LECTURE FOUR

A History of the Islamic World

What prejudices and stereotypes cloud our understanding?

c.f. Seerah and Muir and Sprenger biographies.

Importance of understanding views irrespective of objective truths.

How do we understand the structure and process of history?

Class history, workers or kings - Cultural history, most important is closest to home, nationalism? In the global village everyone becomes you neighbour, hence the need for these lectures.

View of history actually dependent on your world view and your understanding of what is mankind, and what is his place in the Universe. As a muslim my view of history is also quite possibly different from yours, where we muslims are now Us and western european christianity becomes Them. So I will try to be objective, but if I end up sounding a bit biased, you're right - I am.

So where do I begin my history of Islam?

Adam - already you may have noticed a difference. Islam is not something that started with Muhammad.

One hears much talk of a muslim state, but the history of Islam is not of states, but of a religious attitude, which expresses itself in the culture of a community.

Abraham - Isaac - Ismail (Hagar) - Moses - Jesus - Muhammad

Alongside this development you have Pharaoh (God on earth) - The Greeks who poisoned their philosophers, and the Romans with their Empire, which I'll talk about later.

The Islamic message often became corrupted and the community degraded, people of Noah, Lot, Sodom and Gomorrah and suchlike. Let us look at the state that the Arab peninsula was in by about 500 AD.

Jahilia - time of ignorance - Blood feuds, Brigandage, Burying babies alive. Worship of idols - 360 around Ka'aba, still a place of pilgrimage for tribes, but now each had their own god. Into this time was born Muhammad in 570 AD

A shepherd boy - Merchant's representative   - Khadija and Fatimah to 40yrs old, then Revelation - Muhammad thought himself mad - then accepted - small group around him also accepted - meeting in private for a few years - told to preach and stood at Ka'aba - they didn't like it.

Persecution and torture, Ostracised by society, some fled to Abyssinia, invitation to Yathrib, Birth of Ummah - start of Calendar, community laws based on Revelation, Qibla turned from Jerusalem to Kaaba, reclaiming it. Quraish and tribes try to exterminate muslims but fail to stem the tide of converts, near bloodless reclamation of Makkah. Unification of Arabia under Islam as a way of life (prophets wives as unifying sunnah) - Death of Prophet in 632 AD. Then things were different.

Before he was cold the tribal chiefs were fighting to assume his power and authority. First four Caliphs - Abu Bakr (modesty, visiting the poor and sick at night) died of fever in 634 AD. Under Umar the muslim generals expanded Islam's borders, and it may be useful at this point to consider the muslim view of empire.

Muslim Empire often compared to Roman Empire though they have nothing in common apart from vastness of territory. Roman civilisation not based on universal moral values (Roman justice was justice for romans), but a search for comfort and material wealth, indulgence of individual desirds and passions, and a will to Power for it's own sake. It was also racist, thinking of all outside the empire as barbarians. It took 1,000 years to grow to strength and collapsed before the Huns and Goths in less than 100 years.

cf Muslim Empire - based on religious ideal, wealth is God's, as is Power. Fight is for justice, moral values and freedom of worship. In 80 years it spread from Spain to China, and lasted with extraordinary resilience.

What is the basis of a civilisation that can grow so rapidly and yet retain stability? It cannot be done by coersion, you do not have enough men to control an unwilling populace and overstretch your military resources. cf Hitler or British Empire.

One reason for expansion was the Search for Knowledge - a religious duty / seek as far as China. Communication of Truth, Da'wa, good news and warning. With their thirst for knowledge science flourished, Maths and Medicine, Astronomy and Ecology, Architecture, Town planning, Philosophy and Engineering.

Fight for good and against evil, Justice for all, a war of liberation, and the establishment of moral values in society. Armies were not allowed to capture and own land. Religious freedom but a tax against conscription and for protection against predators. Khalid thinking he must lose against the army of the Byzantine emperor went back to pay protection tax he had taken.

Despite national tribal variety, the conceptual basis was held in common Ihsan-Iman-Islam and Shariah (Islam's great glory) provided a system of justice recognisable from one end of the empire to the other, enabling people to live the Deen in peace and security.

Trade also flourished in this atmosphere without fear or riba' (usury), and despite shifts of power within the Caliphate, the political structure in the Islamic world remained much the same until this century. but let us return to Umar.

Umar and Jerusalem (leading camel and praying outside the church) Syrian, Palestinian, and Egyptian Christians considered heretical by Orthodox Byzantines. Khalid took Damascus with help of Christians - no killing or looting, cathedral partitioned off to allow muslim prayers. Khalid then moved north and threw back the Byzantine Emperor.

East of that, the Persian king Yazdagind found muslims on borders an annoyance and in 637 the Persians attacked the Arabs, lost the battle and fled, leaving them Mesopotamia. In 641 Amr went into Egypt, taking Alexandria in 643

Umar insisted on frugal self denial in his generals and governors, but killed during prayer by a madman with a grudge in 644.

Uthman a Qureishite aristocratic old man, dreadful administrator, gave jobs to his family and earned resentment, also collected the Qur'an. In 656 AD aged 82 Murdered by plotters while reading Quran and his bloodstained shirt and wifes severed fingers plus bloody Quran taken to Muawiya in Damascus, his relative and son of Abu Sufyan and Hind.

He refused to recognise Ali until murderers were punished. Battle of the Camel. Ali killed in Kufa mosque in Ramadan 661 AD

Umayyad dynasty - Muawiyah the muslim Caesar, or Adolf Hitler. After Muawiyah Yazid, but claim by Husayn, slaughtered at Kerbela 78 against 4000. Sunnis take a fatally resigned attitude to this shame, but Shia carry the torch.

After Walid muslim expansion reached China and took Pakistan, while in the west Tariq ibn Zayyid took Jabal Tariq, then Spain, reaching Bordeaux in 732. In 749 rebellion from Iran and Iraq destroyed the Umayyads, though one (Abdul Rahman) remaining son ended up in Andalusia and proclaimed Caliph in Cordova.

Abbasids worse than Ummayads, built a new capital at Baghdad where from 786 to 809 Harun al Rashid ruled. From Andalusia and the Baghdad court came the Renaissance.

Loss of Andalusia (treatment of Moriscos - Inquisition - Colonisation)

The Crusades

1258 the Mongols sack Baghdad. Within a generation they are taking Islam back to Samarkand.  

The Mughals, 200 million muslims in Indonesia, Africa, 60 million in China (They say that muslims run the best restaurants in Beijing)

One sixth of the world's population for 1400 years - into one hour doesn't go!