Introduction
Arabia was the birthplace of the Islamic religion. Arabia would become the center of the Islamic world, and the source of renewal and inspiration for the faithful believers throughout an emerging Islamic empire.
Arabia before the birth of Muhammad had been a culturally isolated and economically underdeveloped region. The Arabian Peninsula is one-third the size of the continental United States. Most of the land is arid and desert; rainfall is scarce, vegetation scant, and very little of the land is suitable for agriculture. In the north of the region, several Arabic kingdoms were able to establish contacts with the Byzantine and the Persian empires as early as the fifth century A.D. To the south, small Arabic kingdoms, including Saba (Sheba), were ancient centers of Arabic civilization. But in the interior, dotted only with occasional oases, the nomadic life was the only successful existence.
The Bedouins
The nomads, or Bedouins, lived according to ancient tribal patterns; at the head of the tribe was the elder, or sheik, elected and advised by the heads of the related families comprising the tribe. Driven from place to place in their search for pastures to sustain their flocks, the Bedouins led a precarious existence. Aside from maintaining their herds, some relied on plunder from raids on settlements, on passing caravans, and on one another. The Bedouins enjoyed a degree of personal freedom unknown in more agrarian and settled societies. Sheiks could not always limit the freedoms of their tribesmen, who often rode off and hired themselves out as herdsmen or warriors if the authority of the tribe became too restrictive. The Bedouins developed a code of ethics represented in the word muru'ah or manly virtue. Far from brutishness and bragging, muru'ah was proven through grace and restraint, loyalty to obligation and duty, a devotion to do that, which must be done, and a respect for women. Bedouin women also enjoyed a great degree of independence. They were allowed to engage in business and commerce and conduct their lives without great restriction by the control of their husbands. The freedom and independence of Bedouins sprang from the realities of life in the desert, as did the values and ethics of the Arabs. One rule of conduct was unqualified hospitality to strangers.
The Bedouins of the seventh century lacked a unifying religious system. The Bedouins worshiped a large number of gods and spirits, many of whom were believed to inhabit trees, wells, and stones. Each tribe had its own gods, generally symbolized by sacred stones, which served as altars where communal sacrifices were offered. Although the Bedouins of the interior led a primitive and largely isolated existence, some parts of Arabia were highly influenced by the neighboring and more highly sophisticated cultures of Byzantium, Persia, and Ethiopia. By the later half of the sixth century Christian and Jewish residents were found throughout the Arabian Peninsula; their religious systems and philosophical positions probably had an influence on the Bedouin population.
Early Mecca
On the western side of the Arabian Peninsula is a region known as the Hejaz, or "barrier." The Hejaz rises from the western coastal plain from Yemen in the south to the Sinai Peninsula in the north. One of the oases in the Hejaz is Mecca, set among the barren hills fifty miles inland from the sea. This site had several advantages: Mecca possessed a well (the Zemzem) of great depth, and two ancient caravan routes met there. An east-to-west route ran from Africa through the peninsula to Iran and Central Asia, and a northwest-southeast route brought the spices of India to the Mediterranean world. Another significant advantage of Mecca was its importance as a religious sanctuary. An ancient temple, an almost square structure built of granite blocks, stood near the well of Mecca. Known as the Kaaba (cube), this square temple contained the sacred Black Stone, which was said to have been brought to Abraham and his son Ishmael by the Angel Gabriel. According to tradition, the stone, probably a meteorite, was originally white but had become blackened by the sins of those touching it. For centuries the Kaaba had been a holy place of annual pilgrimage for the Arabic tribes and a focal point of Arabic cultural and linguistic unity. The Kaaba itself was draped with the pelts of sacrificial animals, and supposedly held the images and shrines of 360 gods and goddesses.
Muhammad
Into this environment at Mecca was born a man who would change completely the religious, political, and social organization of his people. Muhammad (c.570-632) came from a family belonging to the Koraysh. His uncle, Abu Talib, a prominent merchant of Mecca, raised him.
Often he would escape from the society, which he considered too materialistic and irreligious, and spend long hours alone in a cave on nearby Mount Hira. During one such solitary meditation, Muhammad heard a call that was to alter the history of the world.
Quran
The Arabic word for "recitation" or "reading" is Qur’an, and we know the collected revelations given to Muhammad as the Koran. The revelations that continued to come over the next twenty years were sometimes terse and short, at other times elaborate and poetic. The early revelations did not immediately convince Muhammad that he was a messenger of God. In fact, his first reaction was fear and self-doubt. During his depressions brought on by fears over the source and nature of his revelations, he sought the comfort and advice of Khadija. As the revelations continued, Muhammad finally became convinced that the message he was receiving was the truth, and that he had been called to be a messenger of divine revelation. He came to think of himself and his mission as one similar to prophets and messengers who had preceded him in announcing the existence of the one God, Allah. Allah, "the God," was the same God worshiped by the Christians and Jews, but Allah had now chosen Muhammad to be his last and greatest prophet to perfect the religion revealed earlier to Abraham, Moses, the Hebrew prophets, and Jesus. The religion Muhammad preached is called Islam, which means surrender or submission to the will of God. The followers of Islam are called Muslims. The term Muslim refers to one who submits to God's law.
