The Lost History of America’s

Modern Library Chronicles

DAVID BERLINSKI on

mathematics

RICHARD BESSEL on Nazi

Germany

ALAN BRINKLEY on the Great

Depression

IAN BURUMA on modern Japan

JAMES DAVIDSON on the Golden

Age of Athens

SEAMUS DEANE on the Irish

FELIPE FERNANDEZ-ARMESTO on

the Americas

LAWRENCE M FRIEDMAN on law in

America

PAUL FUSSELL on World War II in

Europe

JOHN LEWIS GADDIS on the Cold

War

MARTIN GILBERT on the Long

War, 1914-1945

PETER GREEN on the Hellenistic

Age

JAN T. GROSS on the fall of

Communism

ALISTAIR HORNE on the age of

Napoleon

PAUL JOHNSON on the

Renaissance

FRANK KERMODE on the age of

Shakespeare

JOEL KOTKIN on the city

HANS KUNGon the Catholic

Church BERNARD LEWIS on the Holy Land FREDRIK LOGEVALL on the

Vietnam War MARK MAZOWER on the Balkans

JOHN MICKLETHWAIT AND

ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE on the

company PANKAJ MISHRA on the rise of

modern India ANTHONY PAGDEN on peoples and

empires RICHARD PIPES on Communism

COLIN RENFREW on prehistory JOHN RUSSELL on the museum KEVIN STARR on California

ALEXANDER STILLE on fascist Italy CATHARINE R . STIMPSON on the

university NORMAN STONE on World War I MICHAEL STURMER on the

German Empire STEVEN WEINBERG on science

BERNARD WILLIAMS on freedom A. N. WILSON on London

ROBERT S. WISTRICH on the

Holocaust GORDON S. WOOD on the

American Revolution JAMES WOOD on the novel

ALSO BY KAREN ARMSTRONG

Through the Narrow Gate Beginning the World

The First Christian: St. Paul ? I m p a c t o n Christianity Tongues of Fire: An Anthology of Religious and Poetic Experience The Gospel According to W o m a n : Christianity? Creation o f the

Sex War in the West H o l y War The C r u s a d e s a n d Their I m p a c t o n Today’s W o r l d

The English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century Muhammad. A Biography of the Prophet

A History o f G o d The 4,000-year guest o f Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths In the Beginning A New Interpretation of Genesis The Battle for God A History of Fundamentalism

Buddha

ISLAM

KAREN ARMSTRONG

ISLAM A Short History

A M O D E R N L I B R A R Y C H R O N I C L E S B O O K

T H E M O D E R N L I B R A R Y

N E W Y O R K

2002 Modern Library Paperback Edition

Copyright © 2000,2002 by Karen Armstrong Discussion questions and pronunciation guide copyright © 2002

by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by

Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered

trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This work was published in hardcover and in slightly different form in the United Kingdom by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a division of The Orion Publishing Group, Ltd. and in the United States by

The Modern Library, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2000.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING — IN — PUBLICATION DATA

IS AVAILABLE

I S B N 0-8129-6618-X

Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com

Printed in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1

CONTENTS

List of Maps vii Preface I X

Chronology xiii

1 BEGINNINGS The Prophet (570-632) 3 The Rashidun (632-661) 23 The First Fitnah 3 3

2 DEVELOPMENT The Umayyads and the Second Fitnah 41 The Religious Movement 45 The Last Years of the Umayyads (705-750) 50 The Abbasids: The High Caliphal Period (750-935) 53 The Esoteric Movements 65

3 CULMINATION A New Order (935-1258) 81 The Crusades 93 Expansion 95 The Mongols (1 220-1 500) 96

4 ISLAM TRIUMPHANT Imperial Islam (1500-1 700) 115 The Safavid Empire 117

vi . Contents

The Moghul Empire 124 The Ottoman Empire 1 30

5 ISLAM AGONISTES The Arrival of the West (1 750-2000) 141 What is a Modern Muslim State? 156 Fundamentalism 164 Muslims in a Minority 1 76 The Way Forward 1 78

Epilogue 189

Key Figures in the History of Islam 193 Glossary of Arabic Terms 203 Pronunciation Guide 207 Notes 209 Suggestions for Further Reading 211 Index 219

Discussion Questions 229

I

MAPS

Muhammad’s world: Arabia c 610 C.E. 9

The Early Conquests 28

Expansion under the Umayyads 51

The Disintegration of the Abbasid Empire 82

The Seljuk Empire 89

The Crusader States in Palestine, Syria and Anatolia c 11 30 94

The Mongol World (during the reign of Hulegu,

1255-65) 99

The Safavid Empire (1500-1 722) 119

The Moghul Empire (1526-1 707) 126

The Ottoman Empire 131

PREFACE

The external history of a religious tradition often seems di- vorced from the raison d’etre of faith. The spiritual quest is an interior journey; it is a psychic rather than a political drama. It is preoccupied with liturgy, doctrine, contemplative disci- plines and an exploration of the heart, not with the clash of current events. Religions certainly have a life outside the soul. Their leaders have to contend with the state and affairs of the world, and often relish doing so. They fight with members of other faiths, who seem to challenge their claim to a monopoly of absolute truth; they also persecute their co-religionists for interpreting a tradition differently or for holding heterodox beliefs. Very often priests, rabbis, imams and shamans are just as consumed by worldly ambition as regular politicians. But all this is generally seen as an abuse of a sacred ideal. These power struggles are not what religion is really about, but an unworthy distraction from the life of the spirit, which is conducted far from the madding crowd, unseen, silent and unobtrusive. In- deed, in many faiths, monks and mystics lock themselves away from the world, since the clamour and strife of history is re- garded as incompatible with a truly religious life.

In the Hindu tradition, history is dismissed as evanescent, unimportant and insubstantial. The philosophers of ancient

X • Preface

Greece were concerned with the eternal laws underlying the flux of external events, which could be of no real interest to a serious thinker. In the gospels,Jesus often went out of his way to explain to his followers that his Kingdom was not of this world, but could only be found within the believer. The Kingdom would not arrive with a great political fanfare, but would de- velop as quietly and imperceptibly as a germinating mustard- seed. In the modern West, we have made a point of separating religion from politics; this secularization was originally seen by the philosophes of the Enlightenment as a means of liberating re- ligion from the corruption of state affairs, and allowing it to be- come more truly itself.

But however spiritual their aspirations, religious people have to seek God or the sacred in this world. They often feel that they have a duty to bring their ideals to bear upon soci- ety. Even if they lock themselves away, they are inescapably men and women of their time and are affected by what goes on outside the monastery, although they do not fully realize this. Wars, plagues, famines, economic recession and the in- ternal politics of their nation will intrude upon their clois- tered existence and qualify their religious vision. Indeed, the tragedies of history often goad people into the spiritual quest, in order to find some ultimate meaning in what often seems to be a succession of random, arbitrary and dispiriting inci- dents. There is a symbiotic relationship between history and religion, therefore. It is, as the Buddha remarked, our percep- tion that existence is awry that forces us to find an alternative which will prevent us from falling into despair.

Perhaps the central paradox of the religious life is that it seeks transcendence, a dimension of existence that goes be- yond our mundane lives, but that human beings can only ex- perience this transcendent reality in earthly, physical phenomena. People have sensed the divine in rocks, moun- tains, temple buildings, law codes, written texts, or in other

Preface • xi

men and women. We never experience transcendence di- rectly: our ecstasy is always “earthed,” enshrined in some- thing or someone here below. Religious people are trained to look beneath the unpromising surface to find the sacred within it. They have to use their creative imaginations. Jean- Paul Sartre defined the imagination as the ability to think of what is not present. Human beings are religious creatures be- cause they are imaginative; they are so constituted that they are compelled to search for hidden meaning and to achieve an ecstasy that makes them feel fully alive. Each tradition en- courages the faithful to focus their attention on an earthly symbol that is peculiarly its own, and to teach themselves to see the divine in it.

In Islam, Muslims have looked for God in history. Their sacred scripture, the Quran, gave them a historical mission. Their chief duty was to create a just community in which all members, even the most weak and vulnerable, were treated with absolute respect. The experience of building such a so- ciety and living in it would give them intimations of the di- vine, because they would be living in accordance with God’s will. A Muslim had to redeem history, and that meant that state affairs were not a distraction from spirituality but the stuff of religion itself. The political well-being of the Muslim community was a matter of supreme importance. Like any religious ideal, it was almost impossibly difficult to imple- ment in the flawed and tragic conditions of history, but after each failure Muslims had to get up and begin again.

Muslims developed their own rituals, mysticism, philoso- phy, doctrines, sacred texts, laws and shrines like everybody else. But all these religious pursuits sprang directly from the Muslims’ frequently anguished contemplation of the political current affairs of Islamic society. If state institutions did not measure up to the Quranic ideal, if their political leaders were cruel or exploitative, or if their community was humili-

xii . Preface

ated by apparently irreligious enemies, a Muslim could feel that his or her faith in life’s ultimate purpose and value was in jeopardy. Every effort had to be expended to put Islamic his- tory back on track, or the whole religious enterprise would fail, and life would be drained of meaning. Politics was, there- fore, what Christians would call a sacrament: it was the arena in which Muslims experienced God and which enabled the divine to function effectively in the world. Consequently, the historical trials and tribulations of the Muslim community- political assassinations, civil wars, invasions, and the rise and fall of the ruling dynasties-were not divorced from the inte- rior religious quest, but were of the essence of the Islamic vi- sion. A Muslim would meditate upon the current events of his time and upon past history as a Christian would contem- plate an icon, using the creative imagination to discover the hidden divine kernel. An account of the external history of the Muslim people cannot, therefore, be of mere secondary interest, since one of the chief characteristics of Islam has been its sacralization of history.

CHRONOLOGY

610 The Prophet Muhammad receives the first revelations of the Quran in Mecca and, two years later, begins to preach.

616 Relations between the Meccan establishment and Muhammad’s converts deteriorate; there is persecution and Muhammad’s position becomes increasingly unten- able in Mecca.

620 Arabs from the settlement of Yathrib (later called Med- ina) make contact with Muhammad and invite him to lead their community.

622 The Prophet together with some seventy Muslim fami- lies make the hijrah,or migration, from Mecca to Medina and the Meccan establishment vows revenge. The hijrah marks the beginning of the Muslim era.

624 Muslims inflict a dramatic defeat on Mecca at the Battle of Badr.

625 Muslims suffer a severe defeat at the hands of the Mec- can army at the Battle of Uhud, outside Medina.

The Jewish tribes of Qaynuqah and Nadir are expelled from Medina for collaborating with Mecca.

627 Muslims soundly defeat the Meccan army at the Battle of the Trench. This is followed by the massacre of the men of the Jewish tribe of Qurayzah, which had supported the Meccans against the Muslims.

xiv . Chronology

628 Muhammad’s daring peace initiative results in the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah between Mecca and Medina. He is now seen as the most powerful man in Arabia and at- tracts many of the Arabian tribes into his confederacy.

630 The Meccans violate the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. Muhammad marches on Mecca with a large army of Mus- lims and their tribal allies. Mecca recognizes its defeat and voluntarily opens the gates to Muhammad, who takes the city without bloodshed and without forcing anybody to convert to Islam.

632 Death of the Prophet Muhammad. Abu Bakr is elected his khalifah (representative).

632-34 The caliphate of Abu Bakr and the wars of riddah against tribes who secede from the confederacy. Abu Bakr manages to subdue the revolt and unite all the tribes of Arabia.

634-44 The caliphate of Umar ibn al-Khattab. The Muslim armies invade Iraq, Syria and Egypt.

638 The Muslims conquer Jerusalem, which becomes the third holiest city in the Islamic world after Mecca and Medina.

641 The Muslims control Syria, Palestine and Egypt; they have defeated the Persian Empire and, when manpower is available, will occupy its territories.

The garrison towns of Kufah, Basrah and Fustat are built to house the Muslim troops, who live separately from the subject population.

644 Caliph Umar is assassinated by a Persian prisoner of war. Uthman ibn Affan is elected the third caliph.

644-50 Muslims conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa and establish Muslim rule in Iran, Afghanistan and Sind.

656 Caliph Uthman is assassinated by malcontent Muslim soldiers, who acclaim Ali ibn Abi Talib as the new caliph, but not all accept Ali’s rule.

656-60 The first fitnah. Civil war ensues.

