The Development of the Major Legal "Schools"

Regional differences developed early on in even the central parts of the first Caliphate (even in the period of the first four Rashidun Caliphs) in relation to marriage, international affairs (such as questions of war and peace) and even in relation to the formation of subordinate governments within the Caliphate.

From around the mid 8^th century, scholars discussed the variations and what if anything was required to be done about them. The 2^nd Abbasid Caliph, al-Mansur, considered some codification in order to promote more uniformity in the law but was persuaded to accept the status quo on the basis that Islam importantly accepts and promotes diversity and independence of thought and ideas. This same principle led to the acceptance of differing mutually respectful schools of jurisprudence. Various schools were formed under the influence of respected scholars and later ceased. By the end of the 10^th century there had been around 10 major schools.

One example of schools arriving at their own diverse positions that dealt with new situations is the case of tobacco products. Tobacco was not widely known in Arabia until around the 16^th Century. There is still disagreement among scholars today (based to an extent on the schools to which the scholars adhere) as to whether consumption of tobacco products is acceptable but disapproved or actually forbidden (in an Islamic legal sense) . Incidentally coffee, which became popular at around the same time (well after the death of Muhammad), has generally been found to be an acceptable dietary item by all schools. These debates occurred well before modern times and bespeak some prescience particularly concerning tobacco's attributes vis a vis coffee's given the current state of scientific knowledge. The general Islamic concept appears to be that stimulants generally don't fall within prohibitions to the extent that items with narcotic properties similar to those of alcohol do (such as heroin or marijuana (by analogy with alcohol's prohibition)). Incidentally, music has also been considered by some especially puritan scholars (Ibn Hanbal was one (see below)) to have similar narcotic effects to alcohol thus making it potentially subject to regulation and certainly suspicion.

The idea arose that a consensus of the major scholars applying the original sources could raise the status of an opinion from an opinion to a law. There are four major Sunni schools today and one major Shi'a school but there have been several others that have contributed to Islamic law in the past, as I've mentioned. The Shi'a schools have required that Hadith be transmitted solely by members of Muhammad’s family in order to be considered valid as legal sources and have also included acts of senior members of his family as valid sources of law.

I will now briefly discuss the five major schools that exist today in the order in which they came to prominence. Note that today there are two other significant Shi'a schools and one significant Khawarij school active in a few regions. It has been common for serious scholars to learn the methods of all or several of these five major schools rather than merely a single school’s methods.

The Maliki School

Malik Ibn Anas (713 – 795) developed a system for 750s Medina of searching the sources for solutions to then-current issues. The school is now mainly prevalent in the western part of the Arab world (typically from Libya West). Malik gave particular weight to the consensus of the earliest jurists of Medina and the principle of the common good of the community as principles of legal decision-making. His major work is called al-Muwatta’ (also the earliest comprehensive book of Islamic jurisprudence) and was evidently written over around a 40 year period. It thus provides a model for later works and typically combines ideas concerning things such as grooming regulations and religious duties with everything from international laws of war and peace to division of estates upon divorce, penal law, contracts and the freeing of slaves. Malik was the only one of the five major school founders who produced such a major work himself. The other four appear to have left that role to one or more of their disciples.

The Hanafi School

Abu Hanifa al-Nu’man (c. 699 – 767) championed Greek logical methods in Islamic legal philosophy in Iraq. The 'Abbasid dynasty centred in Iraq first took on his philosophy when a disciple of Hanifa’s was appointed head judge and it remains prominent in Iraq and the North and East of the Arab world today. The Seljuk and Ottoman Turks and Indian Mughals thus came to prefer it and the Ottomans later popularised it in much of the rest of the Arab world with the exception of Egypt by means of their Ottoman Empire. It persists especially in the East of the Middle Eastern Islamic world.

The Ja’fari School (The Major Shi'a School)

The sixth Imam of the Twelver Shi’a (I will discuss the Twelver Shi’a further later) Ja’far al-Sadiq (c. 700 – 765) knew of and respected the above two scholars (i.e. the putative founders of the Maliki and Hanafi Schools). These first three scholars lived more or less contemporaneously and were in contact with and respected each other. The Ja'fari School is now prevalent especially in Iran (where Twelver Shi'ism is the major religion) and in southern Iraq and Lebanon (the areas that Condoleezza Rice used to menacingly refer to as the Shi'a Crescent that threatened peace when she wanted to scare Sunni Arab rulers into doing what she wanted).

The Shafi’i School

Muhammad Ibn Idris al-Shafi’i (767 – 820) was born in Gaza and was a disciple of Malik. He made use of the principle of precedent and thus a kind of judge-made law as a reaction against the kind of relatively arbitrary speculation promoted by the relatively logic-based Hanafi School. Shafi'i law is most commonly used today in Egypt and in South East Asia.

The Hanbali School

Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (780 – 855) was, in turn, a disciple of ash-Shafi’i. I will write more about Ibn Hanbal in later posts. For this post I will leave it that he was the least legally trained of the five scholars. His training was more in Hadith criticism - a quite different but of course related area. The Wahhabi clerics of Saudi Arabia constitute a quite puritanical sub-school of this already quite conservative School. The School mainly remains popular in Arabia and Syria today.

I will turn to Sufism in the next post.

The Law that Developed

The first elements of the Islamic "law" are not supposed to be compelled at all. They are more religious requirements including prayers, fasting in the month of Ramadan, pilgrimage, belief and the giving of alms. Piety, mysticism and copying of the habits of Muhammad are a further layer of requirement (but voluntarily undertaken) for the most desirous of attaining complete submission to Allah. Nevertheless Islam had created a state and it was not seen as necessary initially to separate that state from religion. Therefore the actual laws of the first state were derived from the religious teachings of its leader. Muhammad’s death led to a succession of successors who attempted to continue the success of the new ummah (community). Naturally therefore they built their legal system on the structure so successfully begun by Muhammad. He had left the Qur’an and his example (or Sunna) embodied especially in the Hadith and generally in the versions of the Sira (biography) of Muhammad that people wrote soon after his death.