A complete written text of the Koran was produced shortly after Muhammad's death, with particular care taken to eliminate discrepancies and record only one standard version. This version was then transmitted to various parts of the new Islamic empire and used to assist in the conversion of unbelievers. The text of the Koran has existed virtually unchanged for fourteen centuries. The Koran was never to be translated from the Arabic for worship. Because the followers of Islam had to learn the Koran in Arabic, the spread of Islam created a great amount of linguistic unity. Arabic replaced many local languages as the language of daily use, and the great majority of the Muslim world from Morocco to Iraq is still Arabic-speaking. In addition, the Koran remains the basic document for the study of Islamic theology, law, social institutions, and ethics. The study of the Koran remains at the heart of all Muslim scholarship, from linguistics and grammatical inquiry to scientific and technical investigation.
The Five Pillars
Islam is united in the observance of the Five Pillars, or five essential duties, which all Muslims are required to perform as they are able.
1. The first obligation is a simple profession of faith, by which a believer becomes a Muslim.
2. Prayer (salat) is said five times a day in the direction of Mecca. Prayer can be given alone, at work, at home, or in the mosque.
3. A Muslim is required to give alms (zakat) to the poor, orphans, and widows, and to assist the spread of Islam.
4. Muslims are requested to fast (siyam) during the holy month of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. From sunrise to sunset, adult Muslims in good health are to avoid food and drink.
5. Finally Muslims are called to make a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca at least once in his or her lifetime, in the twelfth month of the Islamic lunar calendar.
Islamic Law
It is not possible to separate Islam from its law, because law in the Muslim community is religious by its nature. Islam is a way of life as well as a religion, and at its heart is the Sharia, or path, the law provided by Allah as a guide for a proper life. The Sharia gives the believers a perfect pattern of human conduct and regulates every aspect of a person's activities. Islamic law is considered to be established by God, and therefore unquestionably correct; God's decrees must be obeyed even if humans are incapable of understanding, since the Sharia is greater than human reason.
Islamic law, then, permeates all aspects of human conduct and all levels of activity - from private and personal concerns to those involving the welfare of the whole state. Family law is set forth in the Koran and is based on much earlier Arabic tribal patterns of development. Islamic law emphasizes the patriarchal nature of the family and society. Marriage is expected of every Muslim man and woman unless physical infirmity or financial inability prohibits it. Muslim men can marry non-Muslim women, preferably Christians or Jews, since they too are "People of the Book," but Muslim women are forbidden to marry non-Muslim men. The Koran had the effect of improving the status and opportunities of women in Islam, as opposed to the older and traditional Arabic patterns of conduct. Women can contract their own marriages, keep and maintain their own dowries, and manage and inherit property.
The Koran allows Muslim men to marry up to four wives, but polygamy is not required. Co-wives must be treated with equal support and affection. Many modern-day Muslims interpret the Koran as encouraging monogamy. For Islamic society as a whole, the law is considered to be universal and equally applied. Islamic law is considered to be God's law for all humankind, not only for the followers of Islam.
Islamic Empire
On the day of Muhammad's death, the question of leadership was solved by the democratic election of Abu Bakr, who became the prophet's first successor or caliph (from the Arabic khalifa). The caliph was regarded as the head of the Islam. Abu
Bakr, as the first Caliph, continued to incorporate Arabia into a region controlled by the political power of Medina. United by their faith in God and a commitment to political consolidation, the merchant elite of Arabia succeeded in consolidating their power throughout the Arabian Peninsula and began to launch some exploratory offensives north toward Syria.
