history 22

WorldHistoryIChapter9.pptx

Worlds of Islam

World History I Chapter 9

Major World Religions

By 500 CE, the world already had a variety of established, monotheistic religions: Daoism and Confucianism originating in China, Hinduism and Buddhism originating in India, Judaism and Christianity, originating in the Middle East. Islam will become another great world religion by the middle 600s.

Bedouin Origins

Islam originated among the Bedouins of Arabia. The Bedouins were a nomadic people, who herded and traded camels and frequently made war on each other.

They were originally polytheistic, believing in a variety of gods, including ancestor worship and animism.

Their principle city was Mecca, which originally included shrines to more than 360 different deities, but which eventually became known as a pilgrimage site for worshippers of Allah.

Allah was the principle deity- and ultimately the ONLY deity- of the Muslims, just as Yahweh was the god of the Jews.

Muhammad

Some Jews had come to believe that Yahweh had put his son, Jesus, on earth, that Jesus was the prophet of the faith and ultimately died in sacrifice as a testament to his faith in God, as these believers, now called Christians, called their only deity.

For many Muslims, Allah had a prophet too, named Muhammad Ibn Abdullah.

Muhammad was born in Mecca, had a wife and children and engaged in trade until he began to have visions that he believed showed him to be Allah’s prophet.

He recorded these revelations into a book called the Quran, which is as sacred to Islam as the Holy Bible is to Christianity.

Muhammad

For many Muslims, Allah had a prophet too, named Muhammad Ibn Abdullah. Muhammad was born in Mecca, had a wife and children and engaged in trade until he began to have visions that he believed showed him to be Allah’s prophet. He recorded these revelations into a book called the Quran, which is as sacred to Islam as the Holy Bible is to Christianity.

He recorded these revelations into a book called the Quran (below), which is as sacred to Islam as the Holy Bible is to Christianity.

The umma

The most important precept of Islam is that Allah is God, and Muhammad is his prophet.

The Quran taught that people needed to return to an earlier society where money was unimportant, people (including women) were treated more equally and class divisions did not exist.

Believers in Islam became part of the umma, the “community of all believers” as the text says, “a new and just community, bound by common belief rather than by territory, language, or tribe.” (362) This idea effectively shoved tribal chiefs and political leaders out of power.

Islamicity.org

The Five Pillars of Islam

The Quran provided guidance in the five PILLARS OF ISLAM: The first and foremost being “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God.”

The second was for ritual prayer, which needed to be performed five times a day.

The third pillar was almsgiving- helping the poor and the needy.

The fourth pillar required a month of fasting for Ramadan (minimal food and drink, abstaining from sex) to self-purify and remind the faithful to help the poor.

The fifth pillar is a requirement to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj, to worship and prove one’s faith.

For some believers there is a sixth pillar, the “struggle”, or jihad. This is typically an internal struggle of good vs. evil, but some take it to mean a literal battle against nonbelievers to protect and spread the Islamic faith.

Islam Grows

Muhammad’s words weren’t popular with everyone. In Mecca, businessmen in particular as well as city leaders worried about their own power bases protested against him and his followers, eventually hounding them out of Mecca entirely.

The center of Islamic religion then became the city of Medina, although the faithful faced the direction of Mecca when saying their daily prayers.

Almost immediately, these Muslims fought with some area Jews who supported Muhammad’s detractors instead of him.

Muhammad’s message of peace among the tribes instead of the constant warfare in the past was a popular one and his followers grew steadily.

In 630, Muhammad was able to re-enter and control Mecca, and by his death in 632, most of Arabia had become Islamic.

Comparing Two Religions

There’s one extremely important difference between Christianity and the Islamic faith during this time. The Christians never sought to become rulers of their areas; there was a separation between one’s religion and one’s politics.

The Christians were under the power of the Roman Empire, just as the Jews had been, and kept their faith separate, continuing to be loyal citizens to the empire (at least on the surface) so to avoid persecution.

