Islam: a thousand years of faith and power
By Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair
Yale University Press, 2002, £9.99
Reviewed by Manny Thain
ISLAM IS the fastest growing religion in the US and rivals
Christianity worldwide: "‘They’ are now ‘us’," is how Jonathan
Bloom and Sheila Blair put it. They call for a greater understanding of Islam in
the West and denounce the victimisation of Muslims in the wake of 11 September.
Bloom and Blair cover over one thousand years of human
history in 250 pages. They describe rather than analyse, outlining how Islam
rose from its oasis base to an imperial religion. They show that Islam has
adapted to different conditions. It has been used by the ruling class to
consolidate power and as a means of expression by the oppressed.
Muhammad was born around 570 into one of the clans of the
Quraysh – an Arab tribe based around Mecca, a trading centre. To the north and
east were the two superpowers: the Christian Byzantine empire and the
Zoroastrian Sasanian empire in Persia. Aged around 40 years, Muhammad began
attracting followers after claiming that the angel Gabriel had revealed God’s
message to him. He criticised the traditional polytheist religions, falling foul
of tribal leaders, and was forced out with a small band of followers. They
settled in Medina, 280 miles north. (The Muslim calendar begins on the first day
of the first lunar month of the year in which Muhammad arrived in Medina – 16
July 622.)
Central to Islam are God’s revelations to Muhammad, known
collectively as the Qur’an (recitation). Considered to be God’s actual
words, Muslims believe that the Qur’an can only be truly understood in Arabic.
This was important in developing a cultural and linguistic bond between
believers of all nationalities. Apart from the Qur’an, Muslims draw on the
hadith (traditions), which are examples of what Muhammad reportedly did or said.
Islam shares many prophets with Judaism and Christianity: Ibrahim (Abraham),
Musa (Moses), and Isa (Jesus), for example. According to Islam, Muhammad was the
last in the line of prophets and represents the perfection of the religion.
Muhammad died suddenly on 8 June 632. His death left open
questions on the nature of the religion, and who would succeed him. Under Abu
Bakr, the first khalifa (successor/caliph, 632-34), and Umar (the second),
Muslim forces conquered Arabia and Egypt, parts of Palestine and Western Iraq.
The Sasanian empire crumbled. By the early eighth century, the Islamic empire
stretched from North Africa to the Central Asian steppes and into Sind (now
Pakistan), an area larger than the empires of Persia, Alexander the Great or the
Romans.
Islam, however, was far from unified. There were – and
remain – bitter disputes over Muhammad’s succession which led to the
establishment of different Islamic factions. Both the third and fourth caliphs,
Uthman and Ali, were murdered by disaffected Muslims. Shiites argued that the
caliph should be descended from Muhammad but differences developed within Shiism
over who was the rightful seventh caliph.
By the mid-eighth century, the majority of Muslims were
known as the people of tradition and unity – Sunnis. They remain the
overwhelming majority today. Unlike the Shiites they did not endow the caliph
with spiritual authority. They considered him Muhammad’s political successor
who should enforce the doctrines expressed by the learned men, the ulema. By the
eleventh century four dominant Sunni schools had emerged.
Caliphs increasingly held power as the heads of dynasties.
The Umayyads (r 661-750) moved the capital to Damascus, better suited for a
large state machine. Its more centralised regime was modelled on Byzantine and
Persian kingdoms. Arab armies became regularly paid troops. Arabic, long the
language of religion, was extended into administration and finance. Standardised
coinage was introduced and public works undertaken. In 692 Abd al-Malik
commissioned the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem – a public announcement to Jews
and Christians that Islam was here to stay.
These were slave societies which need a constant supply of
labour and expansion into new areas. Maintaining control of the centre was an
endless battle and the relative strength of contending empires and regions
within empires ebbed and flowed.
From 749, the Abbasid dynasty was established. Persians took
over the administration with Turks in the army. A dominant military caste
evolved with the caliphs providing the regime religious authority. The new
capital, Baghdad, symbolised a period of relative peace, prosperity and cultural
progress: the so-called Golden Age of Islam (750-1250).
Bloom and Blair detail many of the technical achievements
which were far in advance of anything in Western Europe. In all spheres, from
the sciences to food to language, the influence of Islamic civilisation on
subsequent human culture is staggering. But this is a history of the ruling
class. Certainly, the phenomenal wealth amassed touched only a small minority.
The main cities boasted paved streets, running water and
sewerage systems. Urban caravansaries – secure resting places for merchants
– acted as wholesale markets and de facto consulates. Commerce was often
conducted on credit, to avoid transporting gold over long distances. The
Treasury of Knowledge was founded where writings in Syriac and Greek were
translated into Arabic, along with works of Persian and Indian science.
The use of numbers, imported from India, was known in late
eighth century Baghdad, spreading to Muslim Spain by the end of the tenth and
from there into the Christian world. Muslim scholars developed algebra and
calculated the circumference of the earth to within 41 metres. Baghdad had over
800,000 inhabitants at its height in the Abbasid period and Cairo had around
400,000 in the fourteenth century. (Before the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth
century, Paris had a population of 210,000, Venice 180,000 and London 40,000.)
Infighting left the Middle East vulnerable to attack. On 27
November 1095, Pope Urban II launched the Crusades to reclaim Jerusalem. Within
three years, the city had fallen. Muslim and Jewish men, women and children were
slaughtered. A breakthrough for Muslim resistance came under Salah al-Din bin
Ayyab (Saladin), who consolidated Egypt and Syria under a Sunni caliph during
the 1180s. Jerusalem was taken on 2 October 1187, the anniversary of the miraj
– Muhammad’s ascension to heaven. There was no slaughter, but a ransom
levied on those wanting to leave.
After the Turco-Mongolian invaders took Baghdad in 1258
three main regional powers emerged: the Mongols in Iran/Iraq; Mamluks in Egypt
and Syria; and a series of dynasties in the Maghrib (North Africa).
The Maghrib occupies a special place in Islamic history. It
had been conquered from the Berbers in the seventh and eighth centuries. But,
because of its distance from the centres of Islamic power, it was always a place
apart, attracting non-conformists. Berber dissatisfaction was often mobilised to
overthrow regimes, by Sunni and Shiite groups alike. There were Muslim Berber
dynasties in Spain, Morocco and Senegal.
The greatest threat to Islam would come from the West. One
of the driving forces behind the voyages of Vasco da Gama and Christopher
Columbus et al was to gain direct control of Asian produce. Indeed, the final
blow to Mamluk power was the discovery of a sea route around Africa at the end
of the fifteenth century. In 1517 Cairo was easily taken by the Ottoman Turks,
who headed a new type of Islamic society where the state was the dominant
institution.
Bloom and Blair mention the sub-Saharan Islamic states and
the spread into India, where Islam had been especially successful converting
lower-caste Hindus – attracted by the promise that all believers were equal.
Merchants and missionaries took Islam to South-East Asia where it expressed
cultural identity and political resistance to Portuguese and Dutch rule.
The extraordinary economic and military power of Western
Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the exploitation of the
Americas, the formation of dynamic nation states, and the development of
capitalism enabled the European powers to dominate the world. Islam continued to
evolve. In the nineteenth century, attempts were made in Turkey, Egypt, Syria
and Iran to modernise Islamic societies to try and compete with Western
capitalism. That evolution continues. Bloom and Blair have sketched out the
reasons for the rise and fall of Islam as an imperial power, and its
continuation as one of the world’s two largest religions. They have provided a
well-researched introduction into a subject which demands further study.
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