A History of the Muslim World to 1405: The Making of a Civilization Read online

  A HISTORY OF THE MUSLIM WORLD TO 1405

  THE MAKING OF A CIVILIZATION

  VERNON O. EGGER

  Georgia Southern University

  First published 2004 by Pearson Education, Inc.

  Published 2016 by Routledge

  2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

  711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

  Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

  Cover Design: Jayne Conte

  Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and reproduced, with permission, in this textbook appear on page 327.

  Copyright © 2004 Taylor & Francis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

  Notices

  Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Egger, Vernon

    A history of the Muslim world, to 1405 / Vernon Egger

     p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN-13: 978-0-13-098389-3 (pbk)

    1. Civilization, Islamic. 2. Islam—History. I. Title

    DS36.85.E34 2004

    909′.097671—dc21

  2003052833

  Contents

  PREFACE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND DATING

  PART ONE

  The Formative Period, 610–950

  1.

  ORIGINS

  Southwestern Asia in the Seventh Century

  The Byzantine Empire

  The Sasanian Empire

  The Arabian Peninsula

  The Rise of Islam

  The Meccan Environment

  Muhammad

  A Framework for a New Community

  Conclusion

  NOTES

  FURTHER READING

  2.

  ARAB IMPERIALISM

  Arab Conquests

  Arabia and the Fertile Crescent

  Iran

  North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula

  Central Asia and the Indus River Valley

  Umayyad Administration

  The Caliphate

  The Administration of Non-Muslims

  The Administration of Muslims

  Arab Warriors

  Non-Arab Converts

  Regulating Women’s Roles

  The Rationalization of Society

  Dissolution of the Arab Empire

  Conclusion

  NOTES

  FURTHER READING

  3.

  THE DEVELOPMENT OF SECTARIANISM

  ‘Ali and the Politics of Division

  Political Dissension

  ‘Ali’s Caliphate: Shi‘ites and Kharijites

  Karbala

  The Abbasid Revolution

  Shi’ite Identities

  The Ghulat and the Zaydis

  The Husayni Alids

  The Centrality of Muhammad al-Baqir and Ja‘far al-Sadiq

  The Imamis

  The Isma‘ilis

  The Shi‘ite Movement

  The Sunni Consensus

  Conclusion

  FURTHER READING

  4.

  THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD: THREE CALIPHATES

  The Abbasid Caliphate

  The Early Period

  Military and Economic Problems

  The Assertion of Regional Autonomy

  The Fatimid Caliphate

  Isma‘ili Activism

  A Second Caliphate in the Umma

  The Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba

  The Consolidation of Umayyad Power

  A Third Caliphate in the Umma

  Economic Networks

  A Single Economy

  Overland Trade

  Maritime Commerce

  Conclusion

  NOTES

  FURTHER READING

  5.

  SYNTHESIS AND CREATIVITY

  The Origins of Islamic Law

  Assimilation and Adaptation

  Groping Toward an Islamic Jurisprudence

  The Development of the Shari‘a

  The Synthesis of al-Shafi‘i

  Consolidation of the Madhhabs

  The Impact of the Shari‘a

  Early Sufism

  The Contemplative Life

  Testing the Limits of Transcendence

  The Accommodation of Sufism

  The Reception of Science and Philosophy

  Science (“Natural Philosophy”)

  Philosophy

  The Development of an Islamic Theology

  The Reception of Rationalism

  The Critique of Rationalism

  Conclusion

  NOTES

  FURTHER READING

  PART TWO

  A Civilization Under Siege, 950–1260

  6.

  FILLING THE VACUUM OF POWER, 950–1100

  The Buyid Sultanate

  The Advent of the Turks

  Origins

  The Saljuq Invasion

  The Great Saljuqs and the Saljuqs of Rum

  The Fatimid Empire

  The Conquest of Egypt and Palestine

  Religious Policies

  The New Egyptian Economy

  Ominous Developments

  The Nizaris (“Assassins”)

  The Muslim West

  Norman Invasions of Muslim Territory

  The “Hilali Invasion” of Ifriqiya

  A Berber Empire

  The Collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of Andalus

  The Incorporation of Andalus into the Maghrib

  Conclusion

  FURTHER READING

  7.

  BARBARIANS AT THE GATES, 1100–1260

  The Period of the Crusades

  The First Crusade

  The Franks on the Defensive

  The Loss of Andalus

  Provisional Solutions: The Great Berber Empires

  The Disintegration of the Almohads and of Andalus

  Realignment in the East

  The Collapse of the Great Saljuqs

  Sunni–Nizari Rapprochement

  The Mongol Campaigns

  Conclusion

  FURTHER READING

  8.