This only had a limited affect, as the Roman Empire continued to persecute the Christians off and on for more than 300 years after Jesus’ crucifixion.

In Islam, the faith and the nation are one and the same. Muhammad was both a religious and political leader, waging war against other states and forcing them to convert to Islam when he was victorious.

Additionally, Christians had a whole set of people whose job it was to intercede between God and his followers: the clergy. Islam had no priests, bishops, etc., although it had plenty of religious teachers and scholars.

The Christians had two sets of law: Secular law, which was the law of their nation, and Canon Law, which was the law of the Church. The Muslims had one set of laws with the principles of Islam at the core of each.

Religious Tolerance (For a Fee)

The Arab empire, meanwhile, continued to grow in power. It conquered portions of the Byzantine and Persian empires and flowed southward into North Africa and westward, conquering Spain and attempting to conquer France. To the east, it conquered some of the Indus valley and made it as far as China.

Where the Muslims conquered, they did not necessarily force their religion on the conquered peoples- at least not at first. For almost 100 years after Muhammad’s death, conquered Jews and Christians were allowed to continue to practice their own beliefs. Even Zoroastrians, Persians typically, were given religious tolerance for a time because they were monotheistic.

These monotheistic but non-Muslim peoples were called dhimmis- they were “second-class citizens” of the Arab empire, as the book suggests (367) but they were still allowed to worship without being harassed as long as they paid special taxes called jizya.

A dhimmi bows

Before

Conversions

Many people voluntarily converted to Islam for a variety of reasons. Some didn’t want to pay the jizya tax. Some admired Islam for the veneration and protection it gave merchants, the backbone of the Arab empire. Some found that becoming Muslim allowed them to rise further in their careers than they could if they stayed as nonbelievers.

In some areas, conversion was widespread but very gradual: Egypt, Syria, Iraq and North Africa eventually identified themselves as so strongly that their native languages were often no longer spoken.

In Persia, most people eventually became Muslim, but the Persian language (Farsi, as the Arabians call it) continued to thrive and increase. Other areas like Iran, Turkey and Pakistan embraced Islam but didn’t become very Arabic in their culture.

Factions

After Muhammad’s death, four close friends of his became the supreme ruler, or caliph, but none of these reigns were very successful. Instead, civil wars broke out between factions, one of which still continues to some extent today.

The Sunni Muslims, who believe the caliphs should be selected by the Islamic community itself, and the Shia Muslims, who believe only those of Muhammad’s bloodline (specifically those descended from Ali, and Husayn, both blood relatives of Muhammad himself) should be allowed to rule. To this day, the two sides are rarely at peace.

Caliphs and Caliphates

As time passed, the caliphs consolidated their powers as rulers, becoming absolute rulers with all of the outward signs one expects from rulers who are all-powerful: elaborate and luxurious courts with extended ceremonies, complex bureaucracies, standing armies and strong systems of taxation.

Caliphs became hereditary rulers, giving rise to dynasties such as the Umayyad Caliphate, which moved the capital of the Arab Empire from Medina in Arabia to Damascus in Syria. Eventually, though, the caliphate dynasties lost their power and began to crumble, leaving the Islamic areas ruled by sultans or military oligarchies.

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Sufis

As the caliphates disintegrated, religious leaders called ulama developed laws regarding every aspect of Muslim life, from society, to economics, to politics, all the way down to personal hygiene. This sharia law became the blueprint for how to live life correctly as a Muslim.

Also, a group of mystics, known as Sufis, began to teach that although sharia law would keep you out of trouble legally, to become an enlightened Muslim, one had to pray, meditate and study the Quran and remove oneself from distractions of the world such as ego and the pursuit of wealth.

Women in Islam

Culturally, restrictions against women that are seen today in the Muslim faith were not always originally part of the Quran. The Quran states that women and men and equal spiritually, but still makes it clear that women are inherently inferior to men.

Customs such as veiling women and separating them from men came later, through the dictates of various caliphs.