Nevertheless time did not stand still and it was necessary to apply thought to the above sources in order to arrive at the laws that should apply in this new community. New circumstances always arise with which lawyers must inevitably grapple in new ways (albeit according to established principles, one could argue). The Qur’an and Hadith are not, in themselves, law books. The Qur’an, in particular, is far too abstract but certainly contains principles such as those of justice, equality and mercy that may provide a basis for a legal philosophy and ultimately "new" laws. Occasionally, however, both the Qur’an and the Hadith do contain direct pronouncements on matters that may be regarded as binding laws to be followed (importantly at least as long as circumstances remain unaltered). Circumstances always change, however. That is why laws are required to change and why the idea of an unchanging Shariah is palpably ridiculous to many Muslims today as it should be.

The Islamic law thus developed from the two sources of law, the Qur’an and the example of the prophet (and for the Shi'a, the rulings of the Imams which I may discuss further in another post).

The Islamic law came to be seen as one body of law that covered everything from the exceptional moral behaviour I mentioned at the beginning of the post (and even good grooming) and prayer as well as punishable immoral behaviour, the establishment of the clergy, commercial rules and family and intestacy law. However, as different governments came, they all freely interpreted the law and codified law when further clarification appeared to be necessary so there was almost never one single Islamic law. Some of it was codified by ‘Islamic’ governments (I will consider "Islamic" political theory in later posts) and some was judge-made as is the case today in the Western Common Law nations (and indeed in Civil Law nations, too). It also includes dietary rules (basically a pork, blood, meat not properly slaughtered and wine/alcohol prohibition).

The Qur’an itself does set down some rules that came to be accepted as the law as I've said but it tends to discourage and encourage behaviours (it also regards contrition as a mitigating factor to be considered in punishment decisions) much more than it sets down firm punishments for crimes. Some especially esteemed books of law by scholars based on the generally accepted sources (Qur'an and Hadith) came to have the status of persuasive secondary sources of the law. Judges were also appointed by the earliest Caliphs who had to solve the actual problem of interpretation of the law and they and the government were always the ultimate sources of the law in Islamic countries.

The Qur’an has been accepted as legislating concerning intestate estate inheritance, a requirement for a written record of contracts of debt (but not credit purchases), witnessing requirements for debt contracts, dietary rules, a law against usury, the law of peace and war between nations (this is quite an area of contention, naturally) and some penal law and rules concerning witnesses. Today some argue that the witness and inheritance rules that may appear to disadvantage some women may have been reasonable in the circumstances of 7^th Century Arabia when women both traditonally received a dowry and were expected to attend more to their domestic affairs than legal affairs but may not reasonably apply in a modern context. The usury rule has led to somewhat complicated arrangements to take into account the time value of money and yet be lawful. Considering that the rules of evidence in large parts of England apparently permitted guilt to be decided by battle and/or ordeal for centuries after the 7^th Century, these rules seem to have been eminently modern for their times.

The Hadith have been held to elucidate various legal/religious matters referred to in the Qur’an and to therefore constitute an ultimate legal source in Islam subordinate only to the Qur’an.

Legal decisions and rules were written down from the earliest period for reference (to be regarded as a kind of rule of law and a form of precedent in interpretation). A rule also developed that the burden of proof generally fell on the bringer of an action in a court.

The law was understood to leave much punishment and praise to be meted out by Allah himself and so behaviour was classified by legal theorists more in terms of its usefulness in society (whether it was Ma’ruf (good) or Munkar (unacceptable)) rather than associated with human penalties. With that as a proviso, the early jurisprudents defined around five legal attitudes to behaviour. Behaviour could thus be viewed as compulsory (Fard/Wajib) including generosity, certain basic prayers and truthfulness (default is only punishable by Allah), highly recommended (Sunna/Mandub) such as extra prayers, permitted (Halal – note this word also encompasses the first two kinds of behaviour and Mubah, meaning neither approved nor specifically disapproved), disliked (Makruh) and forbidden (Haram) such as murder, stealing, some dietary items and self-harming. The relatively short Haram list occasionally came with human penalties in Islamic law (as in other legal schemes, Islamic societies punish behaviour thought to be especially "bad").

The law was first administered directly by Caliphs in consultations with knowledgeable companions of Muhammad and later also by governors and chiefs of police in regions in criminal matters as the Caliphate expanded. The advice of experts often continued to be sought in the tradition of consultation with the companions after the companions were no longer available; the consultation now was with people learned in the law. Judges were appointed mainly to decide questions of family law, property and commercial practice.

Firstly the collections of Hadith and then the collections of fatawa (singular fatwa), the rulings of distinguished jurists, came to be regarded as important to deciding how to live one’s life according to the "School" to which one’s family adhered. I'll discuss the different "Schools" in the next post. The fatawa of individual scholars are mere opinions, though, and not law in themselves (although based on legal learning) rather like the opinions of legal academics in Western universities but followed more popularly. Nevertheless, the variety of opinions that were accorded some authority in this system that developed in a large Caliphate is partly due to the collection of a vast number of potentially contradictory Hadith in the time of ‘Umar II and the decision of the Caliph al-Mansur in the 8^th Century not to fully codify and unify the law of the Caliphate when that was under consideration. I will consider the later influence of modernity and the West on the law later. In Egypt and widely, the al-Azhar is today recognised as the foremost scholarly Sunni institution.

The laws that are today applied in Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf countries are merely conservative versions of Islamic law. They are not the only real Islamic law possible any more than the law of Australia is the only law possible in a "Christian" country.

Theology

Theology was influenced by political splits in early Islam. As well as the Shi’a there were the Khawarij and others. Theology was also influenced by Christian theology and debates with Christians.

The idea of predestination was considered early.

The mu’tazila (intermediate) school (not their preferred name) that began in Basra and became prominent in Baghdad was an early theological school that was associated with the Greek ideas of rationality. It had precursor ideas in earlier Syrian theology upon which it drew.

One major argument concerned whether the Qur’an was eternal. Ibn Hanbal, as a Hadith scholar and not a logician, (and his supporters) said it was but mu’tazilites saw that as tantamount to deifying the words and thus giving Allah a partner (a special blasphemy in Islam as asserted by the mu’tazilites). They further argued that the very idea of God’s justice (which was certainly Islamic) clearly implied the existence of a form of freewill. Their name comes in part from their view that a major sinner is in an intermediate position (with regard to God’s justice) between a true believer and an infidel (kāfir).