Chronology . xv

656 The Battle of the Camel. Aisha, the Prophet’s wife, Tal- hah and Zubayr lead a rebellion against Ali for not aveng- ing Uthman’s murder. They are defeated by Ali’s partisans.

In Syria the opposition is led by Uthman’s kinsman Muawiyyah ibn Abi Sufyan.

657 An attempt is made to arbitrate between the two sides at Siffin; when the arbitration goes against Ali, Muawwiyyah deposes him and is proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem.

The Kharajites secede from Ali’s camp. 661 Ali is murdered by a Kharajite extremist.

Ali’s supporters acclaim his son Hasan as the next caliph, but Hasan comes to an agreement with Muawiyyah and retires to Medina.

661-80 The caliphate of Muawiyyah I. He founds the Umayyad dynasty, and moves his capital from Medina to Damascus.

669 The death of Hasan ibn Ali in Medina. 680 Yazid I becomes the second Umayyad caliph on the

death of his father, Muawiyyah. 680-92 The second fitnah. Another civil war ensues. 680 The Muslims of Kufah, who call themselves the Shiah

i-Ali (the Partisans of Ali), acclaim Husain, the second son of Ali ibn Abi Talib, as caliph. Husain sets out from Med- ina to Kufah with a tiny army and is killed on the plain of Kerbala by Yazid’s troops.

Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr revolts against Yazid in Arabia. 683 Death of Yazid I.

Death of his infant son, Muawiyyah II. Accession of Marwan I, the Umayyad claimant to the

caliphate, who is supported by the Syrians. 684 Kharajite rebels against the Umayyads set up an inde-

pendent state in central Arabia. Kharajite uprisings in Iraq and Iran. Shii uprising in Kufah.

xvi . Chronology

685-705 Caliphate of Abd al-Malik, who manages to restore Umayyad rule.

691 Umayyad forces defeat the Kharajite and Shii rebels. The Dome of the Rock is completed in Jerusalem.

692 Umayyad forces defeat and kill Ibn al-Zubayr. As a result of the fitnah wars, a religious movement de-

velops in Basrah, Medina and Kufah; various schools cam- paign for a more stringent application of the quarah in public and private life.

705-1 7 Caliphate of al-Walid. Muslim armies continue the conquest of North Africa

and establish a kingdom in Spain. 717-20 Caliphate of Umar II. The first caliph to encourage

conversion to Islam. He tries to implement some of the ideals of the religious movement.

720-24 Caliphate of Yazid II, a dissolute ruler. There is widespread Shii and Kharajite discontent with Umayyad government.

724-43 Caliphate of Hisham I, a devout but more autocratic ruler, who also antagonizes the more pious Muslims.

728 Death of Hasan al-Basri, hadith scholar, religious re- former and ascetic.

732 The Battle of Poitiers. Charles Martel defeats a small raiding party of Spanish Muslims.

Abu Hanifah pioneers the study of fiqh. Muhammad ibn Ishaq writes the first major biography of

the Prophet Muhammad. 743 -44 The Abbasid faction begins to muster support against

the Umayyads in Iran, fighting under the banner of the Shiah.

743 Caliphate of Walid II, 744 -49 Marwan II seizes the caliphate and tries to restore

Umayyad supremacy against the insurgents. His Syrian forces suppress some of the Shii revolts, but:

Chronology . xvii

749 The Abbasids conquer Kufah and overthrow the Umayyads.

750-54 Caliph Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah, the first Abbasid caliph, massacres all the members of the Umayyad family. A sign of an absolute monarchy that is new to Islam.

755-75 Caliphate of Abu Jafar al-Mansur. He murders prominent Shiis.

756 Spain secedes from the Abbasid caliphate, setting up an independent kingdom under the leadership of one of the Umayyad refugees.

762 The foundation of Baghdad, which becomes the new Abbasid capital.

765 The death of Jafar as-Sadiq, the Sixth Imam of the Shiah, who urges his Shii disciples to withdraw on princi- ple from politics.

769 Death of Abu Hanifa, the founder of the first of the great schools of Islamic law.

775-85 Caliphate of al-Mahdi. He encourages the develop- ment of fiqh, acknowledges the piety of the religious movement, which gradually learns to coexist with the ab- solutism of the Abbasid dynasty.

786-809 Caliphate of Harun al-Rashid. The zenith of Ab- basid power. A great cultural renaissance in Baghdad and other cities of the empire. Besides patronizing scholarship, science and the arts, the caliph also encourages the study of fiqh and the anthologization of ahadith which will enable the formation of a coherent body of Islamic law (Shariah).

795 Death of Malik ibn Anas, founder of the Maliki school of jurisprudence.

801 Death of Rabiah, the first great woman mystic. 809-13 Civil war between al-Mamun and al-Amin, the two

sons of Harun al-Rashid. Al-Mamun defeats his brother. 8 13-33 Caliphate of al-Mamun. 814-15 A Shii rebellion in Basrah.

xviii . Chronology

A Kharajite revolt in Khurasan. An intellectual, a patron of arts and learning, the caliph

inclines towards the rationalistic theology of the Mutazi- lah, who had hitherto been out of favour. The caliph tries to reduce tension by wooing some of the rival religious groups.

817 Al-Mamun appoints al-Rida, the Eighth Shii Imam, as his successor.

8 18 Al-Rida dies, possibly murdered. A state-sponsored inquisition (mihnah) tries to enforce

Mutazilah views over those of the more popular ahl al- hadith, who are imprisoned for their doctrines.

833 Death of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, a hero of the ahl al-hadith, and the founder of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence.

833-42 Caliphate of al-Mutasim. The caliph creates his own personal corps of Turkish slave soldiers and moves his capital to Samarra.

842-47 Caliphate of al-Wathiq. 847-61 Caliphate of al-Mutawakkil. 848 Ali al-Hadi, the Tenth Shii Imam, is imprisoned in the

Askari fortress in Samarra. 861-62 Caliphate of al-Muntasir. 862-66 Caliphate of al-Mustain. 866-69 Caliphate of al-Mutazz. 868 Death of the Tenth Shii Imam. His son Hasan al-Askari

continues to live as a prisoner in Samarra. 869-70 Caliphate of al-Muhtadi. 870 Death of Yaquib ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, the first of the Mus-

lim Faylasufs. 870-72 Caliphate of al-Mutamid. 874 Hasan al-Askari, the Eleventh Shii Imam, dies in prison

in Samarra. His son Abu al-Qasim Muhammad is said to have gone into hiding to save his life. He is known as the Hidden Imam.

Chronology . xix

Death of Abu Yazid al-Bistami, one of the earliest of the “drunken Sufi” mystics.

892-902 Caliphate of al-Mutadid. 902-8 Caliphate of al-Muktafi. 908-32 Caliphate of al-Muqtadir. 909 Shii Fatimids seize power in Ifriqiyyah, Tunisia. 910 Death of Junayd of Baghdad, the first of the “sober

Sufis.” 922 The execution for blasphemy of the “drunken Sufi” Hu-

sain al-Mansur, known as al-Hallaj, the Wool-Carder. 923 Death in Baghdad of the historian Abu Jafar al-Tabari. 932-34 Caliphate of al-Qahir. 934-40 Caliphate of al-Radi. 934 The “Occultation” of the Hidden Imam in a transcen-

dent realm is announced. 935 Death of the philosopher Hasan al-Ashari.

From this point, the caliphs no longer wield temporal power but retain merely a symbolic authority. Real power now resides with the local rulers, who establish dynasties in various parts of the empire. Most of them acknowledge the suzerainty of the Abbasid caliphs. Many of these local rulers of the tenth century have Shii leanings.

The Samanids 874-999 A Sunni Iranian dynasty, the Samanids rule in

Khurasan, Rayy, Kirman, and Transoxania, with a capital at Bukhara. Samarkand is also an important cultural centre of a Persian literary renaissance. In the 990s the Samanids begin to lose power east of the Oxus to the Kharakhanid Turks, and in the West to:

The Spanish kingdom of al-Andalus 912-61 Rule of Caliph Abd al-Rahman III, an absolute ruler.

xx . Chronology

969-1027 Cordova a centre of learning. 1010 Central power weakens and petty emirates establish

local rule. 1064 Death of Ibn Hazm, poet, vizier and theologian. 1085 Toledo falls to the Christian armies of the Reconquista.

The Hamdanids 929-1003 Arab tribesmen, the Hamdanids rule Aleppo and

Mosul. Court patronage of scholars, historians, poets and Faylasufs.

983 Death of Abu Nasr al-Farabi, Faylasuf and court musi- cian at Aleppo.

The Buyids c. 930-1030 Twelver Shiis and mountain dwellers from Day-

lam in Iran, the Buyids begin to seize power in western Iran during the 930s.

945 The Buyids seize power in Baghdad, south Iraq and Oman.

Baghdad begins to lose its prominence to Shiraz, which becomes a centre of learning.

983 Buyid unit begins to disintegrate. They eventually suc- cumb to Mahmud of Ghaznah in Rayy (1030) and the Ghaznavids in the plateau areas of western Iran.

The Ikshids 935-69 Founded by the Turk Muhammad ibn Tugh, the Ik-

shids rule Egypt, Syria and the Hijaz.

The Shii Fatimids 969-1 171 (Originally established in Tunisia in 909) the Fa-

timids rule North Africa, Egypt and parts of Syria, estab- lishing a rival caliphate.

983 The Fatimids move their capital to Cairo, which be-

Chronology . xxi

comes a centre of Shii learning, and build the madrasah of al-Azhar there.

976-1 11 8 The Ghaznavids 999-1030 Mahmud of Ghaznah establishes a permanent

Muslim power in north India, and seizes power from the Samanids in Iran. A brilliant court.

1037 Death in Hamadan of the great Faylasuf Ibn Sina (Avi- cenna in the West).

990-1 11 8 The Seljuk Empire 990s The Seljuk Turkish family from Central Asia convert

to Islam. In the early eleventh century they enter Trans- oxania and Kwarazm with their cavalry of nomadic troops.

1030s The Seljuks in Khurasan. 1040 They take western Iran from the Ghaznavids, and enter

Azerbaijan. 1055 Sultan Togril-beg rules the Seljuk Empire from Bagh-

dad as the lieutenant of the Abbasid caliphs. 1063-73 The rule of Sultan Arp Arslan. 1065-67 The Nizamiyyah madrasah built in Baghdad. 1073-92 Malikshah rules the empire, with Nizalmulmulk as

vizier. The Turkish troops enter Syria and Anatolia.

1071 Seljuk troops defeat the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikurt, establish themselves in Anatolia, reaching the Aegean Sea (1080).

Seljuks war with the Fatimids and local rulers in Syria. 1094 Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asks Western

Christendom for help against the Seljuk infiltration of his territory.

1095 Pope Urban IIpreaches the First Crusade. 1099 The Crusaders conquer Jerusalem.

xxii . Chronology

The Crusaders establish four Crusader states in Pales- tine, Anatolia and Syria.

1090s The Ismailis begin their revolt against Seljuk and Sunni hegemony. Local Turkish dynasties start to arise in various parts of the empire.

111 1 Death in Baghdad of the theologian and legist al- Ghazzali.

11 18 Seljuk domains break up into independent principalities.

1118-1 258 Small dynasties now function independently, ac- knowledging the suzerainty of the Abbasid caliphate, but in practice bowing only to the superior power of a neigh- bouring dynasty.

1127-73 The Zangdid dynasty, founded by a Seljuk com- mander, begins to unite Syria in a riposte against the Cru- saders. Notable examples are:

1130-1269 The Almohads, a Sunni dynasty, attempt to re- form North Africa and Spain according to the principles of al-Ghazzali.

11 50-1 220 The Khwarazmshahs from north-west Transoxa- nia defeat the remaining small Seljuk dynasties in Iran.

1171-1250 The Ayyubid dynasty, founded by the Kurdish general Saladin, continues the Zanghid campaign against the Crusaders, defeats the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt, and converts it to Sunni Islam.

1180-1225 Al-Nasir, Abbasid caliph in Baghdad, attempts to use the Islamic fituwwah guilds as a basis for more effective rule.

1187 Saladin defeats the Crusaders at the battle of Hattin and restores Jerusalem to Islam.

1191 The Sufi mystic and philosopher Yahya Suhrawardi dies, possibly executed by the Ayyubids for heresy, in Aleppo.

1193 The Iranian Ghuid dynasty takes Delhi and establishes rule in India.

Chronology . xxiii

1198 Death in Cordova of the Faylasuf Ibn Rushd (known in the West as Averroes).

1199-1220 Ala al-Din Mahmoud, Khwarazmshah, deter- mines to create a great Iranian monarchy.