Islamic Faith in India

The great Arab empire came to an end in 1258, when Mongol raiders sacked Baghdad and killed the last caliph. But the religion and culture of Islam continued to spread.

Islam reached India through the conquests of Turkic raiders. When parts of India were conquered bit by bit by these Turks, they brought Islamic customs with them. Seeing Hinduism and Buddhism as heretic religions, the Turks destroyed Hindu and Buddhist temples.

The Turks themselves were not very successful in keeping Indian provinces under their control, but the influence of Islam long outlasted their efforts.

Although Hindus and Buddhists were still the majority, the number of Muslims grew in part because the lower caste and untouchables found they were treated more equitably under Islam.

As in other areas, some Indians converted to Islam in order to avoid paying the non-Muslim taxes. Sufis, the Islamic holy men, were also welcomed by many Indians, in part because they encouraged Indians to keep their own local gods and religious celebrations (which is surprising) while still allowing them to practice at least a type of Islamic faith.

Islamic Faith in India

Islam never accounted for more than 25% of the Indian population, though. Some of the reasons were that Islam is radically monotheistic- there is no god but Allah, and he must never be depicted in any way, whereas the Hindus were polytheistic and loved to have statues and drawings of their various gods everywhere.

Islam also taught that people were essentially equal in the eyes of Allah, but the Hindus had the caste system that they rigidly adhered to.

Also, as your test points out, the Muslims were sexually modest, while the Hindus were openly and joyfully erotic.

Some Indians balanced the two through SIKHISM, a religion that embraced the idea of one god, but included also the ideas of karma and rebirth.

“There is no Hindu and no Muslim. All are children of God.” - Guru Nanak (below), founder of Sikhism.

Islamic Faith in Anatolia (Turkey)

The Turkic peoples invaded Anatolia (which would become known as Turkey) around the same time as they invaded India. In Anatolia as in India, Sufis helped to convert many of the conquered to Islam. More Turks settled in Anatolia compared to India, and as a result, Anatolia eventually became heavily Muslim- about 90%, compared to the 20-25% of India.

Anatolia had been governed by the Byzantine Empire, which was Christian, but as the Byzantine Empire began to crumble, Christians in Anatolia were discriminated against and hounded until many of them began to believe that Islam might be the true religion, since it was clearly the religion of the powerful.

Furthermore, Christianity and the Muslim religion had more in common than Hindu and Muslim had. Both Christianity and Islam believed in one god, and that a prophet had been sent by God to guide His people. Sufis began to teach that the two religions were actually just different version of the same faith.

These Sufis also built schools, mills, resting places for travelers, hospice centers for the sick, etc- all of these good works helped to not only spread Islam in Anatolia, but helped Anatolia become successful and prosperous…and eventually powerful. By 1500, Anatolia was the center of the Ottoman Empire, which was massive at one point.

Islamic Faith in Africa

Islam spread to Africa via trade routes rather than conquest. It was accepted gradually and peacefully until most of the West African empires were Muslim: Ghana, Mail, Songhay and others.

The city of Timbuktu became a mecca for Quranic scholars, and mosques were scattered all over West Africa. Still, Islam tended to be prevalent in the cities, but less so in the remote reaches where the people clung to their tribal religions where were often polytheistic.

“ View of Timbuktu”, Heinrich Barth, 1858

Islamic Faith in Al-Andalus (Spain)

In Spain, or al-Andalus, as the Muslims called it, was conquered by Arabs and Berbers in the 700s, and by 1000, about 75% of the population was Muslim.

At first Muslims and Christians got along fine, but as years passed and more rigid forms of Islam came into Spain from North Africa, that tolerance for each other eroded.

By 1200 (the time of the Crusades), the Christians were actively trying to wrest Spain from Muslim hands, and by the end of the 1400s, they had succeeded. Jews were expelled from Spain as well as Muslims.

Unlike other areas, when Spain repudiated Islam, much of the Islamic culture was pushed out too.

Islamic Architecture in Spain