codification of Muslim law following the death of Muhammad. The more rigorous sciences peak in the first Abbasid century and continue fairly strong for another two centuries before a steep decline beginning in the second half of the 11th century. History and the social sciences rise more slowly, reach a maximum in the early 10th century and then abruptly drop. Thus, scholarly activity peaks in the 9th through the 11th century. There is, however, a secondary smaller peak in the 13th century for reasons that will be explained below.
The next table shows the background of the significant figures over time.
Significant figures of non-Muslim and recent non-Muslim background make up more than half the total. As indicated above, this result is quite conservative since many of the scholars who are labeled as Arab Muslim, might well be of recent descent from non-Arab converts who were assimilated as clients into Arab tribes. After 1050, with the decline in the non-Muslim population, the number of non-Muslim figures becomes negligible. The table indicates a strong dependence of intellectual achievement on the existence of non-Muslim populations as a source of significant figures.
The following table gives the cross tabulation of background category by field of scholarship. Non-Muslims and recent converts dominate the arts and sciences and constitute almost half of the social sciences. Only theology and law, unsurprisingly, are made up of overwhelming orthodox Muslim percentages.
Restricting the view to the rigorous fields of science and philosophy and to the critical first four centuries yields the following results:
Scientists by Background: First 4 Centuries
N---------34
R-----------3
M --------23
Total -----60
Science, math and philosophy in the “golden age” are dominated by non-Muslims or recent Muslims who make up 62% of the total significant figures.
In summary, the above tabulations yield the following conclusions. By the fourth century after the conquest, the number of major intellectuals declines. Non-Muslims or recent Muslims constitute a majority of significant figures until the fifth century. Non-Muslims are a majority in the fields of science/math/philosophy and arts/humanities and are close to half in the field of history/social sciences. Therefore, the conclusion is that Arab Islamic civilization declines after three centuries as the number of non-Muslims declines and the process of Islamization accelerates. Moreover, this effect is undoubtedly even greater than that shown since many of those categorized as Muslims are likely near descendents of conquered peoples.
The following tables show field by century, background by century and field by background for Islamic Spain and the Maghreb.
Intellectual activity in Spain began with a greater time lag after the conquest than was the case in the Muslim east. This late start may be a consequence of the lower level of pre-Islamic civilization in Spain as compared to that in the East. The golden age beginning in the tenth century was instigated by the establishment of an independent Umayyad caliphate. Two centuries after the inception of the golden age, the fourth century after the conquest, scholarship entered a period of decline which was exacerbated by fanatical Berber dynasties. However, even during the time of the new dynasties and for some years afterward, scholarly achievement was stronger than during the equivalent period in the East. This lateness of the decline in scholarship was likely facilitated by the lower degree of Islamization and the stronger position of dhimmis in Muslim Spain. The resistance of the dhimmi population in succumbing to Islamization was a result of the continuing existence of the Christian kingdoms that provided a source of refuge for Christian and even Jewish scholars during periods of persecution as well as political pressure and leverage against weakening Muslim rulers. Even so, in the thirteenth century, Islamic civilization in Spain began its terminal decline.
Identifiable non-Muslims, heretics and recent converts number 22 out of 51 significant figures, a proportion somewhat lower than that in the East. However, in Spain it is likely that many more of those who, for lack of further information, must categorized as orthodox Muslims of long standing, are probably of recent non-Muslim descent. In addition, identifiable non-Muslims, heretics and Muslims of recent origin dominate the more rigorous intellectual subjects of science, mathematics and philosophy. Furthermore, the Jewish component of scholars in these fields is greater than that of unconverted Christians; six of the scholars listed are unconverted Jews, while only one is readily identified as an unconverted Christian. This is a much larger percent of Jews than occurs in the East and is another indication of the initial lower level of culture in Christian Spain, as compared to that in the East, at the time of the Muslim conquest.
The geographic dispersion of significant figures in the Arab east is shown as follows:
Syria is quite important in intellectual achievement in the first century when the Damascus based Umayyads were in power. Iraq assumes an overwhelming dominance in achievement during the first centuries of Abbasid rule. Baghdad became the point of concentration for émigré scholars from all over the empire particularly from neighboring Persia. Science/math/philosophy predominated in Iraq. On the other hand, the early numbers in Arabia proper are heavily dominated by poets/musicians. The minor secondary spikes are due to intellectual activity in Egypt and Syria. However, these later spikes in intellectual activity are much dampened. These occur within a century of new dynasties coming to power in those regions.
These secondary spikes are the result of a number of factors. A new dynasty usually improves local conditions after a period of disorder, war or civil strife. These new dynasties are frequently heretical, schismatic, regarded as illegitimate, or of a different ethnic group (Turk, Berber, Kurd, Persian, Caucasus Mamluk etc.) and seek to obtain support from the remaining dhimmi population as a counterweight to a hostile orthodox Muslim majority. As we have seen, new locally-based dynasties have a tendency to compete with the Baghdad caliphs in attracting scholars. They also consciously seek to compete in prestige with previous or rival dynasties. Furthermore, they may seek the propaganda value of subsidizing intellectual activity. In addition, a new dynasty may co-opt local talent that would otherwise have flowed to the central government of Baghdad. However, eventually the same pattern of decline sets in for Syria and Egypt following these minor spikes in intellectual achievement. The same effect is also seen in Persia with the native semi-independent dynasties after 850. More recent Persian dynasties and the Turkish dynasties are beyond the scope of Hitti's history.
The following graph repeats the Bulliet conversion curve for Iraq, Syria and Egypt. Directly beneath, for purposes of comparison, is a graph of the number of significant figures by province in the Arab East over the same half century time periods.
The inverse relationship between the number of significant figures and the non-Muslim percent of population is evident. Once Muslims pass the fifty percent mark, the number of significant figures per time period drops, never again to approach the Abbasid heights. The following charts show the breakdown of activity in the three provinces of Iraq, Egypt and Syria. Scholarly activity in Iraq, constituting the largest fraction shows clearly the stages of intellectual activity from recovery after the Muslim conquest to peak and inevitable decline. The charts for Egypt and Syria show the later spikes in scholarship under local rulers followed by the same decline. The Fatimids assumed power in Egypt about the year 970. Two centuries later the Ayyubids came to power in both Egypt and Syria followed by the Mamluk dynasty in 1250. The latter, though uncultured and bloodthirsty, had an appreciation for art and architecture.[144] Also clearly shown is the shift in intellectual leadership from Syria to Iraq with the replacement of the Umayyads by the Abbasids in 750.
The conversion curve and significant figures chart for Persia show the minor spike and subsequent decline in scholarly activity resulting from the rise of the native independent Saffarid and Samanid dynasties about the year 875. The numbers of significant figures in the three provinces outside of Iraq are always minuscule and, hence, subject to random fluctuations.
Of course, the absolute number of significant figures does not account for the crucial factor of population size. Increases or decreases in population will affect the number undertaking and succeeding in scholarly endeavors. The following charts show population[145] and significant figures per million for Iraq, Persia, Syria and Egypt.
The rise, peak and decline of the ratio of scholars are obvious for Iraq. The initial decline following the Umayyad overthrow in Syria and the later peaks in the outlying provinces can also be seen.
The following chart shows the rise, peak and decline in the number of significant figures in Iraq and Persia. It encompasses the time period from the early Arab conquests through the rule of the Abbasids and the closely linked local Persian dynasties. Below is a chart of population.[146] The population of the two lands shows almost no variation between 650 and 1250 which is the entire period over which the rise, peak and decline in intellectual achievement occurs. Although the Mongol invasions are often blamed for the destruction of high civilization in these two lands, the number of significant figures declines well before the Mongol depredations of the 1250s caused a drop in population. In fact, population is virtually flat for the four centuries from 800 through 1200. By the year 1200 scholarship had dropped to a lower level than had existed in Umayyad times five centuries before.
The next two charts show the Spanish conversion curve and the number of significant figures over time. The Andalusian golden age commenced about the year 912 when Abdel Rahman III established formal independence by proclaiming himself caliph. Its progress was cut short with the accession of the Almoravids and resumed with the equally fanatical, but somewhat more intellectually curious, Almohads.
The full cycle of Islamic intellectual development in Spain is obscured by the steady decline of Muslim power before the advancing Christians. However, the steady drop in activity beginning with the thirteenth century indicates that the evolution of Islamic civilization in Spain would have closely mirrored that in the eastern provinces.
The following graph shows the relationship in the Arab east, excluding Arabia proper, between the percent of significant figures present in each century beginning with 650 and ending with 1550 and the Muslim percent of population.
The largest percent of significant figures occurs in the first few centuries when Muslims were still a minority and begins to decline when the Muslim percent rises above fifty. There is a minor peak after the rise of independent or semi-independent local dynasties, but this is followed by an irreversible decline within two centuries. A linear regression run between the percent of significant figures occurring within centuries and the percent of Muslims in the population shows a strong negative relationship (correlation coefficient 65%) between the two. An increase in conversions of 10% in any century decreases the century's share of significant figures by 1.5%. Regressing the percent of significant figures on the preceding century’s percent of Muslims shows an even stronger relationship (correlation of 83%). Pre-Islamic cultural imperatives would be expected to influence a recently converted population. An increase in conversions of 10% in any century decreases the next century's share of significant figures by almost 1.8%. The most favorable assessment of Muslim civilization that could be made, given these results, is that “Islam provided a sense of purpose and vitality that helped power the achievements of its golden age, but Islam could not accommodate itself to the degree of autonomy required to sustain it.”[147]
Two other studies support this general view of Muslim intellectual achievement. The process of rise, peak and decline is also shown in Bulliet’s graph 1which gives the proportional representation of Arab territories in biographical sources. His graph clearly shows the rise and decline of learning in Iraq and Umayyad Syria. And it shows that at the time of new or breakaway dynasties, in Iran, Egypt, Syria, Spain and Anatolia, there was a secondary intellectual impetus.[148] His graph only measures proportions and not absolute numbers of notable figures; it also does not evaluate the importance of these significant figures, so it cannot be used as a real gauge of intellectual accomplishment. Moreover, Bulliet regards the Mongol conquest as an important factor in the decline in scholarly activity, when as seen above, that decline preceded the Mongol invasion.
Another supporting perspective on Islamic intellectual rise and decline occurs in Murray’s study of human accomplishment. He presents a graph of numbers of significant figures and index measurements of their achievements for the field of Arabic literature. This graph given for the period 500 to 1300 shows a decline after 1050. “The golden age of classic Arabic literature coincided with the golden age of Arabic culture in general.” The peaks in literature occurred in the century from 950 to 1050.[149]
Furthermore, Murray’s data permits a comparison of Islamic achievement with that of other civilizations. Given the extraordinary rise in western accomplishment since the Renaissance, a direct comparison of Islamic accomplishment with that of the west would be unable to separate out the general factors involved in western supremacy over the rest of the world, and those factors specifically resulting from Islam. However, additional light can be cast on the pattern of Islamic achievement through a comparison with other civilizations that were also surpassed by the modern west. The following chart shows the percent of significant figures, listed by Murray, occurring in each century between 600 and 1800 for the Islamic world, China, Japan and India. Century percents are used to avoid the complications that would arise by the large variations in population between these territories.
The graph shows that the peak in Islamic civilization occurs in the eleventh century with almost 18% of the total significant figures. The subsequent drop-off is severe. China, after recovering from a low point in the seventh century, has a fairly narrow range of oscillation; the percent drops off toward the end as a result, no doubt, of western pressure. Japan shows a general rise over the centuries prefiguring its entry into western science and technology. India’s pattern is of considerable interest. India shows a general downward trend after an early cultural highpoint. It is no coincidence that the decline begins at the time of the Arab invasion of Sind and accelerates in the tenth century with the destructive raids of the Ghaznavids. There is a slight recovery in the eleventh century followed by a new decline, doubtless due to increased Muslim pressure in the late twelfth century with the Ghurid territorial expansion. Finally, the beginning of Mogul rule permits a slight recovery which is greatly accelerated under Akbar’s eclectic rule, only to plunge, once again, under Akbar’s fanatical successors.
Both the qualitative and quantitative results in this chapter are in conformity with the general pattern of cultural achievement set out in the figure entitled Phases of Islamic Civilization. That pattern is one of recovery from the Islamic jihad, rise, peak and then decline as the Dhimmi proportion of the population decreases. The following chapter examines the prospects of reforming Muslim society and culture by placing these in a historical context.
[1] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 23.
[2] From Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran.
[3] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 24.
[4] Ibid, p. 29.
[5] Keay, India, A History, p. 210.
[6] Ibid, p. 238.
[7] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 26.
[8] Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 66.
[9] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 353.
[10] Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 110.
[11] Ibid, p. 67.
[12] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 345.
[13] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 31.
[14] Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 68.
[15] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 183.
[16] Ibid, p. 184.
[17] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 96.
[18] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 351.
[19] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 274.
[20] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 61.
[21] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 174.
[22] Ibid, p. 61.
[23] Ibid, pp. 240-41.
[24] Ibid, pp. 392-93.
[25] Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, p. 39.
[26] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 370.
[27] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 345.
[28] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 265.
[29] Ibid, pp. 345-46.
[30] Kennedy, When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World, p. 44.
[31] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 373.
[32] Ibid, p. 253.
[33] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 344.
[34] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 217.
[35] Ibid, p. 310.
[36] Ibid, p. 297.
[37] Ibid, p. 404.
[38] Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, p. 133.
[39] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 630.
[40] Ibid, p. 683.
[41] The scholars listed are obtained from Hitti, History of the Arabs.
[42] Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, quoted in Jonathan David Carson, Hyping Islam 's role in the History of Science, americanthinker.com, July 29th, 2005.
[43] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, pp. 193-94.
[44] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 509.
[45] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 58.
[46] Ibid.
[47] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 543.
[48] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 54.
[49] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 345.
[50] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 515.
[51] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, pp. 194-95.
[52] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 233.
[53] Ibid, p. 235.
[54] Ibid, p. 237.
[55] Ibid, pp. 237-38.
[56] Ibid, p. 239.
[57] Ibid, p. 235.
[58] Ibid, p. 237.
[59] Vryonis, Byzantium and Europe, p. 175.
[60] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 243.
[61] Crowley, 1453, p. 101.
[62] Ibid, p. 167.
[63] Ibid, p. 91.
[64] Ibid, p. 124.
[65] Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, New York, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 21.
[66] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 113.
[67] Ibid, pp. 156-57.
[68] Freely, Inside The Seraglio, p. 22.
[69] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 156.
[70] Ibid, p. 200.
[71] Ibid, p. 214.
[72] Muller, The Loom of History, New York, p. 305.
[73] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 268.
[74] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, pp. 381-82.
[75] Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, p. 23.
[76] Ibid, p. 384.
[77] Frye, The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 4, p. 398.
[78] Ibid
[79] Ibid, p. 142.
[80] Keay, India, A History, p. 275.
[81] Ibid
[82] Ibid, p. 336.
[83] Lewis, What Went Wrong?, p. 139.
[84] Ibid
[85] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 311.
[86] Needleman, Lost Christianity, p. 24.
[87] Lewis, What Went Wrong?, pp. 139-40.
[88] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 382.
[89] Ibid, p. 685.
[90] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 87.
[91] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 285.
[92] Quoted in Carson, Hyping Islam 's role in the History of Science.
[93] Quoted in Ibid
[94] Quoted in Ibid
[95] Quoted in Ibid
[96] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 54.
[97] Carson, Hyping Islam 's role in the History of Science.
[98] Vryonis, Byzantium and Europe, p. 114.
[99] Steven Runciman, The Last Byzantine Renaissance, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 102.
[100] Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p. 77.
[101] Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment, New York, Perennial, 2003, pp. 399-400.
[102] Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, p.103.
[103] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 99.
[104] Ibid
[105] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 66.
[106] Ibid, p. 67.
[107] Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, p. 214.
[108] Carl B. Boyer, and Uta C. Merzbach, A History of Mathematics, New York, Wiley, 1989, pp. 255-56.
[109] Ibid, p. 256.
[110] Ibid, p. 258.
[111] Ibid, p. 260.
[112] Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 528.
[113] Ibid, pp. 529-32.
[114] Keay, India, A History, p. 188.
[115] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 738.
[116] Ibid, p. 739.
[117] Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem.
[118] Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 739-40.
[119] Lewis, What Went Wrong?, p.140.
[120] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 166.
[121] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 125.
[122] Ibid, p. 127.
[123] Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 401.
[124] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 64.
[125] Quoted in Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 400.
[126] Patai, The Arab Mind, pp. 154-55.
[127] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 662.
[128] Ibid, p. 381.
[129] Ibid, p. 391.
[130] Ibid, p. 403.
[131] Ibid, p. 685.
[132] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 71.
[133] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 298.
[134] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, pp. 343-44.
[135] Keay, India, A History, p. 336.
[136] Thierry Gattuso, Why do Moslems Underachieve?, faithfreedom.org, November 24, 2005.
[137] From Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen IQ and the Wealth of Nations summarized by Steve Sailer at www.iSteve.com.
[138] L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 290-296, Figures 5.11.1 through 5.11.4. Principal components are statistical measures summarizing and combining data obtained from many different genes.
[139] Seyran Ates in Jamie Glazov, Symposium: Murdering Women For “Honor”, FrontPageMagazine.com June 10, 2005.
[140] Cavalli-Sforza, The History and Geography of Human Genes, p. 244, Table 4.15.
[141] From Lynn and Vanhanen.
[142] See Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem.
[143] Hugh Fitzgerald, Algeria, Christianity, and Islam, Jihad Watch (internet), March 23, 2006.
[144] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 671.
[145] Source: Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History, New York, Penguin Books, 1978.
[146] Ibid
[147] Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 399.
[148] Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, p. 8.
[149] Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 321.
However, the Muslim efflorescence, like the financial underpinning for the Muslim military campaigns, depended on the wealth expropriated from, and on the continuing economic exploitation of, conquered non-Muslim populations. In addition, it must be acknowledged that the Muslim invaders were not, in general, total barbarians; they were not Huns or Mongols or Vandals. They valued the level of civilization that they encountered in their invasions and maintained a cultivated and often comfortable existence. However, one thing about the historical record is noteworthy; the various golden ages of Islamic civilization always occur early in the first few centuries in which a new territory is occupied. Wherever the various Muslim vanguards invaded, the vast majority of the population was non-Muslim. It would take many years for this population to be converted and assimilated. These non-Muslims or recent converts are the ones who carried on the work which many historians are prone to attribute to "Islamic" civilization. Thus, a distinction must be drawn between the so-called high Islamic civilization and the religion of Islam. Eventually as the process of Islamization proceeds the non-Islamic component of the population becomes a small minority and stagnation sets in. This process is evident in the first centuries of the Arab conquests where the process of Arabization and conversion to Islam took a few centuries to complete; this was the "Arab" golden age, a product of unconverted or recently converted Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians. In Spain the golden age lasted longer, perhaps because the process of Islamization was never as complete in Moorish Spain as in the Arab East.
It is remarkable how closely this pattern was repeated in the subsequent expansions of Islam as a consequence of the Turkish and Mogul conquests. The initial splendors of the Seljuk and Ottoman empires were the result of unconverted or recently converted subjects. When the Islamization of the newly conquered territories was complete intellectual stagnation once again set in. Similarly, an initial flowering as an extension of the ancient Hindu culture followed the Mogul conquest of India.
It must, however, be granted that Islamic civilization did serve a valuable purpose as a bridge between the West and the ancient civilizations of India and China. This resulted in the transmission of science and technology from China and mathematics from India. It must also be noted that, as will be shown below, the so-called Arabic numerals are really Hindu in origin; algebra is a combination of Indian, Greek and pre-Islamic Mesopotamian mathematics. And while it is true that Muslim rulers did enable some of the knowledge of the classical world to be preserved, the importance of this work has been greatly exaggerated. In addition, the actual work of transcribing and preserving this classical knowledge was done by non-Muslims or by recent converts.
Plunder and Economic Exploitation
The first Muslim invaders were always invariably motivated by the desire for loot and, as we have seen in Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem, the lust for concubines. The Prophet himself “skillfully couched his worldly objectives in divine terms” and this “fusion of the sacred and the profitable was endorsed by future generations of Islamic leaders.”[1] Thus, Islamic scripture contains explicit promise of, and religious sanction for, plunder from infidels:
Fight against such of those who have been given the scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.
Surah 9:29
Whoso fighteth in the way of Allah, be he slain or be he victorious, on him We shall bestow a vast reward.[2]
Surah 4:74
With vast territories conquered and large populations subdued, the early Arab leadership found it prudent to regularize and bureaucratize plunder. The caliph Umar instituted a register known as the Diwan “which remunerated the fighters out of the proceeds from the conquered lands and thus allowed them to continue prosecuting war operations without worrying about their subsistence.”[3] The necessity for caliphs to keep their supporters happy with a continuing distribution of loot is illustrated by the civil conflict that began in the reign of Caliph Uthman which was “exacerbated by the temporary halt of the conquests in the early 650s and the attendant reduction in the spoils of war.”[4]
Plunder also served Muslim rulers, from the time of the early Arabs to the end of the Muslim expansions, as the wherewithal for vast public works. For those rulers with pretensions to intellectual achievement plunder could also be used to attract scholars. Mahmud of Ghazni, for example, employed his plunder in adorning his capital and subsidizing a gathering of scholars at his court but “for Hindus, this paragon of valour and piety would ever be nothing but a monster of cruelty”.[5] Successive generations of Muslim ghazis became increasingly addicted to looting, with explosive results when the spigot was turned off as occurred when the Rajput leader Prithviraj had succeeded in bottling up the Muslims in the Punjab. “But this interdiction had served only to increase the pressure for a more decisive encounter. The Ghorids rose to the challenge because for them … plunder was a necessity.”[6]
As the Arab empire expanded and the rate of new conquest slowed, it became necessary for plunder from war to be replaced by the less violent form of plunder known as taxation. The conquering Muslim military elites were, thus, supported by the dhimmi populations “who had to pay special taxes” such as the kharaj or land tax and the jizya or poll tax.[7] Bat Yeor summarizes the Islamic view of the “collective booty” owed by the dhimmis to their conquerors:
The concept of fay – collective booty reserved for the upkeep of the Islamic community – constituted the legal argument which preserved the religions of the conquered peoples. This economic burden, which devolved on the disarmed vanquished people to the benefit of a warlike community destined to conquer the world, is very clearly set out by the Muslim jurisconsults.[8]
This concept of “fay” became very well entrenched within Muslim tradition, even long after the Arab heyday.
The economic surplus extracted from the vanquished population, on which the Muslim elite depended, did help to preserve infidel religions for many centuries. In many cases it was the dhimmis who “did the jobs Arabs were unwilling to do.” In early Abbasid times “the agricultural class, who constituted the bulk of he population … and the chief source of revenue, were the original inhabitants of the land, now reduced to the position of dhimmis. The Arab considered it below his dignity to engage in agricultural pursuits. … In country places and on their farms these dhimmis clung to their ancient cultural patterns and preserved their national languages.” These were Syriac, Aramaic, Iranian and Coptic. “Many of those who embraced Islam moved to the cities.”[9]
In the early days of a newly conquered territory the Muslim rulers found that practicality and efficiency required this system of extortion be administered by native bureaucrats or even by infidel clergy. These punitive exactions, despite the attempts by some officials to mitigate them, would inevitably lead to the decimation of non-Muslim populations.
The caliph entrusted to the patriarch the task of collecting the taxes extorted from his flock, leaving him only with a pittance. The chronicles record in detail these relationships based on money and violence and always involving torture, from the lowest social level to its summit. Equally, one should have few illusions about the appointment of high Christian officials, particularly to the Treasury. Integrated into this Islamic machinery for the destruction of Christendom, they could, by a gesture, temporarily slow it down, temper it, or exacerbate it, but could not abolish it.[10]
However, at some point it must have occurred to the more prescient caliphs, sultans and viziers that non-Muslims were essential as a source of taxes, expertise, and entrepreneurship and as go-betweens and emissaries with non-Muslim states; so conversions were no longer actively sought. These rulers did “endeavor to protect the dhimmi peasantry against uncontrolled extortions by governors or local tyrants.” Agriculture, being the source of wealth and power, the state was dependent for its revenues “on compulsory work by an abundant workforce.”[11] As the number of converts grew the remaining “infidel subjects were more oppressively mulcted and humiliated.” Over the objections of the devout, some rulers began to actively discourage conversions since the “treasury of the Sultan had come to depend on the contributions of the unbeliever.”[12] In fact, as occurred in Islamic Spain, officials sometimes shut off completely “this escape route from a miserable existence by forbidding Christians and Jews to convert to Islam. Too many converts would destroy the tax base.”[13]
In times of disorder when the caliph or the sultan could no longer protect them, the diminishing supply of dhimmis endured further extortion from rebellious nomads. “The wealth-producing dhimmi communities became a coveted prize and plunder to warring political forces.”[14] Vryonis observes how during the Turkish conquests this competition for the diminishing dhimmi resource was a cause of warfare among nomadic tribes.
The invasions had caused a certain disruption and decline in the Christian population of the Anatolian plateau. As a result … the various Turkish princes began to raid the land of one another and of the Christians and to carry away entire Christian towns and villages in order to repopulate their own domains.[15]
One enlightened nomad sultan, however, with all the attention to detail of a compulsive greenhouse proprietor, carefully nurtured his valuable stock of dhimmi farmers:
The great care the sultan [Kaykhusraw] lavished upon these Christian colonists is illustrative of the importance the Muslim rulers attached to repopulating their domains with Christian farmers. He had them carefully guarded so none would escape en route, and on arrival … he gave them land and seed to plant. He bestowed upon them a five year tax immunity … many who heard of the tax exemption migrated to the sultan’s domains because of the great disorder that had now enveloped the Byzantine Maeandrian regions.[16]
Nevertheless, despite the best efforts of some far-seeing Muslim rulers, in the long run the Islamic meme followed the logic inherent in its program. And once the dhimmi populations were sufficiently depleted through conversion, enslavement and displacement, the natural result was inevitably the stagnation of Islamic society.
Brief Renaissance and Permanent Decline
After the initial Arab conquests, it required about a century for peace and stability to become commonplace so that civilization could resume its advance. This lag was reinforced by the continuing Arab advance into North Africa and the easternmost territories of the Persians which continued into the eighth century and must have consumed considerable resources. All subsequent Muslim conquests resulted in lags of various lengths during which peace and security was being re-established and the still numerous non-Muslim population could resume the work of civilization. Trifkovic observes that “since dead bodies paid no taxes while the captives were economic assets, once the conquerors’ rule was firmly established a degree of normalcy was reestablished at the level of local communities.”[17]
The Dhimmi Roots of Early Muslim Civilizations
The achievements of the civilizations under Muslim rule were substantial. However, almost all of this occurred in the early periods of such rule, once peace and stability had been restored. Furthermore, these high periods of culture were almost exclusively the product of the conquered, and still not completely Islamized native populations. The observations, in this regard of Professor Darlington who looks at society with the eye of a trained biologist, are pertinent:
But while war accounts for the expansion of Islam it does not account for the sparkling creation of culture which followed the expansion. This … happened only where there was something valuable before the coming of Islam. And the sparkle in each instance lasted only half a dozen generations. It lasted evidently as long as the conquest of each ancient society brought about the recombination of valuable racial components.
So it was that successively in Damascus and Baghdad, in Cordoba and Marrakesh, in Isfahan and Delhi, we see the characteristic flame of the new hybrid Islamic civilizations always based on a precarious balance between conversion and non-conversion, hybridization and non-hybridization, a balance which Muslim violence was not fitted to sustain. When the conquest ceased … the intellectual and artistic … life of Islam came to a standstill. … When the limits of conquest had been reached … and new hybridization was excluded, decay set in, slow but everywhere irremediable.[18]
Other students of Islam contend that “Islamic science developed for a while despite Islam.” Only in those few areas and times when it was protected by freethinking or unorthodox elites could it flourish.[19] Such times usually occurred early in Muslim rule. Stillman, writing of the early Arab conquests makes the observation, applicable to Muslim polities in general, that Islamic civilizations are extensions of the pre-existing cultures modified for the service of the new faith:
Classical Islamic civilization was not Islam the religion, although the latter was an essential component. Islamic civilization was an amalgam of cultural elements that included Islamic religion, Arabic culture with its strong pre-Islamic roots, Greek humanism, and subtle remnants of the ancient heritage of the Near East.[20]
Hitti echoes these ideas with respect to the early post-conquest Arab dynasties in the east:
What we therefore call ‘Arab civilization’ was Arabian neither in its origins and fundamental structure nor in its principal ethnic aspects. The purely Arabian contribution in it was in the linguistic and to a certain extent in the religious fields. Throughout the whole period of the caliphate the Syrians, the Persians, the Egyptians and others, as Moslem converts or as Christians and Jews, were the foremost bearers of the torch of enlightenment and learning. … The Arab Islamic civilization was at bottom the Hellenized Aramaic and the Iranian civilizations as developed under the aegis of the caliphate and expressed through the medium of the Arabic tongue.[21]
It took almost three centuries for most of the vanquished population to convert to Islam and most such conversions were motivated by self interest and not by religious conviction. Islamic culture, thus, developed “on a substratum composed of the heritage of the Syro-Aramaean, Persian and Hellenistic civilizations which had preceded it. With Islam the Near Orient not only recaptured the whole of its former political domain but regained in the realm of culture its ancient intellectual preeminence.”[22] However, as we have seen, the price paid by the native non-Muslims for this reassertion of their submerged civilization under Arab domination was a steep one.
In the fields of science and philosophy the contributors were in large majority non-Arab and non-Muslim. As Hitti notes:
When we therefore speak of ‘Arab medicine’ or ‘Arab philosophy’ or ‘Arab mathematics’ we do not mean the medical science, philosophy or mathematics that are necessarily the product of the Arabian mind or developed by people living in the Arabian peninsula, but that body of knowledge enshrined in books written in the Arabic language by men who flourished chiefly during the caliphate and were themselves Persians, Syrians, Egyptians or Arabians, Christian, Jewish or Moslem and who may have drawn some of their material from Greek, Aramaean, Indo-Persian or other sources.[23]
The subjects dominated by Arab Muslims were specifically those that related to the Arabic language and the Islamic religion. Theology, jurisprudence, philology and linguistics were “those intellectual activities evoked by the predilections of the Arabs as Arabs and Moslems.” The scholars in this field were mostly of Arab descent “in contrast to the physicians, astronomers, mathematicians and alchemists … who were of Syrian, Jewish or Persian origin.”[24] Even so, the great theologian al-Bukhari was a Persian, while the founder of one of the four orthodox Muslim schools, abu-Hanifah, was the grandson of a Persian and presumably non-Muslim slave. It is also “noteworthy that many of the pioneering grammarians of the Arabic language were themselves non-Arabs.”[25] There was one great exception to the general rule that philosophy and science was the domain of the non-Arabs. This was Al-Kindi whose “pure Arabian descent earned him the title ‘the philosopher of the Arabs’, and indeed he was the first and last example of an Aristotelian student in the Eastern caliphate who sprang from Arabian stock.”[26] The acclaim Al-Kindi received from his fellow Arabs highlights the paucity of noteworthy philosophers and scientists of both Arab stock and Muslim religion.
The early Arab rulers were able to capitalize on the different specializations of the conquered groups and there arose a division of labor based largely on ethnicity. It is ironic that in the first years of the conquest mosques were built by Greek-speaking Christians. Greeks and Aramaeans continued to dominate the field of architecture for many years. Although they eventually adopted the Arabic tongue “they continued the style and inherited the mathematics, and the ability to use it, of their Greek or … of their Babylonian ancestors.”[27] Persian, Coptic and Hindu designers found a niche in architectural decoration. When al-Walid built his famous grand mosque in Damascus, he “employed Persian and Indian craftsmen as well as Greek artisans provided by the emperor of Constantinople. Papyri … show that material and skilled workmen were imported from Egypt.”[28]
Jews were valued “for their medical skill and general literacy” and unlike the Greeks and Persians “were able to exert their influence largely without conversion” for a long period of time.[29] Indians were also valued for their medical skills. The Barmakid minister Yahya “paid an Indian scholar called Manka to translate an Indian medical book … the book of Sasard into Arabic.”[30] Hindus were also valued for their skills in astronomy and mathematics. “The same Hindu scholar who brought to the court of al-Mansur the astronomical work Sindhind is credited with having also introduced Hindu arithmetical lore with its numeral system (called in Arabic Hindi) and the zero.”[31] Personal tutors usually consisted of practicing Christians or those recent converts adopted by Arab tribes as clients. “After the time of ‘Abd-al-Malik the tutor or preceptor, usually a client or Christian became a standing figure in the court.”[32]
The maritime trades were dominated by those of Greek or Phoenician descent; a situation that continued under succeeding Muslim rulers for a thousand years. These seamen
…were by origin Phoenician and Greek and by ancestry much hybridized. … they must have willingly converted … For so we must understand the fall of Cyprus … to be followed by Sicily and Sardinia, Crete and Malta. Another Muslim advance in the Mediterranean was delayed until the fifteenth century. Then the annexation of Greece was followed by the incorporation and conversion of the Greek and Dalmatian … sea-faring populations in the Ottoman Empire.[33]
During the reign of the Umayyad caliphs Abd-al-Malik (685-705) and al-Walid (705-715) the Arabization of the state administration occurred by “changing the language of the public registers from Greek to Arabic in Damascus and from Pahlawi to Arabic in al-Iraq and the eastern provinces and in the creation of an Arabic coinage.”[34] However, this caused no end to the state’s dependence on the skills of non-Arabs. Under the Abbasids the appointment of non-Muslims to high office continued into the latter half of the ninth century. These appointments occurred even during times of the implementation of stringent regulations against dhimmis. Despite these persecutions, caliphs and other high officials were long dependent on non-Muslim expertise.