The Ash’ariyya school was named after its founder who had been a mu’tazilite. It became the dominant theological school and it asserted that the nature of God was beyond the power of human rationality to comprehend. Ash'ari and his school held the Qur’an to be eternal and held God to be the creator of human acts which humans 'acquire' from God (in some mystical way, presumably) in order to do the acts. There were also Khawarij and Shi’a theology schools.

Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani and ‘Muhammad Abduh were prominent theologians emphasising the concept of God's oneness (Tawhid) in the last couple of centuries and Muhammad Arkoun, Muhammad Shahrur and others have been still more recent critics of standard theologies.

Study of the Analytical Religious Sciences and Historiography

Study of the Qur’an as the direct word of Allah was the foremost foundation of the Islamic religious sciences. Commentary (Tafsir) was the elucidation and exegesis of its script and required extensive training to master.

The prophet and his companions (including his wives) were the first and considered the most authoritative commentators. ‘Abdullah Ibn ‘Abbas (ancestor of the ‘Abbasid Caliphs) was a young cousin of Muhammad who became his companion and a major early commentator. He died in the Umayyad period.

The Qur’anic language was confusing even to Arabs and it has become a tradition that not all of it can be understood (at least until some time in the future). This difficulty led to an interest in the linguistic sciences which aimed to aid in the elucidation of as much as was possible especially in the 8^th and 9^th Centuries. At-Tabari (d. 923) probably produced the most comprehensive commentary of the early period. Commentaries began to be preferred on the basis of the theology (which I discuss in my next post) that had previously been decided upon by the reader leading to competing partisan commentaries in the following centuries.

Thus specialised theological school-approved and general commentaries came to co-exist. The new law was also naturally dependent upon this commentary science and thus each legal school also tended to have preferred commentaries. Philosophers skilled in Greek logic such as Ibn Rushd (known in the West as Averroes) also contributed commentary coming from this logical view-point. Commentaries even served the purposes of a multitude of other factions throughout the history of Islam including Sufis and two of the most noted commentaries (of many) in the modern tradition are those of Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1905) and Sayyid Qutb (d. 1966), incidentally written before his radicalisation.

The correct reading of the Qur’an was also a subject of disagreement and therefore studies were required to be made of this aspect of the Qur’an. Recital from memory also naturally required study to master. The language had to be altered to standardise readings, as mentioned in the last post. Melodic reading also became an art-form. There are about four major regional styles of reading the Qur’an today.

The Hadith were also subject to much dispute especially before there were written collections and therefore they were studied in order to verify and correctly interpret them. The Hadith were considered mainly important legally as elucidators of the Qur'an. The major collections of Hadith also required travel to meet possible hearers at the ends of the hearer-chains of the until-then oral Hadiths for the purpose of verification of their validity.

The alleged hearers of Hadith also had to themselves be studied extensively to ascertain their truthfulness, memory and the likelihood of them having been in a position to have heard the Hadith from the source in the chain alleged. Chains of transmission were thus studied over the many years before the Hadith were formally written in accessible collections. Some of the companions (sahāba) of Muhammad had collected and written down what Muhammad both ruled and said presumably for the purposes of understanding better what Islam required. It could also be used potentially to cite a legal precedent. These early notes (the sahifa) were then either communicated to many others or known to relatively few and mostly collected much later by scholars into various written collections.

At first the scholars focused on attributions to a single companion and that compilation was referred to as the companion’s musnad. Ibn Hanbal (d. 855), the renowned lawyer, produced an early version of a more comprehensive collection. Malik (c. 715 – 795), also one of the major lawyers, included the first more or less comprehensive collection arranged thematically in his unique (at the time) law book.

Eventually six major collections were made that are usually accepted (and debated over) by at least Sunni Muslims. Al-Bukhari (d. 870) produced his Sahih (True [Ones]), Muslim Ibn al-Hajjaj (d. 875) produced his and Abu Dawud, at-Tirmidhi, an-Nasa’i and Ibn Majah rounded out the most accepted large collections also in the 9^th Century. There are three major Shi’a works: those of al-Kulaini (d. 939), al-Qummi (d. 991) and at-Tusi (d. 1067) typically produced a little later.

Scholars criticised Hadith based on the collection of the biographies of all of the transmitters in chains. From that they reasoned whether a specific transmitter may have an ulterior motif when transmitting a version that suited him (or her) or a particular viewpoint (and the weakness of character to follow through with the deception). It quickly became apparent that Hadith and their collectors could not always be trusted and sectarian interests and loyalties were often at the heart of the matter, hence the tendency for a variety of collections rather than one authoritative one accepted by all. The science could also ascertain the possibility of the Hadith being a fraud by testing the chain (isnad) of transmission. For example one link may be that person A told the Hadith to person B. If it could be shown by science that person A had died before person B could understand (e.g. person B was a baby at the time) or that one of these people had never been in the same place at the same time as the other or one had become deaf or perhaps senile before the alleged transmission would have been possible the Hadith could be thus invalidated. The scholars regarded face-to-face oral transmission at all points in a given purported chain as necessary for the chain to be a valid Hadith chain.

The science of biography, then, became vital to the religious sciences. Various forms of work appeared including lists of the important transmitters of a generation or generations in chronological order or of a city or region or more comprehensive works arranged alphabetically (all arranged for ease of checking the logical possibility of isnads). Histories of cities were appended to these lists (basically to provide context) so that we now have this type of work and related histories for many cities and regions including Damascus, Egypt, Baghdad, Aleppo, Bukhara, Isfahan, Cordova, Fez and many others. With these resources scholars were able to focus on specific transmitters and thus criticise the unique musnad (i.e. any Hadith only known via that person) of that transmitter and 'disprove' the validity some chains 'scientifically'. This science, of course, is essentially a form of historiography. The dictionaries of transmitters continued to be refined until the 15^th Century.

Separate schools for Hadith studies proliferated from the 10^th Century throughout the Islamic world and were still common in the 20^th Century. The methods of source citation and criticism and the focus on biography arrived at in these schools thus significantly contributed to and influenced the science of historiography in the Islamic world.