  THE CONSOLIDATION OF TRADITIONS

  Science and Philosophy

  Mathematics and the Natural Sciences

  Philosophy

  The Sunni Resolution to the Tension between Reason and Revelation

  Consolidating Institutions: Sufism

  The Emergence of Lodges and Tariqas

  Speculative Mysticism

  Consolidating Institutions: Shi‘ism

  Twelver Shi‘ites

  The Isma‘ilis

  The Impact of “The Foreign Sciences” and Jurisprudence

  The Transmission of Knowledge

  Schools

  The Legacy to Europe

  ENGLISH WORDS DERIVED FROM ARABIC

  Conclusion

  NOTES

  FURTHER READING

  9.

  THE MUSLIM COMMONWEALTH

  Frontiers and Identities

  Frontiers Defining the Dar al-Islam

&n
bsp; Frontiers within the Dar al-Islam

  Identities

  The City and the Countryside

  The City

  The Countryside

  Conversion to Islam

  A Muslim Minority

  The Pace of Conversion Quickens

  The Issue of Authority in the Muslim World

  Conclusion

  NOTES

  FURTHER READING

  PART THREE

  Mongol Hegemony, 1260–1405

  10.

  THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION

  The Mongol Khan

  The Qipchaq Khanate

  The Il-khanate

  The Chaghatay Khanate

  New Centers of Islamic Culture

  The Mamluke Empire

  The Delhi Sultanate

  The Ottoman Sultanate

  Scourges

  Plague

  Timur Lang

  Conclusion

  FURTHER READING

  11.

  UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN ISLAMIC TRADITIONS

  Intellectual Life in the Fourteenth Century

  The End of the “Golden Age”?

  Against All Odds

  Ibn Taymiya

  Ibn al-Shatir

  Ibn Khaldun

  Hafez

  Ibn Battuta

  Law

  The Queen of the Sciences

  The “Closing of the Gate of Ijtihad”?

  The Varieties of Religious Expression

  “Orthodoxy” and “Heterodoxy”

  The Proliferation of Sufi Groups

  Sufism Triumphant

  Sufism as Social Critique

  Sufism, Syncretism, and Shi‘ism

  Conclusion

  FURTHER READING

  GLOSSARY

  INDEX

  DOCUMENTS

  Chapter 1

  Confronting the Death of the Prophet

  Chapter 2

  The Arrival of al-Hajjaj in Kufa (694–695)

  Chapter 3

  The Rightful Caliph: The Shi‘ite Version

  Chapter 4

  A Commercial City in the Mediterranean

  Chapter 5

  Hadith: Guides to Living

  Chapter 6

  The Birth of Rostam

  Chapter 7

  Franks through Muslim Eyes

  Chapter 8

  A Handbook for Sufi Novices

  Chapter 9

  Jihad in the Shari‘a

  Chapter 10

  In the Presence of Timur

  Chapter 11

  The People’s Poet

  MAPS

  Map 1-1

  Western Asia and the Mediterranean on the Eve of Islam

  Map 2-1

  Arab Conquests, 632–750

  Map 3-1

  The Age of Sectarian Development, 650–950

  Map 4-1

  Political Fragmentation of the Umma, to 950

  Map 4-2

  The Tenth-century Muslim Trading Zone

  Map 6-1

  The Eastern Muslim World, 950–1030

  Map 6-2

  The Muslim World, Late Eleventh Century

  Map 7-1

  The Western Muslim World, 1100–1260

  Map 7-2

  The Muslim East, 1200–1260

  Map 10-1

  The Mongol Empire, ca. 1300

  Map 10-2

  The Eastern Muslim World, Late Fourteenth Century

  TABLES

  Chapter 3

  The Early Alids and Abbasids

  Chapter 8

  The Isma‘ili (Sevener) and Imami (Twelver) Shi‘a

  Preface

  This book is an introduction to the history of the Muslim world for readers with little or no knowledge of the subject. I use the term Muslim rather than Islamic because this is a study of the history made by the Muslim peoples rather than a history of the religion of Islam. It is important to make a distinction between Muslim and Islamic—properly speaking, Islamic should refer to elements of the religion, while Muslim relates to the adherents of the religion. Thus, not all customs followed by Muslims are Islamic, and although a mosque is an example of Islamic architecture, a palace is not. A generation ago, the great scholar Marshall Hodgson wrestled with this problem and coined the term Islamicate to describe the cultural features of Muslim societies that were not strictly religious, such as secular architecture. The term has not gained widespread acceptance, and this book will avoid it.

  If the distinction between Islamic and Muslim seems strained, suppose that someone said that the White House is an example of Christian architecture because a Christian designed it, or that Bastille Day is a Christian holiday, since it is celebrated in a country with a Christian majority. No one is tempted to make such assertions, and yet they are equivalent to speaking of Islamic palaces or Islamic medicine, as many historians do. Much of the history related in this book is not directly related to Islam, and so it is more appropriately called Muslim history.