It was during the Abbasid caliphate that Arab Islamic civilization reached its height. It was at this time that the epoch of the translation of Greek works occurred. The caliphs and the Arab elite of Baghdad, remarkably open to the ideas of classical civilization, subsidized a great explosion of creativity:
The apogee of Greek influence was reached under al-Ma’mun. The rationalistic tendencies of this caliph and his espousal of the Mu’tazilite cause which maintained that religious texts should agree with the judgments of reason, led him to seek justification for his position in the philosophical works of the Greeks.[35]
Hitti observes that the “Abbasid dynasty, like others in Muslim history, attained its most brilliant period of political and intellectual life soon after its establishment.” Its height was reached during the reigns of Harun al-Rashid and his son al-Ma’mun (786-833).[36] The primary reason for the early occurrences of Muslim high culture, of course, is the continued existence of a large reservoir of dhimmis or of recent converts with specialized skills. Other reasons include the establishment of peace and stability after a long period of strife, the inclusion of newly conquered territories into an empire with expanded trade and the diffusion of ideas, and the need for new dynasties to consolidate their rule by including non-Muslims in the governing coalition.
The fertilization caused by the diffusion of ideas from distant parts of the Arab oecumene is illustrated by the most famous literary composition of the Islamic world. The so-called ‘Arabian Nights’ “was an old Persian work … containing several stories of Indian origin. … As time went on additions were made from numberless sources: Indian, Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian and the like.”[37]
The relative paucity of intellectual achievement, under Abbasid rule, in Syria and Egypt as compared to Iraq lends support to the thesis that dhimmis or recently converted Muslims were the driving force in intellectual achievement. For in those provinces:
Administration and secular arts and sciences depended to a very great extent on government employment and favor. In Egypt and Syria such employment and favoritism seems to have been directed more toward the Arab population than toward the indigenous convert community.[38]
Intellectual achievement in the late post-Abbasid Arab dynasties is but a pale reflection of the brilliance in early Baghdad. Under the minority sect Fatimid caliphs of Egypt, who cultivated the support of Christian elements, there was a minor renaissance. Hitti notes that as late as 1125 in Fatimid Egypt the façade of the al-Aqmar mosque “may have been due to some Armenian Christian architect.”[39] However, with the decline of Abbasid Baghdad and with the steady decrease in non-Muslim numbers, Islamic science began its terminal decline. Such science as existed was confined to previously peripheral areas, now under independent dynasties, like Syria, Egypt, Persia, central Asia and Spain. In addition these remnants of Islamic science were critically dependent on Mongol rulers, Persian scholars or the few remaining dhimmi intellectuals:
In science there were only two branches wherein the Arabs after the middle of the thirteenth century maintained their leadership: astronomy-mathematics, including trigonometry, and medicine, particularly ophthalmology. But in the first discipline the contribution was made mainly by Arabic-writing Persian scholars whose centre of activity was the Il-Khanid observatory; and library of Maraghah … It is interesting to find the Syrian Jacobite Catholicos …. (Barhebraeus, 1226-86) known as an historian and as the last classical author in Syriac literature lecturing there on Euclid in 1268 and on Ptolemy in 1272-3.[40]
There were a large number of significant scholarly figures[41] who were either non-Muslims, converts, or of recent non-Muslim and non-Arab ancestry. There were still others who, although nominally Muslim are reputed to be guilty of various forms of heresy, freethinking or atheism. In the years starting with the first caliphs and extending through the Umayyad dynasty, some of these scholars were as follows. Abdullah ibn Saba (ca 650), a Jewish convert from Yemen was a noted legal scholar. A quarter century later another converted Jew, Wahb ibn Munabbih, was well known as a writer in history. Another converted Jewish historian, Ka'b al-Ahbar, a contemporary of ibn Saba, was from the city of Hims in Syria. The poet al-Akhtal (640-710), a close friend and drinking companion of the caliph Yazid was a Syrian Christian. His fellow poet al-Farazdak was an Arab who was described by Muslims as dissolute and, therefore, likely a freethinker. Another Christian poet at the time was Jamil al-Udhri from Yemen. The city of Kufa in Iraq was the home of another poet, the Persian convert al-Rawiyah (713-72).
Music was an important art form in the early days of the Arab Empire. The Arabian Peninsula, in those early days before the full force of the sharia was felt, was a center of music and song. A surprising number of renowned musicians residing there were non-Arabs. Ibn-Surayj (640-726) was a Turkish convert and freed slave. Musajjah (ca 714) was a black African convert and client member of a Meccan tribe. His contemporary, al-Gharid was originally a half breed Berber slave. Another contemporary, ibn-Muhriz was from Persia and, thus, of recent non-Muslim background. Jamilah, also a contemporary is described as a Medinese freedwoman and therefore, also of probable non-Muslim origin; she is one of very few women in the Islamic world recognized for artistic or intellectual ability. Ma'bad (ca 720) was a Muslim of half African parentage. In this era Hunayn al-Hiri (ca 735) was a well known Christian musician in neighboring Iraq.
Medicine was the only science that was well established in Umayyad times. In the late seventh century ibn-Uthal, a famous Christian physician practiced in Damascus; Tayadhuq, another renowned practitioner in Iraq was a Greek Christian and Masarjawayh, a Persian Jew, was still another well-known Iraqi physician. Finally, there was one important philosopher in late Umayyad times. He was the famous Syrian Christian John Damascene who died in 748.
The early Abbasid dynasty was the high water mark for intellectual accomplishment in the Islamic world. Despite increasing repression, non-Muslim, convert and suspected heretic scholars were present in abundance. Baghdad, in those years, was one of the great centers for the study of astronomy. One famous astronomer was al-Fadl ibn-Nawbakht (ca 815) who was from Persia, and therefore of recent non-Muslim ancestry. His contemporary Isa al-Asturlabi, although described as an Arab Muslim was apparently of recent Christian background. Al-Farghani, who lived some thirty years later, was a Turkish Muslim and, therefore, either a convert or the descendant of recent converts. Abu-Ma’shar, (ca 886), like ibn-Nawbakht, a Persian Muslim, was a well known astrologer. Another Persian Muslim astronomer in the following century was al-Khazin. Sind ibn-'Ali (ca 830) was a converted Jew, who also left his mark in the field of astronomy. Al-Battani (877-918) also a respected astronomer was a Sabian (Mandean). From that obscure monotheistic Sabian religion emerged a famous family of translators specializing in Greek astronomy. The founder was Thabit ibn-Qurrah (836-901) who was followed by his son Sinan, his grandsons Thabit and Ibrahim, and his great grandson abu-al-Faraj.
Another famous family of translators was the Nestorian Christians Hunayn ibn-Ishaq, his son Ishaq and his nephew Hubaysh ibn-al-Hasan who all worked in the mid ninth century translating Greek medical and philosophical texts. Other famous translators were the Christian Thawafil ibn-Tuma (ca 785) who worked in literature, and the Syrian Christian Yuhanna ibn-Masawayh who translated medical texts. The Syrian Christian Qusta ibn-Luqa (ca 922) translated Greek mathematical and philosophical writings. Jacobite Christians Yahya ibn-Adi (893-974) and Isa ibn-Zu'rah (ca 1008) translated works of Greek philosophy. Indeed, according to the historian Franz Rosenthal, almost “all of the translators [from Greek into Syriac or Hebrew or from Greek, Syriac, or Hebrew into Arabic] were Christians.”[42] The aforementioned Sabian Thabit family plus a scattering of Jews were exceptions.
Another famous family worked in the field of medicine. These were the Nestorian Christians Jurjis ibn Bakhtishu (ca 771), his son Bakhtishu and grandson Jibril. A converted Christian from Persia, Ali al-Tabari (ca 850), also made his mark as a physician as did the Persian Zoroastrian convert Al-Majusi (ca 994). The eleventh century Christian physicians, Ali ibn-Isa, Ibn-Jazlah and ibn-Butlan also left their mark on the study of medicine. But, perhaps the most famous physician and medical theorist was the Persian Al-Razi (865-925), who although nominally Muslim was notorious as a freethinker condemned by Muslims for blasphemy.
Three additional freethinkers, known as the arch-heretics of Islam, were the Syrian philosophers Al-Rawandi (ca 915), Al-Tawhidi (ca 1023) and Al-Ma'ari (973-1057). Another famous heretic was the Turkish Sufi, Al-Farabi, the student of two Christian scholars, who died in 950. Al-Farabi, who was the model Muslim heretic, is described by Trifkovic as follows:
Greatly influenced by Baghdad’s Greek heritage in philosophy that survived the Arab invasion, and especially the writings of Aristotle, Farabi adopted the view — utterly heretical from a Moslem viewpoint — that reason is superior to revelation. He saw religion as a symbolic rendering of truth, and, like Plato, saw it as the duty of the philosopher to provide guidance to the state. He engaged in rationalistic questioning of the authority of the Koran and rejected predestination. He wrote more than 100 works, notably The Ideas of the Citizens of the Virtuous City. But these unorthodox works no more belong to Islam than Voltaire belongs to Christianity.[43]
Non-Muslims, heretics and converts were also well represented in the natural sciences and geography. Al-Jahiz (ca 868), a member of the rationalist and soon to be declared heretical Mutazilite sect, was a renowned zoologist. A school of geography, dominated by Persians, flourished in the late ninth and early tenth centuries: ibn-Khurdadhbih (ca 912), al-Ya'qubi (ca 891), ibn-Rustah and al-Hamadhani (ca 903), al-Balkhi (ca 934), al-Istakhri and ibn-Hawqal (ca 950) worked in Iraq, Persia and Arabia. All were described as Persian Muslims and, thus, at that early period, presumably of recent non-Muslim family backgrounds. Qudamah (ca. 928), a converted Christian also did work in geography.
Another group of Persian Muslims dominated the study of history. Ibn-al-Muqaffa was active in historical studies soon after the Abbasids assumed power. A century later ibn-Qutaybah worked in Baghdad along with his younger contemporaries, al-Baladhuri and ibn-Dawud al-Dinawari. Al-Tabari (838-923) worked in Persia, as did his younger contemporary, Hamzah al-Isfahani. The above-mentioned Ibn-al-Muqaffa was a Persian Zoroastrian convert, whose suspect orthodoxy led to his being burned at the stake. A few years afterward in 783, the poet ibn-Burd, also well known in early Abbasid literary circles, was a Persian heretic, who was also put to death for his Zoroastrian apostasy. Abu-Nuwas, another Persian poet managed to avoid Burd’s unfortunate fate.
In the following century, Abu-Tammam, a converted Christian living in Syria also attained renown as a poet. Ibn-Ishaq, who died in 767, the grandson of a Christian slave achieved fame as a biographer. Two non-Arabs of recent non-Muslim family backgrounds achieved success in philology, a subject usually reserved for native Arabs. One was Al-Jawhari (ca 1008), a Turkish Muslim in Baghdad. His contemporary philologist was ibn-Jinni the son of a Greek slave who worked in Syria.
Following the “golden prime” of the early Abbasids, Islamic scholarship fell into a sharp decline. With the steady increase in converts and the decrease in the number of non-Muslims, the primary source of accomplished scholars dried up. With the passage of time, the descendants of earlier converts became far removed from the family and national traditions that promoted and sustained high scholarly achievement. The inner logic of the Islamic meme unfolded creating a climate of anti-intellectualism and a rigid pseudo scholarship; both of which were upheld by an increasingly powerful clerical class. Nevertheless, there were occasional intellectual revivals encouraged by some of the more enlightened rulers of the later local Arab dynasties. Non-Muslims, converts and heretics, once again, played a disproportionate role in these mini-renaissances.
Al-Biruni (973-1050), a famous astronomer in Afghanistan, was a Persian Shi'ite accused of agnostic leanings. Another Persian freethinking astronomer was Umar al-Khayyam (1038-1123) who attained even greater fame as a poet. Two centuries later the Syrian Jacobite Christian, Barhebraeus also did notable work in astronomy. One of the greatest Muslim philosophers also worked in Persia. This was al-Ghazzali, who before he achieved his great eminence was a practicing Sufi.
Two notable scholars worked in late Abbasid Iraq. One was the geographer Yaqut (1179-1229) who was a Greek converted Christian. The other was the historian Sibt ibn-al-Jawzi (1186-1257) the son of a converted Turkish slave.
Under the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties, Egypt which had been a scholarly backwater since the Muslim conquest, became the intellectual center of the Arab world. Of course, the minor intellectual flowerings, encouraged by new dynastic rulers, paled in comparison to the earlier Baghdad renaissance. Clearly the flame of Muslim learning was growing dim. The scholar Al-Kindi (d. 971) was described at this late date as an Egyptian and, therefore, was presumably from a family of recently converted Copts; he was noted for his historical works. Another Fatimid intellectual was the Vizier, Ibn-Killis, a converted Jew who established an academic institute. In the late 12th and 13th centuries three Egyptian Jews attained fame as physicians: Jami (ca 1190), his contemporary al-Naqid, and al-Kuhin al-Attar (ca 1260). Al-Khuzai al-Mawsali (ca 1310) was a converted Christian or Jew who achieved some literary eminence under the Mamluks. Finally, in late Mamluk times the noted historian ibn-Taghri-Birdi (1411-69), was the son of a Turkish slave woman.
Islamic Spain has a reputation for intellectual accomplishment almost as great as that of Baghdad at the height of Abbasid rule. But the experience of Islamic Spain is similar to that of Baghdad, with a brief period of creativity following re-establishment of peace and stability after the conquest, followed by a sharp decline. The founder of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty, Abd-al-Rahman, seized control half a century after the Moorish conquest and laid the foundation for the flowering of Andalusian civilization. He diligently strove to “fashion into a national mould Arabians, Syrians, Berbers, Numidians, Hispano-Arabs and Goths … and in more than one sense did he initiate that intellectual movement which made Islamic Spain from the ninth to the eleventh centuries one of the two centers of world culture.”[44]
However, there was a considerable lag until Spanish intellectual achievement reached its apogee. Most of the greatest figures of the Andalusian enlightenment only make their appearance beginning with the eleventh century, some three centuries after the initial conquest and over two centuries after the establishment of an independent dynasty. In the Arab East, on the contrary, the great age of achievement commenced within a century and a half of the conquest. One of the reasons for the Spanish lag was, undoubtedly, the continuing conflicts which plagued a territory that was only partially conquered. It was the continuing Christian resistance by Navarre, Leon and their Frankish allies that “generated Muslim distrust of the Christian majority and resulted in their widespread exclusion from governmental posts.”[45] Hence the Muslim rulers of Spain were not, at first, able to fully capitalize on the abilities of their large Christian population. In the Islamic east, on the other hand, the fully subdued non-Muslim population posed no such threat. Furthermore, in Spain “Muslim-Christian tensions were further exacerbated by the bitter enmity between Berbers and Arabs … as well as by a series of social and religious grievances … and numerous squabbles among the unruly slave soldiers” and the imported “rivalry between the two great tribal leagues of Qays and Yemen.”[46] It was only in the early tenth century that Abd-al-Rahman III temporarily suppressed these conflicts and felt strong enough to proclaim himself caliph. It was during his reign that the first great scholars appeared and began the fabled intellectual flowering of Moorish Spain.
One other reason for the lag may be that the Christians of Spain were at a lower level of learning and culture than were the Eastern Christians. This may well may account for the greater prominence of Jewish scholars in Spain’s golden age, as compared with that of the golden age of Baghdad. It was during the caliphates of Abd-al-Rahman III and of his son al-Hakam that “many Jews came from the East” and that “Cordova became the centre of a Talmudic school whose foundation marks the beginning of the flowering of Andalusian Jewish culture.”[47] These Jews were instrumental “in the translation process, which brought the fruits of medieval Islamic Hellenism into Europe.”[48]
These Jewish migrants illustrate once again a common Islamic pattern whereby the founder of a new dynasty will seek to enhance his prestige by attracting or inviting refugees including many scholars into his domains. Thus, Spain became a repository of high culture at times when various eastern scholars, Syrians, Jews or political refugees were subject to repression or persecution. Darlington notes this diffusion of intellectuals and artists to the periphery of the Islamic world:
And with the extension of Islam, repeated, under successive races of conquerors, the artisans of Damascus, Muslim or infidel, might be found in later generations practising their skills in Toledo or Samarkand and contributing to the uniform spread of what was now known as Islamic civilization.[49]
One such refugee intellectual was Ziryab who was forced to flee from his enemies at the court of Harun-al-Rashid. Seeking “to make of Cordova a second Baghdad”, Abd-al-Rahman welcomed the exiled young Persian minstrel who was also a poet, astronomer and geographer.[50]
Therefore, the relative lag and later efflorescence of intellectual activity in Spain and elsewhere on the Muslim periphery may also be due to the slow migration of artisans and intellectuals out to the Muslim frontier which offered better opportunities for patronage and a refuge from the gathering clouds of persecution in the heartland of Islam. The magnet offered by Umayyad Spain may also partly explain the relative paucity of intellectual achievement in Syria as compared to Iraq under the early Abbasids. This may be the result of the transfer of Syrian high culture to Spain. Under the Abbasids many Syrians would have found a Spain dominated by their kinsmen a more congenial place. Indeed Spain may in that period be regarded as an extension of Syria and its great period of intellectual achievement was partly due to displaced Syrian energy.
The following are significant scholars of non-Muslim origin or of heretical orientation who were from Muslim Spain or the neighboring Maghreb. These are, once again, obtained from Hitti’s thorough and authoritative History of the Arabs. The ninth century Cordovan writer Abd-Rabbih (860-940) was reportedly descended from a slave freed about sixty years before his birth. The seminal tenth century saw the rise of a school of philology in Cordova. One of its leading lights was al-Qali (901-67), an immigrant from Baghdad reputedly of Armenian birth. Another was the Jew Judah ben-David who died in 1010. Eleventh century Cordova, the capital of the now declining Umayyad caliphate witnessed a great upsurge in intellectual achievement. The historian Ibn-Hazm (994-1064), the grandson of a converted Christian was active at this time. Astronomical studies were pursued by Al-Majriti (ca 1007) and Al-Karmani (ca 1066), both described as Hispano-Muslims and, therefore, presumably of recent non-Muslim descent. Their contemporary, the astronomer Al-Zarkali, a Jew worked in the city of Seville. Another Jew, Ben-Shaprut (ca 1013), was active in the study of medicine in Cordova during this period.
At the height of the Umayyad caliphate the city of Seville was home to the poet Ibn-Hani (937-73), regarded as a heretic tainted with the opinions of the Greek philosophers. Three centuries later, during the decline of Spanish Islam, that city was home to another distinguished poet, the converted Jew, Ibn-Sahl.
The eleventh and early twelfth centuries witnessed the high point of intellectual activity in Muslim Spain. Beginning with the eleventh century, intellectual activity diffused away from the one-time center, Cordova. Although the relatively tolerant Umayyads and “party” kings were followed by the puritanical Almoravids and Almohads, the latter continued to patronize and tolerate Muslim scholars and philosophers. Non-Muslims, however, experienced a period of intense persecution with a consequent diminishment in scholarship. Before the advent of the fanatical Berber dynasties, the city of Valencia was home to the famous Jewish philosopher Ben-Gabirol (Avicebron) (1021-1058). A few decades later, the avowed atheist philosopher Ibn Bajjah (Avenpace), worked in Granada. One of the most renowned philosophers, the Jewish physician Maimonides was forced by the Almohads to flee to Cairo in 1165. At this time Seville was the site of the astronomer Ibn-Aflah, described as a Hispano-Muslim and presumably of recent non-Muslim background. Another Hispano-Muslim astronomer was Al-Bitruji, who worked a half century later. The Hispano-Muslim botanist Al-Ghafiqi, a contemporary of Ibn-Aflah did his work in the city of Cordova.
After 1150, the Andalusian flowering entered a period of terminal decline. However, while orthodox Muslims largely ceased their scholarly activities the large non-Muslim population joined by a number of heretical Muslims continued their intellectual pursuits in certain localities, notably the city of Seville. The latter location was home to the mystical Sufi philosopher Ibn-Arabi (1165-1240). Another Sufi philosopher, Ibn-Sab'in (1217-1269) worked in the city of Ceuta on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar. Seville also was the city of the greatest philosopher of the Muslim west. Ibn-Rushd (Averroes) (1126-1198) is widely regarded by orthodox Muslims as a heretic. Averroes is described by Trifkovic as follows:
On the other side of the Empire, in Spain, Averroës exercised much influence on both Jewish and Christian thinkers with his interpretations of Aristotle. While mostly faithful to Aristotle’s method, he found the Aristotelian "prime mover" in Allah, the universal First Cause. His writings brought him into political disfavor and he was banished until shortly before his death, while many of his works in logic and metaphysics had been consigned to the flames. He left no school…[51]
Averroes’ mentor, Ibn-Tufayl was a follower of the atheist Granadan philosopher Ibn-Bajjah.
A number of scholars from Spain and the Maghreb were patronized or granted refuge by nearby Christian rulers. Constantine the African (ca 1087), apparently a member of the rapidly vanishing Christian community of North Africa brought the medical learning preserved in the Islamic world to Italy. Two centuries later the Jew Faraj ben Salim translated the medical works of the heretic Razi under the auspices of the rulers of Sicily.
The Turkish conquerors also “mined” their non-Muslim population resources for their administrative, technical and intellectual skills. The Seljuk sultans maintained a chancellery manned by Greek bureaucrats with the Byzantine administrative title of notaran. This Greek bureau persisted for centuries following the Seljuk conquests. Greek scribes were “maintained not only in the Seljuk administration but also among some of the emirates that succeeded the Seljuk state.” Greeks also appeared as ambassadors, tax collectors and even court musicians.[52] Vryonis observes how the economic institutions of the conquering Turks were formed from those developed by Byzantines. At the height of the Seljuk sultanate “those elements of Christian agrarian, commercial and artisanal population which had remained in Anatolia took an increasingly active part in the expanding economic life of the Muslim portion of the peninsula.”[53] Moreover a “substantial element of the farming population, indeed the majority, in the Seljuk domains of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries consisted of Christians.” Even into the fifteenth century Christian peasants were apparently still a majority of the rural population in many areas as illustrated by the example of the renowned wine produced by Christian villagers in Begshehhir.[54]
Seljuk art was heavily dependent on, if not actually dominated by, Greek Christians and recent converts. The great Sufi master Rumi had within his circle the famous painters Kaloyani and ‘Ayn al-Dawla Rumi. The latter artist, who was elaborately praised by the Turkish chronicler Eflaki, was personally converted to Islam by Rumi. The textile industry was dominated by Greek, Armenian and Syrian craftsmen. Greeks, as well as Syrian Christians, served as physicians to the Seljuk ruling class.[55] Greek and Armenian technicians dominated the Seljuk mining and metallurgy industries. Greek shipwrights, sailors and navigators dominated both Seljuk and early Ottoman maritime activities. Vryonis observes that
Greek mining communities of Anatolia were quite active in Ottoman times… a Greek goldsmith … taught the craft of jewelry making to the sultan Selim I. It was Greeks who introduced the Turks to maritime life … It is everywhere discernible, from the first Turkish fleet that was built by Greek Smyrniotes in the eleventh century down to the establishment of the first Ottoman naval arsenal in Europe in the fourteenth century.[56]
It was the field of architecture that was the most important expression of Turkish high culture. By the time of the final Turkish conquests of Byzantium, the Muslim world had fallen behind the Europeans in science, technology and art. The days of the high Arab culture and scholarship were gone. However, architecture was one field in which the now Turkish led Muslim world could still excel. But, as was the case with Arab science, it was non-Muslims or recent converts that were also the driving force in this field. There is substantial “evidence that side by side with Muslim architects there were active certain Christian architects and architects who though Muslims were converts.”[57] The Sufi saint Rumi who employed a Greek architect and Greek masons for work on his house provides devastating testimony regarding the superiority of craftsmen of Christian origin over those of Turks. He is quoted, in once instance, explaining “the desirability of using Greek rather than Turkish masons.”[58]
There were a number of famous Christian architects in Seljuk and early Ottoman times as detailed by Vryonis. The Greek architect Thyrianus worked in the Seljuk domains in the early 13th century. In 1215 Sebastus rebuilt the walls of Sinope. Kaloyan al-Qunewi (ca 1270) worked in Konya. At a later date Nikomedianous was prominent in the court of the Ottoman sultan Orhan I. The architect Keluk ibn Abdullah was an Armenian convert.
The Turks were famous for the gulam and devshirme systems, an inventive addition to the existing Muslim institution of slavery. Vryonis notes that much “of the vitality of both the military and the administration derived from the system by which the Ottomans took the cream of the Christian youth, converted them to Islam, and then trained them to wield the sword and the pen.”[59] Large numbers of children were confiscated from their families and educated as administrators, artisans and soldiers in the employ of the Sultan’s government. “These gulams and devshirmes were fully integrated into the life of Muslim Anatolia, as is witnessed by their tremendous contribution to the military, administrative, religious, and cultural life of Anatolia.”[60] The following are some of the gulams of Greek origin who achieved fame and distinction in the 13th century. Karatay held a number of important posts under the Seljuk sultan. He was also a tutor to the royal children, a disciple of the mystic poet Rumi and a patron of architecture and learning. Amin al-Din Mikail was a Seljuk financial administration innovator who was also famous for his general great knowledge. Shams al-Din Hass Oguz was a writer and calligrapher who was renowned for his magnificent literary and artistic style.
Mehmed the conqueror of Constantinople made good use of infidel resources in achieving his great conquests. “The help the Ottomans received from Christian subjects, mercenaries, converts, and technical experts was a theme of repeated lament for the European chroniclers.”[61] The Slav troops that Mehmed drafted for the siege of Constantinople included a band of skilled miners. These included Saxon technicians whom Mehmed put to use in tunneling under Constantinople’s walls.[62] The Hungarian Orban went to work for Mehmed the conqueror as his chief cannon maker. “The Ottomans were probably already casting guns at Edirne by this time; what Orban brought was the skill to construct the molds and control the critical variables on a far greater scale.”[63] The historian of the siege, Crowley, notes the importance of non-Muslims in building the Conqueror’s navy:
The empire had acquired an experienced resource of shipwrights, sailors and pilots, both of Greek and Italian origin, as it rolled up the coasts of the Black Sea and Mediterranean, and this skilled manpower could be brought into play in naval reconstruction.[64]
Bernard Lewis confirms this dependence of the Ottomans on European military technology. It was “the Ottomans among Muslim states” that “made full and effective use of musketry and artillery, but even they … were dependent on Western technology and, to an increasing extent, relied on Western renegades and mercenaries to equip and direct their artillery.”[65]
Once his life’s ambition was accomplished through the use of both Islamic fanaticism and infidel greed, the irreligious and cynical Conqueror now saw that the Greeks “could be an asset to his empire, having an aptitude for industry, commerce, and seamanship which the Turks did not share.”[66] The relative incapacity of the Turks was, thus, acknowledged by their greatest warrior. When one considers the preponderant amount of Greek and other infidel blood flowing through the veins of Muslim Turks the suspicion naturally arises that this Turkish intellectual incapacity can only be explained as a result of Islam.
Mehmed, aspiring to the role of a Renaissance Italian duke, initiated and patronized a flurry of activity in architecture, painting, and sculpture. He encouraged scholarship and learning which flourished under the early Pax Ottomanica. Many of these scholars and artists were Greek; many others were Italian such as the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini. Medicine was also “largely undeveloped among the Turks, and the Sultan’s own medical advisers were for the most part Jews from Italy.”[67] One aristocratic captive from Trebizond, George Amirutzes “was a distinguished philosopher and scientist, and he became Fatih’s instructor in geography, astronomy and astrology.”[68] However, all of the Conqueror’s painstaking collecting and scholarly patronage tragically came to naught. “All these works of the Renaissance were to be removed as ‘indecent’ after Mehmed’s death by his iconoclastic son Bayezid II” and most of them vanished except for one portrait of the Conqueror which was, fortuitously, purchased by a Venetian merchant.[69]
The height of Ottoman civilization occurred in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent who “raised to its peak an oriental civilization deriving from nomadic, tribal and religious origins.”[70] Architecture was the expression of this height:
Here was the full flowering of that architectural tradition which Mehmed the Conqueror had first evolved from that of Byzantium … Providing a link between those two contrasting civilizations, it attained its peak with the work of a man who now ranks … as one of history’s great architects. This was Mirmar Sinan, the son of a Christian stonemason from Anatolia …[71]
In addition to the great Armenian architect Sinan, other leading lights of Suleiman’s court were of recent non-Muslim origin. These include the great admiral-corsair Barbarossa who was Greek. One of his grand viziers was also Greek while another was a Slav.[72]
The history of printing in the Ottoman lands illustrates both the disrepute into which innovation fell and the continuing dependence of progress on the efforts of men of non-Muslim origin. Islamic attitudes inevitably hardened with the passing of the more tolerant or at least more intellectually curious rulers, such as Mehmed. In fact, there were printing presses in the sixteenth century set up by Jewish exiles, Armenians and later Greeks. These were allowed to operate on the condition that they not be used for the sacred Arabic and Turkish languages.[73] However it was left to Ibrahim Muteferrika “a renegade from the Hungarian nobility” who in 1727 brought the first Muslim printing press to Turkey and cajoled or begged the authorities to permit its use. For a brief time “Ibrahim Muteferrika and his press propagated the new ideas and discoveries of European science.” However with Muteferrika’s death in 1745, printing was once again banned for an additional forty years. [74]
The use of windmills and watermills furnish yet another example of Muslim technological backwardness. Lewis notes how even “primitive” medieval Europe was more technologically sophisticated than many “golden age” Islamic societies. “A comparison between the Domesday Book and the Ottoman imperial registers … revealed the astonishing fact that there were proportionately more mills in Norman England than in the central Ottoman lands in the days of Suleyman the Magnificent.”[75]
In the Seljuk and early Ottoman periods, numerous Christian converts and slaves manned the highest ranks of the administrative bureaucracy. In later Ottoman times power “passed from a ruling institution of renegade Christians to one of predominantly Moslem-born officials” who were rather insular and parochial in outlook. This necessitated the creation of the institution of the dragoman. The high office of Dragoman of the Porte was created in 1669 as a sort of Secretary of State and was reserved for the Sultan’s Christian subjects. Around this high official numerous lesser Christian bureaucrats gathered. These Greek Phanariots “were to serve often as ambassadors or as governors of autonomous Christian provinces. Thus, with the passing of the Sultan’s Slave Household did the Ottomans continue, without either conscription or enforced conversion, to draw on the abilities of their Christian subjects.”[76]
Early Islamic Persia also had a brilliant cultural flowering fueled by non-Muslims and Muslim heretics. Indeed, as we have seen, Persian infidels or recent converts played a major role in the translation of Greek works in Abbasid Baghdad. There was a similar effort to translate Persian scientific and philosophical works into Arabic:
The transition from the Sasanian to the Islamic era in the sciences is marked by the period of translation from Graeco-Syriac, Pahlavi and Sanskrit sources into Arabic. In this very important process the majority of translators were Christian and Harranian, but the Persians also had a major role, especially in making available works of Pahlavi in the Arabic language, which the Persians … adopted rapidly as the scientific and philosophical language of discourse.[77]
Furthermore, certain powerful families of Persian converts, in particular the Barmakid and Naubakht families, acted as patrons and supporters of the scholars undertaking this work.[78] This work continued at a later time under the native Samanid dynasty. Jaihani the Samanid Prime Minister from 914 to 922 wrote on geography and patronized geographers, astronomers and other scholars. “Jaihani, who had been suspected of harbouring Shi’i beliefs or even Manichaean dualist tendencies … was removed from office.”[79]
The Muslim rulers of India, eventually found that utilizing the talents of the despised “idol worshippers” was more profitable than slaughtering them. In fact maintaining even a minimal level of civilized life depended on the effective exploitation of Hindus, heretics and recent converts. In the sultanate of Delhi, ca 1330, “most trade, most industry and all financial services remained in Hindu hands.”[80] The experience of the Delhi sultans paralleled the situation in the Ottoman Empire where such activities were most effectively carried out by Greeks, Armenians and Jews.