In coming posts, I discuss the other religious sciences of theology, Sufism and Islamic jurisprudence (legal philosophy).

First, the system of Education that arose

Islam came to an East that had already made sophisticated use of learning and in which the skill of thinking was already highly valued (especially in the cause of the maintenance of cities and empires). The first civilised cities and the very idea of writing had arisen in the Middle East before any Europeans including the illiterate ancestors of the Classical Greeks had left their metaphorical caves. Hellenic and Hellenistic civilisation later contributed to this Eastern learning-curve before even the ancestors of the Romans had emerged from the mists of obscurity in the metaphorical steppes. Beside the advantages of city civilisation, the comparative wealth of empires permitted yet further opportunities for the leisure that enable the pursuit of learning (and also a further demand for it by rulers). This was the experience of the East immediately before the advent of Islam and in the very region over which Islamic rulers were now to rule.

Once 'Islam' came to rule over its own grand Empire, learning on a massive new scale was actually the result. Let's examine how it happened. Completely new cities such as Kufa, Basra, Fustat (which later became Cairo) and Baghdad and old cities such as Jerusalem and Damascus (and many more new and old cities besides) soon produced and/or extended their own thriving learning cultures. There really was a dramatic blossoming essentially because of the economics of building such a vast new and different Empire. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca and extensive regional trade networks importantly also gave legitimate opportunities for scholars from distant regions to relate their findings to each other directly. The Arabic language was soon also the language in which many books were written and into which many works were translated from many languagese over a vast Empire, as I've discussed, also given added impetus by the recent transmission to the Middle East of an invention known as paper. The Qur’an was a written work in virtually its current form from early in its human history that was a vital catalyst to study. Its new idea, Islam, required stout defence and its language too required a field of study so that this new idea could be brought to the world. So the impetus for the vast blossoming involved grand secular and also grand religious motivations.

Three sciences began to be widely studied in this vast milieu. Religious sciences were necessary to understand Islam most fully. The science of Arabic grammar served a similar purpose for as Allah had chosen the language, its full comprehension was necessary in order to understand Islam. Not all new Muslims spoke or understood Arabic and so this science was vitally important for their understanding of their new religion. Finally, the Arabs had access to the science of the Ancients, the learning of the Greeks and the Indians were especially studied in as much detail as possible. The Arabians now ruled Greek-speaking peoples and had novel access to and interest in all of the learning of the Near East and India.

In the Hadith, Muhammad specifically recommends seeking knowledge as far away as in China and the Qur’an recommended (in the first revelation of all) that Muhammad, who was traditionally illiterate, “read”, or at least "recite". In the same revelation, the pen is equated with knowledge and the Qur’an often enjoins reasoning. The so-called “People of the Book” (especially the Jews and Christians) were also the essential forebears of Islam and Islam naturally followed suit in valuing the book.

Arabic humanities were also important aspects of the new civilisation of the Arab-Islamic world. Being literate and especially the seeking of knowledge (talab al-‘ilm) and rational thought thus came to be seen as religious duties. Muhammad and the first Caliphs and their governments put this into practice.

Schools were needed to transmit this knowledge as required and scholars also were valued for their learning. Students studied with scholars and memorised the written work or oral teaching of often the same scholar in order to be qualified to teach that work or oral 'teaching' to others.

The Arabic script itself was early found to require reform in order to achieve more clarity and the language itself required expansion to become more than the mainly oral, poetic language it had formerly been.

Other languages of learning also continued to exist within the new Islamic world, of course, but Arabic was seen as necessary in order to follow Islam fully.

The first education in literacy, numeracy and reading the Qur’an was in the traditional “kuttab” or “maktab” school for children. Senior students would attend further lessons at a “majlis” school and a halaqa (circle of learning) possibly at the local mosque or a teacher’s home. Teaching hospitals provided specialised regular medical training in their medical schools from the early 9^th century. Major centres for the study of philosophy in the Hellenistic style existed at Alexandria, Antioch, Harran and Baghdad. Christian churches and monasteries continued to be centres for Christian learning in Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Iraq (usually in Arabic from around the 9^th Century) and major Jewish centres of learning continued to exist in Iraq and Egypt. Observatories also performed a specialised teaching role for astronomers. Arabic came to replace Syriac and Greek (generally) as the local language of learning from the early 9^th Century.

The teaching of the Islamic religion and law beyond the basic level discussed above came to be the function of a school called a madrasa in the major cities from the late 10^th Century. The madrasa thus pre-dated but was remarkably similar to the mediaeval Christian university in the West (e.g. Bologna, Paris and Oxford were founded between the late 11^th Century and the 12^th Century). The madrasa would often be near or later form part of a major mosque and was associated initially with hostels at which travellers were able to stay. Thus a promising student from a country area or less important regional town or city would be able to combine lodgings with advanced teaching more suited to (generally) his aptitude in a major city. Besides religious subjects that included especially jurisprudence and theology, the madrasa typically offered courses in logic, grammar, rhetoric, history and poetry.

A preponderance of these institutions occurred especially in Iran and Iraq but the madrasas associated with al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo also came to be especially highly regarded from the Mamluk period. Madrasas were generally endowed in perpetuity in a special kind of trust that developed as a kind of religious 'tax dodge' called a waqf by wealthy individuals or by the government itself. A waqf might be purely philanthropic or be designed to guarantee a future family income by assigning paid roles to descendents and family members in perpetuity. It might also directly pay the fees of some teachers at the madrasa and/or provide basic bread and board for students (and additional financial aid for especially needy students as required). Large madrasas would typically contain their own mosques and/or prayer halls and accommodation for students and staff. They might train students in one of the schools of jurisprudence or occasionally all four of the major Sunni schools might be taught in the one madrasa. Memorisation of a major text with demonstrated understanding via discussion was the general method of learning and assessment. The equivalent to the modern Western degree offered was the licence to teach (Ijazat at-Tadris). It was the certification of competence to teach specific matter by a suitably qualified senior scholar.

Once qualified, a scholar could legitimately teach and thus earn an income as a scholar. Suitably qualified scholars, many of whom already came from reasonably well-to-do backgrounds, also became available as advisors for government and wealthy individuals who valued their specialised skills.