1205-87 A Turkish slave dynasty defeats the Ghuids in India and establishes the Sultanate of Delhi, ruling the whole of the Ganges Valley. But soon these smaller dynas- ties have to face the Mongol threat.

1220-31 The first great Mongol raids, with immense de- struction of cities.

1224-1391 The Golden Horde Mongols rule the lands north of the Caspian and Black Seas and convert to Islam.

1225 The Almohads abandon Spain, where Muslim power is eventually reduced to the small Kingdom of Granada.

1227 Death of the Mongol leader Genghis Khan. 1227-1358 The Chaghaytay Mongol Khans rule Transoxa-

nia and convert to Islam. 1228-1551 The Hafsid dynasty replaces the Almohads in

Tunisia. 1240 Death of the Sufi philosopher Muid ad-Din Ibn al-Arabi. 1250 The Mamluks, a slave corps, overthrow the Ayyubids

and establish a ruling dynasty in Egypt and Syria. 1256-1335 The Mongol 11-Khans rule Iraq and Iran and

convert to Islam. 1258 They destroy Baghdad. 1260 The Mamluk sultan Baibars defeats the Mongol II-

Khans at the Battle of Ain Jalut, and goes on to destroy many of the remaining strongholds on the Syrian coast.

1273 Death of Jalal al-Din Rumi, founder of the Whirling Dervishes, in Anatolia.

1288 Uthman, a ghazi on the Byzantine frontier, founds the Ottoman dynasty in Anatolia.

1326-59 Orkhan, Uthman’s son, establishes an independent Ottoman state, with its capital at Brusa, and dominates the declining Byzantine Empire.

xxiv . Chronology

1328 Death of the reformer Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah in Da- mascus.

1334-53 Yusuf, king of Granada, builds the Alhambra, which is completed by his son.

1369-1405 Timur Lenk (Tamburlaine) revives Chaghaytay Mongol power in Samarkand, conquers much of the Mid- dle East and Anatolia, and sacks Delhi. But his empire dis- integrates after his death.

1389 The Ottomans subdue the Balkans by defeating the Serbians at Kosovo Field. They go on to extend their power in Anatolia, but are overthrown by Timur Lenk in 1402.

1403-21 Afier the death of Timur, Mehmed I revives the Ottoman state.

1406 Death of the Faylasuf and historian Ibn Khaldun. 1421-51 Murad I asserts Ottoman power against Hungary

and the West. 1453 Memed II “the Conquerer” conquers Constantinople,

henceforce known as Istanbul, and makes it the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

1492 The Muslim Kingdom of Granada is conquered by the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella.

1502-24 Ismail, head of the Safavid Sufi Order, conquers Iran, where he establishes the Safavid Empire. Twelver Shiism is now the official religion of Iran and Ismail’s bru- tal attempts to suppress Sunni Islam in his domains inspire a persecution of Shiis in the Ottoman Empire.

1510 Ismail pushes the Sunni Uzbeks out of Khurasan and establishes Shii rule there.

15 13 Portuguese traders reach south China. 1514 Sultan Selim I defeats Shah Ismail’s Safavid army at the

Battle of Chaldiran, halting the Safavid westward advance into Ottoman territory.

1517 The Ottomans conquer Egypt and Syria from the Mamluks.

Chronology . xxv

1520-66 Suleiman, known in the West as the Magnificent, expands the Ottoman Empire and develops its distinctive institutions.

1522 The Ottomans take Rhodes. 1524-76 Tahmasp I, the second Safavid shah of Iran,

strengthens Shii dominance there. His court becomes a centre of art, especially known for its painting.

1526 Babur establishes the Moghul Empire in India. 1529 The Ottomans besiege Vienna. 1542 The Portuguese establish the first European commer-

cial empire. 1543 The Ottomans subjugate Hungary. 1552-56 The Russians conquer the old Mongol khanates of

Kazan and Astrakhan on the River Volga. 1560-1605 Akbar is the emperor of Moghul India, which

reaches the zenith of its power. Akbar fosters Hindu- Muslim cooperation, and conquers territory in south India. He presides over a cultural renaissance.

The Ottomans and Portuguese conduct a naval war in the Indian Ocean.

1570 The Ottomans take Cyprus. 1578 Death of the Ottoman court architect Sinan Pasha. 1580s Portuguese weakened in India. 1588-1629 Shah Abbas I rules the Safavid Empire in Iran,

building a magnificent court in Isfahan. Drives the Ot- tomans out of Azerbaijan and Iraq.

1590s The Dutch begin to trade in India. 1601 The Dutch begin to seize Portuguese holdings. 1602 Death of the Sufi historian Abdulfazl Allami. 1625 Death of the reformer Ahmad Sirhindi. 1627-58 Shah Jihan rules the Moghul Empire, which

reaches the height of its refinement. Builds the Taj Mahal. 1631 Death of the Shii philosopher Mir Dimad in Isfahan. 1640 Death of the Iranian philosopher and mystic Mulla

Sadra.

xxvi . Chronology

1656 Ottoman viziers halt the decline of the Ottoman Em- pire.

1658-1707 Aurengzebe, the last of the major Moghul em- perors, tries to Islamize all India, but inspires lasting Hindu and Sikh hostility.

1669 Ottomans take Crete from Venice. 1681 The Ottomans cede Kiev to Russia. 1683 The Ottomans fail in their second siege of Vienna, but

they recover Iraq from the Safavids. 1699 Treaty of Carlowicz cedes Ottoman Hungary to Aus-

tria, the first major Ottoman reversal. 1700 Death of Muhammad Baqir Majlisi, the influential Shii

alim of Iran. 1707-12 The Moghul Empire loses its southern and eastern

provinces. 1715 Rise of the Austrian and Prussian kingdoms. 1718-30 Sultan Ahmad III attempts the first Westernizing

reform in the Ottoman Empire, but the reforms end with the revolt of the Janissaries.

1722 Afghan rebels attack Isfahan and massacre the nobility. 1726 Nadir Shah temporarily restores the military power of

the Iranian Shii Empire. 1739 Nadir Shah sacks Delhi and puts an end to effective

Moghul rule in India. The Hindus, Sikhs and Afghans compete for power.

Nadir Shah tries to return Iran to Sunni Islam. As a re- sult, the leading Iranian mujtahids leave Iran and take refuge in Ottoman Iraq, where they establish a power base independent of the shahs.

1748 Nadir Shah is assassinated. A period of anarchy ensues, during which the Iranians who adhere to the Usuli position achieve predominance, thus providing the people with a source of legality and order.

1762 Death of Shah Vali-ullah, the Sufi reformer, in India.

Chronology . xxvii

1763 The British expand their control over the dismembered Indian states.

1774 Ottomans totally defeated by the Russians. They lose the Crimea and the tsar becomes the “protector” of Ortho- dox Christians in Ottoman lands.

1779 Aqa Muhammad Khan begins to found the Qajar dy- nasty in Iran, which by the end of the century is able to re- store strong government.

1789 The French Revolution. 1789-1807 Selim III lays the groundwork for new Western-

izing reforms in the Ottoman Empire, and establishes the first formal Ottoman embassies in European capitals.

1792 Death of the militant Arabian reformer Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.

1793 The first Protestant missionaries arrive in India. 1797-1818 Fath Ali Shah rules Iran. Rise of British and Rus-

sian influence there. 1798-1801 Napoleon occupies Egypt. 1803-13 The Wahhabis occupy the Arabian Hijaz, wresting

it from Ottoman control. 1805-48 Muhammad Ali attempts to modernize Egypt. 1808-39 Sultan Mahmud II introduces the modernizing

“Tanzimat” reforms in the Ottoman Empire. 1814 Treaty of Gulistan: Caucasian territory is ceded to

Russia. 1815 Serbian revolt against Ottoman control. 1821 Greek war of independence against the Ottomans. 1830 France occupies Algeria. 1831 Muhammad Ali occupies Ottoman Syria and pene-

trates deeply into Anatolia, creating within the Ottoman Empire a virtually independent imperium in imperio. The European powers intervene to save the Ottoman Empire and force Muhammad Ali to withdraw from Syria (1841).

1836 Death of the Neo-Sufi reformer Ahmad ibn Idris.

xxviii . Chronology

1839 The British occupy Aden. 1839-61 Sultan Abdulhamid inaugurates more modernizing

reforms to halt the decline of the Ottoman Empire. 184349 The British occupy the Indus Basin. 1854-56 The Crimean War, which arises from European ri-

valry over the protection of Christian minorities in the Ot- toman Empire.

Said Pasha, governor of Egypt, grants the Suez Canal concession to the French. Egypt contracts its first foreign loans.

1857-58 Indian Mutiny against British rule. The British for- mally depose the last Moghul emperor. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan argues for the reform of Islam on Western lines and the adoption of British culture.

1860-61 Afier a massacre of Christians by Druze rebels in Lebanon, the French demand that it become an au- tonomous province with a French governor.

1861-76 Sultan Abdulaziz continues the reform of the Ot- toman Empire, but contracts huge foreign loans which re- sult in the bankruptcy of the empire and the control of Ottoman finances by European governments.

1863-79 Ismail Pasha, governor of Egypt, undertakes exten- sive modernization, but contracts foreign loans, which re- sult in bankruptcy, the sale of the Suez Canal to the British (1875) and the establishment of European control of Egyptian finances.

1871-79 Al-Afghani, the Iranian reformer, resides in Egypt and founds a circle of Egyptian reformers, including Muhammad Abdu. Their aim is to halt the cultural hege- mony of Europe by a revitalization and modernization of Islam.

1872 Intensification of British-Russian rivalry in Iran. 1876 The Ottoman sultan Abdulaziz is deposed by a palace

coup. Abdulhamid II is persuaded to promulgate the first

Chronology . xxix

Ottoman constitution, which, however, the sultan later suspends. Major Ottoman reforms in education, trans- portation and communications.

1879 Ismail Pasha is deposed. 1881 France occupies Tunisia. 1881-82 A mutiny of native Egyptian officers joins forces

with Constitutionalists and reformers, who manage to im- pose their government on Khedive Tewfiq. But a popular uprising leads to the British military occupation of Egypt with Lord Cromer as governor (1882-1907)

Secret societies campaign for Syrian independence. 1889 Britain occupies the Sudan. 1892 The Tobacco Crisis in Iran. A fatwah by a leading muj-

tahid forces the shah to rescind the tobacco concession he had given to the British.

1894 Between 10,000 and 20,000 Armenian revolutionaries against Ottoman rule are brutally massacred.

1896 Nasiruddin Shah of Iran assassinated by one of al- Afghani’s disciples.

1897 The first Zionist conference is held in Basel. Its ulti- mate aim is to create a Jewish state in the Ottoman province of Palestine.

Death of al-Afghani. 1901 Oil is discovered in Iran and the concession given to the

British. 1903-11 Fears that the British intend to divide Hindus and

Muslims in India, following the British partition of Bengal, lead to communalist anxiety and the formation of the Muslim League (1906).

1905 Death of the Egyptian reformer Muhammad Abdu. 1906 Constitutional Revolution in Iran forces the shah to

proclaim a constitution and establish a Majlis, but an Anglo-Russian agreement (1907) and a Russian-supported counter-coup by the shah revokes the constitution.

xxx . Chronology

1908 The Young Turk revolution forces the sultan to restore the constitution.

1914-18 The First World War. Egypt is declared a protectorate by Britain; Iran is occu-

pied by British and Russian troops. 1916-2 1 The Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire in al-

liance with the British. 1917 The Balfour Declaration formally gives British support

to the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 1919-2 1 The Turkish War of independence. Atatiirk is able

to keep the European powers at bay and set up an inde- pendent Turkish state. He adopts radical secularizing and modernizing policies (1924-28).

1920 The publication of the Sykes-Picot agreement: in the wake of the Ottoman defeat in the First World War, its provinces are divided between the British and the French, who establish mandates and protectorates, even though the Arabs had been promised independence after the war.

1920-22 Gandhi mobilizes the Indian masses in two civil disobedience campaigns against British rule.

1921 Reza Khan leads a successful coup d’e’tat in Iran and founds the Pahlavi dynasty. He introduces a brutal mod- ernizing and secularizing policy in Iran.