The fragmentation of Muslim authority in India opened up new opportunities for scholars and technicians:
As Delhi’s authority declined, aggressive new sultanates on India’s Islamic frontier in Bengal, Gujarat, Malwa and the Deccan boosted the market for military personnel and offered even better prospects for plunder… Scholars, jurists and artisans gravitated towards the more generous patronage on offer.[81]
This competition between Indian Muslim states creating a temporary ‘boom’ in intellectual achievement was similar to the circumstances creating the high level of scholarship that existed in Spain during the Umayyad caliphate. In Spain, the eagerness of the Umayyads to increase their prestige at the expense of their eastern rivals spurred them to collect Muslim, infidel and heretic scholars from all over the Islamic world.
The high civilization that existed under the Mughal sultans depended heavily on non-Muslims. The Mughal “synthesis of Indian and Islamic traditions and their eagerness to enlist the support of Hindu subjects” was crucial to their empire building as well as to their architecture, poetry, painting and music.[82]
Practicality of Early Muslim Rulers
One factor underlying the early accomplishment of Islamic civilizations was the pragmatism of the early conquerors. They were willing and even eager to partake of those ideas and technologies of the vanquished cultures that were of obvious practical use. During the period of translations from the Greek “the criterion of choice was usefulness; they translated what was useful … medicine, astronomy, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and also philosophy, which at that time was considered useful.”[83] Medicine has an obvious use and is valued in all civilizations. The sciences and mathematics have obvious uses in industry, agriculture, architecture, navigation and, of course, warfare. Philosophy was found useful by Muslim scholars for the defense, propagation and reinforcement of Islamic doctrine. However, Greek literature and art had no such use. As Lewis observes:
…we find no poets, no dramatists, not even historians. … you take what is useful from the infidel; but you don’t need to look at his absurd ideas or to try and understand his inferior literature, or to study his meaningless history.[84]
Hitti notes that no “close contact was … established between the Arab mind and Greek drama, Greek poetry and Greek history. In that field Persian influence remained paramount.”[85] Yet it is these unpractical subjects that give a culture its spirit and the ideological basis for advances in the more useful arts and sciences. The questions regarding man’s place in the universe, his relationship with the gods etc., raised by Greek dramatists and artists are instrumental in shaping the social attitudes that predispose a culture toward scientific and technological endeavors. As the philosopher Jacob Needleman puts it regarding the importance of the poetic impulse in science:
The impulse to understand, to learn the meaning of what is alive, whatever form it takes: surely this is what science once touched in us. Its power in the Western world does not originally come from the benefits of technology, but because it alone … once called forth this impulse in man to understand the whole of life…[86]
Indeed, it may be conjectured that without the impulse of great writers and artists, there was nothing to counteract the increasing rigidity that Islamic law imposed with the passage of time; a rigidity that ultimately stifled all expressions of Muslim accomplishment. The later Ottomans showed a similar pattern of pragmatism in their translation period from the 16th to the 18th centuries. However, among the Turkish elite philosophy was no longer considered useful and European history was.[87] By the 16th century, Islamic dogma was fully crystallized, so that philosophy was no longer regarded as useful, although a wayward sultan like Mehmed the Conqueror may have at one time indulged himself by dabbling in it. On the other hand, the successful Western counterattack made the study of their history a matter of some urgency.
Muslim scholars and scientists could attain considerable expertise in those fields of great interest and usefulness. “The study of the horse formed one conspicuous exception” to the lack of advancement in zoology “and was developed almost to the rank of a science.”[88] The example of such a narrow field of science demonstrates how Muslim curiosity was directed chiefly at utilitarian ends; knowledge of the horse having immediate advantages in warfare and trade. However, even in a subject of such intense interest, Arabs were still largely indebted to the work of non-Muslims. For “although the Arabs since Bedouin days possessed an extensive empirical knowledge of diseases of camels and horses, yet their more systematic knowledge and improved technique must have come from Byzantine sources.”[89]
The admission of exiled Jews into the Ottoman realm is an example, par excellence, of Islamic pragmatism. Sultan Bayezid II (1481-1512) was shrewd enough to recognize the benefits provided to his empire by the Jews expelled from Spain. He “welcomed the talented Sefardim into his realm … Bayezid and his courtiers are said to have considered Ferdinand of Spain a fool for impoverishing his own kingdom while enriching theirs. Some of the Sefardic immigrants … helped the Turks to produce their own cannon and powder.”[90]
Myth of the Western Debt to Islam
A persistent misconception, the debt western science and scholarship owes to Islam, has afflicted historians for many years, although never more so than at the present time. The historian Herbert Muller, writing at a time when academic candor was still common, debunks the belief in the preservation and transmission of science under Islam, as well as a few other widely cherished myths.
For the sake of understanding … I should say flatly that these high-minded apologists for Islam are talking about a fiction or a dream. The religion preached by Mohammed, and thereafter practiced in his name, is quite different from the Islam they describe. The prophet had nothing of the scientific outlook, and demanded absolute obedience to the law that he alone laid down. Islam never produced a democracy or a state in which the people were actually sovereign. In all states, past and present, economic inequality has been glaring. Its holy wars fought on principle, its degradation of women, and its formal acceptance of slavery make nonsense of its theoretical principle of equality, or any profession of universal human brotherhood.[91]
Other historians and philosophers echo Professor Muller’s viewpoint. Charles Burnett writing in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy refutes the belief that it was the Arabs who re-transmitted Plato’s Republic to Europe. “The Republic of Plato, though translated into Arabic, was not subsequently translated into Latin.”[92] Frederick Copleston in his History of Philosophy says that “it is a mistake to imagine that the Latin scholastics were entirely dependent upon translations from Arabic or even that translation from the Arabic always preceded translation from the Greek.” Moreover, “translation from the Greek generally preceded translation from the Arabic.”[93] Another historian of philosophy Peter Dronke concurs:
Note that Latin versions of a number of learned Greek works (Euclid, Ptolemy) came through translations from the Arabic; most of the works of Aristotle, however, were translated directly from the Greek, and only exceptionally by way of an Arabic intermediary...translations from the Arabic must be given their full importance, but not more. Another confirmation comes from Dod, according to whom the following were first translated from Greek: Categories, De interpretatione, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophistici elenchi, Physics, De generatione et corruptione, Meteorologica (Book IV), De anima, De sensu, De memoria, De somno, De longitudine, De inventute, De respiratione, De morte, De animalibus (De progressu, De motu), Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Oeconomica, Rhetoric, Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, and Poetics. Only the following were first translated from Arabic: De caelo, Meteorologica (Books I-III), and De animalibus (Historia, De partibus, De generatione).[94]
Furthermore, as Franz Rosenthal points out, many of the works translated from the Arabic were not the work of Muslims. “Aristoteles latinus” by Bernard Dod, a chapter of The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, provides a comprehensive list of medieval translations of Aristotle from Arabic into Latin, none by Islamic scholars—unless by “Islamic” one means “Christian or Jewish.”[95] Indeed, in Islamic Spain it was Jewish scholars who were instrumental in translating Greek knowledge into Latin.[96] Carson sums up the reality of the translation process as follows:
So the great rescue of Greek philosophy by translation into Arabic turns out to mean no rescue of Plato and the transmission of Latin translations of Arabic translations of Greek texts of Aristotle, either directly or more often via Syriac or Hebrew, to a Christendom that already had the Greek texts and had already translated most of them into Latin, with almost all of the work of translation from any of these languages into any other having been done by Christians and Jews and none of it by Muslims.[97]
Moreover, the most important preservers and transmitters of classical knowledge were not Muslims, or even dhimmis working in Muslim lands. While much has been made of Muslim Spain as a transmitter of ancient Greek knowledge to the West few have remarked on how the Byzantines transmitted Greek knowledge to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The 11th century Byzantine scholar Psellus “remarked at the height of his career that Celts, Arabs, Persians and Ethiopians came to Constantinople to hear his lectures.”[98] And it was these same Byzantines, who at the time of the tragic destruction of their city, brought this knowledge to the West. As the famous historian Steven Runciman observes:
…these refugee Greek scholars … took trouble to collect and copy the Greek manuscripts that Byzantium had preserved. … It was from these scholars… that the men of the Renaissance learnt most of their philosophy. … They conserved ancient books … and transmitted what they had conserved for the benefit of European civilization.[99]
Imperial Consequences: Peace, Trade and Cross Fertilization
The victory of the holy warriors of Islam and the economic recovery of the conquered territory was followed by a resumption of the civilization of the native population under Muslim auspices. In addition, Muslim rulers were able to capitalize on the different specializations of the conquered groups and on a division of labor based largely on ethnicity. Furthermore, the inclusion of the new territory within the trading network of a much larger Muslim empire created a brief period of intellectual and technological advancement due to the cross fertilization of different cultures.
In the case of the Abbasid cultural flowering, Hourani notes that “as the Abbasid caliphate brought the lands of the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea into a single trading area, so too the Greek, Iranian and Indian traditions were brought together, and it has been said that ‘for the first time in history, science became international on a large scale’.”[100] Of course, for this Islam must be given its’ due, however, this advancement was caused by the fact that for a while under the Pax Islamica different ideas cross-fertilized each other. It was not due to anything inherent in Muslim civilization itself, but it did give the appearance of a brilliant Islamic civilization for a brief period of time. Social scientist Charles Murray provides additional details regarding the process of this intellectual ferment:
The extraordinarily rapid rise of the Arabic empire provides a number of reasons for the ignition of the burst of activity. First, the empire brought the neglected raw materials of the ancient world under one roof. In the words of historian Thomas Goldstein, ‘A Muslim could study, from records preserved on his own soil, the astronomies of India, Babylon and Egypt; Indian and Persian mathematics; the philosophical concepts of the Greeks; the medicine, geography, astronomy, and mathematics of the Hellenistic age; the botanical, pharmacological, zoological, geological, and geographic lore amassed by the ancient world as a whole.’ The trade routes and commercial centers … of the Arab world made these materials accessible to scholars across the empire and encouraged cross-fertilization of ideas. … Initially, the Islamic elites engaged the cultures they conquered undefensively, flexibly, and curiously.[101]
Muslim empire builders were not unique in bringing about the cross fertilization of ideas from widely distant cultures. An apt comparison can be made to another extraordinary group of nomadic conquerors, the Mongols:
The energy and genius of the relatively small number of people who were at the core … have baffled historians … just as the effects, ranging from horrifying massacres and devastations to periods of admirable cross-cultural exchange and stimulation, have never ceased repelling and attracting them.[102]
The results of the conquests of these non-Muslim nomads were very similar to the various Islamic conquests. However, no historian would presume to write about the “brilliant Mongol civilization”.
It was under the Mongols that a Jewish convert to Islam, Rashid al-Din compiled a universal history at the behest of the khans Ghazan and Oljetu. “He assembled a team of collaborators, including two Chinese scholars, a Buddhist hermit … a Mongol specialist in tribal tradition, and a Frankish monk, as well as some Persian scholars, and with their aid, he wrote a vast history of the world from England to China.”[103]
In addition to the importance of non-Muslims and recent converts, this shows how, once peace was established, the Mongol empire also promoted intellectual advance through cross fertilization of ideas from its many conquered territories. Lewis notes that “the Mongols united, for the first time under one dynasty, the civilizations of the Middle East and of the Far East, with immediate and beneficial effects both for trade and culture.”[104] No one, however, attributes these achievements to Mongols or to Mongol culture or ideology.
Furthermore, the vaunted Muslim “tolerance” pales in comparison with that of the bloody-minded Mongol rulers.
Jewish and Christian officials served in the Mongol administration. The apogee … came during the reign of Arghun Khan (1284-91). … Only a few years before … the Jewish oculist and philosopher Sa’d b. Kammuna had written a comparative study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam … The publication of such a book in Arabic would have been unthinkable when Islam was the ruling faith.[105]
Mongol tolerance could survive their savage conquests. But one thing it could not survive was their conversion to Islam. “The Jews and Christians of Iraq and Iran soon returned to their traditional dhimmi status when the Ilkhanid dynasty became Muslim once and for all in 1295.”[106]
An important spur to the subsequent development of Islamic civilization was the transmission of learning and technology from the distant lands of the East. Chinese technology, obtained through trade or capture, was of great importance. After the Chinese were defeated at Talas, for example, “many captives were brought to Samarkand, where, it is reported, they started a paper making industry.”[107]
Of equal or greater importance was the transmission of knowledge from the ancient civilization of India. The most famous and misunderstood example occurs in the field of mathematics. It is casually assumed that algebra and modern number notation were invented by the Arabs. The so-called Arabic numerals were simply systematized from Hindu texts. The famous Arab mathematician al-Khwarizmi
wrote two books on arithmetic and algebra … One of these … Concerning the Hindu Art of Reckoning … In this work, based presumably on an Arabic translation of Brahmagupta, al- Khwarizmi gave so full an account of the Hindu numerals that he probably is responsible for the widespread but false impression that our system of numeration is Arabic in origin. …when subsequently Latin translations of his work appeared in Europe, careless readers began to attribute not only the book but also the numeration to the author. ….ultimately the scheme of numeration making use of the Hindu numerals came to be called … algorithm, a word … derived from the name of al-Khwarizmi…[108]
Algebra had a more mixed origin; it was only partly derived from Hindu texts. The word algebra was also obtained from al-Khwarizmi’s book Al-jabr wa’l muqabalah. Moreover, in certain respects, the works of al-Khwarizmi were at a lower level than those of his Greek and Hindu predecessors:
…in two respects the works of al-Khwarizmi represented a retrogression from that of Diophantus. First it is on a far more elementary level … and second … [it] is thoroughly rhetorical, with none of the syncopation found [in the works of Diophantus] … or in Brahmagupta’s work. Even numbers were written out in words rather than symbols! … Nevertheless, the Al-Jabr comes closer to the elementary algebra of today than the works of Diophantus or Brahmagupta, for the book is not concerned with difficult problems in indeterminate analysis but with a straightforward and elementary exposition of the solution of equations, especially of second degree.[109]
Thus, the Arabs must be credited not with inventing algebra, but with making it more accessible for the solution of simple problems. As for the ultimate origin of modern algebra there are three schools of thought: “one emphasizes Hindu influences, another stresses the Mesopotamian, or Syriac-Persian, tradition, and the third points to Greek inspiration. The truth is probably approached if we combine the three theories.”[110] Historians of mathematics Boyer and Merzbach conclude:
It is probable that al-Khwarizmi typified the Arabic eclecticism that will so frequently be observed in other cases. His system of numeration most likely came from India, his systematic algebraic solution of equations may have been a development from Mesopotamia, and the logical geometric framework for his solutions palpably was derived from Greece.[111]
The example of algebra is an ideal case illustrating the role of cultural cross fertilization in the short-lived period of high civilization under the early Pax Arabica. Algebra was derived from a combination of ideas developed by the oriental culture superseded by Islam, the classical learning of ancient Greece, and an impetus from a far-off land, in this instance India that became accessible due to the vast extent of the Arab empire. And, of course, it reached its full development in a land that still contained a majority population of non-Muslims and recent converts who were well versed in their ancient traditions.
Furthermore, the Hindus had a continuing role in the development of algebra subsequent to al-Khwarizmi as the civilization of the Arabs ossified under the deepening influence of Islam. The “radical sign, and many algebraic symbols” appear to have been invented by the Hindu mathematician Bhaskara in the twelfth century. [112]
Mathematical knowledge was, by no means, the only contribution India made to the golden age of Arab culture. Will Durant notes how the Muslims “took much of this Hindu chemical science and industry to the Near East and Europe; the secret of manufacturing ‘Damascus’ blades, for example, was taken by the Arabs from the Persians, and by the Persians from India.” He also notes that India contributed much medical knowledge to the Arabs. “Haroun-al-Rashid accepted the preeminence of Indian medicine and scholarship and imported Hindu physicians to organize hospitals and medical schools in Baghdad.” The technique of vaccination was first developed in India as early as 550 A.D.[113] This practice was adopted by the Muslims and reportedly found its way into Europe from the Ottoman Empire.
There has been much written in certain modern academic circles regarding the “stealing” of ideas by one civilization from another. In no case was this truer than in the wholesale appropriation of India’s intellectual treasures by the early Arabs. Keay points out that India’s “scientific and mathematical discoveries, though buried amidst semantic dross and seldom released for practical application, were readily appreciated by Muslim scientists and then rapidly appropriated by them. Al-Biruni was a case in point: his scientific celerity in the Arab world would owe much to his mastery of Sanskrit and access to Indian scholarship.”[114] It is not a coincidence that the astronomer al-Biruni (973-1050), who worked in Afghanistan and is described as a Persian Shi'ite with agnostic leanings, would be quite open to the study of Hindu works.
Muslim Self Sufficiency
From its inception the Muslim community was preoccupied with the Islamic religion in general and the spiritually superior Arab people in particular. Indeed the one undeniable achievement of Islam was the elevation from barbarism of the tribes on the Arabian Peninsula itself; the achievement of which was one of the Prophet’s primary goals. As the scholar of comparative religion John Noss observes:
Muhammad gave much thought to the behavior of his followers, and must be said to have legislated for them so comprehensively, and with such a uniform purpose of elevating their morals to a higher level than before – the high level of an inclusive brotherhood instead of the lower level of divisive tribal organization…[115]
There can be no doubt that the “laws prohibiting wine and gambling as well as the regulations covering the relations of the sexes and granting a higher status to women, must have meant to his early followers a considerable change in their way of life.”[116] Considering the status of women under Islam, one can surmise that the condition of Arabian women’s lives must have been quite oppressive before Islam. From the commandments in the Qu’ran we can infer that female infanticide was widely practiced until prohibited by Muhammad. Unrestricted polygamy must also have been practiced; Muhammad limited this to four wives, required that the husband have sufficient means and that all wives be treated equitably. However, as shown in a previous chapter[117] there was no restriction on sexual slavery. He also regularized divorce and granted women the right to at least some fair treatment, presumably correcting the gross abuses that existed until his time.[118]
The Arab obsession with their own spiritual and cultural elevation was accompanied by a disdain and disinterest in other traditions, even that of the large numbers of conquered peoples over whom they ruled. For a brief period of time, certain members of the ruling elite patronized scholars to translate and interpret these other traditions, but for the most part this was limited to the immediately practical and useful arts and sciences. As Lewis notes until “the Mongol conquests, [Muslims] have virtually nothing to say about their neighbors in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and very little even about their own pagan ancestors.”[119] This doctrine of Arab supremacy prevented the higher philosophy of the ancient Greeks from becoming truly incorporated into Islamic culture. This was quite different from the attitude of the Romans and later western Europeans who were eager students of the higher Greek wisdom. The Muslims were content with useful technical and scientific knowledge. Some, though by no means all, Muslim schools of theology attempted to co-opt much of Greek philosophy in the service of Islam. A few Muslim rulers, like the quirky Ottoman Conqueror, even engaged Greek scholars in study and discussion. However, while some of the forms might be adopted, Islam had no use for the substance of Greek thought.
The tale of the burning of the Library at Alexandria illustrates Islam’s self imposed intellectual isolation. The story that the Library at Alexandria was burned at the orders of the caliph “is one of those tales that make good fiction but bad history. … Abd-al-Latif al Baghdadi who died as late as A.H. 629 (1231) seems to have been the first to relate the tale. Why he did it we do not know; however, his version was copied and amplified by later authors.”[120] The story, though not literal fact, does, however, express an important symbolic truth regarding the attitude the early Arab conquerors had to the accomplishments of earlier civilizations. That may be the reason why it gained such wide currency both within and outside of the Muslim world. Moreover, this early Arab attitude was bequeathed to later Muslim civilizations.
Intellectual Atrophy
With the passage of time, and with Islam becoming the dominant majority religion, there began the final phase of Islamic civilization. This phase is characterized by intellectual atrophy leading to economic and technological stagnation. The critic of Islam Robert Spencer is of the opinion that the demise of philosophy and of the rationalist sects such as Mu’tazilism was part of an ‘anti-intellectual rage’ which afflicted Arab Islam at the end of the golden ages of Baghdad and Andalusia. In addition “the impetus for such a reaction came from the Qur’an and Islamic tradition, or it wouldn’t have been so strong or long lasting.”[121] He theorizes that this reaction is a consequence of fundamental Islamic theology:
Jews and Christians believe that God created the universe to operate according to reliable, observable laws. While he can suspend those laws, ordinarily he does not do so … This way of thinking provided a foundation for the edifice of modern science … But to the Muslim who found all knowledge in the Qur’an and suspected philosophers of infidelity, that was tantamount to saying, ‘God’s hand is chained.’ Allah, they argued, could not be thus restricted. … If one could not rely on the universe to obey observable laws … science could not flourish.[122]
This view of Islam is echoed by Murray:
Islam, more than Christianity … saw God as sustaining the universe on a continuing basis, and as a deity who is not bound by immutable laws. To proclaim scientific truths that applied throughout the universe and throughout time could easily become blasphemy, implying limits to what God could and could not do.[123]
Stillman contends that it was in the thirteenth century that the “secular and humanistic tendencies of Hellenism … began to wane; at the same time the Islamic religious element in its most rigid form began to wax ever stronger.”[124] It would appear, however, that the strengthening of Islam was the cause and not the result of the decline in Hellenism which was the product of the dhimmi or recently converted elements in the population. By the thirteenth century those elements had become small minorities in most Arab lands and with the decline in the numbers of non-Muslims the well of Greek thought dried up.
The Islamic scholar G. E. Grunebaum also believed that it was the strengthening of Islam that put an end to the great period of Arab Islamic civilization:
Islam was never able to accept that scientific research is a means of glorifying God. … When the religious leadership began to oppose scientific inquiry … the internalized misgivings of the scientific elites led them to acquiesce. … During the golden age, the orthodox did not aggressively enforce those aspects of the Faith that discouraged free-flowing inquiry and debate; once they began to do so, Islamic contributions to the sciences effectively ended.[125]
Patai notes the deleterious effects of Islam on the Arab intellect and the premature termination of the Arab golden age:
The fact remains that under traditional Islam, efforts at human improvement have rarely transcended ineffectuality. In general, the Arab mind, dominated by Islam, has been bent more on preserving than innovating, on maintaining than improving, on continuing than initiating. In this atmosphere, whatever individual spirit of research and inquiry existed in the great age of medieval Arab culture became gradually stifled; by the fifteenth century, Arab intellectual curiosity was fast asleep.[126]
Another factor in Muslim intellectual degeneration was, undoubtedly, the end of imperial expansion. Once the Arab empire reached its maximum extent the temporary bubble in wealth caused by economic expansion, trade, and the flow of technology and expertise, in the early Islamic oecumene ceased. Furthermore, considering the extent of the Muslim domains, the wealth expropriated by the Muslim elites, and the number of technologies and variety of ideas available to them, it is remarkable how little in terms of human advancement and accomplishment was achieved by Muslims even at the height of their golden age. Muslim accomplishments were paltry when compared to what was achieved in the small and fragmented cities of Greece, in the divided states of the Indian subcontinent or in parochial and isolated China. Still another factor contributing to Islamic intellectual decline was the tendency toward increasing despotism and the lack of independent centers of power such as church, monarchy, landed aristocracy and urban bourgeoisie typical of many parts of Europe.
The decline in Arab culture occurred quite rapidly. Hitti contends that Arab culture in the eastern Mediterranean was already in decline at the time of the Crusades.[127] The physical sciences ceased to advance once the Abbasid caliphate entered its decline. “The Moslems of today, if dependent on their own books, would have even less than their distant ancestors in the eleventh century.”[128] The historical sciences also after the time of the historian Miskawayh (1030) began a rapid decline.[129] There was a simultaneous increase in less intellectually rigorous subjects during this time. “The whole period (11th –12th century) was marked by predominance of humanistic over scientific studies. Intellectually it was a period of decline.”[130]
It was the fate of fabled Andalusia that its golden age would be followed, like that of the Abbasids, by intellectual decline. The stage was set when the vizier al-Mansur burned the library of the scholar-caliph al-Hakam in order to please the increasingly powerful and rigidly anti-intellectual Muslim clergy. After another brief period of enlightenment under the party kings, Islamic anti-intellectualism resumed its course under the repressive Almoravids. Not one to be upstaged by the book burnings of al-Mansur, the devout Almoravid ‘Ali (1106-43) burned all of al-Ghazzali’s works that he could get his hands on in Spain and the Maghreb. The succeeding Almohads were slightly less hostile to scholarly pursuits, but were even more fanatical in driving many Christian and Jewish scholars into exile.
Also inevitable was the decline of the lesser intellectual renaissance that began in Fatimid Egypt, once a center of medical learning. “Egyptian medicine since Ayyubid days was dominated by Jewish physicians carrying on the glorious tradition of ibn-Maymun. But among neither Moslem nor Jewish physicians do we find creative activity.”[131] In 1448 the Mamluk Sultan Jaqmaq “prohibited Jewish and Christian physicians from treating Muslim patients. … Jaqmaq’s decree is indicative not only of the decline of the position of non-Muslims in the later Islamic Middle Ages, but also of the waning esteem for Hellenic science and its practitioners.”[132] In Muslim North Africa west of Egypt, there were no discernible golden ages at all; only the occasional isolated scholar like ibn-Khaldun or ibn-Battutah. This relative lack of intellectual activity in that part of North Africa was due to the continuing depredations of both Berber and Bedouin nomads and a consequent Islamization of the population that was even deeper than that of Spain or the Arab east.
Both the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks had brief periods of artistic and, to a lesser extent, intellectual glory during the period of stability subsequent to their conquests. However, as Muller notes, Islam was unable to sustain periods of enlightenment for more than a brief time. Their religion
made the nomadic Turks a great power … But it quickens chiefly the military virtues of courage, fortitude, loyalty, and obedience, not so much the qualities that make for sophistication, enlightenment, and creativity. It impedes the continued growth of its converts by the rigidity of its doctrine and discipline. The Ottoman Turks restored an empire to Islam and adorned it with suitable art; but they proved unable to extend or renew its culture, or create a high civilization of their own.[133]
Darlington observes how once the Ottoman Empire’s advance was halted, the lack of new dhimmi populations to exploit led to its inevitable decline. “As in other Muslim empires no one ever discovered how to organize a process of social promotion that would replace capture and conquest.”[134]
One question that remains is why the Ottomans were unable to attain the level achieved during the brilliant albeit brief flowering of Baghdad. To be sure, there was a slight initial efflorescence which expressed itself primarily in architecture and poetry, but few Ottoman subjects reached the level previously attained by many of the scholars of Abbasid Baghdad or Umayyad Spain. This is especially puzzling since the empire of the Ottoman Turks at its height covered an area equivalent in size to that of the early caliphs. One reason may be the chronic and slower nature of the Turkish conquest which exhausted and impoverished the vanquished population. In addition, many of the intellectual elite among the conquered had ample time and opportunity to flee, to the ultimate benefit of Italy and the West. However, the most important reason may be that during the era of the Turkish conquests Islamic thought attained its nadir of rigidity. In the early ages of Baghdad and Andalusia, on the other hand, Islam was still slightly flexible.
In India the high point of Mughal civilization came to an end with the repressive despotism of the bigoted sultan Aurangzeb. Under his intolerant rule discrimination “against Hindus and the active promotion of Islamic values were … revived.” It was no coincidence that during his time “the great tradition of Mughal building virtually ceased.”[135]
The inevitable closing of the Muslim mind is symbolized by the ultimate fate of the art collection that was painstakingly accumulated under the patronage of Mehmed the Conqueror. These works were destroyed or sold and dispersed by his pious son Bayezid. That sad event was a repeat of the earlier destruction of the scholarly library of the Umayyad caliph al-Hakam in Cordova at the instigation of the intolerant ulema. Even more tragic was the fate of the unfortunate scientist-sultan Ulugh Beg who, after presiding over a scientific renaissance in Samarkand, was executed at the insistence of the religious authorities. Equally typical of the ultimate fate of Islamic science was the destruction by the Chief Mufti of the great observatory built by Ottoman Sultan Murad III under the direction of the astronomer Taqi al-Din. Another example was the abrupt end of the Mughal renaissance with the death of the tolerant reformer Akbar.
The intellectual deficiency resulting from the Islamic meme continues up to the present day. Thierry Gattuso observes the following with respect to the underachievement of Muslim citizens of Britain:
The United Kingdom census of 2001 for the first time looked at the nation’s religious background. The findings showed that Muslims make up 2.8% of the UK population. Hindus 1%, Sikhs 0.6, Buddhists and Jews both make up 0.5% of the UK population. 31% of Muslims of working age have no qualifications, the highest of any religious group. As in many countries owning your own home is a major achievement and financial responsibility. 82% of Sikhs followed by 78% of Jews own their own home in the UK. Only 52% of Muslims own their own home, the lowest of any religious group. 14% of Muslims are unemployed, compared to 8% of Sikhs and 6% of Hindus. The underachievement of Muslims is even more bleak when you examine where most Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists in the UK come from. 75% of Muslims, 97% of Hindus, 98 % of Sikhs and 69% of Buddhists in the UK are from or have ancestral links to South Asia. Therefore any cultural factors can be largely ruled out when comparing the achievement of Muslims with people from other religious groups. Muslims complain that they have to overcome language difficulties and face discrimination in the UK and state this as a factor in their poor performance. Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs face the same language and discrimination issues as Muslims, yet their achievements and performance is much better than Muslims.
The underachievement of Muslims should come as no surprise to those of us who understand the true nature of Islam. Everything a Muslim needs to know is in the Koran, Hadith or Sunnah. Muslims are not encouraged to seek knowledge and better themselves. Muslims are against progress, modernity and science. Those that control Islam do not want to see Muslims educated as an educated Muslim will apply commonsense and logic to the Koran and see it for what its is, a collection of distorted Bible and Torah stories and in print the mind of a 7th century Bedouin bandit leader.[136]
The following analysis, and that in the next section, assumes a slight knowledge of statistics on the part of the reader. An analysis of IQ data lends support to Gattuso’s assertion. The following table compares IQ test data for Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria.[137]
The adjusted scores, which are the result of various studies, show higher scores for Greece and Bulgaria with respect to that of Turkey. The one exception is a study of Greek children from the early 1960s with a score in the middle of the Turkish range. The overall score which is a summary of the studies shows that Turkey lags her European neighbors by two to three points. The use of IQ data from these countries minimizes the effect due to heredity. Genetic factors are unlikely to account for these differences for the following reasons. As we have seen, there was in Turkey extensive hybridization with the Byzantine peoples of Anatolia and a large genetic infusion after the Ottoman conquests from peoples in the Balkans and all along the Black Sea. Similarly, there would have been an inevitable genetic infusion from the Turkish conquerors to the vanquished people of Bulgaria and Greece. The genetic studies of Cavalli-Sforza show the close relationship between modern Turks and adjacent Europeans as shown in his synthetic maps of principal components for Europe and western Asia.[138] Effects due to cultural factors are also minimized. With the exception of religion other aspects of culture and worldview are similar. Music, dance, cuisine, and other traits are likely the remnants of ancient underlying Aegean and Pontic cultures common to all three countries.
Two other observations from the IQ data are of interest. One is the lower scores attained by immigrant Turks as compared to those remaining in Turkey. It appears that immigrant Turks in Europe, who presumably come from smaller cities and rural areas, score somewhat lower than the Turkish population as a whole. Seventy years of Kemalism seems to have raised IQs among a portion of the population up to levels equivalent to those in neighboring Europe. The difference between the immigrant and home populations is noted by Seyran Ates a lawyer for family and criminal law and a women’s rights activist in Germany. She observes that the Turkish community in Berlin is very conservative and traditional, much more so than most people in Turkey proper. So there is, among immigrants a regression backwards towards Middle Ages Islam.[139] In addition, IQs in the adjacent countries of Iran and Iraq are lower than that of Turkey. The work of Cavalli-Sforza shows that the genetic distances between Iran, Iraq and Turkey are relatively close.[140] This slight gap may be due to the fact that in both Iran and Iraq Islam has existed many centuries longer than it has in Turkey. Also Turkey has had the benefit of eighty years of enforced secularism.
However, a sample size of three countries is too small to permit rigorous statistical verification. The sample size may be increased by adding those European and Muslim countries bordering or facing each other across the Mediterranean, as well as certain similar adjacent territories. The following table shows the IQs obtained for these countries by a number of studies..[141] These particular countries are chosen to hold genetic and non-religious cultural factors as close as possible. Most of the European and Muslim countries are of Mediterranean racial stock. In almost all of them there has been a long history of genetic interchange. Many of the European countries were partially or completely under Muslim rule for many centuries; others experienced briefer periods of Muslim occupation of or incursions into some of their provinces. In addition, many of the populations of these countries are made up of closely-related racial groups. Some populations are made up of similar Mediterranean racial components. Others have large Turco-Mongolian components in their ancestry: e.g. Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Russia.