Beyond the madrasa, it was possible to receive advanced training in specialised areas of learning privately in palaces and the homes of wealthy patrons and teachers.

Training in Sufi practices (I discuss Sufism further (and the schools of jurisprudence) in later posts) was also offered in what came to be centres for Sufi learning.

Also, libraries were often formed from private collections in scholars’ homes for the purposes of making important works available for interested students. Works and ideas might be studied, taught, read, discussed and copied by advanced scholars in these libraries (more or less formally). Many mosque, palace and madrasa libraries were available to the public or to specialised groups for research. Books were also available for sale, scholarly discussion and copying in bookshops.

The next posts will go into more detail about what was taught, why and what discoveries were made.

Economics and Trade of the Dar al-Islam and beyond of the 7th to the 14th Centuries

As I think this blog has made somewhat clear, before the Western and Northern Europeans began to dominate world trade and economics, the Islamic world was virtually THE major player in world trade. 'Old' World trade had roughly been an Eastern hegemony even before the advent of Islam.

Much of the valuable stuff of what arrived in the West of inventions and crops seems to have been first seen in the Middle East and much of that was even earlier seen in China. Paper is a classic example arriving in Europe via Islamic Spain but there has also been a trend of major food crops also moving in the same East-West direction. Citrus fruits were probably first grown in the East (in India and possibly also in China) before first being grown in the Middle East and then becoming almost a by-word for a Spanish crop and cotton, silk, rice, tea and sugar cane production also appear to have followed a roughly similar East-to-West migration pattern. Egyptian is still an epithet that at least since the 19th Century has described fine cotton. Coffee seems to have originated in the Middle East itself. The irrigation methods that the Arabs also ultimately imparted to the West were probably a combination of methods indigenous to the arid Arabian Peninsula with an influence from the engineering prowess of the Roman aqueduct builders from whom the Arabs learned.

I have previously mentioned the central position of Arabia in the 6^th Century when it came to major trading Empires. Although large scale industry was first seen in the Industrial Revolution in the West, significant trade and basic industry such as food and textile production has been a feature of the Middle East since well before then.

Trades were often taxed from the earliest times and provided major sources of income to Empires and the new Islamic Caliphate was a beneficiary of a successful and flourishing trading class once the initial disruption of the Early Islamic conquests of the 7th Century had abated.

While the Islamic world was essentially politically united for only around the period from 650 to 750, the succeeding and geographically vast if not completely united ‘Abbasid Caliphate became united in the heart of its diversity of residents by virtue of travel, religion and later trade. This continued with the Fatimid and Umayyad caliphates once the 'Abbasids completely lost political control of their territories. Especially in this early period of political unity under the Umayyads and earlier, there were linguistic and religious diversities which were, somewhat ironically, broken down as the political unity broke down over the centuries.

The Arabs were at the centre of all the trading networks and were thus able to play a key role in the transmission of ideas and culture. In the central Arab lands, certain tribal heads constituted a class of major land holders in a position to set agricultural and trade imposts due to the central location of their lands on all the major trade routes and the new political domination that Islam brought the Arabs.

Commerce was conducted in sophisticated trading arrangements by the Arabs in stages over the vast distances and many changes of transportation method often involved. Coinage had developed before the advent of Islam. The earliest ‘Islamic’ coins appear to date from the 690s issued by an Umayyad Caliph, ‘Abd al-Malik. An indication of their world-wide use is that Eastern 'Islamic’ coins dated from the 9^th to 11^th Centuries have been found in places as far away as England and Spain.

The Arabic language spread with its commerce and its credit methods first employed by especially Yemenis in their long-distance trade with relatives acting as agents in India and South East Asia. The word ‘cheque’ is thought to have its origins in the Arabic, ‘sakk’ used at this time. The Jewish inhabitants of the newly formed Islamic world were also significant traders in the new environment taking advantage of having a wide Diaspora community (the Yemenis had such a diaspora as I mentioned above but for different reasons, of course).

With commerce came the importance of various major cities. The Middle East and China originated the idea of the city in the so-called Old World and throughout this period the cities of the Middle East were larger and more numerous than in the contemporary West (and yet they were often more compact perhaps for some historical reason such as a special requirement for security). The earliest examples of cities created by Muslims appear to have been un-walled perhaps reflecting the sense of security felt at first by new converts. Walling of cities was usual at the time in other parts of the world. By the time Baghdad was being established, however, many previously un-walled cities were being walled. Nevertheless they tended to grow beyond their walls. Twelfth century Cairo is thought to have been the largest city in the world in that century (in terms of both area and population). The plague became common in city conditions and quarantine measures are mentioned in Hadith demonstrating advanced science for the 6^th century. Homes in the cities of Islam had piped water. The fortunes of a city depended upon both politics and economics in this period as they arguably continue to do. I think I need to add to this section but for now that's it on economics and trade (and the extra bit on cities).

In the next post and those following, as promised, I will begin to explain what science this economically successful and culturally diverse but in a major sense united but politically divided realm of Islam was doing in this period (and perhaps why it stopped doing it (if I can work that out)).

But What about Egypt?

This post is really a reminder to myself that I appear to have left out Egypt, somewhat, in my appreciation of my early political history of Islam-by-region. I have referred to it somewhat in my earlier discussion of cities and in discussing the Maghreb and its Fatimids (and even in some of my Asian discussion when I mentioned the Asian origins of the Mamluk Dynasty that ruled in Egypt and Syria for some time). I haven't yet done enough specific research to give a significant Egyptian post, however.

What I can say (or perhaps repeat) is that Egypt was an early conquest and that there was also a second wave of major Arab tribal colonisation a few centuries later (that also extended beyond it to the Maghreb including Spain and Portugal). Also, Cairo early on became a cultural capital (under the Fatimids and since) and Egypt was generally unified and virtually politically independent from (or even ruling over) other parts of the Arab world from its earliest Islamic history. Al-Azhar mosque-university at Cairo is today still generally regarded as the pre-eminent Sunni authority and teaching institution in Islam and it has a long and distinguished history in that role (despite occasionally bending its will to that of Egyptian secular leaders and modernist thinking - perhaps its great strength in future and Islam's salvation may be its continuing of a modern imagination opposed to the Wahhabism and radicalism emanating inexorably from the likes of Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan and Iran).