1922 Egypt granted formal independence, but Britain retains control of defence, foreign policy and the Sudan. Between 1923 and 1930, the popular Wafd Party wins three large electoral victories, but each time it is forced to resign by either the British or the king.

1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia founded. 1935 Death of the Muslim reformer and journalist Rashid

Rida, founder of the Salafiyyah movement in Egypt. 1938 Death of the Indian poet and philosopher Muhammad

Iqbal. 193945 The Second World War. The British depose Reza

Shah, who is succeeded by his son, Muhammad Reza (1944).

Chronology . xxxi

1940s The Muslim Brotherhood becomes the most powerful political force in Egypt.

1945 Turkey joins the United Nations and becomes a multi- party state (1947). Formation of the Arab League.

1946 Communal rioting in India, following the Muslim League’s campaign for a separate state.

1947 The creation of Pakistan from areas with a large Mus- lim majority. The partition of India leads to massacres and killings of both Muslims and Hindus.

1948 The end of the British Mandate in Palestine and the creation of the Jewish state of Israel, as a result of a United Nations declaration. Israeli forces inflict a devastating de- feat on the five Arab armies who invade the new Jewish state. Some 750,000 Palestinians leave the country during the hostilities and are not permitted to return to their homes afierwards.

1951- 53 Muhammad Musaddiq and the National Front party nationalise Iranian oil. After anti-royalist demon- strations, the shah flees Iran but is returned to power in a coup organized by the CIA and British intelligence and new agreements are made with European oil companies.

1952 In Egypt, the revolution of the Free Officers led by Jamal Abd al-Nasser deposes King Faruk. Al-Nasser sup- presses the Muslim Brotherhood and imprisons thousands of Brothers in concentration camps.

1954 The secularist National Liberation Front (FLN) leads a revolution against French colonial rule in Algeria.

1956 The first constitution of Pakistan is ratified. Jamal Abd al-Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal.

1957 Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran founds the se- cret police force S A V A K with the help of t h e American CIA and the Israeli MOSSAD.

1958-69 The secularist government of General Muhammad Ayub Khan in Pakistan.

1961 Muhammad Reza Phalavi, shah of Iran, announces the

xxxii . Chronology

White Revolution of modernization, which further mar- ginalizes religion and exacerbates divisions within Iranian society.

1963 The NLF establishes a socialist government in Algeria. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini attacks the Pahlavi regime, inspires street demonstrations throughout Iran, is impris- oned and eventually exiled to Iraq.

1966 Al-Nasser orders the execution of the leading Egyp- tian fundamentalist ideologue Sayyid Qutb.

1967 The Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neigh- bours. The Israeli victory and the humiliating Arab defeat lead to a religious revival throughout the Middle East, since the old secularist policies seem discredited.

1970 Death of al-Nasser; he is succeeded by Anwar al-Sadat, who courts the Egyptian Islamists to gain their support.

1971 Sheikh Ahmad Yasin founds Mujamah (Congress), a welfare organization, and campaigns against the secular nationalism of the PLO, seeking an Islamic identity for Palestine; Mujamah is supported by Israel.

1971-77 Prime Minister Ali Bhutto of Pakistan leads a left- ist and secularist government, which makes concessions to the Islamists, but these measures are not sufficient.

1973 Egypt and Syria attack Israel on Y o m Kippur, and make such an impressive showing on the battlefield that al-Sadat is in a position to make a daring peace initiative with Israel, signing the Camp David Accords in 1978.

1977-88 The devout Muslim Zia al-Haqq leads a success- ful coup in Pakistan, and creates a more overtly Islamic government, which still, however, separates religion from realpolitik.

1978-79 The Iranian Revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini be- comes the Supreme Faqih of the Islamic Republic (1979-89).

1979 Death of the Pakistani fundamentalist ideologue Abu Ala Mawdudi.

Chronology . xxxiii

Several hundred Sunni fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia occupy the Kabah in Mecca and proclaim their leader as Mahdi; the state suppresses the uprising.

1979-81 American hostages are held prisoner in the United States embassy in Tehran.

1981 President Anwar al-Sadat is murdered by Muslim ex- temists, who condemn his unjust and coercive treatment of the Egyptian people and his peace treaty with Israel.

1987 The intifadah, a popular Palestinian uprising in protest against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. HAMAS, an offshoot of Mujamah, now enters the fray against Israel as well as against the PLO.

1989 Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwah against the British author Salman Rushdie for his allegedly blasphemous por- trayal of the Prophet Muhammad in his novel The Satanic Verses. A month later, the fatwah is condemned as un- Islamic by forty-eight out of the forty-nine member states of the Islamic conference.

After the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khameini becomes the Supreme Faqih of Iran and the pragmatic Hojjat 01-Islam Rafsanjani becomes president.

1990 The Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) scores major victo- ries in the Algerian local elections against the secularist FLN. It looks set for victory in the 1992 national elections.

President Saddam Hussein, a secularist ruler, invades Kuwait; in response the United States and its Western and Middle Eastern allies launch Operation Desert Storm against Iraq (199 1).

1992 The military stages a coup to prevent the FIS from coming to power in Algeria, and suppresses the movement. As a result, the more radical members launch a horrific terror campaign.

Members of the Hindu BJP dismantle the Mosque of Babur at Ayodhya.

xxxiv . Chronology

1992-99 Serbian and Croatian nationalists systematically kill and force the Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia and Kosovo to leave their homes.

1993 Israel and the Palestinians sign the Oslo Accords. 1994 Following the assassination of twenty-nine Muslims in

the Hebron mosque by a Jewish extremist, HAMAS sui- cide bombers attack Jewish civilians in Israel.

President Yitzak Rabin is assassinated by a Jewish ex- tremist for signing the Oslo accords.

The Taliban fundamentalists come to power in Afghanistan.

1997 The liberal cleric Hojjat 01-Islam Sayyid Khatami is elected president of Iran in a landslide victory.

1998 President Khatami dissociates his government from Khomeini’s fatwah against Salman Rushdie.

2001 September 11. Nineteen Muslim extremists, members of Osama bin Laden’s group Al-Qaeda, hijack American passenger planes and drive them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

October 7. In retaliation, the United States initiates a military campaign against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

BEGINNINGS

T H E P R O P H E T ( 5 7 0 . 6 3 2 )

During the month of Ramadan in 610 C.E.,an Arab business- man had an experience that changed the history of the world. Every year at this time, Muhammad ibn Abdallah used to re- tire to a cave on the summit of Mount Hira, just outside Mecca in the Arabian Hijaz, where he prayed, fasted and gave alms to the poor. He had long been worried by what he per- ceived to be a crisis in Arab society. In recent decades his tribe, the Quraysh, had become rich by trading in the sur- rounding countries. Mecca had become a thriving mercantile city, but in the aggressive stampede for wealth some of the old tribal values had been lost. Instead of looking after the weaker members of the tribe, as the nomadic code prescribed, the Quraysh were now intent on making money at the expense of some of the tribe’s poorer family groupings, or clans. There was also spiritual restlessness in Mecca and throughout the peninsula. Arabs knew that Judaism and Christianity, which were practised in the Byzantine and Persian empires, were more sophisticated than their own pagan traditions. Some had come to believe that the High God of their pantheon, al-Lah (whose name simply meant “the God”), was the deity wor- shipped by the Jews and the Christians, but he had sent the Arabs no prophet and no scripture in their own language. In- deed, the Jews and Christians whom they met often taunted the Arabs for being left out of the divine plan. Throughout Arabia one tribe fought another, in a murderous cycle of vendetta and counter-vendetta. It seemed to many of the more thoughtful people in Arabia that the Arabs were a lost people, exiled forever from the civilized world and ignored by God himself. But that changed on the night of 17 Ram-

4 . Karen Armstrong

adan, when Muhammad woke to find himself overpowered by a devastating presence, which squeezed him tightly until he heard the first words of a new Arab’s scripture pouring from his lips.

For the first two years, Muhammad kept quiet about his experience. He had new revelations, but confided only in his wife Khadija and her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal, a Christian. Both were convinced that these revelations came from God, but it was only in 612 that Muhammad felt empowered to preach, and gradually gained converts: his young cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, his friend Abu Bakr, and the young merchant Uthman ibn Affan from the powerful Umayyad family. Many of the converts, including a significant number of women, were from the poorer clans; others were unhappy about the new inequity in Mecca, which they felt was alien to the Arab spirit. Muhammad’s message was simple. He taught the Arabs no new doctrines about God: most of the Quraysh were al- ready convinced that Allah had created the world and would judge humanity in the Last Days, as Jews and Christians be- lieved. Muhammad did not think that he was founding a new religion, but that he was merely bringing the old faith in the One God to the Arabs, who had never had a prophet before. It was wrong, he insisted, to build a private fortune, but good to share wealth and create a society where the weak and vulner- able were treated with respect. If the Quraysh did not mend their ways, their society would collapse (as had other unjust societies in the past) because they were violating the funda- mental laws of existence.

This was the core teaching of the new scripture, called the guran (recitation) because believers, most of whom, including Muhammad himself, were illiterate, imbibed its teachings by listening to public readings of its chapters (surahs). The Quran was revealed to Muhammad verse by verse, surah by surah during the next twenty-one years, often in response to a

Islam . 5

crisis or a question that had arisen in the little community of the faithful. The revelations were painful to Muhammad, who used to say: “Never once did I receive a revelation, without thinking that my soul had been torn away from me.”‘ In the early days, the impact was so frightening that his whole body was convulsed; he would often sweat profusely, even on a cool day, experience a great heaviness, or hear strange sounds and voices. In purely secular terms, we could say that Muhammad had perceived the great problems confronting his people at a deeper level than most of his contemporaries, and that as he “listened” to events, he had to delve deeply and painfully into his inner being to find a solution that was not only politically viable but spiritually illuminating. He was also creating a new literary form and a masterpiece of Arab prose and poetry. Many of the first believers were converted by the sheer beauty of the Quran, which resonated with their deepest as- pirations, cutting through their intellectual preconceptions in the manner of great art, and inspiring them, at a level more profound than the cerebral, to alter their whole way of life. One of the most dramatic of these conversions was that of Umar ibn al-Khattab, who was devoted to the old paganism, passionately opposed to Muhammad’s message, and was de- termined to wipe out the new sect. But he was also an expert in Arabian poetry, and the first time he heard the words of the Quran he was overcome by their extraordinary eloquence. As he said, the language broke through all his reservations about its message: “When I heard the Quran my heart was softened and I wept, and Islam entered into me.”2

The new sect would eventually be called islam (surrender); a muslim was a man or a woman who had made this submission of their entire being to Allah and his demand that human be- ings behave to one another with justice, equity and compas- sion. It was an attitude expressed in the prostrations of the ritual prayer (salat) which Muslims were required to make

6 . Karen Armstrong

three times a day. (Later this prayer would be increased to five times daily.) The old tribal ethic had been egalitarian; Arabs did not approve of the idea of monarchy, and it was abhorrent to them to grovel on the ground like slaves. But the prostra- tions were designed to counter the hard arrogance and self- sufficiency that was growing apace in Mecca. The postures of their bodies would re-educate the Muslims, teaching them to lay aside their pride and selfishness, and recall that before God they were nothing. In order to comply with the stern teaching of the Quran, Muslims were also required to give a regular proportion of their income to the poor in alms (zakat). They would also fast during Ramadan to remind themselves of the privations of the poor, who could not eat or drink whenever they chose.

Social justice was, therefore, the crucial virtue of Islam. Muslims were commanded as their first duty to build a com- munity (ummah) characterized by practical compassion, in which there was a fair distribution of wealth. This was far more important than any doctrinal teaching about God. In fact the Quran has a negative view of theological speculation, which it calls zannah, self-indulgent whimsy about ineffable matters that nobody can ascertain one way or the other. It seemed pointless to argue about such abstruse dogmas; far more crucial was the effort (jihad) to live in the way that God had intended for human beings. The political and social welfare of the ummah would have sacramental value for Muslims. If the u m m a h prospered, it was a sign that Muslims were living ac- cording to Gods will, and the experience of living in a truly is- lamic community, which made this existential surrender to the divine, would give Muslims intimations of sacred transcen- dence. Consequently, they would be affected as profoundly by any misfortune or humiliation suffered b y the u m m a h a s Chris- tians by the spectacle of somebody blasphemously trampling on the Bible or ripping the Eucharistic host apart.