Expansion Under The First Four Caliphs
During the reigns of the first four caliphs (632-661), Islam spread rapidly. The wars of expansion were also advanced by the devotion of the faithful to the concept of jihad. Muslims are obliged to extend the faith to unbelievers and to defend Islam from attack. The original concept of jihad did not include agressive warfare against non-Muslims. Jihad was directly responsible for some of the early conquests of Islam outside of the Arabian peninsula. The Islamic cause was also aided by political upheavals occurring outside of Arabia. The Muslim triumphs in the Near East can be partly accounted for by the long series of wars between the Byzantine and Persian empires. Earlier Byzantine victories had left both sides exhausted and open to conquest. Moreover, the inhabitants of Syria and Egypt, alienated by religious dissent and resenting the attempts of the Byzantine Empire to impose Christianity on the population, were eager to be free of Byzantine rule. In 636, Arab armies conquered Syria. The Muslims then won Iraq from the Persians and, within ten years after Muhammad's death, subdued Persia itself. The greater part of Egypt fell with little resistance in 640 and the rest shortly afterward. By the end of the reigns of the first four caliphs, Islam had vastly increased its territory in the Near East and Africa. The new conquests of Islam were governed with remarkable efficiency and flexibility. Unbelievers in the conquered territories became increasingly interested in the new religion and accepted Islam in great numbers. In addition to the obvious power of the religious message of Islam, the imposition of a personal tax on all non-Muslims encouraged many to become converts. Contrary to exaggerated accounts in Western Europe of the forceful imposition of Islam upon conquered peoples, Jews and Christians outside of Arabia enjoyed toleration because they worshiped the same God as the Muslims; many non-Muslims participated in the Islamic state and prospered financially and socially
The fourth caliph, Ali, who was the son-in-law of Muhammad, was devoted to Islam and convinced that leadership of the Islamic community should remain in the family of the prophet. The followers of Ali were later called Shii or Shiites (after Shiat-u-Ali, or "party of Ali"), and believed that the first three caliphs had been usurpers to legitimate power. Ali and his followers were opposed first by Muslims under the leadership of Muhammad's widow Aisha, daughter of Abu Bakr, and later by the forces of Muawiyah, the governor of Syria and a relative of the third caliph. In 661 Muawiyah proclaimed himself caliph, made Damascus his capital, and founded the Umayyad Dynasty, which lasted until 750. Thus the caliphate became in fact, although never in law, a hereditary office, not, as previously, a position filled by election. The followers who accepted the Umayyad rule were Sunni (people of the tradition). [Today 85% of Muslims are Sunni]
Umayyad Conquest
Umayyad military campaigns of conquest for the most part were highly successful. The Umayyad navy held Cyprus, Rhodes, and number of Aegean islands, which served as bases for annual seaborne attacks on Constantinople from 674 to 678. With the aid of Greek fire Constantinople was successfully defended, and the Arab advance was checked for the first time. Their advance ended in Asia Minor (Turkey).
Westward across North Africa, however, the Umayyad armies had much greater success. The Berbers, a warlike nomadic people inhabiting the land between the Mediterranean and the Sahara, resisted stubbornly but eventually converted to Islam. The next logical expansion for Islam was across the Strait of Gibraltar into the weak kingdom of the Visigoths in Spain. The governor of Muslim North Africa sent his general, Tarik, and an army across the Strait into Spain in 711. Seven years later the kingdom of the Visigoths completely crumbled. The Muslims advanced across the Pyrenees and gained a strong foothold in southwest France. However, they were defeated in the Battle of Tours in 732. Thus ended the conquests in Europe.
Umayyad dynastic power was the ruling class consisting of an Arab military aristocracy, who formed a privileged class greatly outnumbered by non-Arabic converts to Islam - Egyptians, Syrians, Persians, Berbers, and others. Many of these converted peoples possessed cultures much more advanced than that of the Arabs, and the economic and cultural life of the Arab empire came to be controlled by these non-Arab Muslims (mawali). Because they were not Arab by birth, they were treated as second-class citizens. High government positions were closed to them. They paid higher taxes than Arabs, and as soldiers they received less pay and loot than the Arabs. Resentment grew among the non-Arabic Muslims who objected to their lesser status as a violation of the Islamic laws of equality. Eventually the resentment of the mawali helped bring about the downfall of the Umayyads.
The Abbasid Dynasty
The Abbasid Dynasty (750-1258) built a new capital city, Baghdad. During the early Abbasid period Islam reached the high point of its geographical expansion and cultural achievements. Under the Abbasids, judges, merchants, and government officials were the new heroes. All Muslims regardless of ethnic background could now hold civil and military offices. Many Arabs began to intermarry with conquered peoples. The government became bureaucratic.
The Seljuk Turks
The Seljuk Turks were a nomadic people from central Asia. They converted to Islam and prospered as soldiers for the Abbasid caliphate. As the Abbasid grew weaker, the Seljuk Turks grew stronger. By 1055, a Turkish leader captured Baghdad and too control of the empire. His title was sultan. The Turks held military and political power and the Abbasid caliph held religious power.
The Crusades
As the world of Islam kept colliding with the Byzantine Empire fear and dislike grew. The Byzantine emperor Alexius I asked the Christian states of Europe for help against the Turks and Arab Empire, which was the beginning of a series of campaigns to recapture the holy lands and fallen Byzantine provinces from the Arabs.