Culturally, Egypt has been so significant in Arab, Islamic and Middle Eastern history and yet politically it has been a little uninteresting ironically because of a tendency to stability, I think, and this may explain why I don't have a lot to say about it yet. That stability-tendency may have to do with the stability originating from Egypt having a one-river geography and the successful local political model of pre-Islamic centralised dynasties (also owing to that geography, I would say). There may be a lot more of use to say but I have tended to treat the "Central Lands" a little sparsely, generally, on the perhaps questionable assumption that closeness to the central authority of Islam produced relatively uninteresting uniformity of political, religious and cultural experiences. I must admit that for much of Islam's history most of the backwater that became Saudi Arabia, for example, generally came under no central political authority at all despite its closeness to the seats of the major Eastern Caliphates and that the Persia that the Arabs overran in the 7th Century also deserves much more of my attention than it has so far received from me, as I've mentioned before.

I will certainly discuss the cultural contribution of Egypt in later posts on culture even if I don't post region-by-region on culture and when I write about the 19th Century Arab Nahda (Renaissance) and beyond, readers will notice Egyptian influence in this period was vital as it has always been to Arab-Islamic culture.

Having now discussed all the major regions in some way from various non-economic perspectives, in my next post I will undertake a general exposition of the economics and trade of the entire region encompassed by Islam in its early successful history. Economic success follows political success so my economic 'treatise' follows logically a discussion of what was actually happening around the world politically to the Arab-Islamic project.

I will follow that post with a further deepening of my discussion of what Arabs and Muslims and others eventually made of Islam itself religiously, culturally, legally and politically (as a way of thinking about this world and the putative next one, in other words). Yes, science will be involved and I will suggest now that, at first, Islam was good for the Old Western World version of science that was being widely suppressed by Christians in both the East and the West.

South East Asia

No actual non-indigenous Islamic conquests occurred in this region. Some local Islamic rulers did annex other lands, however. The major conversions occurred not by any conquest or the example of local rulers, however, but by the teaching of charismatic Arab merchants and (from around the 12^th Century) the teaching of Sufi mystics travelling in the region. South Arabian trading families had settled agent members in South East Asia before the advent of Islam.

The Malay-Indonesia region was long a trading hub for trade between China and other regions including Arabia. When China entered a period of isolation and Arabs were no longer permitted to live in Guangzhou in China, South East Asia itself became a major producer of spices for export as well as an ongoing hub. Besides this Malay region, Islam also gained a foothold in Thailand.

Muslim traders are known to have visited Sumatra as early as around 910. Al-Mas’udi and Abu Zayd al-Sirafi, both writing in the 10^th Century, discuss Muslim trade with South East Asia. According to the accounts, a town called Kedah (or Kelah) in what is now the Indonesian North Sumatran province of Aceh served as a major Arab and Chinese trade entrepot. There is Chinese evidence (from 1282) of a major Muslim influence in the town and there is archaeological evidence of a Muslim state and burials. Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) was also surprised to find Muslims there in the course of his travels as he reported. Ibn Battuta also visited there and described the court of the Muslim king. From Sumatra, Islam appears to have spread to another crucial entrepot, Malacca, and other parts of peninsular Malaysia as well as to Java. The nature of Islam in the region is today varied owing in part to the archipelagic nature of the region and the Islam of ports also differed from the Islam that tended to develop in inland locales.

This is another of those very brief posts that I would love to 'flesh out' more later. If anybody wants to contribute any interesting stories, please do!

South Asia (including Iraq, Persia and Afghanistan in brief)

As with some of the other regions that had political/military contact with the new Islamic reality, the local South Asian cultures and the Arab-Islamic, Iraqi and Persian cultures mutually interacted. At the advent of Islam, the cultures of South Asia were highly developed in terms of both learning and religion. By South Asia, I include the area covered by modern day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka (Sarandeeb in Arabic). India has historically been called Hind while the area now occupied by Pakistan has been called Sind. Incidentally, the main language spoken in Afghanistan today is a form of Persian.

Virtually the first region outside the Arabian Peninsula conquered by the earliest Islamic Arabs (along with the so-called "Holy Land" of the Eastern Mediterranean coast) was actually what we would now call Iran and Iraq. It had had Persian rulers but the Arabs would soon become the masters. It is worth debating the idea that they were masters in name only but that debate will have to wait for another time as I haven't really researched that history. In earlier and later posts I have and will mention Persian influences in the various polities and cultural styles but I haven't fleshed them out fully (and can't yet until I am able to do that research). That must be a project for later. This post will mainly focus on other territories with most of which both Arabs and Persians had already had a long history of trade and limited cultural and political exchanges.

In 711, Muslim Arabs conquered the Indus valley region now roughly occupied by Pakistan and ruled it as an Iraqi sub-province.

The West Coast of what is now India and Southern Arabian cultures traded by sea before the advent of Islam. Indus Valley civilisations also traded before the advent of Islam with Iranian and Iraqi cultures. The second Arab ‘invasion’ of the region (in the 9^th Century) was more a pattern of settlement of Arab (and probably some Persian) traders on the Western Coast of India (called Malabar) particularly in Gujarat near modern Pakistan and at Mumbai also (to the north of the Malabar coast).

The third phase of Islamic involvement was the Turkic Ghaznavid invasion (via Afghanistan) and centuries of Islamic Turkic rule of the Punjab region of central Pakistan and Northern India. Lahore became an important centre at this time. Delhi finally became the seat of a great 14^th Century Sultanate that also encompassed Sind.

The final substantial influence in the region before British rule was the 16^th and 17^th Century Mughal rule of most of India that succeeded the early consolidation of Islamic influence in the region.

Islam thus gained a foothold on the West coast of India and the South West mainly by trade and peaceful settlement and in the North and the Indus Valley and Punjab mainly by the effects of conquest. Sind and Gujarat especially fell under the Isma’ili Shi’a Fatimid influence. Chistiyya and Naqshbandi Sufism were also highly influential in the region.

The Islamic influence on the sub-continent continues especially in Pakistan and Indian cities such as Hyderabad.