The European countries have an average IQ of 94.6 with a standard deviation of 4.89. The Islamic countries have an average IQ of 85.9 with a standard deviation of 2.13. The difference between the two groups, as measured by a standard t test is highly statistically significant. It suggests a difference in IQs due to an Islamic effect of some eight points. This effect might be a result of the fatalistic attitude engendered by Islamic theology in its adherents. It might also result from Muslim child-rearing practices.[142] The long-lasting institution of Muslim slavery may have left an indelible residue by creating negative attitudes toward work and initiative, including that of intellectual effort. There is the possibility that the greater economic development north of the Mediterranean is the main factor, and if the economic gap narrows the IQ gap will close. However, most of the European countries in the sample are from the least developed parts of the continent, and it is only in the last few decades that they have begun to develop modern economies; a rather short amount of time to produce such a large differential. Of course, these results are only suggestive and further research is warranted.
Rise and fall of Islamic Scholarship
Scholarship, science and human accomplishment appear to follow the hypothesized general pattern over time, shown in the following chart, in all Islamic societies.
The general scheme shown above illustrates the changes in the level of civilization in a Muslim conquered territory. Stage A represents the level preceding the Muslim invasion. In stage B the level drops precipitously as the invasion proceeds bringing war, famine, slavery and displacement. In the following stage C, stability is restored under a new Islamic government. The majority of the population consists of non-Muslims and recent converts. The territory becomes part of the larger Islamic community and, with trade and the cross-fertilization of cultures, civilization rises to new heights in a golden age. However, in the following stage D, conversion reduces the non-Muslim population, Islamic law is more rigidly followed, despotism and persecution increase. The Muslim mind closes; the level of civilization declines. In the terminal stage E, there is a general cultural and economic stagnation causing the level of civilization to stabilize at a low level.
To test the above hypothesized path of Islamic intellectual accomplishment, the significant scholarly figures listed in Hitti’s authoritative History of the Arabs was compiled. These were arranged by subject matter and time period and it was usually possible to categorize the background of the scholar by the description in the text. The scholarly fields were grouped into the following categories:
S: Science, Math, Medicine, Philosophy
H: History, Geography, Social Science
L: Grammar, Literature, Arts
T: Theology, Law
The background of the significant figures fall into the following categories:
N: Non-Muslim, Heretic, Sufi, Non-believer, apostate, convert, child of convert
R: Recent: Grandson of Convert or Muslim of Non Arab ethnicity before end of Islamic 3rd century
M: Assumed long family history of Islam or Muslim of Arab ethnicity
The time pattern of numbers of significant figures makes it possible to test the above hypothesis of rise, golden age, decline and stagnation. The background categories measure the impact of non-Muslims, nominal Muslims or heretical Muslims in contributing to Islamic civilization and attainment. In Hitti’s terminology when a figure is referred to as, a ‘Hispano Muslim’, ‘Persian Muslim’, “Syrian Muslim’ etc., this is taken as an indication of relatively recent non-Arab and non-Muslim ancestry, and the figure is placed in category R. Of course, there is no certainty that this is always the case. However, on the other hand, this is probably balanced in that many of those figures referred to as ‘Arab Muslim’ or simply as Muslim may well be of non-Arab or recent non-Muslim background; these latter figures are placed in category M. Using this methodology, the following contention is tested:
The handful of famous intellectual figures in Islam, when examined, always turn out to have been either non-Muslim, or a generation or two away from being non-Muslims (so still raised in an intellectual environment of some non-Muslim mental freedom), or if Muslim and from a Muslim family, than very likely a heretic or a freethinker, like ar-Razi.[143]
The analysis is broken into two sets. The first part presents the significant figures from the eastern Arab provinces. Spain and the Maghreb, with their distinct historical experience are analyzed separately. There are 171 significant figures in the Arab east. The following table shows the change in the number of significant figures over time by field.
Literature and the arts peak early; these are heavily concentrated in the first Arab century and then precipitously drop in subsequent centuries. Theology and law are also concentrated in the early years. Undoubtedly this is due to the work on the codification of Muslim law following the death of Muhammad. The more rigorous sciences peak in the first Abbasid century and continue fairly strong for another two centuries before a steep decline beginning in the second half of the 11th century. History and the social sciences rise more slowly, reach a maximum in the early 10th century and then abruptly drop. Thus, scholarly activity peaks in the 9th through the 11th century. There is, however, a secondary smaller peak in the 13th century for reasons that will be explained below.The next table shows the background of the significant figures over time.
Significant figures of non-Muslim and recent non-Muslim background make up more than half the total. As indicated above, this result is quite conservative since many of the scholars who are labeled as Arab Muslim, might well be of recent descent from non-Arab converts who were assimilated as clients into Arab tribes. After 1050, with the decline in the non-Muslim population, the number of non-Muslim figures becomes negligible. The table indicates a strong dependence of intellectual achievement on the existence of non-Muslim populations as a source of significant figures.
The following table gives the cross tabulation of background category by field of scholarship. Non-Muslims and recent converts dominate the arts and sciences and constitute almost half of the social sciences. Only theology and law, unsurprisingly, are made up of overwhelming orthodox Muslim percentages.
Restricting the view to the rigorous fields of science and philosophy and to the critical first four centuries yields the following results:
Scientists by Background: First 4 Centuries
N---------34
R-----------3
M --------23
Total -----60
Science, math and philosophy in the “golden age” are dominated by non-Muslims or recent Muslims who make up 62% of the total significant figures.
In summary, the above tabulations yield the following conclusions. By the fourth century after the conquest, the number of major intellectuals declines. Non-Muslims or recent Muslims constitute a majority of significant figures until the fifth century. Non-Muslims are a majority in the fields of science/math/philosophy and arts/humanities and are close to half in the field of history/social sciences. Therefore, the conclusion is that Arab Islamic civilization declines after three centuries as the number of non-Muslims declines and the process of Islamization accelerates. Moreover, this effect is undoubtedly even greater than that shown since many of those categorized as Muslims are likely near descendents of conquered peoples.
The following tables show field by century, background by century and field by background for Islamic Spain and the Maghreb.
Intellectual activity in Spain began with a greater time lag after the conquest than was the case in the Muslim east. This late start may be a consequence of the lower level of pre-Islamic civilization in Spain as compared to that in the East. The golden age beginning in the tenth century was instigated by the establishment of an independent Umayyad caliphate. Two centuries after the inception of the golden age, the fourth century after the conquest, scholarship entered a period of decline which was exacerbated by fanatical Berber dynasties. However, even during the time of the new dynasties and for some years afterward, scholarly achievement was stronger than during the equivalent period in the East. This lateness of the decline in scholarship was likely facilitated by the lower degree of Islamization and the stronger position of dhimmis in Muslim Spain. The resistance of the dhimmi population in succumbing to Islamization was a result of the continuing existence of the Christian kingdoms that provided a source of refuge for Christian and even Jewish scholars during periods of persecution as well as political pressure and leverage against weakening Muslim rulers. Even so, in the thirteenth century, Islamic civilization in Spain began its terminal decline.
Identifiable non-Muslims, heretics and recent converts number 22 out of 51 significant figures, a proportion somewhat lower than that in the East. However, in Spain it is likely that many more of those who, for lack of further information, must categorized as orthodox Muslims of long standing, are probably of recent non-Muslim descent. In addition, identifiable non-Muslims, heretics and Muslims of recent origin dominate the more rigorous intellectual subjects of science, mathematics and philosophy. Furthermore, the Jewish component of scholars in these fields is greater than that of unconverted Christians; six of the scholars listed are unconverted Jews, while only one is readily identified as an unconverted Christian. This is a much larger percent of Jews than occurs in the East and is another indication of the initial lower level of culture in Christian Spain, as compared to that in the East, at the time of the Muslim conquest.
The geographic dispersion of significant figures in the Arab east is shown as follows:
Syria is quite important in intellectual achievement in the first century when the Damascus based Umayyads were in power. Iraq assumes an overwhelming dominance in achievement during the first centuries of Abbasid rule. Baghdad became the point of concentration for émigré scholars from all over the empire particularly from neighboring Persia. Science/math/philosophy predominated in Iraq. On the other hand, the early numbers in Arabia proper are heavily dominated by poets/musicians. The minor secondary spikes are due to intellectual activity in Egypt and Syria. However, these later spikes in intellectual activity are much dampened. These occur within a century of new dynasties coming to power in those regions.
These secondary spikes are the result of a number of factors. A new dynasty usually improves local conditions after a period of disorder, war or civil strife. These new dynasties are frequently heretical, schismatic, regarded as illegitimate, or of a different ethnic group (Turk, Berber, Kurd, Persian, Caucasus Mamluk etc.) and seek to obtain support from the remaining dhimmi population as a counterweight to a hostile orthodox Muslim majority. As we have seen, new locally-based dynasties have a tendency to compete with the Baghdad caliphs in attracting scholars. They also consciously seek to compete in prestige with previous or rival dynasties. Furthermore, they may seek the propaganda value of subsidizing intellectual activity. In addition, a new dynasty may co-opt local talent that would otherwise have flowed to the central government of Baghdad. However, eventually the same pattern of decline sets in for Syria and Egypt following these minor spikes in intellectual achievement. The same effect is also seen in Persia with the native semi-independent dynasties after 850. More recent Persian dynasties and the Turkish dynasties are beyond the scope of Hitti's history.
The following graph repeats the Bulliet conversion curve for Iraq, Syria and Egypt. Directly beneath, for purposes of comparison, is a graph of the number of significant figures by province in the Arab East over the same half century time periods.
The inverse relationship between the number of significant figures and the non-Muslim percent of population is evident. Once Muslims pass the fifty percent mark, the number of significant figures per time period drops, never again to approach the Abbasid heights. The following charts show the breakdown of activity in the three provinces of Iraq, Egypt and Syria. Scholarly activity in Iraq, constituting the largest fraction shows clearly the stages of intellectual activity from recovery after the Muslim conquest to peak and inevitable decline. The charts for Egypt and Syria show the later spikes in scholarship under local rulers followed by the same decline. The Fatimids assumed power in Egypt about the year 970. Two centuries later the Ayyubids came to power in both Egypt and Syria followed by the Mamluk dynasty in 1250. The latter, though uncultured and bloodthirsty, had an appreciation for art and architecture.[144] Also clearly shown is the shift in intellectual leadership from Syria to Iraq with the replacement of the Umayyads by the Abbasids in 750.
The conversion curve and significant figures chart for Persia show the minor spike and subsequent decline in scholarly activity resulting from the rise of the native independent Saffarid and Samanid dynasties about the year 875. The numbers of significant figures in the three provinces outside of Iraq are always minuscule and, hence, subject to random fluctuations.
Of course, the absolute number of significant figures does not account for the crucial factor of population size. Increases or decreases in population will affect the number undertaking and succeeding in scholarly endeavors. The following charts show population[145] and significant figures per million for Iraq, Persia, Syria and Egypt.
The rise, peak and decline of the ratio of scholars are obvious for Iraq. The initial decline following the Umayyad overthrow in Syria and the later peaks in the outlying provinces can also be seen.
The following chart shows the rise, peak and decline in the number of significant figures in Iraq and Persia. It encompasses the time period from the early Arab conquests through the rule of the Abbasids and the closely linked local Persian dynasties. Below is a chart of population.[146] The population of the two lands shows almost no variation between 650 and 1250 which is the entire period over which the rise, peak and decline in intellectual achievement occurs. Although the Mongol invasions are often blamed for the destruction of high civilization in these two lands, the number of significant figures declines well before the Mongol depredations of the 1250s caused a drop in population. In fact, population is virtually flat for the four centuries from 800 through 1200. By the year 1200 scholarship had dropped to a lower level than had existed in Umayyad times five centuries before.
The next two charts show the Spanish conversion curve and the number of significant figures over time. The Andalusian golden age commenced about the year 912 when Abdel Rahman III established formal independence by proclaiming himself caliph. Its progress was cut short with the accession of the Almoravids and resumed with the equally fanatical, but somewhat more intellectually curious, Almohads.
The full cycle of Islamic intellectual development in Spain is obscured by the steady decline of Muslim power before the advancing Christians. However, the steady drop in activity beginning with the thirteenth century indicates that the evolution of Islamic civilization in Spain would have closely mirrored that in the eastern provinces.
The following graph shows the relationship in the Arab east, excluding Arabia proper, between the percent of significant figures present in each century beginning with 650 and ending with 1550 and the Muslim percent of population.
The largest percent of significant figures occurs in the first few centuries when Muslims were still a minority and begins to decline when the Muslim percent rises above fifty. There is a minor peak after the rise of independent or semi-independent local dynasties, but this is followed by an irreversible decline within two centuries. A linear regression run between the percent of significant figures occurring within centuries and the percent of Muslims in the population shows a strong negative relationship (correlation coefficient 65%) between the two. An increase in conversions of 10% in any century decreases the century's share of significant figures by 1.5%. Regressing the percent of significant figures on the preceding century’s percent of Muslims shows an even stronger relationship (correlation of 83%). Pre-Islamic cultural imperatives would be expected to influence a recently converted population. An increase in conversions of 10% in any century decreases the next century's share of significant figures by almost 1.8%. The most favorable assessment of Muslim civilization that could be made, given these results, is that “Islam provided a sense of purpose and vitality that helped power the achievements of its golden age, but Islam could not accommodate itself to the degree of autonomy required to sustain it.”[147]
Two other studies support this general view of Muslim intellectual achievement. The process of rise, peak and decline is also shown in Bulliet’s graph 1which gives the proportional representation of Arab territories in biographical sources. His graph clearly shows the rise and decline of learning in Iraq and Umayyad Syria. And it shows that at the time of new or breakaway dynasties, in Iran, Egypt, Syria, Spain and Anatolia, there was a secondary intellectual impetus.[148] His graph only measures proportions and not absolute numbers of notable figures; it also does not evaluate the importance of these significant figures, so it cannot be used as a real gauge of intellectual accomplishment. Moreover, Bulliet regards the Mongol conquest as an important factor in the decline in scholarly activity, when as seen above, that decline preceded the Mongol invasion.
Another supporting perspective on Islamic intellectual rise and decline occurs in Murray’s study of human accomplishment. He presents a graph of numbers of significant figures and index measurements of their achievements for the field of Arabic literature. This graph given for the period 500 to 1300 shows a decline after 1050. “The golden age of classic Arabic literature coincided with the golden age of Arabic culture in general.” The peaks in literature occurred in the century from 950 to 1050.[149]
Furthermore, Murray’s data permits a comparison of Islamic achievement with that of other civilizations. Given the extraordinary rise in western accomplishment since the Renaissance, a direct comparison of Islamic accomplishment with that of the west would be unable to separate out the general factors involved in western supremacy over the rest of the world, and those factors specifically resulting from Islam. However, additional light can be cast on the pattern of Islamic achievement through a comparison with other civilizations that were also surpassed by the modern west. The following chart shows the percent of significant figures, listed by Murray, occurring in each century between 600 and 1800 for the Islamic world, China, Japan and India. Century percents are used to avoid the complications that would arise by the large variations in population between these territories.
The graph shows that the peak in Islamic civilization occurs in the eleventh century with almost 18% of the total significant figures. The subsequent drop-off is severe. China, after recovering from a low point in the seventh century, has a fairly narrow range of oscillation; the percent drops off toward the end as a result, no doubt, of western pressure. Japan shows a general rise over the centuries prefiguring its entry into western science and technology. India’s pattern is of considerable interest. India shows a general downward trend after an early cultural highpoint. It is no coincidence that the decline begins at the time of the Arab invasion of Sind and accelerates in the tenth century with the destructive raids of the Ghaznavids. There is a slight recovery in the eleventh century followed by a new decline, doubtless due to increased Muslim pressure in the late twelfth century with the Ghurid territorial expansion. Finally, the beginning of Mogul rule permits a slight recovery which is greatly accelerated under Akbar’s eclectic rule, only to plunge, once again, under Akbar’s fanatical successors.
Both the qualitative and quantitative results in this chapter are in conformity with the general pattern of cultural achievement set out in the figure entitled Phases of Islamic Civilization. That pattern is one of recovery from the Islamic jihad, rise, peak and then decline as the Dhimmi proportion of the population decreases. The following chapter examines the prospects of reforming Muslim society and culture by placing these in a historical context.
[1] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 23.
[2] From Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran.
[3] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 24.
[4] Ibid, p. 29.
[5] Keay, India, A History, p. 210.
[6] Ibid, p. 238.
[7] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 26.
[8] Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 66.
[9] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 353.
[10] Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 110.
[11] Ibid, p. 67.
[12] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 345.
[13] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 31.
[14] Yeor, Islam and Dhimmitude, p. 68.
[15] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 183.
[16] Ibid, p. 184.
[17] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 96.
[18] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 351.
[19] Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim, p. 274.
[20] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 61.
[21] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 174.
[22] Ibid, p. 61.
[23] Ibid, pp. 240-41.
[24] Ibid, pp. 392-93.
[25] Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, p. 39.
[26] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 370.
[27] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 345.
[28] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 265.
[29] Ibid, pp. 345-46.
[30] Kennedy, When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World, p. 44.
[31] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 373.
[32] Ibid, p. 253.
[33] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 344.
[34] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 217.
[35] Ibid, p. 310.
[36] Ibid, p. 297.
[37] Ibid, p. 404.
[38] Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, p. 133.
[39] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 630.
[40] Ibid, p. 683.
[41] The scholars listed are obtained from Hitti, History of the Arabs.
[42] Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam, quoted in Jonathan David Carson, Hyping Islam 's role in the History of Science, americanthinker.com, July 29th, 2005.
[43] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, pp. 193-94.
[44] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 509.
[45] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 58.
[46] Ibid.
[47] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 543.
[48] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 54.
[49] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 345.
[50] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 515.
[51] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, pp. 194-95.
[52] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 233.
[53] Ibid, p. 235.
[54] Ibid, p. 237.
[55] Ibid, pp. 237-38.
[56] Ibid, p. 239.
[57] Ibid, p. 235.
[58] Ibid, p. 237.
[59] Vryonis, Byzantium and Europe, p. 175.
[60] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 243.
[61] Crowley, 1453, p. 101.
[62] Ibid, p. 167.
[63] Ibid, p. 91.
[64] Ibid, p. 124.
[65] Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, New York, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 21.
[66] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 113.
[67] Ibid, pp. 156-57.
[68] Freely, Inside The Seraglio, p. 22.
[69] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 156.
[70] Ibid, p. 200.
[71] Ibid, p. 214.
[72] Muller, The Loom of History, New York, p. 305.
[73] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 268.
[74] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, pp. 381-82.
[75] Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict, p. 23.
[76] Ibid, p. 384.
[77] Frye, The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 4, p. 398.
[78] Ibid
[79] Ibid, p. 142.
[80] Keay, India, A History, p. 275.
[81] Ibid
[82] Ibid, p. 336.
[83] Lewis, What Went Wrong?, p. 139.
[84] Ibid
[85] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 311.
[86] Needleman, Lost Christianity, p. 24.
[87] Lewis, What Went Wrong?, pp. 139-40.
[88] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 382.
[89] Ibid, p. 685.
[90] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 87.
[91] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 285.
[92] Quoted in Carson, Hyping Islam 's role in the History of Science.
[93] Quoted in Ibid
[94] Quoted in Ibid
[95] Quoted in Ibid
[96] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 54.
[97] Carson, Hyping Islam 's role in the History of Science.
[98] Vryonis, Byzantium and Europe, p. 114.
[99] Steven Runciman, The Last Byzantine Renaissance, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1970, p. 102.
[100] Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p. 77.
[101] Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment, New York, Perennial, 2003, pp. 399-400.
[102] Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, p.103.
[103] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 99.
[104] Ibid
[105] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 66.
[106] Ibid, p. 67.
[107] Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, p. 214.
[108] Carl B. Boyer, and Uta C. Merzbach, A History of Mathematics, New York, Wiley, 1989, pp. 255-56.
[109] Ibid, p. 256.
[110] Ibid, p. 258.
[111] Ibid, p. 260.
[112] Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 528.
[113] Ibid, pp. 529-32.
[114] Keay, India, A History, p. 188.
[115] Noss, Man’s Religions, p. 738.
[116] Ibid, p. 739.
[117] Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem.
[118] Noss, Man’s Religions, pp. 739-40.
[119] Lewis, What Went Wrong?, p.140.
[120] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 166.
[121] Spencer, Islam Unveiled, p. 125.
[122] Ibid, p. 127.
[123] Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 401.
[124] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 64.
[125] Quoted in Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 400.
[126] Patai, The Arab Mind, pp. 154-55.
[127] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 662.
[128] Ibid, p. 381.
[129] Ibid, p. 391.
[130] Ibid, p. 403.
[131] Ibid, p. 685.
[132] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 71.
[133] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 298.
[134] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, pp. 343-44.
[135] Keay, India, A History, p. 336.
[136] Thierry Gattuso, Why do Moslems Underachieve?, faithfreedom.org, November 24, 2005.
[137] From Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen IQ and the Wealth of Nations summarized by Steve Sailer at www.iSteve.com.
[138] L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi and Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 290-296, Figures 5.11.1 through 5.11.4. Principal components are statistical measures summarizing and combining data obtained from many different genes.
[139] Seyran Ates in Jamie Glazov, Symposium: Murdering Women For “Honor”, FrontPageMagazine.com June 10, 2005.
[140] Cavalli-Sforza, The History and Geography of Human Genes, p. 244, Table 4.15.
[141] From Lynn and Vanhanen.
[142] See Chapter 7: Culture of the Harem.
[143] Hugh Fitzgerald, Algeria, Christianity, and Islam, Jihad Watch (internet), March 23, 2006.
[144] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 671.
[145] Source: Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, Atlas of World Population History, New York, Penguin Books, 1978.
[146] Ibid
[147] Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 399.
[148] Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period, p. 8.
[149] Murray, Human Accomplishment, p. 321.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Chapter 10: Phases of Islamic Political Development
Islamic societies, generally, pass through three phases of political development. The first phase, the “egalitarian” or “republican” follows the initial invasion of the nomadic carriers of Islam or the founding of trading outposts by Muslim merchants. This political tendency is dominant during the early history of a conquered territory; the tribal “republican” tradition is still strong in these early years. The ruler is regarded as simply the first among equals in the warrior caste. Of course, this egalitarianism has nothing to do with rights for dhimmis, women or other lesser groups such as Muslims already residing in the conquered territory; all of which may be subject to massacre, enslavement or oppressive tribute. In those instances where Islam is established through the conversion of an existing ruler or elite, as in Indonesia, this phase may be absent altogether.
The following phase may be termed the “liberal despotic”. The term liberal is strongly qualified; it simply means that there is a majority or at least large numbers of non-Muslims; Islam has not yet “hardened”. The restoration of peace and incorporation of the territory into a larger oecumene along with the many dhimmis and nominal Muslims in the population engenders a great increase in intellectual activity, architecture, and construction of an infrastructure and communication network. Moreover the rulers and aristocrats tend to be worldly, irreligious or heretical. The Muslims are self confident, as shown by the example of the Byzantine vassal emperor Manuel who was allowed to engage in a religious disputation with Muslim scholars in an atmosphere of relative freedom. However, the state exists in the form of a monarchical despotism. This is often based on Persian or Byzantine models where there is a remote and absolute monarch. While the monarch in this period is often impious or unbelieving, he may, in a Machiavellian manner, cynically make use of Islam to expand his territory, appease the Muslim ulama or eliminate rivals. He may, if he finds it politically expedient, employ fanatical Muslim troops to enslave, slaughter or oppress conquered non-Muslim or even Muslim populations. He may, paradoxically, implement persecutions to obtain favor with the ulama, while simultaneously patronizing favored dhimmi intellectuals and advisors. Or, on the contrary, he may be strong enough to protect useful dhimmi populations.
The final phase is the “repressive despotic”. This usually means the establishment of an absolute theocratic state in which the only curb on the activities of the monarch is that of, a frequently, even more fanatical clergy. Islam has been long established and become hardened and inflexible. Intellectual activity outside of Islamic law and tradition is now discouraged. This is often accompanied by economic depression and stagnation. The ruler may be paradoxically both weak and tyrannical; often he is a fanatical Islamic bigot. Persecution and oppression of non-Muslims is endemic. The two forms of despotism, liberal and despotic, may alternate with each other for long periods, but in the end, it is invariably the repressive despotic imperative that triumphs.
The early rugged individualism of the Arabs was preserved through an elective caliphate. The Arabs formed the electoral class in a type of aristocratic republic. However, the ancient despotic tradition of the conquered masses, that of Persia and Egypt, reasserted itself and combined with the Islamic doctrine of submission. The process began with the Umayyad caliphate in 661and reached its final form in the succeeding Abbasid dynasty. The template for all succeeding Islamic despotisms was set in place.
These three contending political imperatives were in conflict with each other. The egalitarian tribal formation, which tended to dominate at the beginning of each nomadic expansion, inevitably gave way to despotism. At first, this despotism was usually pragmatic, worldly or even tolerant; but the end result was always an intolerant theocracy. This conflict was present from the earliest Islamic times. The tendency toward despotism was one of the factors that propelled the growth of empire. While Muhammad held to the traditional forms of Arab tribal society with its consultations and councils, in reality, he as Prophet was effectively an autocrat. His immediate successors followed his example. The very expansion of Arab Muslim rule, first in Arabia and later throughout the Middle East was facilitated by caliphs becoming more absolute in power. Karsh contends that “by substituting absolutist rule for the pluralistic system of traditional tribal organization, based as it was on a series of agreements among equals, the umma created a powerful drive for expansion.”[1]
The result of this despotic imperative was that, although Islam developed a "welfare state", a powerful military-religious ideology and a series of enormous empires, it never developed the concepts of liberty and secular government that arose in Europe. Ironically this was, in part, due to the more rigid class structure that developed in the West. In Islam there was no aristocracy independent of the monarch; religion and the state were also intertwined. In Europe there was rivalry between the Monarch, Church and feudal aristocracy which, in a few places at least, notably Britain, developed into checks on despotic central authority and to the rise of the urban bourgeoisie who were able to restore ancient republican institutions in many major western cities. Kinross, referring to the Ottoman Empire, gives an example of this difference between Islam and Europe:
…this Ottoman system of land tenure through military fiefs differed essentially from the feudal system in Europe, in that the landholdings were small and above all seldom hereditary. For all land was the property of the state. … The sultans retained absolute ownership of the soil they conquered.[2]
Thus, in Islamic society, there were not the divisions and rivalries within the aristocracy that characterized Western Europe; members of all classes from lowest to highest were regarded as "slaves" of an increasingly autocratic Caliph or Sultan and there was no well developed independent religious institution serving as a check on the Monarch. Hence, while Islamic society stagnated, it was the West that pioneered modern concepts of science, technology, government and secularism.
Egalitarian Phase
The term “egalitarian” refers only to members of the conquering military elite and not to the conquered multitudes. The latter, in fact, often received better treatment under the liberal despots. Although the rule of the early caliphs became increasingly arbitrary, they openly espoused the traditional Arab tribal “republicanism”. The caliphs found it necessary, to appease their followers by maintaining, at least the appearance, of the old tribal councils and consultative institutions. Moreover, all “four caliphs of this first period were chosen in some manner by their predecessors or colleagues; none succeeded by hereditary right. … Thereafter the caliphate became, in practice even if not in theory, hereditary”.[3]
Appearances, however, were one thing; reality could be something else entirely as pointed out by Karsh:
Uthman vested all key posts in the hands of his family members … The Medinese elite resented its growing marginalization in the running of the empire, while the provincial leadership was incensed by Uthman’s efforts to increase the central government’s share in the distribution of local revenues…[4]
Thus, from earliest times there was conflict between the centralizing absolutist tendencies of the ruler and the jealous clinging to their privileges on the part of the traditional tribal elite. The Medinese and provincial elite represented the Arab aristocratic republican imperative while the Caliph and his court upheld the idea of a more arbitrary and despotic form of government. Hitti specifically refers to the reign of the first four caliphs as the ‘republican period’. “With the death of Ali (661) what may be termed the republican period of the caliphate, which began with abu-Bakr (632) came to an end. … The hereditary principle was hereby introduced into the caliphal succession”.[5] The idea of Arab egalitarian republicanism persisted into the Umayyad dynasty and the first Umayyad caliphs felt obliged to give to it at least token deference.
A significant token of the hold which democratic Arabian tribal custom had upon the Umayyads is that notice of the appointment [of Caliph Yazid’s son as his successor] was sent to the governors of the provinces, who almost everywhere obtained promises of adherence to the arrangement.[6]
An extreme pole of the egalitarian republican viewpoint, at that time, was represented by the Kharijites who opposed arbitration between the caliph Ali and his rival Mu’awiya since they believed that the choice of the caliph was with “Allah alone”, thereby denying any form of hereditary dynastic rule legitimacy. The triumph of Mu’awiya established the despotic principle when he “presided over the foundation of Islam’s first imperial dynasty by having his son, Yazid succeed him to the throne.”[7]
The early Ottomans provide another example of the egalitarianism and republicanism of the nomadic warrior tradition. “The first Ottoman rulers were tribal chiefs who maintained their position and succession by the approval of their warriors”.[8] Kinross notes that the “warrior companions” of the early Ottoman sultan Orkhan regarded him “less as a master than as a unifying force and a rallying point among them as brothers-in-arms.”[9] In general, viewing the tribal leader as a “brother-in-arms” was characteristic of nomadic tribal societies. When Babur crossed into India to found the Mogul dynasty, he was certainly not looked upon by his companions as if he were a Persian king.
Anarchy and disorder were unfortunate characteristics of the egalitarian phase. The rule of the first four caliphs and the first years of the Umayyad dynasty were marked by disputes regarding the succession which culminated in civil war, assassinations and inter-tribal conflict. Each additional eruption of nomadic Turks into Anatolia was accompanied by warfare and social disruption. The same can be said of the Arab raids into the Sudan, the early Moors in Spain and the Muslim waves crashing into India. The admirable liberty and social equality enjoyed by individual tribesmen came at a great cost to the settled parts of society, and particularly to non-Muslims.
Liberal Despotic Phase
Islamic societies enter upon the “liberal despotic” phase after the initial incursion with its attendant wars and disorder has ended. The end comes when the tribesmen and the population on which they have preyed has reached a point of exhaustion. An accommodation is reached, whereby the victor in one of the civil wars or inter-tribal conflicts is recognized as ruler. At that point a process of recovery can commence. The periods of disorder and recovery can last for decades and even for a century. The establishment of peace is followed by a period of economic security and expansion, and often by an artistic and intellectual renaissance. What was once a besieged territory drained by perpetual Muslim assaults is now part of the greater Islamic oecumene. New ideas and technical developments drawn from far-flung territories pour in. Most of the population still consists of dhimmis or the descendants of recent converts with the skills and outlook of the older culture. The new rulers maintain order by replacing the tribal organization with an increasingly powerful centralized state along with the splendors and rituals of monarchy.
Although the early Umayyad caliphs made a show of deference to egalitarian Arab tribal forms, despotism soon appeared quite openly. “In 705 Walid, brother of ‘Abd-al-Malik, succeeded him on the caliphal throne, for that is what the caliphate has become, a change from a tribal organization to an empire.”[10] In fact under most of the Umayyads the “liberal” despotic tendency was uppermost. The religious imperative under this dynasty “was largely a façade that concealed what was effectively a secular and increasingly absolutist rule. The Umayyad caliphs adopted a lax attitude toward Islamic practices and mores. They were said to have set aside special days for drinking … Little wonder that Islamic tradition tends to decry the Umayyads for having perverted the caliphate into a ‘kingdom’, with the implicit connotation of religious digression or even disbelief.”[11] Such disregard for religious sensibilities is a common characteristic of liberal despotism. In addition to personal expressions of impiety, such rulers also granted favors to and cultivated friendship with members of the dhimmi community. Under some of the Umayyad caliphs, before the hardening of Islamic attitudes, tolerance, favor and even high office was extended to members of the still majority Christian population of Syria. The Christian physician of Mu’awiyah, the first Umayyad caliph was “made financial administrator of the province of Hims”. Al-Akhtal, the Umayyad poet laureate “would enter the caliphal palace with a cross dangling from his neck and recite his poems to the delight of the Moslem caliph and his entourage.”[12] Of course, such kingly munificence was extended only to the Arab ruling military aristocracy and a few favored upper-class educated Dhimmis.
This liberal tendency was to recur frequently under the Abbasids and subsequent sultanates, emirates and caliphates. However, such impiety was often masked by the freethinking, dissolute or heretical rulers who, cynically, sought to mollify the religious zealots by instituting various forms of persecution against dhimmis or by sponsoring invasions and raids into non-Muslim lands.
