History exam

profilehealme
3_ArabWorldandIslam.ppt
Home>History homework help>World history homework help>History exam

Arabia before Muhammad

  • Arabic kingdoms flourished in the area now known as Yemen
  • Camels were domesticated 400 BCE making several Arabic kingdoms prosper
  • Bedouins
  • Men
  • Individualistic
  • Loyalty to obligation and duty
  • Sapolsky and honor
  • Women
  • Free and independent

Robert Sapolsky

Pastoralists (herders) versus Southerners

  • Thieves can’t steal crops but can steal herds
  • So, pastoralists, says Sapolsky
  • Develop warrior classes
  • Develop monotheism
  • Foster cultures of honor

  • “unqualified hospitality to strangers”
  • Len Rogers and hospitality

  • Meaning of life:
  • Life is short, enjoy it while you can

  • By 500s, Christians and Jews move into Arabian peninsula

  • “God created the world and after it human beings. The name of the first man was Adam. The descendants of Adam led to Noah, who had a son named Shem. This is where the word Semite comes from; literally a Semite is a descendant of Shem. Like the Jews, the Arabs consider themselves a Semitic people. The descendants of Shem led to Abraham, and so far we are still in the tradition of Judaism and Christianity. The submission of Abraham in his supreme test appears to have provided Islam with its name. The supreme test was would he be willing to sacrifice his son? Abraham married Sarah. Sarah had no son, so Abraham, wanting to continue his line, took Hagar for his second wife. Hagar bore him a son, Ishmael, whereupon Sarah conceived and likewise had a son, named Isaac. Sarah demanded that Abraham banish Ishmael and Hagar from the tribe.
  • Here we come to the first divergence between the koranic and biblical accounts. According to the Koran, Ishmael went to the place where Mecca was to rise. His descendants, flourishing in Arabia, became Muslims; whereas those of Isaac, who remained in Palestine, were Hebrews and became Jews.” (Huston Smith The World’s Religions p. 223)

Early Mecca

  • An oasis in Hejaz
  • Had a deep well
  • Two caravan routes met there
  • Had religious sanctuary--Kaaba
  • Contains a stone (meteorite)
  • Was white, blacken by sin
  • Draped with animal skins
  • Shrines for 360 gods and goddesses
  • Notice how many!! Polytheism

  • Before Islam, Arabs practiced polytheism

  • Islam derived from s-l-m; no vowels
  • Compare to YHWH
  • Islam=primary definition is peace; secondary definition is surrender
  • Full meaning “The peace that comes when one’s life is surrendered to God.”
  • For most of us, God not Allah

  • The Genesis Story
  • AdamNoahShem (from where we get the word Semite)Abraham married SarahAbraham fathers a son with Hagar, IshmaelSarah gave birth to Issac
  • Sarah demands Hagar and Ishmael’s banishment
  • Ishmael went to the place where Mecca would rise

  • Descendants of Ishmael become Muslims
  • Isaac remained in Palestine, his descendants where Hebrews and become Jews
  • Muhammad was born 570
  • Name means “highly praised”

  • Muhammad born 570
  • Both parents died, raised by an uncle
  • His uncle worshiped Allah, the god, but not The God
  • Became a prominent merchant in Mecca
  • Married Khadija, fathered Fatima

  • Would retreat to a cave
  • Meditated for hours

  • Muhammad thought he was being attacked by a Jinn (where we get our word Genie)
  • He recognized the angel as Gabriel
  • The dreams became the Qu′ran

While attempting to understand his visionary dreams, an angel appeared to Muhammad and said,

Recite in the name of your lord who created--

Created the human from an embryo

Recite your lord is all-giving

who taught by the pen

Taught the human what he did not know before.

He began to preach where he lived, Mecca

The good people of Mecca disliked this message

  • One, its uncompromising monotheism!!
  • Two, its moral teachings
  • Three, new teaching of equality
  • Another reason?
  • So,

  • Muhammad fled Mecca for Medina
  • The Hegira/Hejira (he-jeer-ah)
  • Beginning of the Muslim calendar
  • Conquers Arabia with Islam
  • Muhammad is NOT the center of Islam, the Qur'an is.