Islam . 7

This social concern had always been an essential part of the visions of the great world religions, which had developed during what historians have called the Axial Age (c. 700 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E.), when civilization, as we know it, developed, to- gether with the confessional faiths which have continued to nourish humanity: Taoism and Confucianism in China; Hin- duism and Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent; monothe- ism in the Middle East; and rationalism in Europe. These faiths all reformed the old paganism, which was no longer ad- equate in the larger and more complex societies that evolved once people had created a mercantile economy capable of supporting this cultural effort. In the larger states, people ac- quired broader horizons, and the old local cults ceased to be appropriate; increasingly, the Axial Age faiths focused on a single deity or supreme symbol of transcendence. Each was concerned about the fundamental injustice of their society. All pre-modern civilizations were based economically upon a surplus of agricultural produce; they therefore depended upon the labour of peasants who could not enjoy their high culture, which was only for an elite. To counter this, the new faiths stressed the importance of compassion. Arabia had re- mained outside the civilized world. Its intractable climate meant that the Arabs lived on the brink of starvation; there seemed no way that they could acquire an agrarian surplus that would put them on a footing with Sassanid Persia or Byzantium. But when the Quraysh began to develop a market economy their perspective began to change. Many were still happy with the old paganism, but there was a growing ten- dency to worship only one God; and there was, as we have seen, a growing unease about the inequity of the new civiliza- tion that was developing in Mecca. The Arabs were now ready for an Axial Age faith of their own.

But that did not mean a wholesale rejection of tradition. The Axial Age prophets and reformers all built on the old

8 . Karen Armstrong

pagan rites of their region, and Muhammad would do the same. He did demand that they ignore the cult of such popu- lar Arabian goddesses as Manat, al-Lat and al-Uzzah, how- ever, and worship Allah alone. The pagan deities are said in the Quran to be like weak tribal chiefs, who were a liability for their people, because they could not give them adequate protection. The Quran did not put forward any philosophical arguments for monotheism; its approach was practical, and, as such, it appealed to the pragmatic Arabs. The old religion, the Quran claimed, was simply not working3 There was spiritual malaise, chronic and destructive warfare, and an injustice that violated the best Arab traditions and tribal codes. The way forward lay in a single God and a unified ummah, which was governed by justice and equity.

Radical as this sounded, the Quran insisted that its mes- sage was simply a “reminder” of truths that everybody knew? This was the primordial faith that had been preached to the whole of humanity by the prophets of the past. God had not left human beings in ignorance about the way they should live: he had sent messengers to every people on the face of the earth. Islamic tradition would later assert that there had been 124,000 such prophets, a symbolic number suggesting infinity. All had brought their people a divinely inspired scripture; they might express the truths of God’s religion differently, but essentially the message was always the same. Now at last God had sent the Quraysh a prophet and a scripture. Con- stantly the Quran points out that Muhammad had not come to cancel the older religions, to contradict their prophets or to start a new faith. His message is the same as that of Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, or Jesus.’ The Quran mentions only those prophets who were known to the Arabs, but today Mus- lim scholars argue that had Muhammad known about the Buddhists or the Hindus, the Australian Aborigines or the Native Americans, the Quran would have endorsed their

10 . Karen Armstrong

sages too, because all rightly guided religion that submitted wholly to God, refused to worship man-made deities and preached that justice and equality came from the same divine source. Hence Muhammad never asked Jews or Christians to accept Islam, unless they particularly wished to do so, be- cause they had received perfectly valid revelations of their own. The Quran insists strongly that “there shall be no coer- cion in matters of faith,”6 and commands Muslims to respect the beliefs of Jews and Christians, whom the Quran calls ahl al-kitab, a phrase usually translated “People of the Book” but which is more accurately rendered “people of an earlier rev- elation:”

Do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation otherwise than in a most kindly manner-unless it be such of them as are bent on evil-doing-and say: “We believe in that which has been bestowed from on high upon us, as well as that which has been bestowed upon you; for our God and your God is one and the same, and it is unto Him that we [all] surrender our se lves . ” 7

It is only our more modern culture that can afford to prize originality and jettison tradition wholesale. In pre-modern society, continuity was crucial. Muhammad did not envisage a violent rupture with the past or with other faith communi- ties. He wanted to root the new scripture in the spiritual land- scape of Arabia.

Hence Muslims continued to perform the customary ritu- als at the Kabah, the cube-shaped shrine in the heart of Mecca, the most important centre of worship in Arabia. It was extremely ancient even in Muhammad’s time, and the origi- nal meaning of the cult associated with it had been forgotten, but it was still loved by the Arabs, who assembled each year for the hajj’ pilgrimage from all over the peninsula. They would circle the shrine seven times, following the direction of the sun around the earth; kiss the Black Stone embedded in

Islam . I I

the wall of the Kabah, which was probably a meteorite that had once hurtled to the ground, linking the site to the heav- enly world. These rites (known as the umrah) could be per- formed at any time, but during the hajj pilgrims would also run from the steps of al-Safa beside the Kabah across the val- ley to al-Marwah, where they prayed. They then moved to the environs of Mecca: on the plain of Arafat, they stood all night in vigil; they rushed in a body to the hollow of Muzdalifah; hurled pebbles at a rock in Mina, shaved their heads, and on the Id al-Adha, the final day of the pilgrimage, they per- formed an animal sacrifice.

The ideal of community was central to the cult of the Kabah. All violence was forbidden in Mecca and the sur- rounding countryside at all times. This had been a key fac- tor in the commercial success of the Quraysh, since it enabled Arabs to trade there without fearing the reprisals of vendetta warfare. During the hajj pilgrims were forbidden to carry arms, to argue, to kill game or even to kill an insect or speak a cross word. All this was clearly congenial to Muhammad’s ideal for the ummah, and he was himself de- voted to the shrine, often made the umrah and liked to recite the Quran beside the Kabah. Officially, the shrine was dedi- cated to Hubal, a Nabatean deity, and there were 360 idols arranged around the Kabah, probably representing the days of the year. But by Muhammad’s day, it seems that the Kabah was venerated as the shrine of Allah, the High God, and it is a mark of the widespread conviction that Allah was the same as the deity worshipped by monotheists that those Arabs in the northern tribes on the borders of the Byzantine Empire who had converted to Christianity used to make the hajj alongside the pagans. Yet for all this, in the early days of his mission, Muhammad still made the Muslims perform the salat prayer facing Jerusalem, the holy city of the ahlal- kitab, turning their backs on the pagan associations of the

12 . Karen Armstrong

Kabah. This expressed his longing to bring the Arabs into the monotheistic family.

Muhammad acquired a small following and eventually some seventy families had converted to Islam. At first, the most powerful men in Mecca ignored the Muslims, but by 616 they had become extremely angry with Muhammad who, they said, reviled the faith of their fathers, and was obviously a charlatan, who only pretended to be a prophet. They were particularly incensed by the Quran’s description of the Last Judgement, which they dismissed as primitive and irrational. Arabs did not believe in the after life and should give no cre- dence to such “fairy tales.”‘ But they were especially con- cerned that in the Quran this Judaeo-Christian belief struck at the heart of their cut-throat capitalism. On the Last Day, Arabs were warned that the wealth and power of their tribe would not help them; each individual would be tried on his or her own merits: why had they not taken care of the poor? Why had they accumulated fortunes instead of sharing their money? Those Quraysh who were doing very well in the new Mecca were not likely to look kindly on this kind of talk, and the opposition grew, led by Abu al-Hakam (who is called Abu Jahl, “Father of Lies,” in the Quran), Abu Sufyan, an ex- tremely intelligent man, who had once been a personal friend of Muhammad, and Suhayl ibn Amr, a devout pagan. They were all disturbed by the idea of abandoning the faith of their ancestors; all had relatives who had converted to Islam; and all feared that Muhammad was plotting to take over the lead- ership of Mecca. The Quran insisted that Muhammad had no political function but that he was simply a nadhir, a “warner,”9

but how long would a man who claimed to receive instruc- tions from Allah accept the rulings of more ordinary mortals like themselves?

Relations deteriorated sharply. Abu Jahl imposed a boycott on Muhammad’s clan, forbidding the Quraysh to marry or

Islam • 13

trade with the Muslims. This meant that nobody could sell them any food. The ban lasted for two years, and the food shortages may well have been responsible for the death of Muhammad’s beloved wife Khadija, and it certainly ruined some of the Muslims financially. Slaves who had converted to Islam were particularly badly treated, tied up, and left to burn in the blazing sun. Most seriously, in 619, after the ban had been lifted, Muhammad’s uncle and protector (wali) Abu Talib died. Muhammad was an orphan; his parents had died in his infancy. Without a protector who would avenge his death, according to the harsh vendetta lore of Arabia, a man could be killed with impunity, and Muhammad had great dif- ficulty finding a Meccan chieftain who would become his pa- tron. The position of the ummah was becoming untenable in Mecca, and a new solution clearly had to be found.

Muhammad was, therefore, ready to listen to a delegation of chiefs from Yathrib, an agricultural settlement some 250 miles north of Mecca. A number of tribes had abandoned the nomadic way of life and settled there, but after centuries of warfare on the steppes found it impossible to live together peacefully. The whole settlement was caught up in one deadly feud after another. Some of these tribes had either converted to Judaism or were of Jewish descent, and so the people of Yathrib were accustomed to monotheistic ideas, were not in thrall to the old paganism and were desperate to find a new so- lution that would enable their people to live together in a sin- gle community. The envoys from Yathrib, who approached Muhammad during the hajj in 620, converted to Islam and made a pledge with the Muslims: each vowed that they would not fight each other, and would defend each other from com- mon enemies. Eventually, in 622, the Muslim families slipped away, one by one, and made the migration (hijrah)to Yathrib. Muhammad, whose new protector had recently died, was al- most assassinated before he and Abu Bakr were able to escape.

14 . Karen Armstrong

The hijrah marks the start of the Muslim era, because it was at this point that Muhammad was able to implement the Quranic ideal fully and that Islam became a factor in history. It was a revolutionary step. The hijrah was no mere change of address. In pre-Islamic Arabia the tribe was a sacred value. To turn your back on your blood-group and join another was un- heard of; it was essentially blasphemous, and the Quraysh could not condone this defection. They vowed to exterminate the ummah in Yathrib. Muhammad had become the head of a collection of tribal groups that were not bound together by blood but by a shared ideology, an astonishing innovation in Arabian society. Nobody was forced to convert to the religion of the Quran, but Muslims, pagans and Jews all belonged to one ummah, could not attack one another, and vowed to give one another protection. News of this extraordinary new “su¬ pertribe” spread, and though at the outset nobody thought that it had a chance of survival, it proved to be an inspiration that would bring peace to Arabia before the death of the Prophet in 632, just ten years after the hijrah.

Yathrib would become known as al-Medinah (the City), because it became the pattern of the perfect Muslim society. When Muhammad arrived in Medina one of his first actions was to build a simple mosque ( masjid : literally, place of pros- tration). It was a rough building, which expressed the auster- ity of the early Islamic ideal. Tree trunks supported the roof, a stone marked the qiblah (the direction of prayer) and the Prophet stood on a tree trunk to preach. All future mosques would, as far as possible, be built according to this model. There was also a courtyard, where Muslims met to discuss all the concerns of the ummah — social, political and military as well as religious. Muhammad and his wives lived in small huts around the edge of the courtyard. Unlike a Christian church, which is separated from mundane activities and devoted only to worship, no activity was excluded from the mosque. In the

Islam . 15

Quranic vision there is no dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the political, sexuality and wor- ship. The whole of life was potentially holy and had to be brought into the ambit of the divine. The aim was tawhid (making one), the integration of the whole of life in a unified community, which would give Muslims intimations of the Unity which is God.