The impious Umayyad munificence affected even the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, both of which became centers of “worldly pleasure and song.” More shocking yet to pious Muslim sensibilities was the assertiveness of aristocratic Umayyad ladies. “Al-Madinah boasted under the early Marwanids the proud and beautiful Sayyidah Sukaynah (ca 735), daughter of the martyred al-Husayn.” This liberated woman ran a salon for poets and jurists, pioneered new fashion and “made complete freedom of action a condition precedent to marriage.” Her rival, ‘Aishah bint-Talbah, granddaughter of the caliph abu-Bakr, “combined with noble descent a rare beauty and a proud and lofty spirit.” She refused under any condition to veil herself.[13] The rival Abbasids turned such open impiety into a useful weapon aimed at the Umayyad dynasty. For example, “so widely spread was the cultivation of the musical art under the last Umayyads that it provided their enemies, the Abbasid faction with an effective argument in their propaganda to undermine the house of ‘ungodly usurpers’.”[14] One of the main factions supporting the Abbasid rebellion, the Shi’ites, embodied an early form of repressive despotism, or at least despotism in a more theocratic form. They enshrined the dynastic principle in the family of the Prophet and contended that “the umma should be headed by a prodigious spiritual leader, or imam, possessing superhuman religious knowledge and interpretive powers, who would act as the community’s political leader”.[15]
Liberal despotism, however, was frequently accompanied with periods of ruthless repression. Despotism took on a particularly brutal form in Iraq under the ruthless governor Hajjaj (694-714) who instituted a reign of terror against Muslim dissidents in a manner reminiscent of modern Iraqi dictators. On the other hand, he, like some of his modern Iraqi counterparts, was not a fanatical religious zealot when it came to the dhimmi population under his rule. On the contrary, to protect his revenues, he “took draconian measures to discourage conversion and to drive the new converts back to their villages”.[16]
The Abbasids exemplified the tendency toward despotism to a greater extent than did any of the Umayyad caliphs. “The incoming dynasty [Abbasid] depended upon force in the execution of its policies. For the first time in the history of Islam the leathern spread beside the caliph’s seat which served as a carpet for the executioner, became a necessary adjunct of the imperial throne.”[17] Lewis elaborates on this distinction between the Abbasid caliphs and their predecessors. “Whereas the early Caliphs had been Arabs like the rest whom any man could approach and address by name, the Abbasids surrounded themselves with the pomp and circumstance of an elaborate and hieratic court and could only be approached through a series of chamberlains.”[18] Karsh summarizes this evolution toward increasing despotism:
The growth of monarchical despotism, already noticeable in the days of the Umayyads gained considerable momentum under the Abbasids and was starkly exemplified by the presence of the executioner by the side of the throne. Like the Iranian shahs, the caliph became increasingly inaccessible to his subjects, shielding himself behind a vast cohort of officials, ministers and eunuchs, and leaving the daily running of the empire in the hands of the vizier, a chief executive answerable only to him.[19]
It is striking how this very pattern, down to almost the same exact details, recurs in subsequent Islamic empires. The Iranian Muslim dynasties, the Moguls and, of course the Ottoman Turks exhibit almost identical patterns of despotic monarchical rule. And these occurred at a time when the West was evolving various monarchical forms, from absolute to limited, as well as varieties of parliamentary institutions and even republics with differing degrees of citizen involvement; the republics ranging from aristocratic to petty bourgeois.
Although the Abbasids became increasingly despotic and arbitrary in their government, a number of them partook of the munificence and impiety characteristic of “liberal despotism”. The material indulgence of the early Abbasids is well described by Hitti. “Even when stripped of the glow cast by Oriental romance and fancy, enough of the splendor of court life in Baghdad remains to arouse our astonishment.”[20] The most splendid of these rulers was the famous Harun al-Rashid. “Harun was the beau ideal of Islamic kingship. Like a magnet, his princely munificence and that of his immediate successors attracted to the capital poets, wits, musicians, singers, dancers … and others who could interest or entertain.”[21] And quickly forgetting the criticism leveled by the rebel Abbasids at the Umayyads, aristocratic women were allowed, once again to flaunt themselves in a most un-Islamic manner. Harun al-Rashid’s wife Zubaydah “set the fashion for the smart set and was the first to ornament her shoes with precious stones.” Zubaydah had a rival in the sister of Harun, Ullayah “who to cover a blemish on her forehead devised a fillet set with jewels which … was soon adopted by the world of fashion as the ornament of the day.”[22]
Periods of liberal despotism alternated with periods of repressive despotism. It was also the case that rulers, who were otherwise broad-minded, found it politically expedient to keep their dhimmi subjects in a state of insecurity. The first Fatimid ruler of Egypt al-Aziz (975-96) “extended to the Christians … a measure of toleration never enjoyed before” and employed a Christian vizier.[23] However repression began in the very next reign. Al-Hakim the son of al-Aziz “killed several of his vizirs, demolished a number of Christian churches” and was the third caliph to impose the complete stringent measures prescribed for non-Muslims.[24] The reign of al-Aziz illustrates the common occurrence of a minority Muslim sect building coalitions with non-Muslims. His reign and that of his son also shows that the conquest of Muslim territory by a new Muslim dynasty could initiate a period of liberal despotism which, sooner or later, would be followed by repression.
The Fatimids were followed by the Ayyubids (1171-1250), who, although relatively tolerant found it politically useful to keep their upper-class dhimmis anxious. When the Ayyubids assumed power in Egypt
…stricter enforcement of the dhimma code had already begun. … By the end of Ayyubid rule, most Jews wore a distinguishing mark on their turbans and cloaks, and most Christians wore a special outer belt. Much of the time, members of the dhimmi upper class were still able to evade the requirement, which was considered a mark of humiliation as well as differentiation. Periodic decrees were the way Islamic rulers reminded the upper class dhimmis that they should pay for their exemption, which they did.[25]
Of course, as Jewish historian Norman Stillman also observes:
The reimposition of the dress code over a number of years was not an indication of any great tolerance in the interim. Medieval regimes were woefully inefficient when compared with modern totalitarian states in controlling the daily lives and actions of their subjects. Decrees of many sorts had to be reissued from time to time to demonstrate official resolution.[26]
Thus, even in times of liberal Muslim rule
…there was a tenuousness in the cordiality of interfaith relationships. The non-Muslim could never entirely disembarrass himself of his dhimmi status. There was no lack of preachers and religious reformers to remind Muslims and non-Muslims alike that the Pact of Umar was being violated. … The Muslim community’s sense of propriety could be deeply offended when dhimmis rose too high or became too conspicuous…[27]
Stillman summarizes the insecurity inherent in the dhimmi status even under friendly Muslim rulers. “Even in the best of times, dhimmis in all walks of life could suddenly and rudely be reminded of their true status.”[28]
Periods of benevolent monarchy, inevitably followed by repression, characterized the non-Arab Muslim dynasties as well. The relatively liberal period of the Seljuk Konya sultanate came to an end with their defeat at the hands of the Mongols in 1243. “By then, ineffectual Mongol governors and a large number of Turkish emirs had destroyed the authority of this kingdom. … In this period … justice and security in the kingdom came to an end.”[29] The Seljuk state suffered a premature acceleration of the end of the period of benevolent despotism owing to these setbacks.
The transition from nomadic egalitarianism to monarchical despotism and finally to repressive tyranny is well illustrated by the experience of the Seljuk’s Ottoman successors. The first Ottoman “sultans had been accessible to their subjects and mixed with them in relative informality. But … there developed an increasing concern for sacredness of the sovereign, together with a habit of seclusion appropriate to majesty”.[30] Mehmed the Conqueror even went so far as to cease sitting with his advisers. “Until now the Sultan had always presided in person over meetings of the council of state … from the seat on which he sat, as his ancestors from nomadic times had done in their tents. … But Mehmed … no longer frequenting the meetings of the Divan”, looked down on them, unseen, from behind a screen.[31] Thus, even while restoring order to the Ottoman domains and extending some measure of self government to the Christian church, the Conqueror also began the process of ending the last trappings of the Ottoman tribal ‘egalitarian’ system. He is quoted as follows by historian Herbert Muller. “It is not my will that any one should eat with my Imperial Majesty; my ancestors used to eat with their ministers, but I have abolished this custom.” Under his successors “the ceremonies grew more elaborate, the costumes more ornate, the titles more grandiloquent, the Sultan more inaccessible.”[32] And, in the same way as the Abbasids aped the court ritual of the Sasanids, among the Ottomans “… the customs and formalities of the Sultan’s court, which in its rigid hierarchy, its pomp and luxury, and its elaborate ceremonial owed much to the Byzantine model”.[33]
Despite the increasingly autocratic rule of the sultans, the early empire was relatively benign and forward-looking, a condition that would inevitably change. Stillman describes how the early promise and rapid deterioration of the empire affected its Jewish subjects. The Ottoman realm in the 16th century was “a brief interlude of brightness in the long twilight of the late Islamic Middle Ages for the Jews of Arab lands. The shadows again began appearing toward the end of the century.”[34]
Finally, Keay gives an example of how the Muslim rulers in India gradually imposed despotic rule and court ritual on all of their subjects, including their fellow Muslims. Delhi Sultan Balban (1246-65) “influenced by all those royal refugees from the north-west … introduced into his court an elaborate system of precedence and protocol modeled on the Persian practice. … Those who would approach the throne must abase themselves … kissing the ground and … kissing the royal feet as they advanced.”[35]
Benevolent, Tolerant or Syncretistic Muslim Rulers
Given the autocratic and absolutist nature of all mature Islamic states, the well-being of the Dhimmi population was, to a large extent, dependent on the character of the ruler. Certain Muslim rulers were relatively benevolent to the Dhimmi populations whether for reasons of pragmatism, a compassionate nature transcending Islamic religious imperatives, freethinking, or even secret sympathies with, or interest in, other traditions.
Umayyad caliphs were notorious among their Muslim subjects as being deficient in proper religious attitudes. The most reprehensible, from the Muslim point of view was Caliph Walid II who “is said to have stuck the Koran onto a lance and shot it to pieces with arrows”. It is, therefore, no surprise that Walid irritated the ulama by showing an interest in un-Islamic ideas while leading a merry existence. “An intensively cultivated man, he surrounded himself with poets, dancing girls, and musicians, and lived the merry life of the libertine, with no interest in religion.”[36]
The Abbasids came to power promising to rid Islam of Umayyad impiety. However, as seen above, their personal conduct did not always conform to such high ideals. Caliph Ma’mun even showed a quite un-Muslim interest in comparative religion. During his reign Farruxzatan a Mazdaean religious leader held a disputation with a Muslim convert and also “summoned Jews and Christians to take part in the argument. The Caliph Ma’mun, as is known, favoured such rhetorical jousts”.[37] Such disputations were allowed to take place under a number of Muslim rulers. It would appear that, once Islam was established and the danger of overthrow ended, certain rulers of a less rigid and more inquiring frame of mind could afford to patronize such conferences and discourses. Of course, as an Islamic state entered its final repressive phase, such openness became impossible.
Under the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt, many caliphs showed favor toward non-Muslims:
The heterodox Fatimids showed relatively more tolerance toward their dhimmi subjects than had most Islamic rulers. Perhaps this was due in part to the fact that the majority of the Fatimid subjects in North Africa, and later in Egypt, were orthodox Muslims who were by and large unfriendly to their Isma’ili overlords.[38]
The Fatimid tolerance was a case of political pragmatism. It was one instance in which a schismatic or upstart ruler might build a political base by showing favor to non-Muslims or to other heretical Muslims. In modern times examples of such political pragmatism are the relative tolerance toward Christians on the parts of the Alawite elite of Syria and of the Sunni Baathists in Iraq.
Saladin, the great founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, despite being a stalwart soldier in the Muslim cause, was widely regarded by friend and foe alike as being an honorable opponent who often showed a mercy that was uncharacteristic of both Muslim and non-Muslim rulers at that time. “Saladin was a brave and capable soldier, a great builder, and a generous and merciful ruler. … Saladin repeatedly expressed admiration for the piety of Christian pilgrims” and reportedly said “that a bad Muslim could never make a good Christian.”[39] Moreover, Saladin’s “lieutenants reminded him frequently of the bloody massacres committed by the Crusaders when they first conquered Jerusalem, yet his mercy was widespread.”[40]
Saladin’s tolerance, however, may also be partly due to the fact that he was rather indifferent to religion; his main interest was in building up his own power:
Reflecting neither a burning spirit of jihad nor an unwavering anti Christian enmity, this behavior epitomized Saladin’s career. For all his extensive holy-war propaganda, an essential component in a socio-political order based on the principle of religion, Saladin’s attitude to the Frankish states was above all derived from his lifelong effort at empire-building. As long as they did not stand in the way of this endeavor he was amenable to leaving them in peace…[41]
Furthermore it was the Ayyubid dynasty founded by Saladin that was later to offer a refuge in Egypt and Syria to Jewish refugees from the persecutions in Almohad Spain.[42] Unfortunately, however, in general few subsequent Muslim rulers lived up to Saladin’s example.
In Anatolia, despite the ravages that the nomadic Turks inflicted on the Christian population, a number of Seljuk rulers showed them great benevolence. Such benevolence was shown even in the early years of the Turkish invasion. Sultan Malik Shah (ca 1090) and Ismail the governor of Armenia are known to have protected churches and monasteries. Tolerant Seljuk rulers also appeared in subsequent centuries. The conditions of the Christians of Melitene “improved considerably in the latter half of the twelfth century thanks to the generosity of Kilidj II Arslan who freed” the church “from paying tribute.”[43] Another benevolent Turkish commander was Malik Danishmend who reportedly treated his Christian subjects kindly.[44]
The tolerance shown by the early Turkish leaders may also have had deeper motives owing to the very extensive and early hybridization that characterized the Turkish invaders. Many Muslim Turks, even among the rulers, at that time had Christian parents or in-laws. One such, the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin, was apparently “not only tolerant of Christianity but sympathetic to it”.[45] Another such was the son of the Seljuk sultan Izz-ed-Din who entered the service of the Byzantine Emperor and with “a detachment of his guard remained behind in Constantinople, turned Christian, and formed the nucleus of a corps of Turkish militia”.[46]
The succeeding Ottomans, also with an abundance of Christian relatives and Greek ancestry, likewise produced rulers with tolerant dispositions or even syncretistic and heretical outlooks. In particular Mehmed (Muhammad) the Conqueror is said to have an almost heretical interest in Christianity, the Italian Renaissance and Greek philosophy.[47] As a young man Mehmed “caused concern at Adrianople by his apparent support … of a Persian missionary, leader of a dervish sect which had preached … an affinity between Islam and Christianity.”[48] After the fall of Constantinople there were even “pious hopes that the Sultan might emerge as a potential convert to Christianity. … Such approaches were never likely to influence the Sultan, seeing himself as … the heir to the caliphs, thus wedded spiritually and politically to Islam.”[49] Mehmed is an example of a frequently occurring case among Muslim leaders. He was an unscrupulous and ruthless ruler and impious by Islamic standards. He was also pragmatic in dealing with his non-Muslim subjects and foreigners. He even had some interest in other religions and heretical syncretistic Muslim sects. Yet, he was quite content to use the warlike zeal provoked by Islam to further his worldly ambitions and was not about to chance the storm that would arise if he openly showed disrespect for Islam or threatened its monopoly of power.
Mehmed showed some benevolence to cooperative conquered dhimmis. He confirmed Gennadius as Patriarch, and established the millet system of self government for the various religious communities. He also “treated the Athenians magnanimously, confirming their civil liberties and exemption from taxes” and “granted privileges to the Orthodox clergy.”[50] The Conqueror’s treatment of Athens was undoubtedly a result of his interest in the antiquities of the territory over which he ruled; an interest quite uncharacteristic of a Muslim. “After his army captured Athens Fatih went there in 1459 to see the ruined monuments of the ancient city, for his classical studies had imbued him with a deep reverence for classical Greek culture. Kritovoulos calls him a ‘Philhellene’”.[51] Mehmed’s unusual interest in the Greek classics was exhibited on a visit to Troy:
Fatih visited the site of ancient Troy … which he knew from his reading of Homer. Kritovoulos writes that Fatih’s conquest of Byzantium made the sultan feel that he had evened the score with the Greeks for their victory over the ‘Asiatics’ at Troy, and that he only regretted that he did not have a poet like Homer to extol his deeds.[52]
Once again, this may have been more than just a passing curiosity. In the early days of both Seljuk and Ottoman rule, there appears to have been a consciousness of their pre-Islamic Greek heritage on the part of many members of the Turkish elite who were often of mixed parentage. Such consciousness faded, however, with the hardening of Islamic culture over the centuries.
Mehmed, even after his conquest of Byzantium, continued his interest in Christianity and comparative religion. He
…called on Gennadius … and in their conversations they ranged widely over Christian theology. Gennadius also wrote a summary of his work and had it translated into Turkish for Fatih’s private study. … Spandugino, an Italian who lived in Galata early in the sixteenth century, claims that Fatih took to worshipping Christian relics and always kept many candles burning in front of them.
But Fatih’s interest in Christianity appears to have been superficial, for he seems to have been basically irreligious, and in his observance of Islam he merely observed the forms of the Muslim faith, as was necessary for him as head of state.[53]
Indeed, his son Prince Beyazit reportedly said that his father did not believe in Muhammad. Mehmed was also a highly atypical Muslim in his interest in the Renaissance that was flowering in Italy during his lifetime. The Venetian Senate sent the artist Gentile Bellini to Constantinople at Mehmed’s request. Bellini painted Mehmed’s portrait and also decorated his apartments with erotic paintings.[54]
One strange case of syncretism among Ottoman royalty occurred when the purported son of Sultan Ibrahim was captured as a baby, along with his mother a harem favorite, by Christian pirates.
…the child initially captured by the Maltese on the Turkish galley … was introduced at a certain stage as a possible Ottoman pretender. Now a Catholic priest named Pere Osman, he aspired without success to rally all Ottoman subjects, whether Moslem or Christian, to the cause of a new eastern state, blending the concepts of the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires.[55]
A benevolent Ottoman leader some years later was the Grand Vizier and de facto ruler of the Ottoman Empire Koprulu Ahmed who “relaxed the severity” of his father’s regime. “A strict Moslem, he was nonetheless free from fanaticism, tolerating the beliefs of others, protecting Christians and Jews from injustice, and abolishing restrictions on the building of churches.”[56]
Muslim Central Asia was the scene of an even more unconventional liberal ruler; one who was not simply a patron of learning but an accomplished scientist in his own right. The grandson of the fearsome Tamerlane, Ulugh Beg (1394-1449), ruler of Transoxiana was “a mathematician and astronomer and … patron of other scientists”. The school he established included scholars from Anatolia, Persia and central Asia.
The community could achieve brilliant results in the exact sciences that still matched those of contemporary Europe, if it was stimulated by an inspired sponsor like Ulugh Beg. Without such support, however, scientists had little institutional framework within which to develop and flourish. Moreover, in Central Asia they had to compete not only with conventional learning represented by the madrassa as a theological seminary, but also with a rising tide of religious fervor…[57]
Ulugh’s noted mathematician, Ali Qushchi “ultimately was invited to Istanbul by another enlightened sponsor, the Ottoman sultan Mehmet the Conqueror.”[58] The migration of the mathematician Qushchi to newly conquered Byzantium, illustrates how the consolidation of conquered territory and the establishment of peace under a liberal Muslim despot can engender a temporary high period of culture and learning. The inclusion of the once ravaged territory within the larger Muslim world makes it accessible for scholars and promotes a cross fertilization of ideas. Later, however, the inevitable regression inherent in the Islamic meme comes to dominate. It also shows the small renaissance that might occur under enlightened rulers within a territory long under Muslim rule. Rulers such as Ulugh may come to power following the turmoil accompanying the establishment of a new and often heretical dynasty. Such was the case in Fatimid Egypt and in Safavid Persia. In the wake of the violent rise of the unconventional Muslim empire-builder Tamerlane, there occurred a minor Timurid renaissance in Central Asia, which expressed itself in the science of Ulugh and also in literature and art.
The ultimate fate of the enlightened, but unfortunate, scholar-sultan Ulugh Beg exemplifies both the inevitable triumph of repressive despotism and the decay of science under Islam. Ulugh’s son Abd al-Latif rebelled and “marched on Samarkand with an army and defeated his father … Ulugh Beg returned to the city as a … prisoner of his irate son; worse still, the religious authorities, never fond of the prince-scientist, issued a fatwa mandating his deposition and execution. He was … beheaded on 27 October 1449.”[59] Ulugh’s fate also shows how the beginning of repression in one Islamic territory may provide an opportunity for an enlightened neighboring ruler. Thus, the mathematician Qushchi who was close to Ulugh, found a welcome in the Conqueror’s domains. A similar welcoming of refugee Jewish intellectuals from Spain by the Ayyubids of Egypt was another such example.
In Muslim India there were a number of instances of tolerant, progressive and even syncretistic rulers. One example, the Khalji Sultan Ala-ud-din (ca 1310), a ruler who verged on the edge of heresy, is described by Keay:
The sultan was no Islamic bigot: ‘there is no instance to show that Ala-ud-din oppressed some people simply because they were Hindus and favored others just because they were Muslims.’ Indeed, if one may judge by his reported interest in founding a new religion centred on his own illustrious person, his faith was decidedly unorthodox. … Like his assumption of the title ‘The Second Alexander’ on his coinage, it was a case of the megalomaniac getting the better of the Muslim.[60]
Another Muslim ruler, Muhammad bin Tughluq, despite his severity and cruelty, “was comparatively free of religious and ethnic bigotry. Perhaps he more than any of the sultans glimpsed the potential of an Indo-Islamic accommodation.”[61] Nevertheless, despite his dabbling in science and philosophy, Tughluq “killed so many Hindus that there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion … a mound of dead bodies”.[62] In Bengal, Ala-ud-din Husain Shah (1493-1519) “though a Muslim, indeed an Arab, is said to have honoured … the leader of the Vaishnavire bhakti movement … In return the Hindus” honored the sultan “as an incarnation of Lord Krishna.”[63]
But by far the most daring of all the heretical Muslim rulers was the great Mogul emperor Akbar who exhibited an abiding passion for pursuing religious truth in whatever direction it might lead:
Akbar’s curiosity about his subjects and their beliefs also became markedly eclectic. … he installed a veritable bazaar of disputing divines and presided over their heated debates … To the Quranic arguments of Sunni, Shia and Ismaili were added … numerous Sufi orders, the bhakti fervour of Saiva and Vaishnava devotees … naked Jains, and the varied insights of numerous wandering ascetics, saints and other … recluses.
Also welcome were … disciples of Kabir … and Guru Nanak … founder of the Sikh faith. … included … were Portuguese priests … from Goa…[64]
In the end “Akbar improvised an ideology based on the only element in which he had complete confidence, his imperial persona.” His faith “centred on himself, but whether as God or His representative is not certain.”[65] His threat to orthodox Islam led to a major rebellion, but Akbar with considerable Hindu military support managed to crush it. Aided by his Hindu vassals, he also added considerable territory to his domains.
Akbar was the boldest and most successful of all the syncretistic rulers, but, unfortunately even his religious reforms embedded as they were in an Islamic social and political matrix, could not survive his death. The cult of personality he developed in order to carry through his reforms prefigured that which, centuries later, was to be promoted by Ataturk.
A later royal Mogul heretic was Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan’s favorite son and Aurangzeb’s rival. Dara Shikoh “inspired deep suspicion amongst orthodox Muslims … he consorted with Sufis, Hindus and Christians … translated the Upanishads into Persian … advanced the idea ‘that the essential nature of Hinduism was identical with that of Islam’.” After his defeat by Aurangzeb “he was condemned and cut to pieces” and then “paraded through the streets.”[66]
On the periphery of the Muslim world, in areas where Islam spread by more peaceful means, relatively tolerant rulers following a more relaxed and syncretistic version of the religion were common. In Indonesia “the stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana continued to serve for the aristocracy as a school of chivalry and to be enjoyed by the people. The culture of the Javanese princely courts remained essentially Hinduistic-Javanese up to very recent times.”[67] One overtly apostate ruler was Sultan Amangkurat of the Javanese state of Mataram who in 1674 had some six thousand Muslim clerics killed. “Amangkurat … did not share his father’s sentiment toward Islam. He rejected the title of ‘sultan’ and preferred the Javanese one of ‘susuhunan’. He … restricted the jurisdiction of the religious courts. Thus, his reign constituted a marked reaction against the growing Islamization of Javanese society.”[68] Like Dara Shikoh and Ulugh Beg, Amangkurat came to an unfortunate end when his orthodox Muslim enemies rebelled and overthrew him.
West Africa was also the scene of many unconventional rulers who fell short of the strict standards of Muslim orthodoxy. Under the newly converted rulers of Sub Saharan West Africa, many pre-Islamic customs remained intact. “As a good Muslim, there were aspects of life in Mali which Ibn Battuta found shocking – above all, the freedom given to women, who went about unveiled and chose whom they would as their companions.”[69] Since the oppression and degradation of women was one of the prime factors in Islam’s successful expansion, such freedom would be looked upon as quite egregious by orthodox Muslims.
Repressive Despotic Phase
Islamic states invariably, until the era of Western intervention, end up as rigid theocracies ruled by a small class of bigoted officials under an aloof and arbitrary tyrant. As we have seen, in earlier years such repression was often interspersed with intervals of rule by relatively enlightened or tolerant caliphs or sultans. Arab historian Hourani describes how the increasing Islamization of the population inevitably put an end to toleration and cemented the second class status of non-Muslims.
In the early centuries of Islamic rule there appears to have been much social and cultural intercourse between adherents of the three religions. … As time went on … the barriers became higher. The conversion … to Islam turned a majority into a diminishing minority. … Islam … developed its own social institutions, within which Muslims could live without interaction with non Muslims.
Pressures upon Jews and Christians may have come mainly from the urban masses, particularly in times of war or economic hardship, when hostility might be directed against the non Muslim officials of the ruler. At such moments, the ruler might respond by enforcing the laws strictly, or dismissing his non Muslim officials…[70]
Persecution of the remaining non-Muslims was accompanied by, and undoubtedly was one of the reasons for, the decline in intellectual accomplishment in general, and the diminishment of freedom even for Muslims. Harbingers of such decline were present at a very early date. The Umayyad caliph Umar II enforced the dress code for Christians and Jews and barred them from holding public office. The, otherwise munificent, Abbasid caliph Harun re-enacted those decrees. Finally, the “stringent regulations against dhimmis culminated in the time of al-Mutawakkil, who in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses” among other severe measures.[71] Indeed, the generally tolerant and worldly outlook that marked Umayyad rule became increasingly rare among the Abbasids.
The claim to divine inspiration was exemplified in the strong messianic overtones of the throne names adopted by all Abbasid caliphs and was accompanied by public indulgence of religious figures and institutions. … The relaxed Umayyad attitude to religious observance gave way to strict public enforcement of religious codes of behavior and zealous persecution of heretics.[72]
To be sure, even under the early Abbasids the two competing models of despotism, the enlightened and the repressive, continued to war with each other despite the religious pretensions of the dynasty. In the same way as “the Umayyads sought often to buttress their credentials through spectacular religious acts, such as the building of the Dome of the Rock”, so the “Abbasids complied with the stipulations of …religious law”, but “only to the extent it served their needs”. In private they “indulged in the same vices – wine, singing girls, and sexual licence – that had given the Umayyads their bad reputation.” Furthermore, “scathing criticism was leveled at Ma’mun and his two immediate successors … for their endorsement of the philo-Hellenistic Mu’tazilite school of thought … Yet even when the caliph Mutawakil (847-61) … reestablished the orthodox dogma, this did not mean greater religious observance at the personal level.”[73] Repressive despotism became fairly well entrenched by the time of the Abbasid caliph Qahir (932-34) “who took strict measures against wine-drinkers and singing girls” and this despite the fact that he “was hardly ever sober.”[74]
Muslim Spain, despite the propaganda of the proponents of the myth of Andalusia, was subject to the same fall from a tolerant progressive outlook into repressive despotic rule. The Spanish vizier and de facto ruler al-Mansur (ca. 980), “to ingratiate himself with the ulema … burned all the books in the library of al-Hakam [961-76] dealing with philosophy and other subjects blacklisted by those theologians.”[75] This is an example of another common pattern whereby policies of repression and religious reaction are instituted by weak or usurping rulers to curry favor with the ulama.
Following another brief period of liberalism under some of the “party kings”, the final stage of repression in Muslim Spain began with the overthrow of the Abbadid dynasty of Seville by the Murabits (Almoravids) in 1090. “Under the Murabits, fresh converts to Islam and heirs to a barbarian legacy not yet dead, an outburst of religious fervour on the part of theological zealots resulted at the beginning of the twelfth century in suffering for many Christians, Jews and even liberal Moslems. Under the devout ‘Ali (1106-43) … al-Ghazzali’s works were put on the black list or committed to the flames in Spain and al-Maghrib”.[76] Although the succeeding early Muwahhids (Almohads) are described by Hitti as a “Dynasty puritanic in theology but liberal in its patronage of philosophy”,[77] they were even more fanatical in the persecution of Christians and Jews.
In Egypt, the liberal phases occurring under the Fatimids and Ayyubids were finally ended by the repression of the Mamluks. Under these “slave” sultans there was strict enforcement of dress and building codes directed against the dhimmis. There were also decrees against non-Muslim doctors among “a number of innovative anti-dhimmi measures taken in the Mamluk period.” Indeed, the “last one hundred years or more of Mamluk rule weighed heavily upon all of the subjects of the empire – Muslim and non-Muslim.”[78] The Mamluk Sultan Barsbay (c. 1422) in response to an outbreak of plague regarded it as punishment for the people’s sins and “prohibited females from going outdoors and sought to make atonement by fresh exactions from Christians and Jews.”[79]
The Seljuk Turkish rulers became increasingly despotic when, in the latter days of the formerly tolerant Konya sultanate, the government came under increasing pressure from nomadic Turkmen and Mongols. As a result the population was plagued by rapacious officials and tax farmers. “The sultan ‘Ala al-Din III Kaykubad enacted such fiscal oppression that finances were thrown into confusion and many villagers fled their homes.”[80]
The Ottomans inevitably followed in the dolorous footsteps of their Islamic predecessors. One early harbinger of the more repressive despotism to come occurred when Sultan Selim the Grim in 1514 decided “to follow one campaign against Moslem heretics in Anatolia with another designed to force Anatolian Christians to recant or face the sword”. He desisted only after the Seyhulislam, the chief judge of Islam, pointed out that payers of the jizya had a right to preserve their faiths.[81]
The shift from the liberal to the repressive despotic stage in the Ottoman Empire accelerated after the death of Suleiman’s favorite concubine Roxelana. Suleiman “had withdrawn within himself, growing more than ever silent, more melancholy … more remote from human contacts.” At one time his court had been enlivened by music. But as the Sultan grew more fearfully religious “the instruments were thus broken up and consigned to the flames. In response to similar ascetic scruples he took to eating off earthenware instead of silver plate, moreover banned the importation into the city of all wine”.[82]
One exemplar of the increasing Ottoman despotic repression was Mehmed III, who although a weakling
…was to have his nineteen brothers strangled by mutes – the largest fratricidal sacrifice in Ottoman history. … Meanwhile six pregnant slaves, their favourites from the harem, had been sewn up in sacks and thrown into the Bosporus, lest they give birth to claimants to the throne. Later Mehmed put to death his own chosen son Mahmud, a young man of spirit who had begged to be given command of the armies fighting the rebels in Anatolia, and this had inflamed his father’s jealous suspicions. His mother and his favourite companions … suffered the same fate.[83]
Worse still was the very embodiment of the Oriental despot, Murad IV (1623-1640) whose reign of terror, well described by Kinross brought about the end of a period of military anarchy:
His trusted henchmen and well-trained spies scoured the city of Istanbul on his orders, tracking down the known traitors … executing them on the spot … flinging their corpses into the Bosporus to be washed up on shore before the populace. Bloodshed similarly swept through the provinces.”
Later, to deprive the public of its centers of reunion and possible trouble, he closed all cafes and wineshops in the cities of the Empire – on no temporary basis but for the rest of his reign – and made the smoking of tobacco illegal. Offenders caught at night smoking a pipe, drinking coffee, or flushed with wine might instantly be hanged or impaled, and their bodies thrown out into the street as a warning to the rest.