Not only that, but Arabism and Turkicisation and Persianisation occurred to varying degrees in various parts of the region especially in the North. The Urdu language (Turkish for “army” as it was the mixed language of the local multi-lingual army) that is now official in Pakistan, for example, came to be written with Arabic script and was based on a mixture of these language influences. A high degree of multilingualism among Muslims on the sub-continent preceded the Mughal period. The cities of Tughluqabad and Delhi typified the multilingualism of the region.

In turn, Indian learning was highly prized by the conquerors and traders. Medical knowledge and knowledge of the pharmaceutical properties of plants and other materia medica were so prized that Sindi physicians were encouraged to work in Baghdad from around 716 to 820. Sindi migration to Iraq, generally (and especially settlement in Basra and Baghdad), was common, too.

Medical and advanced materia medica and mathematical texts were swiftly translated into Arabic. Baghdad was the key place of the transfer of ancient Indian knowledge and wisdom as it had been in relation to the wisdom and learning of the Classical Greeks and others.

South Asia also contributed insights of religion and styles of art to the Arab-Islamic world-view. Sufi music, chants and dress was especially influenced by Buddhism and other South Asian religions.

The Indian decimal system and numerals complete with the until-then elusive concept zero is a major contribution of the sub-continent to the Arab world and via it to Europe, as usual from Hind via Sind. Al-Biruni wrote a famous 11^th Century summary of all the wisdom of the Hind region (now available in English translation) after learning Sanskrit.

New music and instruments were also borrowed from the region as well as ancient fables and yarns that we now regard as Arabic and Persian (notably especially the Sindbad stories from the arguably essentially misogynistic Arabian Nights (probably first translated in about 800 under Harun ar-Rashid, the ‘Abbasid Caliph, and including Persian stories) and Kalila wa Dimna (translated into Arabic in the 8^th Century and into Greek in the 9^th Century and later Syriac, Latin and even Hebrew)).

Even new fashions in Arab clothing and cuisine originated in this region with its many exotic spices and its exotic dances and dancers. The great local works of art and architecture such as the Taj Mahal clearly blend the many northern and sub-continental cultural mutual influences.

Anatolia and Eastern Europe - the Ottomans

Byzantine Asia Minor was first penetrated on behalf of Islam by the Turkmani Seljuqs who originated nearby. In the 11^th Century under Tugrul they also controlled Baghdad and Azerbaijan. Asia Minor came to be mostly ruled by one or two Seljuq Sultanates (from the late 11^th Century until the 13^th Century the Seljuqs expanded their Anatolian territories).

In the late 13^th Century, under pressure from the Mongols to the East, a smaller Ottoman Emirate (named after its founder, Osman I) was established in North West Anatolia as part of the Seljuq Sultanate which now also welcomed Persian refugees. The famous Rumi, who inspired the Mevlevi Sufi order, appears to have been one of these Persian refugees.

The Emirate began to have expansionary policies from the early 14^th Century probably under the influence of this pressure. Ibn Battuta gives descriptions of these early expansionary Ottomans.

A series of 14^th Century Ottoman conquests therefore ensued including in Ankara and Gallipoli (1354), the Balkans (1370), Salonika (1387) and Nicopolis (1396).

The chief Ottoman, now using the title, Sultan, established trade relations with Genoa (1385) and Venice (1354). Briefly losing Ankara to the Tartar, Timur (Tamerlane), in the early 15^th Century (1402), they nevertheless continued their conquest of the Balkans and finally captured Constantinople itself in 1453. Timur soon withdrew back to the East.

The early 16^th Century then saw Ottoman expansion into Syria and Egypt as they defeated the Mamluk rulers there. Eventually, they also controlled the religiously important Hijaz (including Mecca and Medina). The knowledge of gun-powder gained from the Chinese was especially useful to these early Ottomans. Nevertheless, Asia Minor itself was conquered fully only after large parts of Eastern Europe and a large population of Greek-speaking Christians remained in Asia Minor for some time after the complete political conquest.

The Turks themselves also maintained pre-Islamic beliefs for some time. Sufism, dervishes and Persian culture played major roles in the Islamisation of Asia Minor and other Ottoman territories. Ibn Battuta refers to the dervishes there.

Central Asia

I've now considered how the politics played out in the Central Lands of Islam, in the West and in Africa. Now I will turn in the other direction and away from the immediate Western interests of the early Islamic period. This post concerns Central Asia but I'll notice in the next post how Central Asian Turkic peoples both inspired by Islam and otherwise again impinged on immediate East European interests and the interests of eastern Christendom (as indeed they did upon the interests of the 'Abbasid Muslim Caliphate). The posts following will again then move away again from then-Western interests to South and South East Asia.

The ancient inhabitants of this region between West and East Asia to the east of the Caspian Sea who still live there tend to be called Turkic peoples. Today’s Turkish (the most widely spoken Turkic language) is the modern version of one of the many Turkic languages spoken and originating in the area. Central Asia includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and, in fact, Western China for our purposes. I also include in Muslim Central Asia the mostly Muslim East Caucasus (the area south of Russia between the Caspian and Black Seas and including Azerbaijan and Chechnya, for example). Much of the territory of these two regions has been part of the USSR until recently. I will consider Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and, in fact, India as South Asian and Turkey as West Asian/European in the later posts I intend to make on those areas.

‘Uthman was the caliph responsible for the first Arab feelers (in 654) reaching beyond the Oxus River (known therefore as Transoxiana), which is now called the Amu Darya, originates in the Pamir mountains to the south, forms much of the border between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and also Afghanistan and Tajikistan and formerly drained into the Aral Sea. Persians had been involved in the area before them. Under al-Walid I, there was a renewed Arab interest and the beginning of Arab settlement in the region from 711 (around the time of the expansion into Spain also). In 712 the Arabs took control of a puppet regime in Khawarazm just to the west of the Oxus. The Turkic peoples fiercely defended their territories and Arab interest in expansion there waned from around 730.

Much later (from around the 11^th Century) a Turkic group called the Seljuqs, who had converted to Islam in the 10^th Century, ruled in Khawarazm for several centuries (dominating the local region until the 14^th). They chose Persian as their official language in a state that was trilingual (Turkic and Arabic was also widely understood). The later Ottomans and Mughals also adopted this kind of trilingualism.