  • Muhammad is NOT the earthly center of Muslim faith, the Qu’ran isPeople of the Book

Why is Islam so successful?

Or

The four main ideas of Islam

Oneness of God, Creation, Humanity, Judgement

  • Oneness of God, Creation, Humanity, Judgement

  • I. Oneness of God
  • Hebrews focused on people of Israel
  • Christians deified Jesus (Nicene Creed)
  • Muhammad is not the son of God, simply a messenger

  • II. Creation
  • World of matter is real and important; the source of Islamic science (while Europe floundered)
  •  astronomy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, botany, geography, cartography, ophthalmology, pharmacology,  physics and zoology
  • Being the handiwork of God is good, the world is good

  • III. Humanity
  • Life is a gift requiring two responses: gratitude, surrender
  • Infidel means “one who lacks thankfulness”
  • Joe Cooper
  • When one goes with the flow with creation, one will be Muslim
  • IV. Day of Judgment: heaven or hell

Practicing the Faith

  • God is revealed through four great stages:
  • Monotheism, Ten Commandments, Golden Rule, but one is left with “How should I love my neighbor?”

The five pillars of Islam, or the five obligations:

Shahadah—There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His Prophet; or, how to become a Muslim

Daily Prayer—five times daily

Congregational worship not stressed as in Judaism and Christianity—there is no church

Content of prayer—praise and gratitude

Paying of alms, an obligation not charity—institutionalized into the state

4. Ramadanfasting

  • Makes one think, teaches self-discipline, underscores human dependency, sensitizes compassion

5. Hajj—one should visit Mecca at least once in a

lifetime

Islam Spreads

  • khalifa˚ “successor” or caliphate
  • Muhammad was a prophet, these were not
  • First four caliphs were

Abu Bakr—elected democratically

Successor to Muhammad, the one who holds Islam together after Muhammad dies

(father of Aisha, Muhammad’s favorite wife and early friend of Muhammad) keeps Islam together after Muhammad’s death

Umar—

1. Muslim armies conquer the Fertile Crescent

2. empire builder—conquered all of Saudi Arabia, parts of Palestine and lower Iraq

3. Uthman— assassinated

  • One of my favorite quotations:

“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. From Harun, Commander of the Faithful, to Nicephorus, the dog of the Greeks, I have read your letter, you son of a she-infidel, and you shall see the answer before you hear it.”

Ali

son-in-law of Muhammad and husband to Fatima

Convinced Islamic community that leadership should remain in the family of Muhammad, ie, Shiat-u-Ali, the family of Ali

“Whomever I am nearest to, so likewise is Ali. O God, be the friend of him who is his friend, and the foe of him who is his foe.”

Aisha challenged Ali but loses to Ali’s forces at the Battle of the Camel

  • Islam fragments

  • Shi'ites˚-- (Shia-u-Ali: the Party of Ali) represented Ali, believed caliph should come from Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and her husband Ali

  • Sunni—focused on community—Ummah—not direct line from Muhammad

As Islam expanded so did Mosques, much more than a place of worship

Literacy

Equality

Women

1. Literacy

  • Educationanother way to manage a group of strangers
  • Three categories: Islamic sciences, ie, study of Qur’an; philosophical and natural sciences (Greek knowledge); literary arts.
  • Mosques often had schools attached

2. Equality

  • Men an women have same spiritual nature
  • Woman is NOT blamed for the fall of humanity (Adam and Eve are to blame)
  • Pregnancy and childbirth are not punishments
  • Men and women have same religious duties and face the same consequences
  • That there are no women prophets has to do with physical demands and not spiritual inferiority

3. Women

  • Women at the time of Muhammad’s birth had few rights
  • Small girls could be buried alive in times of scarcity
  • How do we know?
  • Qur’an says that on Judgement Day “buried girls” will rise out of their graves and ask for what crime they were killed
  • Muhammad ended infanticide and detailed rights for women
  • https://www.pbs.org/muhammad/ma_women.shtml