As time went on Murad became carried away by the thirst for blood. At first his executions were justified by unquestionable guilt; then they grew more sweeping … eventually he was killing, heedless of any suspicion, for the sake of killing, from wanton caprice or impulsive ill humour. …
His cruelties became legendary. Disturbed by the boisterous merriment of a party of women … he had them all seized and drowned. He murdered one of his own doctors … He impaled a courier for informing him mistakenly that the Sultana had given birth to a son … He beheaded his chief musician for singing a Persian air … In five years it is said that twenty-five thousand men perished at his orders, many of them by his own hand.[84]
In India it was Sultan Aurangzeb who initiated the full repressive despotic phase of the Mogul regime. Keay describes how under his severe rule
…dancers, musicians and artists were dismissed from the imperial employ. Their places were taken by bearded jurists and Quranic divines … The tax on Hindu pilgrims, lifted by Akbar, was reimposed … revenue endowments enjoyed by temples and brahmans were rescinded; Hindu merchants were penalized … newly built or rebuilt temples were to be destroyed. … Finally, in 1679 … the reimposition of the detested jizya…[85]
But even Aurangzeb did not try to force the conversion of non-Muslims. “He was too shrewd; they too numerous.”[86]
The Shiite Safavids also, eventually followed the path to repressive Islamic despotism. “In 1656, Shah ‘Abbas II granted extensive powers to his wazirs to force Jews to become Muslims. Al-Majlisi persuaded Shah Husayn (1688-1726) to decree the forcible conversion of Zoroastrians.”[87]
Paralleling the phases of Islamic political development were the phases of Muslim intellectual life. Islamic “golden ages” followed the re-establishment of peace and security under the auspices of the new regime. The time lag between the conquest and the peak of the golden age varied from a few decades through several centuries in different Muslim lands. However, these golden ages were a result of the parasitic exploitation of the intellectual and economic resources left over from the preceding civilization. When these were exhausted intellectual achievement went into a rapid decline. The phases of Muslim intellectual life are analyzed in the following chapter.
[1] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 18.
[2] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 33.
[3] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 140.
[4] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 29.
[5] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 183.
[6] Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, p. 281.
[7] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 30.
[8] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 384.
[9] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 41.
[10] Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, p. 208.
[11] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, pp. 30-31.
[12] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 196.
[13] Ibid, pp. 237-39.
[14] Ibid, p. 278.
[15] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 35.
[16] Ibid, p. 34.
[17] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 107.
[18] Lewis, The Arabs in History, p. 83.
[19] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 41.
[20] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 113.
[21] Ibid, p. 112.
[22] Ibid, p. 302.
[23] Ibid, p. 620.
[24] Ibid, pp. 620-21.
[25] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 68.
[26] Ibid, pp. 68-69.
[27] Ibid, p. 62.
[28] Ibid, p. 63.
[29] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 244.
[30] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 143.
[31] Ibid, p. 139.
[32] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 303.
[33] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 142.
[34] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 91.
[35] Keay, India, A History, p. 248.
[36] Warraq, Leaving Islam, p. 42.
[37] Frye, The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 4, p. 544.
[38] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 43.
[39] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 102.
[40] Payne, The Dream and the Tomb, p. 211.
[41] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 83.
[42] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 61.
[43] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, pp. 197-99.
[44] Ibid, p. 211.
[45] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 281.
[46] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 38.
[47] Muller, The Loom of History, pp. 302-3.
[48] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 88.
[49] Ibid, p. 115.
[50] Ibid, p. 128.
[51] Freely, Inside The Seraglio, p.19.
[52] Ibid, p. 20.
[53] Ibid, p. 24.
[54] Ibid, p. 26.
[55] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 316.
[56] Ibid, p. 338.
[57] Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, pp. 127-29.
[58] Ibid
[59] Ibid, p. 131.
[60] Keay, India, A History, p. 259.
[61] Ibid, p. 271.
[62] Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 461.
[63] Keay, India, A History, pp. 287-88.
[64] Ibid, pp. 316-17.
[65] Ibid, p. 317.
[66] Ibid, pp. 339-40.
[67] Vlekke, Nusantara: A History of Indonesia, p. 87.
[68] Ibid, p. 175.
[69] Oliver and Fagan, Africa in the Iron Age, p. 175.
[70] Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p. 118.
[71] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 353.
[72] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 42.
[73] Ibid, pp. 42-3.
[74] Ibid, p. 43.
[75] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 532.
[76] Ibid, p. 542.
[77] Ibid, p. 581.
[78] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, pp. 72-3.
[79] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 696.
[80] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 246.
[81] Stewart, Life World Library: Turkey, p. 45.
[82] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 252.
[83] Ibid, p. 288.
[84] Ibid, pp. 305-10.
[85] Keay, India, A History, pp. 342-43.
[86] Ibid. p. 343.
[87] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 243.
The following phase may be termed the “liberal despotic”. The term liberal is strongly qualified; it simply means that there is a majority or at least large numbers of non-Muslims; Islam has not yet “hardened”. The restoration of peace and incorporation of the territory into a larger oecumene along with the many dhimmis and nominal Muslims in the population engenders a great increase in intellectual activity, architecture, and construction of an infrastructure and communication network. Moreover the rulers and aristocrats tend to be worldly, irreligious or heretical. The Muslims are self confident, as shown by the example of the Byzantine vassal emperor Manuel who was allowed to engage in a religious disputation with Muslim scholars in an atmosphere of relative freedom. However, the state exists in the form of a monarchical despotism. This is often based on Persian or Byzantine models where there is a remote and absolute monarch. While the monarch in this period is often impious or unbelieving, he may, in a Machiavellian manner, cynically make use of Islam to expand his territory, appease the Muslim ulama or eliminate rivals. He may, if he finds it politically expedient, employ fanatical Muslim troops to enslave, slaughter or oppress conquered non-Muslim or even Muslim populations. He may, paradoxically, implement persecutions to obtain favor with the ulama, while simultaneously patronizing favored dhimmi intellectuals and advisors. Or, on the contrary, he may be strong enough to protect useful dhimmi populations.
The final phase is the “repressive despotic”. This usually means the establishment of an absolute theocratic state in which the only curb on the activities of the monarch is that of, a frequently, even more fanatical clergy. Islam has been long established and become hardened and inflexible. Intellectual activity outside of Islamic law and tradition is now discouraged. This is often accompanied by economic depression and stagnation. The ruler may be paradoxically both weak and tyrannical; often he is a fanatical Islamic bigot. Persecution and oppression of non-Muslims is endemic. The two forms of despotism, liberal and despotic, may alternate with each other for long periods, but in the end, it is invariably the repressive despotic imperative that triumphs.
The early rugged individualism of the Arabs was preserved through an elective caliphate. The Arabs formed the electoral class in a type of aristocratic republic. However, the ancient despotic tradition of the conquered masses, that of Persia and Egypt, reasserted itself and combined with the Islamic doctrine of submission. The process began with the Umayyad caliphate in 661and reached its final form in the succeeding Abbasid dynasty. The template for all succeeding Islamic despotisms was set in place.
These three contending political imperatives were in conflict with each other. The egalitarian tribal formation, which tended to dominate at the beginning of each nomadic expansion, inevitably gave way to despotism. At first, this despotism was usually pragmatic, worldly or even tolerant; but the end result was always an intolerant theocracy. This conflict was present from the earliest Islamic times. The tendency toward despotism was one of the factors that propelled the growth of empire. While Muhammad held to the traditional forms of Arab tribal society with its consultations and councils, in reality, he as Prophet was effectively an autocrat. His immediate successors followed his example. The very expansion of Arab Muslim rule, first in Arabia and later throughout the Middle East was facilitated by caliphs becoming more absolute in power. Karsh contends that “by substituting absolutist rule for the pluralistic system of traditional tribal organization, based as it was on a series of agreements among equals, the umma created a powerful drive for expansion.”[1]
The result of this despotic imperative was that, although Islam developed a "welfare state", a powerful military-religious ideology and a series of enormous empires, it never developed the concepts of liberty and secular government that arose in Europe. Ironically this was, in part, due to the more rigid class structure that developed in the West. In Islam there was no aristocracy independent of the monarch; religion and the state were also intertwined. In Europe there was rivalry between the Monarch, Church and feudal aristocracy which, in a few places at least, notably Britain, developed into checks on despotic central authority and to the rise of the urban bourgeoisie who were able to restore ancient republican institutions in many major western cities. Kinross, referring to the Ottoman Empire, gives an example of this difference between Islam and Europe:
…this Ottoman system of land tenure through military fiefs differed essentially from the feudal system in Europe, in that the landholdings were small and above all seldom hereditary. For all land was the property of the state. … The sultans retained absolute ownership of the soil they conquered.[2]
Thus, in Islamic society, there were not the divisions and rivalries within the aristocracy that characterized Western Europe; members of all classes from lowest to highest were regarded as "slaves" of an increasingly autocratic Caliph or Sultan and there was no well developed independent religious institution serving as a check on the Monarch. Hence, while Islamic society stagnated, it was the West that pioneered modern concepts of science, technology, government and secularism.
Egalitarian Phase
The term “egalitarian” refers only to members of the conquering military elite and not to the conquered multitudes. The latter, in fact, often received better treatment under the liberal despots. Although the rule of the early caliphs became increasingly arbitrary, they openly espoused the traditional Arab tribal “republicanism”. The caliphs found it necessary, to appease their followers by maintaining, at least the appearance, of the old tribal councils and consultative institutions. Moreover, all “four caliphs of this first period were chosen in some manner by their predecessors or colleagues; none succeeded by hereditary right. … Thereafter the caliphate became, in practice even if not in theory, hereditary”.[3]
Appearances, however, were one thing; reality could be something else entirely as pointed out by Karsh:
Uthman vested all key posts in the hands of his family members … The Medinese elite resented its growing marginalization in the running of the empire, while the provincial leadership was incensed by Uthman’s efforts to increase the central government’s share in the distribution of local revenues…[4]
Thus, from earliest times there was conflict between the centralizing absolutist tendencies of the ruler and the jealous clinging to their privileges on the part of the traditional tribal elite. The Medinese and provincial elite represented the Arab aristocratic republican imperative while the Caliph and his court upheld the idea of a more arbitrary and despotic form of government. Hitti specifically refers to the reign of the first four caliphs as the ‘republican period’. “With the death of Ali (661) what may be termed the republican period of the caliphate, which began with abu-Bakr (632) came to an end. … The hereditary principle was hereby introduced into the caliphal succession”.[5] The idea of Arab egalitarian republicanism persisted into the Umayyad dynasty and the first Umayyad caliphs felt obliged to give to it at least token deference.
A significant token of the hold which democratic Arabian tribal custom had upon the Umayyads is that notice of the appointment [of Caliph Yazid’s son as his successor] was sent to the governors of the provinces, who almost everywhere obtained promises of adherence to the arrangement.[6]
An extreme pole of the egalitarian republican viewpoint, at that time, was represented by the Kharijites who opposed arbitration between the caliph Ali and his rival Mu’awiya since they believed that the choice of the caliph was with “Allah alone”, thereby denying any form of hereditary dynastic rule legitimacy. The triumph of Mu’awiya established the despotic principle when he “presided over the foundation of Islam’s first imperial dynasty by having his son, Yazid succeed him to the throne.”[7]
The early Ottomans provide another example of the egalitarianism and republicanism of the nomadic warrior tradition. “The first Ottoman rulers were tribal chiefs who maintained their position and succession by the approval of their warriors”.[8] Kinross notes that the “warrior companions” of the early Ottoman sultan Orkhan regarded him “less as a master than as a unifying force and a rallying point among them as brothers-in-arms.”[9] In general, viewing the tribal leader as a “brother-in-arms” was characteristic of nomadic tribal societies. When Babur crossed into India to found the Mogul dynasty, he was certainly not looked upon by his companions as if he were a Persian king.
Anarchy and disorder were unfortunate characteristics of the egalitarian phase. The rule of the first four caliphs and the first years of the Umayyad dynasty were marked by disputes regarding the succession which culminated in civil war, assassinations and inter-tribal conflict. Each additional eruption of nomadic Turks into Anatolia was accompanied by warfare and social disruption. The same can be said of the Arab raids into the Sudan, the early Moors in Spain and the Muslim waves crashing into India. The admirable liberty and social equality enjoyed by individual tribesmen came at a great cost to the settled parts of society, and particularly to non-Muslims.
Liberal Despotic Phase
Islamic societies enter upon the “liberal despotic” phase after the initial incursion with its attendant wars and disorder has ended. The end comes when the tribesmen and the population on which they have preyed has reached a point of exhaustion. An accommodation is reached, whereby the victor in one of the civil wars or inter-tribal conflicts is recognized as ruler. At that point a process of recovery can commence. The periods of disorder and recovery can last for decades and even for a century. The establishment of peace is followed by a period of economic security and expansion, and often by an artistic and intellectual renaissance. What was once a besieged territory drained by perpetual Muslim assaults is now part of the greater Islamic oecumene. New ideas and technical developments drawn from far-flung territories pour in. Most of the population still consists of dhimmis or the descendants of recent converts with the skills and outlook of the older culture. The new rulers maintain order by replacing the tribal organization with an increasingly powerful centralized state along with the splendors and rituals of monarchy.
Although the early Umayyad caliphs made a show of deference to egalitarian Arab tribal forms, despotism soon appeared quite openly. “In 705 Walid, brother of ‘Abd-al-Malik, succeeded him on the caliphal throne, for that is what the caliphate has become, a change from a tribal organization to an empire.”[10] In fact under most of the Umayyads the “liberal” despotic tendency was uppermost. The religious imperative under this dynasty “was largely a façade that concealed what was effectively a secular and increasingly absolutist rule. The Umayyad caliphs adopted a lax attitude toward Islamic practices and mores. They were said to have set aside special days for drinking … Little wonder that Islamic tradition tends to decry the Umayyads for having perverted the caliphate into a ‘kingdom’, with the implicit connotation of religious digression or even disbelief.”[11] Such disregard for religious sensibilities is a common characteristic of liberal despotism. In addition to personal expressions of impiety, such rulers also granted favors to and cultivated friendship with members of the dhimmi community. Under some of the Umayyad caliphs, before the hardening of Islamic attitudes, tolerance, favor and even high office was extended to members of the still majority Christian population of Syria. The Christian physician of Mu’awiyah, the first Umayyad caliph was “made financial administrator of the province of Hims”. Al-Akhtal, the Umayyad poet laureate “would enter the caliphal palace with a cross dangling from his neck and recite his poems to the delight of the Moslem caliph and his entourage.”[12] Of course, such kingly munificence was extended only to the Arab ruling military aristocracy and a few favored upper-class educated Dhimmis.
This liberal tendency was to recur frequently under the Abbasids and subsequent sultanates, emirates and caliphates. However, such impiety was often masked by the freethinking, dissolute or heretical rulers who, cynically, sought to mollify the religious zealots by instituting various forms of persecution against dhimmis or by sponsoring invasions and raids into non-Muslim lands.
The impious Umayyad munificence affected even the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, both of which became centers of “worldly pleasure and song.” More shocking yet to pious Muslim sensibilities was the assertiveness of aristocratic Umayyad ladies. “Al-Madinah boasted under the early Marwanids the proud and beautiful Sayyidah Sukaynah (ca 735), daughter of the martyred al-Husayn.” This liberated woman ran a salon for poets and jurists, pioneered new fashion and “made complete freedom of action a condition precedent to marriage.” Her rival, ‘Aishah bint-Talbah, granddaughter of the caliph abu-Bakr, “combined with noble descent a rare beauty and a proud and lofty spirit.” She refused under any condition to veil herself.[13] The rival Abbasids turned such open impiety into a useful weapon aimed at the Umayyad dynasty. For example, “so widely spread was the cultivation of the musical art under the last Umayyads that it provided their enemies, the Abbasid faction with an effective argument in their propaganda to undermine the house of ‘ungodly usurpers’.”[14] One of the main factions supporting the Abbasid rebellion, the Shi’ites, embodied an early form of repressive despotism, or at least despotism in a more theocratic form. They enshrined the dynastic principle in the family of the Prophet and contended that “the umma should be headed by a prodigious spiritual leader, or imam, possessing superhuman religious knowledge and interpretive powers, who would act as the community’s political leader”.[15]
Liberal despotism, however, was frequently accompanied with periods of ruthless repression. Despotism took on a particularly brutal form in Iraq under the ruthless governor Hajjaj (694-714) who instituted a reign of terror against Muslim dissidents in a manner reminiscent of modern Iraqi dictators. On the other hand, he, like some of his modern Iraqi counterparts, was not a fanatical religious zealot when it came to the dhimmi population under his rule. On the contrary, to protect his revenues, he “took draconian measures to discourage conversion and to drive the new converts back to their villages”.[16]
The Abbasids exemplified the tendency toward despotism to a greater extent than did any of the Umayyad caliphs. “The incoming dynasty [Abbasid] depended upon force in the execution of its policies. For the first time in the history of Islam the leathern spread beside the caliph’s seat which served as a carpet for the executioner, became a necessary adjunct of the imperial throne.”[17] Lewis elaborates on this distinction between the Abbasid caliphs and their predecessors. “Whereas the early Caliphs had been Arabs like the rest whom any man could approach and address by name, the Abbasids surrounded themselves with the pomp and circumstance of an elaborate and hieratic court and could only be approached through a series of chamberlains.”[18] Karsh summarizes this evolution toward increasing despotism:
The growth of monarchical despotism, already noticeable in the days of the Umayyads gained considerable momentum under the Abbasids and was starkly exemplified by the presence of the executioner by the side of the throne. Like the Iranian shahs, the caliph became increasingly inaccessible to his subjects, shielding himself behind a vast cohort of officials, ministers and eunuchs, and leaving the daily running of the empire in the hands of the vizier, a chief executive answerable only to him.[19]
It is striking how this very pattern, down to almost the same exact details, recurs in subsequent Islamic empires. The Iranian Muslim dynasties, the Moguls and, of course the Ottoman Turks exhibit almost identical patterns of despotic monarchical rule. And these occurred at a time when the West was evolving various monarchical forms, from absolute to limited, as well as varieties of parliamentary institutions and even republics with differing degrees of citizen involvement; the republics ranging from aristocratic to petty bourgeois.
Although the Abbasids became increasingly despotic and arbitrary in their government, a number of them partook of the munificence and impiety characteristic of “liberal despotism”. The material indulgence of the early Abbasids is well described by Hitti. “Even when stripped of the glow cast by Oriental romance and fancy, enough of the splendor of court life in Baghdad remains to arouse our astonishment.”[20] The most splendid of these rulers was the famous Harun al-Rashid. “Harun was the beau ideal of Islamic kingship. Like a magnet, his princely munificence and that of his immediate successors attracted to the capital poets, wits, musicians, singers, dancers … and others who could interest or entertain.”[21] And quickly forgetting the criticism leveled by the rebel Abbasids at the Umayyads, aristocratic women were allowed, once again to flaunt themselves in a most un-Islamic manner. Harun al-Rashid’s wife Zubaydah “set the fashion for the smart set and was the first to ornament her shoes with precious stones.” Zubaydah had a rival in the sister of Harun, Ullayah “who to cover a blemish on her forehead devised a fillet set with jewels which … was soon adopted by the world of fashion as the ornament of the day.”[22]
Periods of liberal despotism alternated with periods of repressive despotism. It was also the case that rulers, who were otherwise broad-minded, found it politically expedient to keep their dhimmi subjects in a state of insecurity. The first Fatimid ruler of Egypt al-Aziz (975-96) “extended to the Christians … a measure of toleration never enjoyed before” and employed a Christian vizier.[23] However repression began in the very next reign. Al-Hakim the son of al-Aziz “killed several of his vizirs, demolished a number of Christian churches” and was the third caliph to impose the complete stringent measures prescribed for non-Muslims.[24] The reign of al-Aziz illustrates the common occurrence of a minority Muslim sect building coalitions with non-Muslims. His reign and that of his son also shows that the conquest of Muslim territory by a new Muslim dynasty could initiate a period of liberal despotism which, sooner or later, would be followed by repression.
The Fatimids were followed by the Ayyubids (1171-1250), who, although relatively tolerant found it politically useful to keep their upper-class dhimmis anxious. When the Ayyubids assumed power in Egypt
…stricter enforcement of the dhimma code had already begun. … By the end of Ayyubid rule, most Jews wore a distinguishing mark on their turbans and cloaks, and most Christians wore a special outer belt. Much of the time, members of the dhimmi upper class were still able to evade the requirement, which was considered a mark of humiliation as well as differentiation. Periodic decrees were the way Islamic rulers reminded the upper class dhimmis that they should pay for their exemption, which they did.[25]
Of course, as Jewish historian Norman Stillman also observes:
The reimposition of the dress code over a number of years was not an indication of any great tolerance in the interim. Medieval regimes were woefully inefficient when compared with modern totalitarian states in controlling the daily lives and actions of their subjects. Decrees of many sorts had to be reissued from time to time to demonstrate official resolution.[26]
Thus, even in times of liberal Muslim rule
…there was a tenuousness in the cordiality of interfaith relationships. The non-Muslim could never entirely disembarrass himself of his dhimmi status. There was no lack of preachers and religious reformers to remind Muslims and non-Muslims alike that the Pact of Umar was being violated. … The Muslim community’s sense of propriety could be deeply offended when dhimmis rose too high or became too conspicuous…[27]
Stillman summarizes the insecurity inherent in the dhimmi status even under friendly Muslim rulers. “Even in the best of times, dhimmis in all walks of life could suddenly and rudely be reminded of their true status.”[28]
Periods of benevolent monarchy, inevitably followed by repression, characterized the non-Arab Muslim dynasties as well. The relatively liberal period of the Seljuk Konya sultanate came to an end with their defeat at the hands of the Mongols in 1243. “By then, ineffectual Mongol governors and a large number of Turkish emirs had destroyed the authority of this kingdom. … In this period … justice and security in the kingdom came to an end.”[29] The Seljuk state suffered a premature acceleration of the end of the period of benevolent despotism owing to these setbacks.
The transition from nomadic egalitarianism to monarchical despotism and finally to repressive tyranny is well illustrated by the experience of the Seljuk’s Ottoman successors. The first Ottoman “sultans had been accessible to their subjects and mixed with them in relative informality. But … there developed an increasing concern for sacredness of the sovereign, together with a habit of seclusion appropriate to majesty”.[30] Mehmed the Conqueror even went so far as to cease sitting with his advisers. “Until now the Sultan had always presided in person over meetings of the council of state … from the seat on which he sat, as his ancestors from nomadic times had done in their tents. … But Mehmed … no longer frequenting the meetings of the Divan”, looked down on them, unseen, from behind a screen.[31] Thus, even while restoring order to the Ottoman domains and extending some measure of self government to the Christian church, the Conqueror also began the process of ending the last trappings of the Ottoman tribal ‘egalitarian’ system. He is quoted as follows by historian Herbert Muller. “It is not my will that any one should eat with my Imperial Majesty; my ancestors used to eat with their ministers, but I have abolished this custom.” Under his successors “the ceremonies grew more elaborate, the costumes more ornate, the titles more grandiloquent, the Sultan more inaccessible.”[32] And, in the same way as the Abbasids aped the court ritual of the Sasanids, among the Ottomans “… the customs and formalities of the Sultan’s court, which in its rigid hierarchy, its pomp and luxury, and its elaborate ceremonial owed much to the Byzantine model”.[33]
Despite the increasingly autocratic rule of the sultans, the early empire was relatively benign and forward-looking, a condition that would inevitably change. Stillman describes how the early promise and rapid deterioration of the empire affected its Jewish subjects. The Ottoman realm in the 16th century was “a brief interlude of brightness in the long twilight of the late Islamic Middle Ages for the Jews of Arab lands. The shadows again began appearing toward the end of the century.”[34]
Finally, Keay gives an example of how the Muslim rulers in India gradually imposed despotic rule and court ritual on all of their subjects, including their fellow Muslims. Delhi Sultan Balban (1246-65) “influenced by all those royal refugees from the north-west … introduced into his court an elaborate system of precedence and protocol modeled on the Persian practice. … Those who would approach the throne must abase themselves … kissing the ground and … kissing the royal feet as they advanced.”[35]
Benevolent, Tolerant or Syncretistic Muslim Rulers
Given the autocratic and absolutist nature of all mature Islamic states, the well-being of the Dhimmi population was, to a large extent, dependent on the character of the ruler. Certain Muslim rulers were relatively benevolent to the Dhimmi populations whether for reasons of pragmatism, a compassionate nature transcending Islamic religious imperatives, freethinking, or even secret sympathies with, or interest in, other traditions.
Umayyad caliphs were notorious among their Muslim subjects as being deficient in proper religious attitudes. The most reprehensible, from the Muslim point of view was Caliph Walid II who “is said to have stuck the Koran onto a lance and shot it to pieces with arrows”. It is, therefore, no surprise that Walid irritated the ulama by showing an interest in un-Islamic ideas while leading a merry existence. “An intensively cultivated man, he surrounded himself with poets, dancing girls, and musicians, and lived the merry life of the libertine, with no interest in religion.”[36]
The Abbasids came to power promising to rid Islam of Umayyad impiety. However, as seen above, their personal conduct did not always conform to such high ideals. Caliph Ma’mun even showed a quite un-Muslim interest in comparative religion. During his reign Farruxzatan a Mazdaean religious leader held a disputation with a Muslim convert and also “summoned Jews and Christians to take part in the argument. The Caliph Ma’mun, as is known, favoured such rhetorical jousts”.[37] Such disputations were allowed to take place under a number of Muslim rulers. It would appear that, once Islam was established and the danger of overthrow ended, certain rulers of a less rigid and more inquiring frame of mind could afford to patronize such conferences and discourses. Of course, as an Islamic state entered its final repressive phase, such openness became impossible.
Under the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt, many caliphs showed favor toward non-Muslims:
The heterodox Fatimids showed relatively more tolerance toward their dhimmi subjects than had most Islamic rulers. Perhaps this was due in part to the fact that the majority of the Fatimid subjects in North Africa, and later in Egypt, were orthodox Muslims who were by and large unfriendly to their Isma’ili overlords.[38]
The Fatimid tolerance was a case of political pragmatism. It was one instance in which a schismatic or upstart ruler might build a political base by showing favor to non-Muslims or to other heretical Muslims. In modern times examples of such political pragmatism are the relative tolerance toward Christians on the parts of the Alawite elite of Syria and of the Sunni Baathists in Iraq.
Saladin, the great founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, despite being a stalwart soldier in the Muslim cause, was widely regarded by friend and foe alike as being an honorable opponent who often showed a mercy that was uncharacteristic of both Muslim and non-Muslim rulers at that time. “Saladin was a brave and capable soldier, a great builder, and a generous and merciful ruler. … Saladin repeatedly expressed admiration for the piety of Christian pilgrims” and reportedly said “that a bad Muslim could never make a good Christian.”[39] Moreover, Saladin’s “lieutenants reminded him frequently of the bloody massacres committed by the Crusaders when they first conquered Jerusalem, yet his mercy was widespread.”[40]
Saladin’s tolerance, however, may also be partly due to the fact that he was rather indifferent to religion; his main interest was in building up his own power:
Reflecting neither a burning spirit of jihad nor an unwavering anti Christian enmity, this behavior epitomized Saladin’s career. For all his extensive holy-war propaganda, an essential component in a socio-political order based on the principle of religion, Saladin’s attitude to the Frankish states was above all derived from his lifelong effort at empire-building. As long as they did not stand in the way of this endeavor he was amenable to leaving them in peace…[41]
Furthermore it was the Ayyubid dynasty founded by Saladin that was later to offer a refuge in Egypt and Syria to Jewish refugees from the persecutions in Almohad Spain.[42] Unfortunately, however, in general few subsequent Muslim rulers lived up to Saladin’s example.
In Anatolia, despite the ravages that the nomadic Turks inflicted on the Christian population, a number of Seljuk rulers showed them great benevolence. Such benevolence was shown even in the early years of the Turkish invasion. Sultan Malik Shah (ca 1090) and Ismail the governor of Armenia are known to have protected churches and monasteries. Tolerant Seljuk rulers also appeared in subsequent centuries. The conditions of the Christians of Melitene “improved considerably in the latter half of the twelfth century thanks to the generosity of Kilidj II Arslan who freed” the church “from paying tribute.”[43] Another benevolent Turkish commander was Malik Danishmend who reportedly treated his Christian subjects kindly.[44]
The tolerance shown by the early Turkish leaders may also have had deeper motives owing to the very extensive and early hybridization that characterized the Turkish invaders. Many Muslim Turks, even among the rulers, at that time had Christian parents or in-laws. One such, the Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin, was apparently “not only tolerant of Christianity but sympathetic to it”.[45] Another such was the son of the Seljuk sultan Izz-ed-Din who entered the service of the Byzantine Emperor and with “a detachment of his guard remained behind in Constantinople, turned Christian, and formed the nucleus of a corps of Turkish militia”.[46]
The succeeding Ottomans, also with an abundance of Christian relatives and Greek ancestry, likewise produced rulers with tolerant dispositions or even syncretistic and heretical outlooks. In particular Mehmed (Muhammad) the Conqueror is said to have an almost heretical interest in Christianity, the Italian Renaissance and Greek philosophy.[47] As a young man Mehmed “caused concern at Adrianople by his apparent support … of a Persian missionary, leader of a dervish sect which had preached … an affinity between Islam and Christianity.”[48] After the fall of Constantinople there were even “pious hopes that the Sultan might emerge as a potential convert to Christianity. … Such approaches were never likely to influence the Sultan, seeing himself as … the heir to the caliphs, thus wedded spiritually and politically to Islam.”[49] Mehmed is an example of a frequently occurring case among Muslim leaders. He was an unscrupulous and ruthless ruler and impious by Islamic standards. He was also pragmatic in dealing with his non-Muslim subjects and foreigners. He even had some interest in other religions and heretical syncretistic Muslim sects. Yet, he was quite content to use the warlike zeal provoked by Islam to further his worldly ambitions and was not about to chance the storm that would arise if he openly showed disrespect for Islam or threatened its monopoly of power.
Mehmed showed some benevolence to cooperative conquered dhimmis. He confirmed Gennadius as Patriarch, and established the millet system of self government for the various religious communities. He also “treated the Athenians magnanimously, confirming their civil liberties and exemption from taxes” and “granted privileges to the Orthodox clergy.”[50] The Conqueror’s treatment of Athens was undoubtedly a result of his interest in the antiquities of the territory over which he ruled; an interest quite uncharacteristic of a Muslim. “After his army captured Athens Fatih went there in 1459 to see the ruined monuments of the ancient city, for his classical studies had imbued him with a deep reverence for classical Greek culture. Kritovoulos calls him a ‘Philhellene’”.[51] Mehmed’s unusual interest in the Greek classics was exhibited on a visit to Troy:
Fatih visited the site of ancient Troy … which he knew from his reading of Homer. Kritovoulos writes that Fatih’s conquest of Byzantium made the sultan feel that he had evened the score with the Greeks for their victory over the ‘Asiatics’ at Troy, and that he only regretted that he did not have a poet like Homer to extol his deeds.[52]
Once again, this may have been more than just a passing curiosity. In the early days of both Seljuk and Ottoman rule, there appears to have been a consciousness of their pre-Islamic Greek heritage on the part of many members of the Turkish elite who were often of mixed parentage. Such consciousness faded, however, with the hardening of Islamic culture over the centuries.
Mehmed, even after his conquest of Byzantium, continued his interest in Christianity and comparative religion. He
…called on Gennadius … and in their conversations they ranged widely over Christian theology. Gennadius also wrote a summary of his work and had it translated into Turkish for Fatih’s private study. … Spandugino, an Italian who lived in Galata early in the sixteenth century, claims that Fatih took to worshipping Christian relics and always kept many candles burning in front of them.
But Fatih’s interest in Christianity appears to have been superficial, for he seems to have been basically irreligious, and in his observance of Islam he merely observed the forms of the Muslim faith, as was necessary for him as head of state.[53]
Indeed, his son Prince Beyazit reportedly said that his father did not believe in Muhammad. Mehmed was also a highly atypical Muslim in his interest in the Renaissance that was flowering in Italy during his lifetime. The Venetian Senate sent the artist Gentile Bellini to Constantinople at Mehmed’s request. Bellini painted Mehmed’s portrait and also decorated his apartments with erotic paintings.[54]
One strange case of syncretism among Ottoman royalty occurred when the purported son of Sultan Ibrahim was captured as a baby, along with his mother a harem favorite, by Christian pirates.
…the child initially captured by the Maltese on the Turkish galley … was introduced at a certain stage as a possible Ottoman pretender. Now a Catholic priest named Pere Osman, he aspired without success to rally all Ottoman subjects, whether Moslem or Christian, to the cause of a new eastern state, blending the concepts of the Byzantine and the Ottoman empires.[55]
A benevolent Ottoman leader some years later was the Grand Vizier and de facto ruler of the Ottoman Empire Koprulu Ahmed who “relaxed the severity” of his father’s regime. “A strict Moslem, he was nonetheless free from fanaticism, tolerating the beliefs of others, protecting Christians and Jews from injustice, and abolishing restrictions on the building of churches.”[56]
Muslim Central Asia was the scene of an even more unconventional liberal ruler; one who was not simply a patron of learning but an accomplished scientist in his own right. The grandson of the fearsome Tamerlane, Ulugh Beg (1394-1449), ruler of Transoxiana was “a mathematician and astronomer and … patron of other scientists”. The school he established included scholars from Anatolia, Persia and central Asia.