Following the ‘Abbasid Caliphs, the Seljuqs used the Hanafi School legally. The Ottomans also adopted the Hanafi School of jurisprudence as their official school of law.

The Arab regime also made contact with the Caucasus (in 643). In the 7^th to the 10^th Centuries they continued to have contact with the Khazar peoples whose capital was at Baku (now the capital of Azerbaijan). The area is also sometimes called Khazaria for the local inhabitants. Trade and missionary efforts were ongoing although the local king apparently preferred Judaism to the Christianity and Islam often proposed to him. Al-Mas’udi discusses the history of this region.

In the ‘Abbasid period, the Persian Muslim dynasties centred on Khorasan began to interest themselves in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Later, Turkic dynasties such as the Samanids and the Ghaznavids continued the Islamic and political influence. The Ghaznavid capital of Ghazni was in Afghanistan and they also extended their influence South as far as Lahore (today in Pakistan).

Also in the ‘Abbasid period, trade with China via Central Asia provided paper, Chinaware, gun-powder, silk, painting styles and other art techniques to the Arabs for the first time.

The area began to play its part in the grand scheme of Islamic learning, both religious and secular. Bukhara and Samarkhand were major learning centres. Al-Bukhari, the great Hadith expert came from Bukhara, as his name suggests. Al-Khawarismi (780 – 850), the famed mathematician, astronomer and inventor of algebra, hailed from the region (as his name suggests). Al-Biruni (from Birun in the region) was the famed cartographer and geographer. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) was also active in the field of medicine here in the 11th Century (so far in advance of Western methods of the time that the West much later continued to use his textbooks). A Kashghari man (Kashghar is now in Western China and is probably where the Arabs learned about paper) wrote, in Arabic, an Encyclopaedia of the Turkish Language.

‘Islamic’ coins with Arabic inscriptions were minted in Samarkhand from at least the 8^th Century. The monumental mausoleum was a Turkic tradition that continued under Islam with Persian architectural influence. The Timurids and an Uzbek state in what is now Ukraine made major contributions to Islamic art and architecture. Trade with China now led as we have seen to the major contribution to culture of the trade route which meandered through Turkic territories.

The idea of soldier-slaves derived from subject peoples such as Turkic peoples (who could also nevertheless rise to high social and political rank) developed under these regimes with ‘Abbasid support. Initially it was the practice of an ‘Abbasid Caliph who made his capital at Samarra. He bought Turkish and Circassian and other Caucasian (meaning from the Caucasus) slaves for the purpose. Famously, a dynasty of such slaves called the Mamluks later ruled Egypt.

There was a general drift, demographically, of eastern Turkic peoples such as the Turkmani Seljuqs in the direction of the western part of the Islamic world. The Mongols began their invasions from the East in the 13^th Century notably sacking Baghdad and later converting to Islam, the religion of their subjects. Their influence as successor dynasties (e.g. Timurids, Chagatays, Tatars, and Uzbeks) continued in Central Asia and the Caucasus opposed to Russian domination from the 16^th to the 20^th Centuries (and now possibly the 21st).

Religiously, Buddhism competed with Islam in the early 8^th Century in Transoxiana as it did further south at Bamiyan in Afghanistan (where the Buddhist statues were blown up recently by the Taliban regime). These regions were on the famous Silk Road (really several roads). Nevertheless, Islam slowly spread to the Transoxiana region as it did to the Caucasus. The Northern Bulghars, a Turkic group living well to the north of the Caucasus around the northern Volga (that may have later colonised Bulgaria far to the south in the Balkans) also began to convert to Islam under the usual influence of persuasive traders and missionaries. Ibn Fadlan was an Islamic missionary among these Northern Bulghars who gave some accounts of his life and the region.

The Seljuqs that originated as rulers in Khawarazm played a role in defending Sunnism against Shiism by establishment of the system of Sunni madrasas to teach the orthodox religion.

Theologically, the Seljuqs were from the Maturidi School (a form of Ashari). The Naqshbandi, Kubrawi and Yasevi Sufi Schools were also prominent among the Seljuqs (among others).

Nilotic Sudan

This region, south of Egypt and watered by the Nile to the south of the Aswan cataract and the Nile’s tributaries, is also divided ethnically into northern Hamitic and southern Negroid regions. The northern region was called Nubia. The percentage Hamitic/Kushitic in both regions also tends to fall, the farther from the Nile and its tributaries one travels. Further south was the Nilote and Negro zone. Apologies for the use of Negro if it offends anyone (I do not intend it to be in any way offensive).

Before Islam, Nubia was a Christian kingdom. It was conquered by Arabs from Egypt in the 7^th Century. The southern kingdom held out for a treaty in 651 CE and began a trading relationship with the Muslim Egyptian Arabs. Around 1250 CE, the Mamluks finally conquered the southern region. The capital of Nubia, Dongala, declined as Nubia became an Arabic state.

The conversion of the population was not extensive until the 14^th to 16^th Centuries and Arabic was still not spoken widely. The southern Christian ‘Alawa State was replaced by the Muslim Funj State by the 16^th Century. The Arab vassals settled their whole tribes in this region and their indigenous fellow countrymen and women spoke Arabic earlier than the northern populations. The slave trade continued there.

Islamic lawyers and mystics were the two major sources of conversions to Islam in Sudan. The Sufis were especially influential early on. While in West Africa the Sufi mystic was called a marabout, in East Africa including in Sudan the term used was fakir (incidentally, a lawyer was and is called a faqih in Arabic). The Sufi orders were well established from around the 12^th Century.

These two styles of Islam, the styles of the mainly Maliki faqih and the, often Qadiri (from the 14^th Century) fakir, became blended in East Africa including in the Sudan.

Briefly, the Ottoman ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, also lorded over Sudan in the 19th Century for a time. This was supported militarily by the British general, Gordon, until the mahdiyya movement (led by a radical Sufi who rather apocalyptically called himself the Mahdi, the Mahdi being the much prophesied Muslim end-times figure) brought about Sudanese independence.

Today, virtually all in both the North and South of Sudan speak Arabic, look alike and are Muslim. The only cause of the fighting there appears to be tribal and ethnic identity. There are now three major relevant ethno-tribal identities: Arab, Kushitic/Hamitic and African.