  • Why?
  • Maybe because Muhammad was orphaned by his dad and raised by his mom? “You have rights over your women, and your women have rights over you.”
  • So, if daughters speak well of their father on the Day of Judgement, fathers will enter paradise.
  • Why multiple wives?
  • So many men killed in battle

  • Islamic culture flourished while Europe floundered
  • If not for Islam, the thoughts of the greatest Greek thinkers would not have been preserved
  • Avicenna and Averroes translated Aristotle

  • Why is Islam so successful? Or The four main ideas of Islam
  • Oneness of God, Creation, Humanity, Judgement

OR

  • How do we know about the Greeks?

Islam

Three names to know:

  • Rhazes—smallpox (not chickenpox) from measles
  • Avicenna—(fan of Plato) The Canon of Medicine
  • 750 articles written about him and his ideas between 1906 to 2006
  • Averroes—(fan of Aristotle) translating and writing about Greek writers

  • Plato/Platonism—what is real
  • Forms—the idea of a chair—stop studying change!
  • There are absolutes—not different points of view
  • Aristotle as Empiricist: Aristotle (whose thought is described as Aristotelian), the student of Plato, becomes a kind of polar opposite.
  • Aristotle says there is no perfect realm, just what we see. The idea of chairness is what we see, no separate timeless existence.
  • Who cares? Answering what is real?
  • Nature of reality?

But there are Church Problems

1. Monastic communities--primogeniture

2. Investiture conflict—the issue of control

Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle and the soul

All humans desire an eternal soul

everything in nature has a purpose

therefore salvation will happen

Links logic and religion

Plato v Aristotle, who cares?
What is real!

  • EARLY GREECE: to 750BCE
  • ARCHAIC GREECE: 750BCE to 500 BCE
  • CLASSICAL GREECE: 500 BCE to 338 BCE
  • So what is Islam preserving?

  • Hippocrates 460 to 370 BCE
  • Holistic—forerunner of modern primary care
  • Naturalistic—does not require theology or a priest; disease is the result of natural causes; sacred disease? Epilepsy
  • Extreme illness calls for extreme cure
  • Consciousness and mental functions located in the brain—not the heart or bowels or such
  • The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction by William Bynum

  • Hippocrates believed environmental factors can change basic characteristics—Lamarckianism
  • A reminder:
  • Evolution—is all about reproduction of the species
  • Heritable trait
  • Variability in the heritable trait
  • Some traits more advantageous than others
  • Random mutations

  • Greek legacy in Medicine
  • Botanical basis of most drugs
  • Secular approach to disease

  • Islam
  • Muslims were transcribing those Greek texts we study
  • And they were adding their own ideas:
  • Rhazes—smallpox (not chickenpox) from measles
  • Avicenna—The Canon of Medicine
  • 750 articles written about him and his ideas between 1906 to 2006
  • Averroes—translating and writing about Greek writers

  • Medicine
  • Understood the nature of contagion of plague & TB
  • Constructed hollow needles while Europe is using leeches
  • Developed concept of a modern hospital
  • Jabir Ibn Hayyan
  • One of the founders of modern pharmacy

1: Zeno of Citium 2: Epicurus 3: (Federico II of Mantua?) 4: Boethius or Anaximander or Empedocles? 5: Averroes 6: Pythagoras 7: Alcibiades or Alexander the Great? 8: Antisthenes or Xenophon? 9: Hypatia (Francesco Maria della Rovere?) 10: Aeschines or Xenophon? 11: Parmenides? 12: Socrates 13: Heraclitus (Michelangelo) 14: Plato (Leonardo da Vinci) 15: Aristotle 16: Diogenes 17: Plotinus (Donatello?) 18: Euclid or Archimedes with students (Bramante)? 19: Zoroaster 20: Ptolemy? R: Apelles (Raphael) 21: Protogenes (Il Sodoma, Perugino, or Timoteo Viti). Photo: Wikipedia