The community could achieve brilliant results in the exact sciences that still matched those of contemporary Europe, if it was stimulated by an inspired sponsor like Ulugh Beg. Without such support, however, scientists had little institutional framework within which to develop and flourish. Moreover, in Central Asia they had to compete not only with conventional learning represented by the madrassa as a theological seminary, but also with a rising tide of religious fervor…[57]
Ulugh’s noted mathematician, Ali Qushchi “ultimately was invited to Istanbul by another enlightened sponsor, the Ottoman sultan Mehmet the Conqueror.”[58] The migration of the mathematician Qushchi to newly conquered Byzantium, illustrates how the consolidation of conquered territory and the establishment of peace under a liberal Muslim despot can engender a temporary high period of culture and learning. The inclusion of the once ravaged territory within the larger Muslim world makes it accessible for scholars and promotes a cross fertilization of ideas. Later, however, the inevitable regression inherent in the Islamic meme comes to dominate. It also shows the small renaissance that might occur under enlightened rulers within a territory long under Muslim rule. Rulers such as Ulugh may come to power following the turmoil accompanying the establishment of a new and often heretical dynasty. Such was the case in Fatimid Egypt and in Safavid Persia. In the wake of the violent rise of the unconventional Muslim empire-builder Tamerlane, there occurred a minor Timurid renaissance in Central Asia, which expressed itself in the science of Ulugh and also in literature and art.
The ultimate fate of the enlightened, but unfortunate, scholar-sultan Ulugh Beg exemplifies both the inevitable triumph of repressive despotism and the decay of science under Islam. Ulugh’s son Abd al-Latif rebelled and “marched on Samarkand with an army and defeated his father … Ulugh Beg returned to the city as a … prisoner of his irate son; worse still, the religious authorities, never fond of the prince-scientist, issued a fatwa mandating his deposition and execution. He was … beheaded on 27 October 1449.”[59] Ulugh’s fate also shows how the beginning of repression in one Islamic territory may provide an opportunity for an enlightened neighboring ruler. Thus, the mathematician Qushchi who was close to Ulugh, found a welcome in the Conqueror’s domains. A similar welcoming of refugee Jewish intellectuals from Spain by the Ayyubids of Egypt was another such example.
In Muslim India there were a number of instances of tolerant, progressive and even syncretistic rulers. One example, the Khalji Sultan Ala-ud-din (ca 1310), a ruler who verged on the edge of heresy, is described by Keay:
The sultan was no Islamic bigot: ‘there is no instance to show that Ala-ud-din oppressed some people simply because they were Hindus and favored others just because they were Muslims.’ Indeed, if one may judge by his reported interest in founding a new religion centred on his own illustrious person, his faith was decidedly unorthodox. … Like his assumption of the title ‘The Second Alexander’ on his coinage, it was a case of the megalomaniac getting the better of the Muslim.[60]
Another Muslim ruler, Muhammad bin Tughluq, despite his severity and cruelty, “was comparatively free of religious and ethnic bigotry. Perhaps he more than any of the sultans glimpsed the potential of an Indo-Islamic accommodation.”[61] Nevertheless, despite his dabbling in science and philosophy, Tughluq “killed so many Hindus that there was constantly in front of his royal pavilion … a mound of dead bodies”.[62] In Bengal, Ala-ud-din Husain Shah (1493-1519) “though a Muslim, indeed an Arab, is said to have honoured … the leader of the Vaishnavire bhakti movement … In return the Hindus” honored the sultan “as an incarnation of Lord Krishna.”[63]
But by far the most daring of all the heretical Muslim rulers was the great Mogul emperor Akbar who exhibited an abiding passion for pursuing religious truth in whatever direction it might lead:
Akbar’s curiosity about his subjects and their beliefs also became markedly eclectic. … he installed a veritable bazaar of disputing divines and presided over their heated debates … To the Quranic arguments of Sunni, Shia and Ismaili were added … numerous Sufi orders, the bhakti fervour of Saiva and Vaishnava devotees … naked Jains, and the varied insights of numerous wandering ascetics, saints and other … recluses.
Also welcome were … disciples of Kabir … and Guru Nanak … founder of the Sikh faith. … included … were Portuguese priests … from Goa…[64]
In the end “Akbar improvised an ideology based on the only element in which he had complete confidence, his imperial persona.” His faith “centred on himself, but whether as God or His representative is not certain.”[65] His threat to orthodox Islam led to a major rebellion, but Akbar with considerable Hindu military support managed to crush it. Aided by his Hindu vassals, he also added considerable territory to his domains.
Akbar was the boldest and most successful of all the syncretistic rulers, but, unfortunately even his religious reforms embedded as they were in an Islamic social and political matrix, could not survive his death. The cult of personality he developed in order to carry through his reforms prefigured that which, centuries later, was to be promoted by Ataturk.
A later royal Mogul heretic was Dara Shikoh, Shah Jahan’s favorite son and Aurangzeb’s rival. Dara Shikoh “inspired deep suspicion amongst orthodox Muslims … he consorted with Sufis, Hindus and Christians … translated the Upanishads into Persian … advanced the idea ‘that the essential nature of Hinduism was identical with that of Islam’.” After his defeat by Aurangzeb “he was condemned and cut to pieces” and then “paraded through the streets.”[66]
On the periphery of the Muslim world, in areas where Islam spread by more peaceful means, relatively tolerant rulers following a more relaxed and syncretistic version of the religion were common. In Indonesia “the stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana continued to serve for the aristocracy as a school of chivalry and to be enjoyed by the people. The culture of the Javanese princely courts remained essentially Hinduistic-Javanese up to very recent times.”[67] One overtly apostate ruler was Sultan Amangkurat of the Javanese state of Mataram who in 1674 had some six thousand Muslim clerics killed. “Amangkurat … did not share his father’s sentiment toward Islam. He rejected the title of ‘sultan’ and preferred the Javanese one of ‘susuhunan’. He … restricted the jurisdiction of the religious courts. Thus, his reign constituted a marked reaction against the growing Islamization of Javanese society.”[68] Like Dara Shikoh and Ulugh Beg, Amangkurat came to an unfortunate end when his orthodox Muslim enemies rebelled and overthrew him.
West Africa was also the scene of many unconventional rulers who fell short of the strict standards of Muslim orthodoxy. Under the newly converted rulers of Sub Saharan West Africa, many pre-Islamic customs remained intact. “As a good Muslim, there were aspects of life in Mali which Ibn Battuta found shocking – above all, the freedom given to women, who went about unveiled and chose whom they would as their companions.”[69] Since the oppression and degradation of women was one of the prime factors in Islam’s successful expansion, such freedom would be looked upon as quite egregious by orthodox Muslims.
Repressive Despotic Phase
Islamic states invariably, until the era of Western intervention, end up as rigid theocracies ruled by a small class of bigoted officials under an aloof and arbitrary tyrant. As we have seen, in earlier years such repression was often interspersed with intervals of rule by relatively enlightened or tolerant caliphs or sultans. Arab historian Hourani describes how the increasing Islamization of the population inevitably put an end to toleration and cemented the second class status of non-Muslims.
In the early centuries of Islamic rule there appears to have been much social and cultural intercourse between adherents of the three religions. … As time went on … the barriers became higher. The conversion … to Islam turned a majority into a diminishing minority. … Islam … developed its own social institutions, within which Muslims could live without interaction with non Muslims.
Pressures upon Jews and Christians may have come mainly from the urban masses, particularly in times of war or economic hardship, when hostility might be directed against the non Muslim officials of the ruler. At such moments, the ruler might respond by enforcing the laws strictly, or dismissing his non Muslim officials…[70]
Persecution of the remaining non-Muslims was accompanied by, and undoubtedly was one of the reasons for, the decline in intellectual accomplishment in general, and the diminishment of freedom even for Muslims. Harbingers of such decline were present at a very early date. The Umayyad caliph Umar II enforced the dress code for Christians and Jews and barred them from holding public office. The, otherwise munificent, Abbasid caliph Harun re-enacted those decrees. Finally, the “stringent regulations against dhimmis culminated in the time of al-Mutawakkil, who in 850 and 854 decreed that Christians and Jews should affix wooden images of devils to their houses” among other severe measures.[71] Indeed, the generally tolerant and worldly outlook that marked Umayyad rule became increasingly rare among the Abbasids.
The claim to divine inspiration was exemplified in the strong messianic overtones of the throne names adopted by all Abbasid caliphs and was accompanied by public indulgence of religious figures and institutions. … The relaxed Umayyad attitude to religious observance gave way to strict public enforcement of religious codes of behavior and zealous persecution of heretics.[72]
To be sure, even under the early Abbasids the two competing models of despotism, the enlightened and the repressive, continued to war with each other despite the religious pretensions of the dynasty. In the same way as “the Umayyads sought often to buttress their credentials through spectacular religious acts, such as the building of the Dome of the Rock”, so the “Abbasids complied with the stipulations of …religious law”, but “only to the extent it served their needs”. In private they “indulged in the same vices – wine, singing girls, and sexual licence – that had given the Umayyads their bad reputation.” Furthermore, “scathing criticism was leveled at Ma’mun and his two immediate successors … for their endorsement of the philo-Hellenistic Mu’tazilite school of thought … Yet even when the caliph Mutawakil (847-61) … reestablished the orthodox dogma, this did not mean greater religious observance at the personal level.”[73] Repressive despotism became fairly well entrenched by the time of the Abbasid caliph Qahir (932-34) “who took strict measures against wine-drinkers and singing girls” and this despite the fact that he “was hardly ever sober.”[74]
Muslim Spain, despite the propaganda of the proponents of the myth of Andalusia, was subject to the same fall from a tolerant progressive outlook into repressive despotic rule. The Spanish vizier and de facto ruler al-Mansur (ca. 980), “to ingratiate himself with the ulema … burned all the books in the library of al-Hakam [961-76] dealing with philosophy and other subjects blacklisted by those theologians.”[75] This is an example of another common pattern whereby policies of repression and religious reaction are instituted by weak or usurping rulers to curry favor with the ulama.
Following another brief period of liberalism under some of the “party kings”, the final stage of repression in Muslim Spain began with the overthrow of the Abbadid dynasty of Seville by the Murabits (Almoravids) in 1090. “Under the Murabits, fresh converts to Islam and heirs to a barbarian legacy not yet dead, an outburst of religious fervour on the part of theological zealots resulted at the beginning of the twelfth century in suffering for many Christians, Jews and even liberal Moslems. Under the devout ‘Ali (1106-43) … al-Ghazzali’s works were put on the black list or committed to the flames in Spain and al-Maghrib”.[76] Although the succeeding early Muwahhids (Almohads) are described by Hitti as a “Dynasty puritanic in theology but liberal in its patronage of philosophy”,[77] they were even more fanatical in the persecution of Christians and Jews.
In Egypt, the liberal phases occurring under the Fatimids and Ayyubids were finally ended by the repression of the Mamluks. Under these “slave” sultans there was strict enforcement of dress and building codes directed against the dhimmis. There were also decrees against non-Muslim doctors among “a number of innovative anti-dhimmi measures taken in the Mamluk period.” Indeed, the “last one hundred years or more of Mamluk rule weighed heavily upon all of the subjects of the empire – Muslim and non-Muslim.”[78] The Mamluk Sultan Barsbay (c. 1422) in response to an outbreak of plague regarded it as punishment for the people’s sins and “prohibited females from going outdoors and sought to make atonement by fresh exactions from Christians and Jews.”[79]
The Seljuk Turkish rulers became increasingly despotic when, in the latter days of the formerly tolerant Konya sultanate, the government came under increasing pressure from nomadic Turkmen and Mongols. As a result the population was plagued by rapacious officials and tax farmers. “The sultan ‘Ala al-Din III Kaykubad enacted such fiscal oppression that finances were thrown into confusion and many villagers fled their homes.”[80]
The Ottomans inevitably followed in the dolorous footsteps of their Islamic predecessors. One early harbinger of the more repressive despotism to come occurred when Sultan Selim the Grim in 1514 decided “to follow one campaign against Moslem heretics in Anatolia with another designed to force Anatolian Christians to recant or face the sword”. He desisted only after the Seyhulislam, the chief judge of Islam, pointed out that payers of the jizya had a right to preserve their faiths.[81]
The shift from the liberal to the repressive despotic stage in the Ottoman Empire accelerated after the death of Suleiman’s favorite concubine Roxelana. Suleiman “had withdrawn within himself, growing more than ever silent, more melancholy … more remote from human contacts.” At one time his court had been enlivened by music. But as the Sultan grew more fearfully religious “the instruments were thus broken up and consigned to the flames. In response to similar ascetic scruples he took to eating off earthenware instead of silver plate, moreover banned the importation into the city of all wine”.[82]
One exemplar of the increasing Ottoman despotic repression was Mehmed III, who although a weakling
…was to have his nineteen brothers strangled by mutes – the largest fratricidal sacrifice in Ottoman history. … Meanwhile six pregnant slaves, their favourites from the harem, had been sewn up in sacks and thrown into the Bosporus, lest they give birth to claimants to the throne. Later Mehmed put to death his own chosen son Mahmud, a young man of spirit who had begged to be given command of the armies fighting the rebels in Anatolia, and this had inflamed his father’s jealous suspicions. His mother and his favourite companions … suffered the same fate.[83]
Worse still was the very embodiment of the Oriental despot, Murad IV (1623-1640) whose reign of terror, well described by Kinross brought about the end of a period of military anarchy:
His trusted henchmen and well-trained spies scoured the city of Istanbul on his orders, tracking down the known traitors … executing them on the spot … flinging their corpses into the Bosporus to be washed up on shore before the populace. Bloodshed similarly swept through the provinces.”
Later, to deprive the public of its centers of reunion and possible trouble, he closed all cafes and wineshops in the cities of the Empire – on no temporary basis but for the rest of his reign – and made the smoking of tobacco illegal. Offenders caught at night smoking a pipe, drinking coffee, or flushed with wine might instantly be hanged or impaled, and their bodies thrown out into the street as a warning to the rest.
As time went on Murad became carried away by the thirst for blood. At first his executions were justified by unquestionable guilt; then they grew more sweeping … eventually he was killing, heedless of any suspicion, for the sake of killing, from wanton caprice or impulsive ill humour. …
His cruelties became legendary. Disturbed by the boisterous merriment of a party of women … he had them all seized and drowned. He murdered one of his own doctors … He impaled a courier for informing him mistakenly that the Sultana had given birth to a son … He beheaded his chief musician for singing a Persian air … In five years it is said that twenty-five thousand men perished at his orders, many of them by his own hand.[84]
In India it was Sultan Aurangzeb who initiated the full repressive despotic phase of the Mogul regime. Keay describes how under his severe rule
…dancers, musicians and artists were dismissed from the imperial employ. Their places were taken by bearded jurists and Quranic divines … The tax on Hindu pilgrims, lifted by Akbar, was reimposed … revenue endowments enjoyed by temples and brahmans were rescinded; Hindu merchants were penalized … newly built or rebuilt temples were to be destroyed. … Finally, in 1679 … the reimposition of the detested jizya…[85]
But even Aurangzeb did not try to force the conversion of non-Muslims. “He was too shrewd; they too numerous.”[86]
The Shiite Safavids also, eventually followed the path to repressive Islamic despotism. “In 1656, Shah ‘Abbas II granted extensive powers to his wazirs to force Jews to become Muslims. Al-Majlisi persuaded Shah Husayn (1688-1726) to decree the forcible conversion of Zoroastrians.”[87]
Paralleling the phases of Islamic political development were the phases of Muslim intellectual life. Islamic “golden ages” followed the re-establishment of peace and security under the auspices of the new regime. The time lag between the conquest and the peak of the golden age varied from a few decades through several centuries in different Muslim lands. However, these golden ages were a result of the parasitic exploitation of the intellectual and economic resources left over from the preceding civilization. When these were exhausted intellectual achievement went into a rapid decline. The phases of Muslim intellectual life are analyzed in the following chapter.
[1] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 18.
[2] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 33.
[3] Lewis, The Middle East, p. 140.
[4] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 29.
[5] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 183.
[6] Levy, The Social Structure of Islam, p. 281.
[7] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 30.
[8] Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society, p. 384.
[9] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 41.
[10] Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia, p. 208.
[11] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, pp. 30-31.
[12] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 196.
[13] Ibid, pp. 237-39.
[14] Ibid, p. 278.
[15] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 35.
[16] Ibid, p. 34.
[17] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 107.
[18] Lewis, The Arabs in History, p. 83.
[19] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 41.
[20] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 113.
[21] Ibid, p. 112.
[22] Ibid, p. 302.
[23] Ibid, p. 620.
[24] Ibid, pp. 620-21.
[25] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 68.
[26] Ibid, pp. 68-69.
[27] Ibid, p. 62.
[28] Ibid, p. 63.
[29] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 244.
[30] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 143.
[31] Ibid, p. 139.
[32] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 303.
[33] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 142.
[34] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 91.
[35] Keay, India, A History, p. 248.
[36] Warraq, Leaving Islam, p. 42.
[37] Frye, The Cambridge History of Iran Volume 4, p. 544.
[38] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 43.
[39] Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 102.
[40] Payne, The Dream and the Tomb, p. 211.
[41] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 83.
[42] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, p. 61.
[43] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, pp. 197-99.
[44] Ibid, p. 211.
[45] Muller, The Loom of History, p. 281.
[46] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 38.
[47] Muller, The Loom of History, pp. 302-3.
[48] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 88.
[49] Ibid, p. 115.
[50] Ibid, p. 128.
[51] Freely, Inside The Seraglio, p.19.
[52] Ibid, p. 20.
[53] Ibid, p. 24.
[54] Ibid, p. 26.
[55] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 316.
[56] Ibid, p. 338.
[57] Soucek, A History of Inner Asia, pp. 127-29.
[58] Ibid
[59] Ibid, p. 131.
[60] Keay, India, A History, p. 259.
[61] Ibid, p. 271.
[62] Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 461.
[63] Keay, India, A History, pp. 287-88.
[64] Ibid, pp. 316-17.
[65] Ibid, p. 317.
[66] Ibid, pp. 339-40.
[67] Vlekke, Nusantara: A History of Indonesia, p. 87.
[68] Ibid, p. 175.
[69] Oliver and Fagan, Africa in the Iron Age, p. 175.
[70] Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, p. 118.
[71] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 353.
[72] Karsh, Islamic Imperialism, p. 42.
[73] Ibid, pp. 42-3.
[74] Ibid, p. 43.
[75] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 532.
[76] Ibid, p. 542.
[77] Ibid, p. 581.
[78] Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands, pp. 72-3.
[79] Hitti, History of the Arabs, p. 696.
[80] Vryonis, The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor, p. 246.
[81] Stewart, Life World Library: Turkey, p. 45.
[82] Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, p. 252.
[83] Ibid, p. 288.
[84] Ibid, pp. 305-10.
[85] Keay, India, A History, pp. 342-43.
[86] Ibid. p. 343.
[87] Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 243.
Chapter 9: Strategies of Cultural Survival
Islamic culture has been almost universally successful in erasing and overlaying the past traditions of the converted masses in the conquered territories. However, it is the case for Islam as it is for other historical instances of conquest that the cultural imperatives and national aspirations of conquered and submerged ethnicities do not easily vanish. Sometimes their languages continue to survive for long periods of time and even influence the conquerors’ speech. Even where the conquered population adopts the tongue of the ruling group, their customs may still persist. Perhaps few overt customs of the vanquished remain, however an examination of otherwise unrecorded folklore shows traces of the previous culture. The assertion of older traditions may find expression in a religious guise. In the case of the Muslim conquests even where the pre-Islamic religions have been largely replaced, dissident or heretical Islamic sects or varieties of mystical and occult teachings within Islam may become the means of national expression for submerged populations. Hitti summarizes the means by which three vanquished groups asserted their cultural distinctiveness under the Arab yoke:
The sons of Iran were ever mindful of their ancient national glory and never reconciled themselves entirely to the new regime. The Berbers vaguely expressed their tribal feeling and sense of difference by their readiness to embrace any schismatic movement. The people of Syria long expected the rise of a Sufyani to deliver them from the Abbasid yoke.[1]
The continued existence of distinctive pre-Islamic local traditions and regional patriotisms, even where the Islamic faith prevailed, served the important function of braking and diverting the expansion of Islam.
The Persians had, undoubtedly, more success in reasserting their ancient traditions than any other group that fell under the yoke of Islam’s nomadic vanguards. They did so by adopting Islam and eventually modifying it to suit their peculiar worldview. Other conquered national groups, in addition to the Persians, adopted Islam as a strategy to preserve something of their national distinctiveness although with less success. The closely related Kurds are one such group. The Berbers also quickly adopted the triumphant faith but had only partial success in avoiding Arabization. In Syria and Iraq the remnants of national consciousness was expressed by the rise of various schismatic groups, the most successful being the Shiites of Iraq.
Another region with a relatively successful record of preserving its previous culture was Spain. There, Christianity persisted in remote and rural regions and in the cities converted natives formed the nucleus of social discontent. “Secret Christianity” was widespread. These schismatic tendencies were perhaps stronger in Spain than elsewhere due to the persistence of Christian ruled enclaves in the north, paving the way for the ultimate end of Islamic rule in Spain. However, that was not the case for the other areas in the west of the Dar-al-Islam. It is generally true that “in the eastern part of the Islamic world, the coming of Islam did not submerge the consciousness of the past to the same extent as it did in the west.”[2]
The persistence of pre-Islamic civilization expressed itself strongly in the survival of ancient religious traditions which entered into local versions of Islam:
Springs, trees and stones which had been regarded as places of intercession or healing since before the rise of Islam or even of Christianity were sometimes holy to adherents of different faiths. Some examples of this have been noted in modern times: in Syria, the khidr, the mysterious spirit identified with St. George, was revered in springs and other sanctified places; in Egypt, Copts and Muslims alike celebrated the day of St. Damiana …[3]
These also survived in a more visible physical form. As Vryonis points out, the genetic markers of the different conquered populations differentially altered the racial character of the conquering warrior elite in the many areas conquered by the nomadic armies:
The physiognomy of the tribesmen evidently set them off as sharply from the indigenous population as did their peculiar society. It is quite probable that fusion with other groups such as the Kurds, or later with Christians and converts, gradually altered the physical type in many areas …[4]
Iran
As indicated above, Iran was the area in which the indigenous population most successfully asserted their national distinctiveness. It is the case that although “Islam has become the dominant cultural force, yet Iranian identity, rooted in its Zoroastrian past, has never quite conceded defeat.”[5] As biologist and physical anthropologist C. D. Darlington observes:
The Persians, who resisted hybridization, preserved their language. … The subtle intelligence of the defeated Persians overwhelmed the political strength of their Arab conquerors and gave a new twist to their artistic invention and also their religious enthusiasm. … The intelligence of the Persians expressed itself in the coming centuries in the characteristic art of the country. But it also expressed itself in their attitude to religion.[6]
If the Persians were to preserve something of their ancient culture they, unlike their longtime Byzantine rivals, had no alternative to working within the matrix of Islam. For “in the former Byzantine countries, prominent citizens had been able to flee to Constantinople and from there to redeem their captive compatriots, while the Iranians … whose country was entirely occupied, had little chance of flight nor had they a state at their disposal to ransom their people.”[7] Elements of the Iranian ruling class from very early in the era of Arab occupation converted to the religion of the conquerors. This was especially true in Iraq where “Iranians being an upper class minority of foreign origin before the Arab conquest, had less resistance to conversion than they had in Iran proper, presumably because joining the Arabs was a way of continuing a degree of social superiority over the Aramaic speaking majority of the population.”[8]
However, under the Umayyads, these Persian converts found the barriers to admission into the ruling class high. Continued discrimination in the first century of the conquest, as Karsh points out led to considerable resentment among the converts:
Even the pious caliph Umar II (717-20), who attempted to equalize the Mawali’s standing, was reputed to have taken a dim view of Muslims and Mawali intermarrying, and forbade Mawali from selling their lands to Muslims. Little wonder that this state of affairs turned the Mawali into an embittered and disgruntled group whose actions were to shake the empire to its core before too long.[9]
In the Persian regions, this resentment served to fuel the Abbasid revolution. In fact the Abbasid emissary and commanding general was “a man of obscure origin, probably of an Iranian family, Abu Muslim.”[10]
The Persians, having made the concession of adopting Islam were able, following the Abbasid revolution, to co-opt the machinery of the Muslim empire and turn it into an instrument to advance Persian culture into central Asia, India and, most of all, into the lands of their ancient Byzantine rivals. Under the Abbasids “Arab Islam succumbed to Persian influence; the caliphate became more a revival of Iranian despotism and less an Arabian sheikhdom. Gradually Persian titles, Persian wines and wives, Persian mistresses, Persian songs, as well as Persian ideas and thought won the day.”[11] Persian culture soon became the norm among the Arab population of the Abbasid regime. “With the intensification of interaction between conqueror and conquered, the Arabs adopted indigenous – especially Iranian – habits, manners and ways of life.”[12]
Even the bloodline of the Abbasid rulers became part Persian. Under the caliph al-Ma’mun Persian triumphalism reached new heights:
The Khurasanians accepted [Abbasid] al-Ma’mun as one of their own and because his mother was an Iranian, called him ’son of our sister’. The rebellion of Rafi’, which had begun because the distant government in Baghdad would not respond to protests against misrule in Khurasan had now lost its point and in 810 he surrendered himself to al-Ma’mun who pardoned him. The poets … soon began to represent al-Ma’mun and his vizier al-Fadl b. Sahl, a Zoroastrian until 806 as opponents of Arabs, and by extension, of Islam itself. One poet said of al-Ma’mun, ‘A power continuing that of Chosroes and his religion has gathered and the Muslims are humbled.’[13]
But while the Persians rose to positions of prominence as officials, scholars and even rulers of local dynasties, they were soon superseded in the Islamic world by tribesmen of more primitive culture and ferocious disposition. “Only with the accession in 833 of al-Mu’tasim did the Persian element in the caliphal armies take second place to newer groups, most prominent amongst which were Turks”.[14] It was the latter who, proving diligent students of their Persian teachers, carried Iranian-Islamic culture into India and into Byzantium ultimately conquering the capital of the Persians ancient enemy, Constantinople. In the words of historian of Iran Richard Frye, “though it was the Arabs who brought Iran and Central Asia together, the Turks were the principal agents for spreading … the Iranian version of Islamic culture to the west, even to Constantinople.”[15]
Despite the success certain elements of the Iranian elite achieved by adopting Islam, which then culminated in the Abbasid revolt, dissatisfaction with the new Islamic order festered for some time finding “expression in a series of religious movements in different parts of Persia”.[16] In 749 an ex-Zoroastrian, Bihafarid assumed the mantle of Prophethood. Sonpadh, who was a Mazdaki associate of the Abbasid mastermind Abu Muslim, rose in revolt in 755. Ustad Sis led a revolt of Zoroastrians in Badghis and although he was executed in 768 there was continuing unrest among his followers. Following Ustad, Yusuf ibn Ibrahim, executed in 778, led the Khurramdin sect which was characterized by a combination of Muslim and Zoroastrian doctrines. Murqanna, who claimed to be a reincarnation of Abu Muslim, seized Bokhara in 776; he was defeated and killed in 783.[17]
The centers of Iranian nationalism and continued anti-Muslim sentiment were the mountainous regions bordering the Caspian Sea. In this area the ancient religion of Zoroaster continued to seize the popular imagination. Apostasy was rife and when Islam finally secured a foothold in Tabaristan “sections of the local population emphasized their continued differentiation by adopting heterodox forms of the new faith”.[18] In Tabaristan as early as 700 the local ruler, the Ispahbad “under the pressure of new Arab attacks … agreed to pay tribute but succeeded in keeping the Muslims out of the country. When the ‘Abbasid revolutionary army reached Ray in 748 the Ispahbad Khurshid readily followed the invitation of Abu Muslim to transfer his allegiance and pay tribute to the new power.”[19] In 781 the rulers of Tabaristan, Tukharistan and Miyandurud “led a dangerous anti Muslim rebellion.”[20]
The following century saw further rebellion in the Caspian region by adherents of a Khurrami leader by the name of Babak. Zoroastrianism ultimately gave way to heretical Shi’ism as the expression of the Persian national spirit. The province of Dailam, in the remote Elburz Mountains which was home to many of Babak’s followers became a focus of revolutionary Zaidi Shi’ism. Revolution against Islam turned into revolution within Islam.[21] Another follower of Babak, Mazyar, King of Tabaristan and a converted Muslim led a revolt which became a social revolution against Islamicized landholders in 839. The caliph al-Mu’tasim “now recognized the danger of this rebellion to Islam” and cooperated with the Tahirids to put down the revolt. Another Babaki rebel leader following Mazyar was Mankjur who was also executed in 841. These rebels were accused “of apostasy from Islam and of a desire to see the Arabs and Turks abased and the ancient glories of Persia restored.”[22] The rulers of Tabaristan revived the use of ancient Persian titles. The adoption of titles such as Ispahbad “among the rulers seems … to attest the survival of Persian national sentiments”.[23] As late as the 10th century, Zoroastrian sentiments could still spark revolts in the Caspian region:
Mardavij ibn Ziyar, a potentate from the Caspian Sea province of Daylam … claimed to be none other than the biblical King Solomon … and spoke openly about reconstituting a great Zoroastrian Iranian empire. This grandiose plan failed to materialize as he was murdered by his Turkish mercenaries in 935.[24]
Thus was extinguished the last Zoroastrian hope of taking back Iran.
So it was that Iranians became reconciled to the permanence of the Islamic religion and sought within the context of orthodox and eventually of heretical Islam to restore their national pride. Iranians made good use of their talents as poets in constructing pro-Persian and anti-Arab propaganda. One such propagandist was the notable Persian dissident, Bashhar ibn Burd, the son of an enslaved Persian aristocrat who was charged with heresy and imprisoned. He was an accomplished poet and “did not miss an opportunity to glorify the memories of ancient Iran. He did not have a high opinion of the Arabs.”[25]
With the advent of the late ninth century Saffarid dynasty “Persian panegyric poetry containing imagery drawn from the imperial Iranian past” first appeared.[26] It was under the subsequent Samanid dynasty that the Persian of the Sasanids, once again became the language of court life. Persian epic poetry chronicling the glorious days of the pre-Islamic shahs was once more cultivated under the patronage of high Samanid officials. These epic historical poems were finalized in the Shahname by Firdawsi before the year 999.[27] This remarkable renaissance marked the Iranians as almost unique among Muslim peoples “in having a strong, conscious link with its pre Islamic past.”[28]
Still another way that the “Persians saved their national pride” was by “claiming that the Prophet’s grandson Husayn married … a daughter of … the last Sasanian king of Persia.”[29] This is one more indication of the determination of the Persians to preserve their ancient culture. It distinguishes them from many other converts in the conquered territories who were busy inventing fake Arab genealogies for themselves. The Buyid sultans, an Iranian dynasty who wielded power in Baghdad over a puppet Abbasid caliph during the tenth century, carried this national resurgence forward another step by restoring Persian court ceremonial. And in an interesting historical sequel, their Seljuk Turk replacements became willing students of the Iranian traditions of their defeated Buyid rivals. As Bulliet observes:
The innovation of the Buyids was the use of the imperial regalia of the Sassanid Empire. A royal crown, the title Shahanshah … all these and more were utilized by the rude Buyid princes to legitimize their regime. … From that time onward Iran’s imperial past became wedded to her Islamic present to such a degree that the two titles adopted simultaneously by the Seljuk Turks when they conquered Iran were Sultan and Shahanshah.[30]
Thus, the Iranians made the best of the Islamic conquest. They burrowed in and managed to insinuate themselves into the fabric of Islam, thereby, preserving much of their national tradition. Moreover, they even managed to take advantage of the Islamic tide to spread their ancient culture beyond the old borders of the Sasanian Empire. In fact, it was the conquests of the Arabs that “brought the various Iranian speaking peoples together in one political unit.” Indeed under the aegis of Islam “Sasanian, as well as Arab, influences came to Central Asia.”[31] And it was in Central Asia that “the first great flowering of Islamic Iranian culture occurred.”[32]
In addition to advancing Persian culture, the Iranian national revival shielded the other indigenous traditions of central Asia. By impeding the advance of Arab culture the Persian revivalists enabled other peoples of inner Asia to retain elements of their own culture in defiance of Arabism and even of some strictures of orthodox Islam. According to Lapidus in Inner Asia “Muslim spirituality … was tempered by a lively folk culture, which included secular entertainments by musicians, dancers, acrobats, jugglers, and gypsies. The populace also enjoyed tobacco, tea, and wine.”[33]
The logic of Persian cultural distinctiveness inevitably led to the triumph of schismatic Islamic doctrines in Iranian territory. In the 16th and 17th centuries, under the Safavid dynasty, Shi’ism emerged as the dominant sect in Iran.