Muhammad’s numerous wives have occasioned a good deal of prurient interest in the West, but it would be a mistake to imagine the Prophet basking decadently in sensual delight, like some of the later Islamic rulers. In Mecca, Muhammad had remained monogamous, married only to Khadija, even though polygamy was common in Arabia. Khadija was a good deal older than he, but bore him at least six children, of whom only four daughters survived. In Medina, Muhammad became a great sayyid (chief), and was expected to have a large harem, but most of these marriages were politically motivated. As he formed his new supertribe, he was eager to forge marriage ties with some of his closest companions, to bind them closer to- gether. His favourite new wife was Aisha, the daughter of Abu Bakr, and he also married Hafsah, the daughter of Umar ibn al-Khattab. He married two of his daughters to Uthman ibn Affan and Ali ibn Abi Talib. Many of his other wives were older women, who were without protectors or were related to the chiefs of those tribes who became the allies of the ummah. None of them bore the Prophet any children.” His wives were sometimes more of a hindrance than a pleasure. On one occasion, when they were squabbling about the division of booty after a raid, the Prophet threatened to divorce them all unless they lived more strictly in accordance with Islamic val- ues.” But it is still true that Muhammad was one of those rare men who truly enjoy the company of women. Some of his male companions were astonished by his leniency towards his wives and the way they stood up to him and answered him

16 . Karen Armstrong

back. Muhammad scrupulously helped with the chores, mended his own clothes and sought out the companionship of his wives. He often liked to take one of them on an expedi- tion, and would consult them and take their advice seriously. On one occasion his most intelligent wife, Umm Salamah, helped to prevent a mutiny.

The emancipation of women was a project dear to the Prophet’s heart. The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status. The Quran prescribes some degree of segrega- tion and veiling for the Prophet’s wives, but there is nothing in the Quran that requires the veiling of all women or their seclusion in a separate part of the house. These customs were adopted some three or four generations after the Prophet’s death. Muslims at that time were copying the Greek Chris- tians of Byzantium, who had long veiled and segregated their women in this manner; they also appropriated some of their Christian misogyny. The Quran makes men and women part- ners before God, with identical duties and responsibilities.12 The Quran also came to permit polygamy; at a time when Muslims were being killed in the wars against Mecca, and women were left without protectors, men were permitted to have up to four wives provided that they treat them all with absolute equality and show no signs of favouring one rather than the others.13 The women of the first ummah in Medina took full part in its public life, and some, according to Arab custom, fought alongside the men in battle. They did not seem to have experienced Islam as an oppressive religion, though later, as happened in Christianity, men would hijack the faith and bring it into line with the prevailing patriarchy.

In the early years at Medina there were two important de- velopments. Muhammad had been greatly excited by the prospect of working closely with the Jewish tribes, and had even, shortly before the hijrah, introduced some practices

Islam . 17

(such as communal prayer on Friday afternoons, when Jews would be preparing for the Sabbath, and a fast on the Jewish Day of Atonement) to align Islam more closely with Judaism. His disappointment, when the Jews of Medina refused to ac- cept him as an authentic prophet, was one of the greatest of his life. For Jews, the era of prophecy was over, so it was not surprising that they could not accept Muhammad, but the polemic with the Jews of Medina occupies a significant pro- portion of the Quran and shows that it troubled Muhammad. Some of the Quranic stories about such prophets as Noah or Moses were different from those of the Bible. Many of the Jews used to scoff when these were recited in the mosque. The three main Jewish tribes also resented Muhammad’s as- cendancy; they had formed a powerful bloc before his arrival in the settlement, and now felt demoted and determined to get rid of him.

But some of the Jews in the smaller clans were friendly and enhanced Muhammad’s knowledge of Jewish scripture. He was especially delighted to hear that in the Book of Genesis Abraham had two sons: Isaac and Ishmael (who became Ismail in Arabic), the child of his concubine Hagar. Abraham had been forced to cast Hagar and Ismail out into the wilderness, but God had saved them and promised that Ismail too would be the father of a great nation, the Arabs.14Local tradition had it that Hagar and Ismail had settled in Mecca, that Abraham had visited them there and that together Abraham and Ismail had rebuilt the Kabah (which had originally been erected by Adam but had fallen into disrepair).15 This was music to Muhammad’s ears. It seemed that the Arabs had not been left out of the divine plan after all, and that the Kabah had vener- able monotheistic credentials.

By 624 it was clear that most of the Jews of Medina would never be reconciled with the Prophet. Muhammad had also been shocked to learn that the Jews and Christians (whom he

18 . Karen Armstrong

had assumed to belong to a single faith) actually had serious theological differences, even though he appears to have thought that not all the ahl al-kitab condoned this disgraceful sectarianism. In January 624 he made what must have been one of his most creative gestures. During the salat prayer, he told the congregation to turn around, so that they prayed in the direction of Mecca rather than Jerusalem. This change of qiblah was a declaration of independence. By turning away from Jerusalem towards the Kabah, which had no connection with Judaism or Christianity, Muslims tacitly demonstrated that they were reverting to the original pure monotheism of Abraham, who had lived before the revelation of either the Torah or the Gospel and, therefore, before the religion of the one God had been split into warring sects.16Muslims would direct themselves to God alone: it was idolatrous to bow be- fore a human system or an established religion rather than before God himself:

Verily, as for those who have broken the unity of their faith and become sects-thou has nothing to do with them.. . Say: “Be- hold, my Sustainer has guided me to a straight way through an ever-true faith- in the way of Abraham, who turned away from all that is false, and was not of those who ascribe divinity to aught beside Him.” Say: “Behold, my prayer, and [all] my acts of wor- ship, and my living and dying are for God alone.””

The change of qiblah appealed to all Arab Muslims, especially to the emigrants who had made the hijrah from Mecca. Mus- lims would no longer tag lamely behind those Jews and Chris- tians who ridiculed their aspirations, but would take their own direct route to God.

The second major development occurred shortly after the change of the qiblah. Muhammad and the emigrants from Mecca had no means of earning a living in Medina; there was not enough land for them to farm, and, in any case, they were

Islam • 19

merchants and businessmen not agriculturalists. The Medi- nese, who were known as the ansar (the helpers), could not af- ford to keep them gratis, so the emigrants resorted to the ghazu, the “raid,” which was a sort of national sport in Arabia, as well as being a rough-and-ready means of redistributing resources in a land where there was simply not enough to go round. Raiding parties would attack a caravan or contingent from a rival tribe and carry off booty and livestock, taking care to avoid killing people since this would mean a vendetta. It was forbidden to conduct a raid against a tribe that had be- come an ally or “client” (a weaker tribal group who had sought protection from one of the more powerful tribes). The emigrants, who had been persecuted by the Quraysh and forced to leave their homes, began to conduct ghazu against the rich Meccan caravans, which brought them an income, but to conduct a ghazu against one’s own tribe was a serious breach in precedent. The raiding parties enjoyed some initial success, but in March 624 Muhammad led a large band of mi- grants to the coast to intercept the largest Meccan caravan of the year. When they heard of this outrage, the Quraysh dis- patched an army to defend the caravan, but, against the odds, the Muslims inflicted a stunning defeat on the Meccans at the well of Badr. Even though the Meccans were superior in terms of numbers, they fought in the old Arab style with care- less bravado, each chief leading his own men. Muhammad’s troops, however, were carefully drilled and fought under his unified command. It was a rout that impressed the Bedouin tribes, some of whom enjoyed the spectacle of seeing the mighty Quraysh brought low.

There then ensued desperate days for the ummah. Muham- mad had to contend with the hostility of some of the pagans in Medina, who resented the power of the Muslim newcom- ers and were determined to expel them from the settlement. He also had to deal with Mecca, where Abu Sufyan now di-

20 . Karen Armstrong

rected the campaign against him, and had launched two major offensives against the Muslims in Medina. His object was not simply to defeat the ummah in battle, but to annihilate all the Muslims. The harsh ethic of the desert meant that there were no half-measures in warfare: if possible, a victorious chief was expected to exterminate the enemy, so the ummah faced the threat of total extinction. In 625 Mecca inflicted a severe de- feat on the ummah at the Battle of Uhud, but two years later the Muslims trounced the Meccans at the Battle of the Trench, so called because Muhammad protected the settle- ment by digging a ditch around Medina, which threw the Quraysh, who still regarded war rather as a chivalric game and had never heard of such an unsporting trick, into confu- sion, and rendered their cavalry useless. Muhammad’s second victory over the numerically superior Quraysh (there had been ten thousand Meccans to three thousand Muslims) was a turning point. It convinced the nomadic tribes that Muham- mad was the coming man, and made the Quraysh look decid- edly passe’ The gods in whose name they fought were clearly not working on their behalf. Many of the tribes wanted to be- come the allies of the ummah, and Muhammad began to build a powerful tribal confederacy, whose members swore not to attack one another and to fight each other’s enemies. Some of the Meccans also began to defect and made the hijrah to Med- ina; at last, after five years of deadly peril, Muhammad could be confident that the ummah would survive.

In Medina, the chief casualties of this Muslim success were the three Jewish tribes of Qaynuqah, Nadir and Qurayzah, who were determined to destroy Muhammad and who all independently formed alliances with Mecca. They had powerful armies, and obviously posed a threat to the Muslims, since their territory was so situated that they could easily join a besieging Meccan army or attack the ummah from the rear. When the Qaynuqah staged an unsuccessful rebel- lion against Muhammad in 625, they were expelled from

Islam . 21

Medina, in accordance with Arab custom. Muhammad tried to reassure the Nadir, and made a special treaty with them, but when he discovered that they had been plotting to assas- sinate him they too were sent into exile, where they joined the nearby Jewish settlement of Khaybar, and drummed up sup- port for Abu Sufyan among the northern Arab tribes. The Nadir proved to be even more of a danger outside Medina, so when the Jewish tribe of Qurayzah sided with Mecca during the Battle of the Trench, when for a time it seemed that the Muslims faced certain defeat, Muhammad showed no mercy. The seven hundred men of the Qurayzah were killed, and their women and children sold as slaves.

The massacre of the Qurayzah was a horrible incident, but it would be a mistake to judge it by the standards of our own time. This was a very primitive society: the Muslims them- selves had just narrowly escaped extermination, and had Muhammad simply exiled the Qurayzah they would have swelled the Jewish opposition in Khaybar and brought an- other war upon the ummah. In seventh-century Arabia an Arab chief was not expected to show mercy to traitors like the Qurayzah. The executions sent a grim message to Khaybar and helped to quell the pagan opposition in Medina, since the pagan leaders had been the allies of the rebellious Jews. This was a fight to the death, and everybody had always known that the stakes were high. The struggle did not indicate any hostil- ity towards Jews in general, but only towards the three rebel tribes. The Quran continued to revere Jewish prophets and to urge Muslims to respect the People of the Book. SmallerJew¬ ish groups continued to live in Medina, and later Jews, like Christians, enjoyed full religious liberty in the Islamic em- pires. Anti-semitism is a Christian vice. Hatred of the Jews became marked in the Muslim world only after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent loss of Arab Palestine. It is significant that Muslims were compelled to import anti-Jewish myths from Europe, and translate into

22 • Karen Armstrong

Arabic such virulently anti-semitic texts a s the P r o t o c o l s o f t h e E l d e r s o f Zion, because they had no such traditions of their own. Because of this new hostility towards the Jewish people, some Muslims now quote the passages in the Quran that refer to Muhammad’s struggle with the three rebellious Jewish tribes to justify their prejudice. By taking these verses out of context, they have distorted both the message of the Quran and the attitude of the Prophet, who himself felt no such ha- tred of Judaism.

Muhammad’s intransigence towards the Qurayzah had been designed to bring hostilities to an end as soon as possi- ble. The Quran teaches that war is such a catastrophe that Muslims must use every method in their power to restore peace and normality in the shortest possible time.18 Arabia was a chronically violent society, and the ummah had to fight its way to peace. Major social change of the type that Muhammad was attempting in the peninsula is rarely achieved without bloodshed. But after the Battle of the Trench, when Muhammad had humiliated Mecca and quashed the opposition in Medina, he felt that it was time to abandon the jihad and begin a peace offensive. In March 628 he set in train a daring and imaginative initiative that brought the conflict to a close. He announced that he was going to make the hajj to Mecca, and asked for volunteers to accom- pany him. Since pilgrims were forbidden to carry arms, the Muslims would be walking directly into the lions’ den and putting themselves at the mercy of the hostile and resentful Quraysh. Nevertheless, about a thousand Muslims agreed to join the Prophet and set out for Mecca, dressed in the tradi- tional white robes of the hajji. If the Quraysh forbade Arabs to approach the Kabah or attacked bona fide pilgrims they would betray their sacred duty as the guardians of the shrine. The Quraysh did, however, dispatch troops to attack the pil- grims before they reached the area outside the city where vi- olence was forbidden, but the Prophet evaded them and, with

Islam • 23

the help of some of his Bedouin allies, managed to reach the edge of the sanctuary, camped at Hudaybiyyah and awaited developments. Eventually the Quraysh were pressured by this peaceful demonstration to sign a treaty with the u m m a h . It was an unpopular move on both sides. Many of the Muslims were eager for action, and felt that the treaty was shameful, but Muhammad was determined to achieve victory by peace- ful means.

