More on the Politics and Conquests

I didn't really give much explanation in the last post of how Islam and the Arabs spread from Spain to Afghanistan and from Yemen and India to the Caucasus. It actually happened fairly quickly. After Muhammad died as the ruler of what was the major novelty of an Arab state of all Arabia, the Arabs were fired up to conquer more. Much of the conquest was of the territory of two weakened super powers, the Sasanian Persian and Byzantine Empires. The result of the combination of those weakened states and that religious and national fervour was major conquest fairly easily accomplished. The added Arab advantage in formerly Byzantium-colonised North Africa was that Arab and North African culture was more similar than Byzantine and North African culture was.

One important feature of the Arab technique of conquest in this blitzkreig of a short period was seiging, which ended up being a relatively bloodless way of conquest for the Arabs. Another feature of the Arabs' methodology was that they didn't spend a lot of effort forcing conversions. Most of the area ruled by the Arabs by "Crusader" times was still therefore Christian. In fact, the Crusades themselves led to reprisals against Christians that had not been thought of up until that time and contributed to the consequent conversion of many of them to Islam. Many Christians actually had preferred Arab Muslim rule to Byzantine Christian rule from the start because, unlike the Byzantines, the Arabs at least didn't tell the Christians how to be Christian the way the Byzantines tended to do. Jews also thrived under Arab Muslim rule and the cooperation between the three religions was especially notable in Spain over the many centuries of its Muslim history. Muslims were always in charge, however, although some senior posts in the early years, especially, when Muslims didn't possess all the skills of government, went to non-Muslims. The Arabs underwent a process of assimilating the sophisticated cultures and practises of the lands which they had over-run as a relatively cultureless people and as a result other cultures were infused into the Arab Muslim culture producing a blend.

Now I will just add a few more thoughts on the early Arabs and their political style (I will need to flesh out and improve this section eventually):

Abu Bakr

Abu Bakr had been Muhammad’s senior advisor for many years. After Muhammad's death, he began the Early Islamic Conquests beyond Arabia that seemed to early Muslims to prove the rightness of their religion. As religious conquests, they were undertaken with a reasonable degree of civility by the standards of the times. Relatively few cities refused to submit to the sieging armies and therefore they were relatively bloodless conquests. There was no requirement for the conquered peoples to become Muslims. Until the Crusades the majority of the peoples of places like Iraq, Egypt and Syria remained Christians of various forms under Muslim rule and arguably protection. Non Muslims were nevertheless even allowed to be senior public servants throughout the classical period of early Islam as I mentioned earlier.

‘Umar

‘Umar gave governors of conquered provinces the responsibility for the administration of justice along with himself and in consultation with knowledgeable companions of the Prophet. He was the first Caliph to use the moniker, Commander of the Faithful.

'Uthman

'Uthman was thought to be somewhat too nepotistic and partial to his friends. The party of 'Ali was one of the groups that longed for his replacement.

'Ali

The husband of the only adult child of Muhammad with known issue, Fatima, he was at the head of a movement to produce a holy dynastic theocracy.

The Umayyad Dynasty

The dynasty was founded by a Syrian brother-in-law of Muhammad, Mu'awiyah I. One of the Umayyads, 'Umar II, has been called the fifth Rashidun Caliph but his piety was not a general feature of this dynasty. By the time this dynasty ended, Islam was the official religion from Spain, Cyprus and Rhodes and Northern Africa virtually to the Indus valley (roughly Pakistan) and was threatening Constantinople. Nevertheless, Christians were able to flourish, ironically with more success than when their idea of Christianity differed from the idea at Christian Byzantium as appeared to be the case with Maronite Christians, for example. To illustrate the battles within Christianity, Antioch came to have four competing Christian patriarchs. Two other Christian patriarchates out of the total of five (those of Alexandria and Jerusalem) now came under Islamic political control. Rome and Constantinople were the only two outside Islamic control. Culturally, in the western part of the Umayyad realm there still existed major Byzantine, Syriac and Latin cultures and in the east, Persian. Trade with especially Byzantium continued unabated during the existence of this dynasty and naval supremacy passed to the Arab fleet.

The ‘Abbasid Dynasty

This dynasty, begun in the 8th Century, later became more or less a figurehead with a number of smaller semi-independent states surrounding the power centre in Baghdad. Sicily was added to the Islamic world by the 9^th Century. Spain eventually formed an Umayyad Caliphate in a formal break as did the Fatimids who formally founded Cairo as the capital of the first and only Shi’a Caliphate. The dynasty was finally ended with the Mongol invasions of the 13^th Century. The Mongols later adopted the Islam followed by their subjects. Generally, trade with the West continued to flourish under the ‘Abbasids and later Caliphates. By around the 9^th Century, this dynasty had begun to surpass Byzantium in its science and learning including in areas in which it had initially borrowed much from its northern rival. A major translation project of many of the great works of learning from the earlier languages of learning such as Indian languages, Greek, Syriac and Latin occurred in Baghdad. This is partly why many of these great works that inspired the Renaissance that had been lost to the West for centuries were later able to be reconstituted in European languages.

In the next post I will consider what the Arab world of the city was like and how the city functioned in Arab culture from its beginning through its centuries of world dominance. The post after that will consider some notable features of some significant cities of the Arab and Islamic world up to today.