The singular regard that ordinary Iranians have for their ancient pre-Islamic past survives to this day. In 1994 classical historian and documentary filmmaker Michael Wood followed in the path taken by Alexander the Great as he conquered an empire stretching from Greece to India. Wood entered Iran during the festival of Ashura, the time of lamentation when the streets were jammed with parades and passion plays. Carnival floats of figures from Iranian history were present in abundance; among them like a “fairy tale villain” was Iskender (Alexander). Wood noted that Iranians still quote the thousand year old words of the poet Firdawsi describing how Alexander crushed Iran. “The great defeat by Alexander has never been forgotten here…In few countries is the sense of the wounds of history so alive.” As he travels through the site where Alexander forced his way through a pass known as the Persian gates Wood observed that “the story of the battle is still told by the local people here; how the Persian hero Ariobarzanes tricked Alexander.” He has the following conversation with one of his local guides:
Wood: “How do you know these stories, Zavoreh?”
Zavoreh: “It’s a tale as they say here that has been passed from chest to chest.”
Wood: “So this is a story that has been handed down from grandfather to ------------------------------father to son; is it in these parts?"
Zavoreh: “Yes.”
Wood notes that even the guides are impressed by Alexander’s audacity. But then, chillingly, Zavoreh adds the following: “But if I had Alexander here now, I’d like to chop him into little pieces for what he did to Iran.”[34] It is also striking, though unsurprising, that the Iranians view Alexander as a devil, whereas in many Arabic and Turkish speaking regions, he is viewed as a romantic figure. This may be a survival of the legend of Alexander which was passed down to both, converted Muslims among the once Greek speaking conquered people, and to conquering nomads of the steppes who had a natural admiration for a renowned warrior. In Afghanistan, some tribes even believe that they are descended from Alexander’s Macedonians.
One additional effect of Iranian national assertiveness should be noted. It was one of a number of factors and events that impeded the advance of Islam; and this despite Islam’s adoption by the Persians. There can be no doubt that Persian cultural assertiveness slowed down the spread of triumphal Arabism into Asia during those crucial early centuries of the Arab conquests. Also, the schism within Islam and the dynastic rivalries spurred by Iranianism sapped the energy and diverted the resources that would otherwise have gone into further extensions of Islamic territorial conquests.
Iraq and Syria
In the territories of Iraq and Syria, expressions of the older national traditions were present, although in a much weaker form than in Iran. The Semitic speaking masses had been ruled for many centuries by elites speaking Persian in Iraq and Greek in greater Syria. Furthermore, the affinity of most of the population with the closely related Arab culture facilitated the adoption of Arabic language and mores. However, the ancient cultures were not totally consigned to oblivion. Iraq was subject to a series of revolts by schismatic Islamic sects which found strong support among the indigenous population. One such was Kharijism:
Iraq was visited by a steady succession of Khariji revolts … The Kharijis came into existence as a political movement in the 670s, and uprisings were still reported as late as 796 in more remote northern Iraq. Kharijism … is a variety of Islam and Arabs unquestionably predominated in these revolts. Nevertheless, mawali were also drawn to Kharijism …[35]
Later on “the Qarmati movement … sprang up at roughly the same time in eastern Arabia, southern Iraq, northern Iraq and Syria. As with the earlier Khariji revolts, a problem is posed by the mixture of Arab tribesmen and non-Arab peasants in the same movement, but the latter element was particularly evident in southern Iraq.”[36] The position of the Muslims as a small minority of the population motivated them to maintain their solidarity and cohesiveness in the first centuries. However, Bulliet contends that once Islam was well entrenched, this solidarity vanished. In the case of Iraq “following the point of 50 percent conversion in 882, there are again parallels with Iran. Instead of independent local dynasties, one encounters a progressive deterioration in the central governments ability to control the countryside.”[37]
In Syria, as in Iraq, submerged local nationalism found an expression, not only in the survival of Christianity, but more importantly in the emergence of highly unorthodox and even syncretistic Islamic sects. In fact, the number of dissenting Islamic movements was greater in the relatively small Syrian province than in many larger Muslim territories. The mountains of the Syrian coast and of Lebanon provided a convenient refuge in which both Christian and heretical Muslim sectarians were able to attain considerable autonomy. The mountainous redoubts in Syria is one example of the many cases where
heterodox Islamic sects have frequently made their strongest appeal to isolated populations previously unconverted or only nominally converted to Islam. The Zaidis in the mountains of northern Iran, the Fatimids in the mountains of western Tunisia, and the Almohads in the mountains of Morocco followed this line of development. Moreover, such heterodox sects not infrequently incorporated practices of non-Muslim origin to make them more appealing to the potential convert. The Bektashis in Anatolia and the pseudo-Muslim Berber religions of the Barghwata and of the prophet Ha-Mim in Morocco and Algeria afford examples of this tendency.[38]
Furthermore with specific reference to Syria:
In short, considering the Christian tone of some Druze and Nusairi beliefs, it is far more likely that the proselytizing efforts that produced these sects were deliberately aimed at a largely unconverted Christian population in the mountains of coastal Syria than that converts were made primarily among Muslims who subsequently took refuge in the mountains.”[39]
Cultural assertiveness in Syria also took on a decidedly political coloration. After the Abbasid revolution, Syrian nationalism expressed itself in loyalty to the recently deposed Umayyads who had made their capital in the province and, undoubtedly, incorporated many local Syrian particularities into their outlook. The otherwise orthodox Sunni Umayyad faction even developed a peculiar apocalyptic religious outlook based on their deposed dynasty. “In 752 a rising in Syria took place in support of the deposed Umayyad dynasty to which that province for long retained its loyalty. … the pro-Umayyad party began to speak of a Messianic figure of the Umayyad House who would … return to this world and establish a reign of justice.”[40] It did not take the ruthless Abbasid dynasty long to crush their opposition. The Syrian national revolt was subsequently transferred to Spain where the Syrian Muslims formed an important part of the Muslim elite; and these Syrian Muslims paved the way for the accession of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty.
Egypt and North Africa
In Egypt the local Christian Copts were a population more racially and culturally distinct from their Arab masters than were the indigenous populations of Syria and Iraq. So it was that Copts clinging for a long period of time to their Christian religion were the main guardians of the ancient pre-Arab culture. The first century of Abbasid rule witnessed frequent Coptic rebellions. However, these revolts were usually in alliance with better equipped and more warlike Arabs with grievances against their Abbasid overlords.[41] Unfortunately for the rebels Egypt, by virtue of its geography and unlike Iran and Syria, had no redoubts where carriers of the old nationalism, non-Muslims and Muslim heretics could hold out.
West of Egypt, the Arabs encountered more formidable opponents. The tribal Berbers resisted Arabisation, although, like their more civilized Persian counterparts they adopted Islam and enlisted in the armies of their Arab masters. They were less successful than the Persians in preserving their ancient traditions, possibly because they had no high culture or ancient glories to protect. However, their continued resistance also, undoubtedly, was one of the factors in constraining Arab expansion and keeping the Muslim hold on Spain weaker than it was elsewhere. Modern Arab historian Abun-Nasr points out that in “the countryside Berber remained the dominant language, and Islamic heterodox or even heretical doctrines had a special appeal as a means of rejecting the legitimacy of Arab rule”.[42] Indeed, although “some of the Berber population resisted the coming of Islamic rule … when they did become Muslims Khariji ideas spread among them.”[43]
Spain
In Spain the assertion of submerged national identity was carried on by a series of Christian martyrs who deliberately courted death by publicly blaspheming Islam. There were also a series of separatist revolts in the provinces led by neo-Muslims “who posed as nationalist champions”. One of them a “Moslem descendant of a Visigothic count” ultimately apostatized to the Christian faith of his ancestors. The independent Christian kingdoms of the north gave assistance to all such rebels whether Christian or Muslim.[44]
Anatolia
Despite the slow and painful Turkish conquest and the shifting of borders back and forth, Anatolia shows numerous pre-Islamic survivals among its large, once Byzantine, converted population. One expression of the Anatolian cultural spirit was in the peculiar syncretistic forms of Islam prevailing in many parts of the territory. By the time of the Turkish migrations Islam had lost completely its Arab ethnic exclusivity and enthusiastic proselytism was the order of the day. “The great extent of religious syncretism in Anatolian volksreligion is in part to be explained by the desire of the dervishes to convert the Christians.”[45] Some Christians “were prepared for assimilation … by the religious syncretism that tended to equate Islamic practices and saints with those of Christians.”[46] Sufi sects were notably active in spreading the word of Islam to the conquered Byzantines. In turn, their own teachings inevitably absorbed many Christian practices. In the Bektashi Sufi order
many doctrines and practices are similar to those of the Christians … It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that similar practices and doctrines existed because of the entrance of Christians into the order, and because of the close relations between Bektashis and Christians. … This syncretism, which so facilitated the conversion from Christianity to Islam, recalls the religious syncretism that had accelerated the transition from paganism to Christianity a thousand years earlier in Anatolia.[47]
Mawlawi dervishes were also active in converting non-Muslims and made members of the clergy a particular target. “The conversion of monks and priests was of critical importance, as they were the very bulwark of the Christian element against the eroding process of Islamization. Efflaki speaks of the conversion of monks … and of Jewish rabbis.”[48] The account of Mawlawi founder Rumi’s funeral “indicates quite clearly that a powerful process of religious syncretism was in dynamic motion by which Christians and Jews were accommodating themselves to this particular Muslim religious fraternity. The very syncretism and mutual accommodation of dervishes and Christians would eventually result in the absorption of a great many Christians through conversion.”[49]
As in other Islamic territories these unorthodox sects were occasionally foci of rebellion and unrest and even verged on the edge of complete apostasy. There was a rising in western Anatolia ca 1416 by Badr-al-Din and his followers who, among other things preached a communistic doctrine “and went even further by declaring the Christian and Muslim religions to be equally valid.”[50] Even centuries later at the height of the Ottoman Empire the authorities would find it necessary to take action against such dangerous Muslim-Christian syncretisms. One such “heretical sect was the Khubmesihis, who taught that Jesus was superior to Muhammad and seem to have been centered in Istanbul in the seventeenth century. … The sect was said to be inspired by the heretic Kabid who held similar views and was executed in 1527.”
The sons of Iran were ever mindful of their ancient national glory and never reconciled themselves entirely to the new regime. The Berbers vaguely expressed their tribal feeling and sense of difference by their readiness to embrace any schismatic movement. The people of Syria long expected the rise of a Sufyani to deliver them from the Abbasid yoke.[1]
The continued existence of distinctive pre-Islamic local traditions and regional patriotisms, even where the Islamic faith prevailed, served the important function of braking and diverting the expansion of Islam.
The Persians had, undoubtedly, more success in reasserting their ancient traditions than any other group that fell under the yoke of Islam’s nomadic vanguards. They did so by adopting Islam and eventually modifying it to suit their peculiar worldview. Other conquered national groups, in addition to the Persians, adopted Islam as a strategy to preserve something of their national distinctiveness although with less success. The closely related Kurds are one such group. The Berbers also quickly adopted the triumphant faith but had only partial success in avoiding Arabization. In Syria and Iraq the remnants of national consciousness was expressed by the rise of various schismatic groups, the most successful being the Shiites of Iraq.
Another region with a relatively successful record of preserving its previous culture was Spain. There, Christianity persisted in remote and rural regions and in the cities converted natives formed the nucleus of social discontent. “Secret Christianity” was widespread. These schismatic tendencies were perhaps stronger in Spain than elsewhere due to the persistence of Christian ruled enclaves in the north, paving the way for the ultimate end of Islamic rule in Spain. However, that was not the case for the other areas in the west of the Dar-al-Islam. It is generally true that “in the eastern part of the Islamic world, the coming of Islam did not submerge the consciousness of the past to the same extent as it did in the west.”[2]
The persistence of pre-Islamic civilization expressed itself strongly in the survival of ancient religious traditions which entered into local versions of Islam:
Springs, trees and stones which had been regarded as places of intercession or healing since before the rise of Islam or even of Christianity were sometimes holy to adherents of different faiths. Some examples of this have been noted in modern times: in Syria, the khidr, the mysterious spirit identified with St. George, was revered in springs and other sanctified places; in Egypt, Copts and Muslims alike celebrated the day of St. Damiana …[3]
These also survived in a more visible physical form. As Vryonis points out, the genetic markers of the different conquered populations differentially altered the racial character of the conquering warrior elite in the many areas conquered by the nomadic armies:
The physiognomy of the tribesmen evidently set them off as sharply from the indigenous population as did their peculiar society. It is quite probable that fusion with other groups such as the Kurds, or later with Christians and converts, gradually altered the physical type in many areas …[4]
Iran
As indicated above, Iran was the area in which the indigenous population most successfully asserted their national distinctiveness. It is the case that although “Islam has become the dominant cultural force, yet Iranian identity, rooted in its Zoroastrian past, has never quite conceded defeat.”[5] As biologist and physical anthropologist C. D. Darlington observes:
The Persians, who resisted hybridization, preserved their language. … The subtle intelligence of the defeated Persians overwhelmed the political strength of their Arab conquerors and gave a new twist to their artistic invention and also their religious enthusiasm. … The intelligence of the Persians expressed itself in the coming centuries in the characteristic art of the country. But it also expressed itself in their attitude to religion.[6]
If the Persians were to preserve something of their ancient culture they, unlike their longtime Byzantine rivals, had no alternative to working within the matrix of Islam. For “in the former Byzantine countries, prominent citizens had been able to flee to Constantinople and from there to redeem their captive compatriots, while the Iranians … whose country was entirely occupied, had little chance of flight nor had they a state at their disposal to ransom their people.”[7] Elements of the Iranian ruling class from very early in the era of Arab occupation converted to the religion of the conquerors. This was especially true in Iraq where “Iranians being an upper class minority of foreign origin before the Arab conquest, had less resistance to conversion than they had in Iran proper, presumably because joining the Arabs was a way of continuing a degree of social superiority over the Aramaic speaking majority of the population.”[8]
However, under the Umayyads, these Persian converts found the barriers to admission into the ruling class high. Continued discrimination in the first century of the conquest, as Karsh points out led to considerable resentment among the converts:
Even the pious caliph Umar II (717-20), who attempted to equalize the Mawali’s standing, was reputed to have taken a dim view of Muslims and Mawali intermarrying, and forbade Mawali from selling their lands to Muslims. Little wonder that this state of affairs turned the Mawali into an embittered and disgruntled group whose actions were to shake the empire to its core before too long.[9]
In the Persian regions, this resentment served to fuel the Abbasid revolution. In fact the Abbasid emissary and commanding general was “a man of obscure origin, probably of an Iranian family, Abu Muslim.”[10]
The Persians, having made the concession of adopting Islam were able, following the Abbasid revolution, to co-opt the machinery of the Muslim empire and turn it into an instrument to advance Persian culture into central Asia, India and, most of all, into the lands of their ancient Byzantine rivals. Under the Abbasids “Arab Islam succumbed to Persian influence; the caliphate became more a revival of Iranian despotism and less an Arabian sheikhdom. Gradually Persian titles, Persian wines and wives, Persian mistresses, Persian songs, as well as Persian ideas and thought won the day.”[11] Persian culture soon became the norm among the Arab population of the Abbasid regime. “With the intensification of interaction between conqueror and conquered, the Arabs adopted indigenous – especially Iranian – habits, manners and ways of life.”[12]
Even the bloodline of the Abbasid rulers became part Persian. Under the caliph al-Ma’mun Persian triumphalism reached new heights:
The Khurasanians accepted [Abbasid] al-Ma’mun as one of their own and because his mother was an Iranian, called him ’son of our sister’. The rebellion of Rafi’, which had begun because the distant government in Baghdad would not respond to protests against misrule in Khurasan had now lost its point and in 810 he surrendered himself to al-Ma’mun who pardoned him. The poets … soon began to represent al-Ma’mun and his vizier al-Fadl b. Sahl, a Zoroastrian until 806 as opponents of Arabs, and by extension, of Islam itself. One poet said of al-Ma’mun, ‘A power continuing that of Chosroes and his religion has gathered and the Muslims are humbled.’[13]
But while the Persians rose to positions of prominence as officials, scholars and even rulers of local dynasties, they were soon superseded in the Islamic world by tribesmen of more primitive culture and ferocious disposition. “Only with the accession in 833 of al-Mu’tasim did the Persian element in the caliphal armies take second place to newer groups, most prominent amongst which were Turks”.[14] It was the latter who, proving diligent students of their Persian teachers, carried Iranian-Islamic culture into India and into Byzantium ultimately conquering the capital of the Persians ancient enemy, Constantinople. In the words of historian of Iran Richard Frye, “though it was the Arabs who brought Iran and Central Asia together, the Turks were the principal agents for spreading … the Iranian version of Islamic culture to the west, even to Constantinople.”[15]
Despite the success certain elements of the Iranian elite achieved by adopting Islam, which then culminated in the Abbasid revolt, dissatisfaction with the new Islamic order festered for some time finding “expression in a series of religious movements in different parts of Persia”.[16] In 749 an ex-Zoroastrian, Bihafarid assumed the mantle of Prophethood. Sonpadh, who was a Mazdaki associate of the Abbasid mastermind Abu Muslim, rose in revolt in 755. Ustad Sis led a revolt of Zoroastrians in Badghis and although he was executed in 768 there was continuing unrest among his followers. Following Ustad, Yusuf ibn Ibrahim, executed in 778, led the Khurramdin sect which was characterized by a combination of Muslim and Zoroastrian doctrines. Murqanna, who claimed to be a reincarnation of Abu Muslim, seized Bokhara in 776; he was defeated and killed in 783.[17]
The centers of Iranian nationalism and continued anti-Muslim sentiment were the mountainous regions bordering the Caspian Sea. In this area the ancient religion of Zoroaster continued to seize the popular imagination. Apostasy was rife and when Islam finally secured a foothold in Tabaristan “sections of the local population emphasized their continued differentiation by adopting heterodox forms of the new faith”.[18] In Tabaristan as early as 700 the local ruler, the Ispahbad “under the pressure of new Arab attacks … agreed to pay tribute but succeeded in keeping the Muslims out of the country. When the ‘Abbasid revolutionary army reached Ray in 748 the Ispahbad Khurshid readily followed the invitation of Abu Muslim to transfer his allegiance and pay tribute to the new power.”[19] In 781 the rulers of Tabaristan, Tukharistan and Miyandurud “led a dangerous anti Muslim rebellion.”[20]
The following century saw further rebellion in the Caspian region by adherents of a Khurrami leader by the name of Babak. Zoroastrianism ultimately gave way to heretical Shi’ism as the expression of the Persian national spirit. The province of Dailam, in the remote Elburz Mountains which was home to many of Babak’s followers became a focus of revolutionary Zaidi Shi’ism. Revolution against Islam turned into revolution within Islam.[21] Another follower of Babak, Mazyar, King of Tabaristan and a converted Muslim led a revolt which became a social revolution against Islamicized landholders in 839. The caliph al-Mu’tasim “now recognized the danger of this rebellion to Islam” and cooperated with the Tahirids to put down the revolt. Another Babaki rebel leader following Mazyar was Mankjur who was also executed in 841. These rebels were accused “of apostasy from Islam and of a desire to see the Arabs and Turks abased and the ancient glories of Persia restored.”[22] The rulers of Tabaristan revived the use of ancient Persian titles. The adoption of titles such as Ispahbad “among the rulers seems … to attest the survival of Persian national sentiments”.[23] As late as the 10th century, Zoroastrian sentiments could still spark revolts in the Caspian region:
Mardavij ibn Ziyar, a potentate from the Caspian Sea province of Daylam … claimed to be none other than the biblical King Solomon … and spoke openly about reconstituting a great Zoroastrian Iranian empire. This grandiose plan failed to materialize as he was murdered by his Turkish mercenaries in 935.[24]
Thus was extinguished the last Zoroastrian hope of taking back Iran.
So it was that Iranians became reconciled to the permanence of the Islamic religion and sought within the context of orthodox and eventually of heretical Islam to restore their national pride. Iranians made good use of their talents as poets in constructing pro-Persian and anti-Arab propaganda. One such propagandist was the notable Persian dissident, Bashhar ibn Burd, the son of an enslaved Persian aristocrat who was charged with heresy and imprisoned. He was an accomplished poet and “did not miss an opportunity to glorify the memories of ancient Iran. He did not have a high opinion of the Arabs.”[25]
With the advent of the late ninth century Saffarid dynasty “Persian panegyric poetry containing imagery drawn from the imperial Iranian past” first appeared.[26] It was under the subsequent Samanid dynasty that the Persian of the Sasanids, once again became the language of court life. Persian epic poetry chronicling the glorious days of the pre-Islamic shahs was once more cultivated under the patronage of high Samanid officials. These epic historical poems were finalized in the Shahname by Firdawsi before the year 999.[27] This remarkable renaissance marked the Iranians as almost unique among Muslim peoples “in having a strong, conscious link with its pre Islamic past.”[28]
Still another way that the “Persians saved their national pride” was by “claiming that the Prophet’s grandson Husayn married … a daughter of … the last Sasanian king of Persia.”[29] This is one more indication of the determination of the Persians to preserve their ancient culture. It distinguishes them from many other converts in the conquered territories who were busy inventing fake Arab genealogies for themselves. The Buyid sultans, an Iranian dynasty who wielded power in Baghdad over a puppet Abbasid caliph during the tenth century, carried this national resurgence forward another step by restoring Persian court ceremonial. And in an interesting historical sequel, their Seljuk Turk replacements became willing students of the Iranian traditions of their defeated Buyid rivals. As Bulliet observes:
The innovation of the Buyids was the use of the imperial regalia of the Sassanid Empire. A royal crown, the title Shahanshah … all these and more were utilized by the rude Buyid princes to legitimize their regime. … From that time onward Iran’s imperial past became wedded to her Islamic present to such a degree that the two titles adopted simultaneously by the Seljuk Turks when they conquered Iran were Sultan and Shahanshah.[30]
Thus, the Iranians made the best of the Islamic conquest. They burrowed in and managed to insinuate themselves into the fabric of Islam, thereby, preserving much of their national tradition. Moreover, they even managed to take advantage of the Islamic tide to spread their ancient culture beyond the old borders of the Sasanian Empire. In fact, it was the conquests of the Arabs that “brought the various Iranian speaking peoples together in one political unit.” Indeed under the aegis of Islam “Sasanian, as well as Arab, influences came to Central Asia.”[31] And it was in Central Asia that “the first great flowering of Islamic Iranian culture occurred.”[32]
In addition to advancing Persian culture, the Iranian national revival shielded the other indigenous traditions of central Asia. By impeding the advance of Arab culture the Persian revivalists enabled other peoples of inner Asia to retain elements of their own culture in defiance of Arabism and even of some strictures of orthodox Islam. According to Lapidus in Inner Asia “Muslim spirituality … was tempered by a lively folk culture, which included secular entertainments by musicians, dancers, acrobats, jugglers, and gypsies. The populace also enjoyed tobacco, tea, and wine.”[33]
The logic of Persian cultural distinctiveness inevitably led to the triumph of schismatic Islamic doctrines in Iranian territory. In the 16th and 17th centuries, under the Safavid dynasty, Shi’ism emerged as the dominant sect in Iran.
The singular regard that ordinary Iranians have for their ancient pre-Islamic past survives to this day. In 1994 classical historian and documentary filmmaker Michael Wood followed in the path taken by Alexander the Great as he conquered an empire stretching from Greece to India. Wood entered Iran during the festival of Ashura, the time of lamentation when the streets were jammed with parades and passion plays. Carnival floats of figures from Iranian history were present in abundance; among them like a “fairy tale villain” was Iskender (Alexander). Wood noted that Iranians still quote the thousand year old words of the poet Firdawsi describing how Alexander crushed Iran. “The great defeat by Alexander has never been forgotten here…In few countries is the sense of the wounds of history so alive.” As he travels through the site where Alexander forced his way through a pass known as the Persian gates Wood observed that “the story of the battle is still told by the local people here; how the Persian hero Ariobarzanes tricked Alexander.” He has the following conversation with one of his local guides:
Wood: “How do you know these stories, Zavoreh?”
Zavoreh: “It’s a tale as they say here that has been passed from chest to chest.”
Wood: “So this is a story that has been handed down from grandfather to ------------------------------father to son; is it in these parts?"
Zavoreh: “Yes.”
Wood notes that even the guides are impressed by Alexander’s audacity. But then, chillingly, Zavoreh adds the following: “But if I had Alexander here now, I’d like to chop him into little pieces for what he did to Iran.”[34] It is also striking, though unsurprising, that the Iranians view Alexander as a devil, whereas in many Arabic and Turkish speaking regions, he is viewed as a romantic figure. This may be a survival of the legend of Alexander which was passed down to both, converted Muslims among the once Greek speaking conquered people, and to conquering nomads of the steppes who had a natural admiration for a renowned warrior. In Afghanistan, some tribes even believe that they are descended from Alexander’s Macedonians.
One additional effect of Iranian national assertiveness should be noted. It was one of a number of factors and events that impeded the advance of Islam; and this despite Islam’s adoption by the Persians. There can be no doubt that Persian cultural assertiveness slowed down the spread of triumphal Arabism into Asia during those crucial early centuries of the Arab conquests. Also, the schism within Islam and the dynastic rivalries spurred by Iranianism sapped the energy and diverted the resources that would otherwise have gone into further extensions of Islamic territorial conquests.
Iraq and Syria
In the territories of Iraq and Syria, expressions of the older national traditions were present, although in a much weaker form than in Iran. The Semitic speaking masses had been ruled for many centuries by elites speaking Persian in Iraq and Greek in greater Syria. Furthermore, the affinity of most of the population with the closely related Arab culture facilitated the adoption of Arabic language and mores. However, the ancient cultures were not totally consigned to oblivion. Iraq was subject to a series of revolts by schismatic Islamic sects which found strong support among the indigenous population. One such was Kharijism:
Iraq was visited by a steady succession of Khariji revolts … The Kharijis came into existence as a political movement in the 670s, and uprisings were still reported as late as 796 in more remote northern Iraq. Kharijism … is a variety of Islam and Arabs unquestionably predominated in these revolts. Nevertheless, mawali were also drawn to Kharijism …[35]
Later on “the Qarmati movement … sprang up at roughly the same time in eastern Arabia, southern Iraq, northern Iraq and Syria. As with the earlier Khariji revolts, a problem is posed by the mixture of Arab tribesmen and non-Arab peasants in the same movement, but the latter element was particularly evident in southern Iraq.”[36] The position of the Muslims as a small minority of the population motivated them to maintain their solidarity and cohesiveness in the first centuries. However, Bulliet contends that once Islam was well entrenched, this solidarity vanished. In the case of Iraq “following the point of 50 percent conversion in 882, there are again parallels with Iran. Instead of independent local dynasties, one encounters a progressive deterioration in the central governments ability to control the countryside.”[37]
In Syria, as in Iraq, submerged local nationalism found an expression, not only in the survival of Christianity, but more importantly in the emergence of highly unorthodox and even syncretistic Islamic sects. In fact, the number of dissenting Islamic movements was greater in the relatively small Syrian province than in many larger Muslim territories. The mountains of the Syrian coast and of Lebanon provided a convenient refuge in which both Christian and heretical Muslim sectarians were able to attain considerable autonomy. The mountainous redoubts in Syria is one example of the many cases where
heterodox Islamic sects have frequently made their strongest appeal to isolated populations previously unconverted or only nominally converted to Islam. The Zaidis in the mountains of northern Iran, the Fatimids in the mountains of western Tunisia, and the Almohads in the mountains of Morocco followed this line of development. Moreover, such heterodox sects not infrequently incorporated practices of non-Muslim origin to make them more appealing to the potential convert. The Bektashis in Anatolia and the pseudo-Muslim Berber religions of the Barghwata and of the prophet Ha-Mim in Morocco and Algeria afford examples of this tendency.[38]
Furthermore with specific reference to Syria:
In short, considering the Christian tone of some Druze and Nusairi beliefs, it is far more likely that the proselytizing efforts that produced these sects were deliberately aimed at a largely unconverted Christian population in the mountains of coastal Syria than that converts were made primarily among Muslims who subsequently took refuge in the mountains.”[39]
Cultural assertiveness in Syria also took on a decidedly political coloration. After the Abbasid revolution, Syrian nationalism expressed itself in loyalty to the recently deposed Umayyads who had made their capital in the province and, undoubtedly, incorporated many local Syrian particularities into their outlook. The otherwise orthodox Sunni Umayyad faction even developed a peculiar apocalyptic religious outlook based on their deposed dynasty. “In 752 a rising in Syria took place in support of the deposed Umayyad dynasty to which that province for long retained its loyalty. … the pro-Umayyad party began to speak of a Messianic figure of the Umayyad House who would … return to this world and establish a reign of justice.”[40] It did not take the ruthless Abbasid dynasty long to crush their opposition. The Syrian national revolt was subsequently transferred to Spain where the Syrian Muslims formed an important part of the Muslim elite; and these Syrian Muslims paved the way for the accession of the Spanish Umayyad dynasty.
Egypt and North Africa
In Egypt the local Christian Copts were a population more racially and culturally distinct from their Arab masters than were the indigenous populations of Syria and Iraq. So it was that Copts clinging for a long period of time to their Christian religion were the main guardians of the ancient pre-Arab culture. The first century of Abbasid rule witnessed frequent Coptic rebellions. However, these revolts were usually in alliance with better equipped and more warlike Arabs with grievances against their Abbasid overlords.[41] Unfortunately for the rebels Egypt, by virtue of its geography and unlike Iran and Syria, had no redoubts where carriers of the old nationalism, non-Muslims and Muslim heretics could hold out.
West of Egypt, the Arabs encountered more formidable opponents. The tribal Berbers resisted Arabisation, although, like their more civilized Persian counterparts they adopted Islam and enlisted in the armies of their Arab masters. They were less successful than the Persians in preserving their ancient traditions, possibly because they had no high culture or ancient glories to protect. However, their continued resistance also, undoubtedly, was one of the factors in constraining Arab expansion and keeping the Muslim hold on Spain weaker than it was elsewhere. Modern Arab historian Abun-Nasr points out that in “the countryside Berber remained the dominant language, and Islamic heterodox or even heretical doctrines had a special appeal as a means of rejecting the legitimacy of Arab rule”.[42] Indeed, although “some of the Berber population resisted the coming of Islamic rule … when they did become Muslims Khariji ideas spread among them.”[43]
Spain
In Spain the assertion of submerged national identity was carried on by a series of Christian martyrs who deliberately courted death by publicly blaspheming Islam. There were also a series of separatist revolts in the provinces led by neo-Muslims “who posed as nationalist champions”. One of them a “Moslem descendant of a Visigothic count” ultimately apostatized to the Christian faith of his ancestors. The independent Christian kingdoms of the north gave assistance to all such rebels whether Christian or Muslim.[44]
Anatolia
Despite the slow and painful Turkish conquest and the shifting of borders back and forth, Anatolia shows numerous pre-Islamic survivals among its large, once Byzantine, converted population. One expression of the Anatolian cultural spirit was in the peculiar syncretistic forms of Islam prevailing in many parts of the territory. By the time of the Turkish migrations Islam had lost completely its Arab ethnic exclusivity and enthusiastic proselytism was the order of the day. “The great extent of religious syncretism in Anatolian volksreligion is in part to be explained by the desire of the dervishes to convert the Christians.”[45] Some Christians “were prepared for assimilation … by the religious syncretism that tended to equate Islamic practices and saints with those of Christians.”[46] Sufi sects were notably active in spreading the word of Islam to the conquered Byzantines. In turn, their own teachings inevitably absorbed many Christian practices. In the Bektashi Sufi order
many doctrines and practices are similar to those of the Christians … It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that similar practices and doctrines existed because of the entrance of Christians into the order, and because of the close relations between Bektashis and Christians. … This syncretism, which so facilitated the conversion from Christianity to Islam, recalls the religious syncretism that had accelerated the transition from paganism to Christianity a thousand years earlier in Anatolia.[47]
Mawlawi dervishes were also active in converting non-Muslims and made members of the clergy a particular target. “The conversion of monks and priests was of critical importance, as they were the very bulwark of the Christian element against the eroding process of Islamization. Efflaki speaks of the conversion of monks … and of Jewish rabbis.”[48] The account of Mawlawi founder Rumi’s funeral “indicates quite clearly that a powerful process of religious syncretism was in dynamic motion by which Christians and Jews were accommodating themselves to this particular Muslim religious fraternity. The very syncretism and mutual accommodation of dervishes and Christians would eventually result in the absorption of a great many Christians through conversion.”[49]
As in other Islamic territories these unorthodox sects were occasionally foci of rebellion and unrest and even verged on the edge of complete apostasy. There was a rising in western Anatolia ca 1416 by Badr-al-Din and his followers who, among other things preached a communistic doctrine “and went even further by declaring the Christian and Muslim religions to be equally valid.”[50] Even centuries later at the height of the Ottoman Empire the authorities would find it necessary to take action against such dangerous Muslim-Christian syncretisms. One such “heretical sect was the Khubmesihis, who taught that Jesus was superior to Muhammad and seem to have been centered in Istanbul in the seventeenth century. … The sect was said to be inspired by the heretic Kabid who held similar views and was executed in 1527.”