Hudaybiyyah was another turning point. It impressed still more of the Bedouin, and conversion to Islam became even more of an irreversible trend. Eventually in 630, when the Quraysh violated the treaty by attacking one of the Prophet’s tribal allies, Muhammad marched upon Mecca with an army of ten thousand men. Faced with this overwhelming force and, as pragmatists, realizing what it signified, the Quraysh conceded defeat, opened the city gates, and Muhammad took Mecca without shedding a drop of blood. He destroyed the idols around the Kabah, rededicated it to Allah, the one God, and gave the old pagan rites of the hajj’an Islamic significance by linking them to the story of Abraham, Hagar and Ismail. None of the Quraysh was forced to become Muslim, but Muhammad’s victory convinced some of his most principled opponents, such as Abu Sufyan, that the old religion had failed. When Muhammad died in 632, in the arms of his beloved wife Aisha, almost all the tribes of Arabia had joined the ummah as Confederates or as converted Muslims. Since members of the ummah could not, of course, attack one an- other, the ghastly cycle of tribal warfare, of vendetta and counter-vendetta, had ended. Single-handedly, Muhammad had brought peace to war-torn Arabia.

T H E R A S H I D U N ( 6 3 2 – 6 6 1 )

The life and achievements of Muhammad would affect the spiritual, political and ethical vision of Muslims forever.

24 . Karen Armstrong

They expressed the Islamic experience of “salvation,” which does not consist in the redemption of an “original sin” com- mitted by Adam and the admittance to eternal life, but in the achievement of a society which puts into practice God’s de- sires for the human race. This not only redeemed Muslims from the sort of political and social hell that existed in pre- Islamic Arabia, but also provided them with a context within which they could more easily make that wholehearted sur- render to God which alone can fulfil them. Muhammad be- came the archetypal example of that perfect submission to the divine, and Muslims, as we shall see, would attempt to conform to this standard in their spiritual and social lives. Muhammad was never venerated as a divine figure, but he was held to be the Perfect Man. His surrender to God had been so complete that he had transformed society and en- abled the Arabs to live together in harmony. The word islam is etymologically related to salam (peace), and in these early years Islam did promote cohesion and concord.

But Muhammad had achieved this success by being the re- cipient of a divine revelation. Throughout his career, God had sent down the oracles that formed the Quran. When faced with a crisis or dilemma, Muhammad had entered deeply into himself and heard a divinely inspired solution. His life had thus represented a constant dialogue between transcendent reality and the violent, puzzling and disturbing happenings of the mundane world. The Quran had, there- fore, followed public and current events, bringing divine guidance and illumination to politics. Muhammad’s succes- sors, however, were not prophets, but would have to rely on their own human insights. How would they ensure that Mus- lims continued to respond creatively and directly to this sa- cred imperative? The ummah that they ruled would be much larger and increasingly more complex than the little commu- nity of Medina, where everybody knew everybody else and

Islam • 25

there had been no need for officialdom and a bureaucracy. How would the new deputy (khalifah) of Muhammad pre- serve the essence of the first u m m a h in very different circum- stances?

The first four caliphs to succeed Muhammad grappled with these difficult questions. They were all men who had been among the Prophet’s closest companions, and had played a leading role in Mecca and Medina. They are known as the rashidun, the “rightly guided” caliphs, and their period of rule would be just as formative as that of the Prophet him- self. Muslims would define themselves and their theology ac- cording to the way they assessed the turbulent, glorious and tragic events of these years.

After the Prophet’s death, the leading Muslims had to de- cide what form the ummah should take. Some may not have believed that there ought to be a “state,” a polity which had no precedent in Arabia. Some seemed to think that each tribal group should elect its own i m a m (leader). But the Prophet’s companions Abu Bakr and Umar ibn al-Khattab argued that the ummah must be a united community, and should have a single ruler, as it had under the Prophet. Some believed that Muhammad would have wanted to be succeeded by Ali ibn Abi Talib, his closest male relative. In Arabia, where the blood-tie was sacred, it was thought that a chief’s special qualities were passed down the line of his descendants, and some Muslims believed that Ali had inherited something of Muhammad’s special charisma. But although Ali’s piety was beyond question, he was still young and inexperienced, and therefore Abu Bakr was elected the first khalifah of the Prophet by a majority of votes.

Abu Bakr’s reign (632-34) was short but crucial. He was chiefly preoccupied by the so-called wars of riddah (apostasy) when various tribes tried to break away from the ummah and reassert their former independence. It would, however, be a

26 . Karen Armstrong

mistake to regard this as a widespread religious defection. The revolts were entirely political and economic. Most of the Bedouin tribes who had entered the Islamic Confederacy had little interest in the details of Muhammad’s religion. The Prophet, a realist, had recognized that many of the alliances he had formed were purely political, a matter of one chief joining forces with another, as was customary in the Arabian steppes. Some chiefs may have believed that their pact had been only with Muhammad and not with his successor, and that after his death they were free to raid tribes in the ummah, thus calling upon themselves a Muslim riposte.

It was, however, significant that many of the rebels felt im- pelled to give their revolts a religious justification; the leaders after claimed to be prophets, and produced Quranic-style “revelations.” The Arabs had been through a profound experi- ence. It was not “religious” in our modern sense of the word, since for many it was not a private faith, following an interior conversion. The Prophet had broken the old mould, and suddenly-if momentarily-the Arabs had found themselves for the first time members of a united community, free from the burden of constant, debilitating warfare. For the brief years of Muhammad’s career they had glimpsed the possibil- ity of an entirely different way of life, bound up with a reli- gious change. What had happened had been so astounding that even those who wanted to break away from the ummah could only think in prophetic terms. It was probably during the riddah wars that Muslims began to assert that Muhammad had been the last and greatest of the prophets, a claim that is not made explicitly in the Quran, as Muslims countered the challenge of these riddah prophets.

Abu Bakr quelled the uprisings with wisdom and clemency, and thus completed the unification of Arabia. He dealt cre- atively with the complaints of the rebels, and there were no reprisals taken against those who returned to the fold. Some

Islam • 21

were enticed back by the prospect of taking part in the lucra- tive ghazu raids in the neighbouring lands, which gained dra- matic momentum under the rule of the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab (634-44). These raids were a response to a problem that had arisen from the new Islamic peace in the peninsula. For centuries, the Arabs had eked out their inade- quate resources by means of the ghazu, but Islam had put a stop to this because the tribes of the u m m a h were not permit- ted to attack one another. What would replace the ghazu, which had enabled Muslims to scratch out a meagre liveli- hood? Umar realized that the u m m a h needed order. Lawless el- ements had to be brought under control, and energies which had previously been expended in raiding and feuding now had to be channelled into a common activity. The obvious answer was a series of ghazu raids against the non-Muslim communi- ties in the neighbouring countries. T h e unity of the u m m a h would be preserved by an outwardly directed offensive. This would also enhance the caliph’s authority. The Arabs tradi- tionally disliked kingship and would be leery of any ruler who assumed the style of a monarch. But they would accept the authority of a chief during a military campaign or while they were journeying to new pastures. Umar therefore called him- self amir al-muminim (the commander of the faithful), and Muslims accepted his rulings in matters that concerned the u m m a h a s a whole, but not on matters that individuals could decide for themselves.

Under Umar’s leadership, therefore, the Arabs burst into Iraq, Syria and Egypt, achieving a series of astonishing victo- ries. They overcame the Persian army at the Battle of Qa- disiyyah (637), which led to the fall of the capital of the Persian Sassanids at Ctesiphon. As soon as they had the man- power, Muslims would thus be able to occupy the whole of the Persian Empire. They encountered stiffer resistance in the Byzantine Empire, and conquered no territory in the

Islam • 29

Byzantine heartlands in Anatolia. Nevertheless, the Muslims were victorious at the Battle of Yarmuk (636) in northern Palestine, conquered Jerusalem in 638, and controlled the whole of Syria, Palestine and Egypt by 641. The Muslim armies went on to seize the North African coast as far as Cyrenaica. Just twenty years after the Battle of Badr, the Arabs found themselves in possession of a sizeable empire. This expansion continued. A century after the Prophet’s death, the Islamic Empire extended from the Pyrenees to the Himalayas. It seemed yet another miracle and sign of God’s favour. Before the coming of Islam, the Arabs had been a de- spised outgroup; but in a remarkably short space of time they had inflicted major defeats upon two world empires. The ex- perience of conquest enhanced their sense that something tremendous had happened to them. Membership of the ummah was thus a transcendent experience, because it went beyond anything they had known or could have imagined in the old tribal days. Their success also endorsed the message of the Quran, which had asserted that a correctly guided so- ciety must prosper because it was in tune with God’s laws. Look what had happened once they had surrendered to God’s will! Where Christians discerned God’s hand in apparent fail- ure and defeat, when Jesus died on the cross, Muslims experi- enced political success as sacramental and as a revelation of the divine presence in their lives.

It is important, however, to be clear that when the Arabs burst out of Arabia they were not impelled by the ferocious power of “Islam.” Western people often assume that Islam is a violent, militaristic faith which imposed itself on its subject peoples at sword-point. This is an inaccurate interpretation of the Muslim wars of expansion. There was nothing religious about these campaigns, and Umar did not believe that he had a divine mandate to conquer the world. The objective of Umar and his warriors was entirely pragmatic: they wanted

30 . Karen Armstrong

plunder and a common activity that would preserve the unity of the ummah. For centuries the Arabs had tried to raid the richer settled lands beyond the peninsula; the difference was that this time they had encountered a power vacuum. Persia and Byzantium had both been engaged for decades in a long and debilitating series of wars with one another. Both were exhausted. In Persia, there was factional strife, and flooding had destroyed the country’s agriculture. Most of the Sassa- nian troops were of Arab origin and went over to the in- vaders during the campaign. In the Syrian and North African provinces of Byzantium, the local population had been alien- ated by the religious intolerance of the Greek Orthodox es- tablishment, and were not disposed to come to their aid when the Arabs attacked, though Muslims could make no headway in the Byzantine heartlands of Anatolia.

Later, when the Muslims had established their great em- pire, Islamic law would give a religious interpretation of this conquest, dividing the world into the Dar al-Islam (the House of Islam), which was in perpetual conflict with the Dar al- Harb (the House of War). But in practice the Muslims ac- cepted that they had reached the limits of their expansion by this date, and coexisted amicably with the non-Muslim world. The Quran does not sanctify warfare. It develops the notion of a just war of self-defence to protect decent values, but con- demns killing and aggression.19 Furthermore, once the Arabs had left the peninsula, they found that nearly everybody be- longed to the ahl al-kitab, the People of the Book, who had received authentic scriptures from God. They were not, therefore, forced to convert to Islam; indeed, until the middle of the eighth century, conversion was not encouraged. The Muslims assumed that Islam was a religion for the descen- dants of Ismail, as Judaism was the faith of the sons of Isaac. Arab tribesmen had always extended protection to weaker clients (mawali). Once the Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians

Islam • 31

in their new empire had become dhimmis (protected subjects), they could not be raided or attacked in any way. It had always been a point of honour among Arabs to treat their clients well, to come to their aid, or to avenge an injury done to them. Dhimmis paid a poll tax in return for military protection, and were permitted to practise their own faith, as the Quran en- joined. Indeed some of the Roman Christians, who had been persecuted by the Greek Orthodox for their heretical opin- ions, greatly preferred Muslim to Byzantine rule.

Umar was determined to maintain good discipline. The Arab soldiers were not to enjoy the fruits of victory; the con- quered lands were not to be divided among the generals, but left to the existing cultivators, who paid rent to the Muslim state. Muslims were not allowed to settle in the cities. Instead, new “garrison towns” (amsar) were built for them at strategic locations: Kufah in Iraq, Basrah in Iraq, Qum in Iran, and Fustat at the head of the Nile. Damascus was the only old city to become a Muslim centre. A mosque was built in each of the amsar where the Muslim troops attended Friday prayers. In these garrison towns, the soldiers were taught to live an Is- lamic life. Umar stressed the importance of family values, was hard on drunkenness, and promoted the ascetic virtues of the Prophet, who, like the caliph himself, had always lived frugally. But the garrison towns were also Arab enclaves, where those traditions that could be accommodated with the Quranic world-view were continued on foreign soil. At this point, Islam was an essentially Arab religion. Any dhimmi who did convert had to become a “client” of one of the tribes and be absorbed into the Arab system.