  The phrase Muslim world, as used in this book, refers to regions ruled by Muslimdominated governments, as well as areas in which the Muslim population is a majority or an influential minority. For several decades in the seventh century, the Muslim world was coterminous with the region often referred to today as the Middle East, but it soon expanded far beyond that heartland. By the tenth century, many of the most important cultural developments in the Muslim world were taking place outside the Middle East. The size of the Muslim world has alternately expanded and contracted over time, and we will be concerned to see how and why that has happened.

  The themes of the book are tradition and adaptation. The history of any society is one of the preservation of core values and practices, but also one of adaptation to changing conditions. Muslims follow a religion that is strongly anchored in both scripture and authoritative codes of behavior and are conditioned to adhere closely to the canon of their religious tradition. On the other hand, from the very beginning of their history, Muslims have found ways to adapt elements of their faith to their culture, as well as to adapt their cultural values and practices to the core of their faith. Islam is no more of a homogeneous world religion than is Christianity or Judaism.

  The themes of tradition and adaptation allow us to make sense of some important issues in Muslim history. By being aware of the premium placed on faithfulness to the scriptures, we can understand more clearly how Muslims were able to maintain a common sense of identity throughout the wide expanse of the world in which they settled. Further, we can more readily appreciate why Muslims have accepted certain features of alien cultures and rejected others. From the first century of the Islamic calendar, when Muslims were having to decide how to administer a huge majority of non-Muslims in the former Byzantine and Sasanian empires, until today, when many Muslims are concerned about the impact of a secular, global economy on their heritage, the tension between adherence to tradition on the one hand and adaptation to changing conditions on the other has been at the center of Muslim concerns.

  This book treats economic, political, intellectual, and social developments over a wide area and across many centuries. Of these topics, the intellectual and political developments receive more attention than social and economic history. The study of the social history of the Muslim world is in its infancy. Therefore, it is not possible at this point to write the history of the daily lives of ordinary men and women in large areas of the Muslim world. Economic history tends to stress connections among areas of the world, which is why it is a popular theme in the field of world history. The motif of connections and of global integration that economic history can convey runs throughout this book as a powerful undercurrent. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, however, I am convinced that our awareness of connections in Muslim history needs to be balanced by an awareness of diversity and discontinuities. Troubling stereotypes of Islam and of Muslims loom large in our culture and can be modified only by our becoming aware of the diversity of religious and political expressions
within the Muslim world.

  A widely held assumption in our society is that Islam is a crystallized artifact from the seventh century—or, at best, from the tenth or eleventh century, when Islamic law is often said to have stopped developing. It is important to be aware of the important stages in the historical development of Islam and to realize that critical periods in history have encouraged Muslims to be either flexible or inflexible in their reception of new ideas. It is also important to be aware of the varieties of expression of Islam. Many generalizations about Islam are actually applicable only to Sunni Islam, and even then, to the Sunni Islam practiced in certain countries, not to regions in other parts of the world. The history of Shi‘ite Islam is usually ignored—or recognized only in passing. Shi‘ites have played a major role in history and should be recognized for having done so.

  Another widely held stereotype is that Muslims form a monolithic, homogeneous mass that acts in concert on given issues. In recent years, this assumption has given rise to the notion that “Islam” and “the West” are on the eve of a “clash of civilizations.” According to this theory, when Muslims in one area have a grievance against “the West,” other Muslim groups will come to their aid on the basis of their civilizational “kin.” The impression of a monolithic Muslim world is reinforced by the fact that many world history books discuss the Abbasid caliphate (750–1258) as though it were an empire that united the great majority of the world’s Muslims of that age, leaving the impression that Muslims have a history of political unity. Even the textbook discussions of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals rarely note their great differences. The fact is that Muslim political unity was shattered in the third decade after the Prophet’s death. There have been numerous Muslim political entities ever since then. Not only have conflicting interests divided them, but Muslim states have also frequently allied with Christian, Hindu, or other states against fellow Muslims.

  Just as intellectuals prior to the seventeenth century thought that the universe possessed different physical properties from those on earth, so have historians and political theorists often treated Muslim history as different in kind from the history of the rest of the world. This book attempts to show through an examination of their history that Muslims are an integral part of the world community and have functioned as other human beings have under similar conditions.

  Acknowledgments

  This project has taken much longer than I anticipated when I began it with a naive expectation that it would require a couple of years to fill in the gaps in my lecture notes. Gaps, indeed. The book relies almost entirely on the work of other scholars. I have listed the sources that I have found most valuable—and that I recommend to other readers—at the end of the relevant chapters. I wish to express my appreciation to the members of the staff of the Interlibrary Loan office of the Henderson Library at Georgia Southern University for their consistently excellent help, and to the Faculty Research Committee and the Faculty Development Committee for making it possible for me to devote several months to full-time research and writing on this project.