But this period of triumph came to an abrupt end in November 644, when Umar was stabbed in the mosque of Medina by a Persian prisoner-of-war who had a personal grievance against him. The last years of the rashidun were characterized by violence. Uthman ibn Affan was elected as

32 . Karen Armstrong

the third caliph by six of the Prophet’s companions. He was a weaker character than his predecessors, but for the first six years of his reign the umma h continued to prosper. Uthman governed well and the Muslims conquered new territory. They seized Cyprus from the Byzantines, thus finally ejecting them from the eastern Mediterranean, and in North Africa the armies reached Tripoli in what is now Libya. In the East, the Muslim troops took much of Armenia, penetrated the Caucasus and established Muslim rule as far as the River Oxus in Iran, Herat in Afghanistan, and Sind in the Indian subcontinent.

But, despite these victories, the soldiers were becoming dis- contented. They had undergone a massive change. In just over a decade they had exchanged a harsh nomadic existence for the very different lifestyle of the professional army. They spent the summer fighting and winter far from home in the garrison towns. The distances were now so vast that the campaigns were more exhausting, and they were taking less plunder than be- fore. Uthman still refused to allow the commanders and the richest Meccan families to establish private estates in such countries as what is now Iraq, and this made him unpopular, es- pecially in Kufah and Fustat. Uthman also alienated the Mus- lims of Medina by giving the most prestigious posts to members of his own Umayyad family. They accused him of nepotism, even though many of the Umayyad officials were men of great ability. Uthman had, for example, appointed Muawiyyah, the son of Muhammad’s old enemy Abu Sufyan, governor of Syria. He was a good Muslim, and a skilled admin- istrator, known for his steadiness of character and his measured assessment of circumstances. But it seemed wrong to the Mus- lims of Medina, who still boasted of being the ansar(helpers) of the Prophet, that they should be passed over in favour of Abu Sufyan’s offspring. The Quran-reciters, who knew the scripture by heart and had become the chief religious authorities, were

Islam . 33

also incensed when Uthman insisted that only one version of the sacred text be used in the garrison towns, and suppressed variants, which many of them preferred, but which differed in minor details. Increasingly, the malcontents looked to Ali ibn Abi Talib, the Prophet’s cousin, who, it seems, had opposed the policies of both Umar and Uthman, standing for “soldiers’ rights” against the power of the central authority.

In 656 the discontent culminated in outright mutiny. A group of Arab soldiers from Fustat returned to Medina to claim their due, and when fobbed off they besieged Uthman’s simple house, broke in, and assassinated him. The mutineers acclaimed Ali as the new caliph.

T H E FIRST FITNAH

Ali seemed an obvious choice. He had grown up in the Prophet’s household and was imbued with the ideals pro- moted by Muhammad. He was a good soldier and wrote in- spiring letters to his officers, which are still classic Muslim texts, preaching the necessity of justice and the importance of dealing compassionately with the subject peoples. But despite his intimacy with the Prophet, his rule was not universally ac- cepted. Ali was supported by the ansar of Medina and those Meccans who resented the rise of the Umayyads. He also en- joyed the support of Muslims who still lived the traditional nomadic life, especially in Iraq, whose garrison town Kufah was an Alid stronghold. But the assassination of Uthman, who, like Ali himself, had been Muhammad’s son-in-law, and had been one of the earliest converts to Islam, was a shocking event which inspired a five-year civil war within the ummah, which is known as the fitnah, the time of temptation.

After a brief delay, Muhammad’s favourite wife Aisha, to- gether with her kinsman Talhah and Zubayr, one of the Prophet’s Meccan companions, attacked Ali for not punishing

34 . Karen Armstrong

Uthman’s murderers. Since the army was in the provinces, the rebels marched from Medina to Basrah. Ali was in a difficult position. He must himself have been shocked by Uthman’s murder, which, as a devout man, he could not condone. But his supporters insisted that Uthman deserved death, since he had not ruled justly, according to the Quranic ideal. Ali could not disown his partisans, and took refuge in Kufah, which he made his capital. He then advanced on Basrah with his army, which easily defeated the rebels there in the Battle of the Camel, so called because Aisha, who rode with the troops, had watched the fighting from the back of her camel. After his victory, Ali gave his supporters the top jobs, divided his trea- sury among them, but he still did not accord them full “sol- diers’ rights” by allowing them to annex the Sawad, the rich agricultural land around Kufah, which had provided the old Persian Empire with most of its revenue. He was failing to satisfy his own party but also, in not condemning Uthman’s murder, casting himself in a highly dubious light.

Ali’s rule had not been accepted in Syria, where the oppo- sition was led by Muawiyyah from his capital in Damascus. Uthman had been his kinsman, and, as the new head of the Umayyad family, it was his duty as an Arab chieftain to avenge Uthman’s death. He was supported by the wealthy Meccan clans and the Arabs of Syria, who had appreciated his strong and wise government. Ali probably felt some sympathy for Muawiyyah’s position, and initially took no steps against him. But the spectacle of the Prophet’s relatives and compan- ions poised to attack one another was profoundly disturbing. Muhammad’s mission had been to promote unity among Muslims and to integrate the ummah so that it reflected the unity of God. To prevent the appalling possibility of further conflict, the two sides tried to negotiate a settlement at Siffin on the upper Euphrates in 657, but the discussions were in- conclusive. Muawiyyah’s supporters put copies of the Quran

Islam . 35

on the tips of their lances and called for neutral Muslims to arbitrate between the contestants in accordance with God’s word. It appeared that the arbitration went against Ali, and many of his followers tried to persuade him to accept it. Feel- ing thus empowered, Muawiyyah deposed Ali, sent troops into Iraq and had himself proclaimed caliph in Jerusalem.

But some of Ali’s more radical supporters refused to accept the arbitration and were shocked by Ali’s submission. In their view, Uthman had failed to live up to the standard of the Quran. Ali had compromised with the supporters of injustice by failing to right the wrongs committed by Uthman and was, therefore, no true Muslim. They withdrew from the ummah, which they claimed had betrayed the spirit of the Quran, and set up their own camp with an independent commander. Ali suppressed these extremists, who became known as the kharajis (seceders), wiping out the original rebels, but the movement gained adherents throughout the empire. Many had been per- turbed by the nepotism of Uthman’s reign, and wanted to im- plement the egalitarian spirit of the Quran. The Kharajites were always a minority group, but their position was important, since it was the first instance of an important Muslim trend, whereby the politics that affected the morality of the ummah led to a new theological development. The Kharajites insisted that the ruler of the Islamic community should not be the most powerful but the most committed Muslim; caliphs should not be power-seekers like Muawiyyah. God had given human be- ings free will and, since he was just, he would punish such evil- doers as Muawiyyah, Uthman and Ali, who by betraying Islam had become apostates. The Kharajites were extremists but they forced Muslims to consider the question of who was and who was not a Muslim. So important was the political leadership as a religious idea that it led to discussions about the nature of God, predestination and human freedom.

Ali’s harsh treatment of the Kharajites cost him much sup-

36 . Karen Armstrong

port, even in Kufah. Muawiyyah made steady gains and many of the Arabs remained neutral. A second attempt at arbitra- tion, which tried to find another candidate for the caliphate, failed; Muawiyyah’s army defeated the resistance to his rule in Arabia, and in 661 Ali was murdered by a Kharajite. Those who remained loyal to Ali’s cause in Kufah acclaimed his son Hasan, but Hasan came to an agreement with Muawiyyah, and, for a financial consideration, retired to Medina, where he lived without further political involvement until his death in 669.

The ummah had thus entered a new phase. Muawiyyah made Damascus his capital and set about restoring the unity of the Muslim community. But a pattern had been set. The Muslims of Iraq and Syria now felt antagonistic towards one another. With hindsight, Ali was regarded as a decent, pious man who had been defeated by the logic of practical politics. The murder of the man who had been the first male convert to Islam and was the Prophet’s closest male relative was rightly seen as a disgraceful event, which posed grave ques- tions about the moral integrity of the ummah. According to common Arab belief, Ali was thought to have inherited some of the Prophet’s exceptional qualities, and his male descen- dants were revered as leading religious authorities. The fate of Ali, a man betrayed by his friends as well as his enemies, became a symbol of the inherent injustice of life. From time to time, Muslims who protested against the behaviour of the reigning caliph would retreat from the ummah, like the Khara- jites, and summon all true Muslims to join them in a struggle (jihad) for higher Islamic standards. Often they would claim that they belonged to the Shiah i-Ali, the Partisans of Ali.

Others, however, took a more neutral stance. They had been appalled by the murderous divisions that had torn the ummah apart, and henceforth unity became a more crucial value in Islam than ever. Many had been dissatisfied with Ali,

Islam . 37

but could see that Muawiyyah was far from ideal. They began to look back on the period of the four rashidun as a time when Muslims had been ruled by devout men, who had been close to the Prophet but had been brought low by evil-doers. The events of the first fitnah had become symbolic, and rival par- ties now drew upon these tragic incidents as they struggled to make sense of their Islamic vocation. All agreed, however, that the shift from Medina, the capital of the Prophet and the rashidun, to Umayyad Damascus was more than a political ex- pedient. The ummah seemed to be moving away from the world of the Prophet, and was in danger of losing its raison d’etre. The more pious and concerned Muslims were re- solved to find new ways of putting it back on track.

DEVELOPMENT

2

T H E UMAYYADS A N D T H E S E C O N D F I T N A H

Caliph Muawiyyah (661-80) managed to restore the unity of the empire. Muslims had been horrified by the fitnah, and had realized how vulnerable they were in their garrison towns, isolated from their fellow Arabs and surrounded by poten- tially hostile subjects. They simply could not afford such lethal civil war. They wanted strong government, and Muawiyyah, an able ruler, was able to give it to them. He re- vived Umar’s system of segregating the Arab Muslims from the population, and even though some Muslims in Arabia were still agitating for the right to build estates in the occu- pied territories, Muawiyyah continued to forbid this. He also discouraged conversion, and built an efficient administration. Islam thus remained the religion of the conquering Arab elite. At first the Arabs, who had no experience of imperial government, relied on the expertise of non-Muslims, who had served the previous Byzantine and Persian regimes, but gradually the Arabs began to oust the dhimmis from the top posts. In the course of the next century, the Umayyad caliphs would gradually transform the disparate regions conquered by the Muslim armies into a unified empire, with a common ideology. This was a great achievement; but the court natu- rally began to develop a rich culture and luxurious lifestyle, and became indistinguishable in many respects from any other ruling class.

Therein lay a dilemma. It had been found, after centuries of experience, that an absolute monarchy was the only effec- tive way of governing a pre-modern empire with an agrarian- based economy, and that it was far more satisfactory than a

42 . Karen Armstrong

military oligarchy, where commanders usually competed with one another for power. The idea of making one man so privileged that rich and poor alike are vulnerable before him is abhorrent to us in our democratic era, but we must realize that democracy is made possible by an industrialized society which has the technology to replicate its resources indefi- nitely: this was not an option before the advent of Western modernity. In the pre-modern world, a monarch who was so powerful that he had no rivals did not need to fight his own battles, could settle the quarrels of the great and had no rea- son to ignore the entreaties of those who pleaded for the poor. So strong was this preference for monarchy that, as we shall see, even when real power was wielded by local rulers in a large empire, they still paid lip service to the king and claimed to be acting as his vassals. The Umayyad caliphs gov- erned a vast empire, which continued to expand under their rule. They would find that in order to preserve the peace they would have to become absolute monarchs too, but how would this cohere with Arab traditions, on the one hand, and with the radical egalitarianism of the Quran on the other?

The first Umayyad caliphs were not absolute monarchs. Muawiyyah still ruled like an Arab chief, as primus inter pares. The Arabs had always distrusted kingship, which was not fea- sible in a region where numerous small groups had to com- pete for the same inadequate resources. They had no system of dynastic rule, since they always needed the best man avail- able as their chief. But the fitnah had shown the dangers of a disputed succession. It would be wrong to think of the Umayyads as “secular” rulers. Muawiyyah was a religious man and a devout Muslim, according to the prevailing notion of Islam. He was devoted to the sanctity of Jerusalem, the first Muslim qiblah and the home of so many of the great prophets of the past. He worked hard to maintain the unity of the ummah. His rule was based on the Quranic insistence that all

Islam . 43