Abstract
Islam, literally meaning submission, i.e. to the will of the One God, was not a new idea in the Levant. In all the civilizations discussed so far, personified gods were supreme beings, though with different emphases on the scope of their supremacy. In Pharaonic Egypt, God’s supremacy was blurred by the idea of cosmic order, and by man’s power to learn what had to be done and thus to force a way to salvation. In Judaism a certain qualification of God’s exclusive supremacy lay in the idea of the covenant, and in Zoroastrianism the devil (Ahriman) assumed a position unknown in other religions. Only in the Sumerian view, which was then inherited by other nations of the Cuneiscript civilization, was the supremacy of the gods so absolute that petitional prayer and sacrifices alone could mollify them. More often than not these gods were immanent in nature. The idea of God’s undisputed transcendence appeared in Zoroastrianism, matured in Judaism and from there was inherited by the Christians and Muslims.
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Notes and References
H.A.R. Gibb, Mohammedanism, 2nd ed. (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) p.26, quoting Koran.
M.W. Watt, Islam and the Integration of Society (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961) p.42.
P.K. Hitti, Makers of Arab History (London: Macmillan, 1969), p.3.
P.K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th ed. (London: Macmillan, 1973) p.353.
R. Levy, The Social Structure of Islam (London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1957) p.195.
Gibb, Mohammedanism, p.25.
For the meaning of this term in Arabic tradition see W.M. Watt, Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh University Press, 1968) pp.32–3.
Watt, Islamic Political Thought, p.84.
C.A. Julien, History of North Africa, transl. from French by J. Petrie. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970) p.33.
Jamil M. Abun-Nasr, A History of the Maghrib, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975). p. 75.
Julien, History of North Africa, p.31.
P.K. Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th ed. (London, New York: Macmillan, 1973) p.441.
F. Rahman, Islam 2nd ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1979) p.91.
Watt, Islam and the Integration of Society, p.247.
Gibb, Mohammedanism, pp. 95–6.
M.G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, vol. II (University of Chicago Press, 1974) p.219.
Rahman, Islam, pp. 156–7.
In his best renowned work, The Muqaddimah (An Introduction to History), Ibn Khaldun develops this theory at length. His empirical basis is the history of the Islamic states, most of them ruled by dynasties of nomad origin. But the thesis is applicable to any other upstart family development. The following quotation from Ibn Khaldun shows the relevance of his thesis to the rise of the Mamlukdom: People, meanwhile, continue to adopt ever newer forms of luxury and sedentary culture and of quiet, tranquility, and softness in all their conditions, and to sink ever deeper into them. They thus become estranged from desert life and desert toughness. Gradually, they lose more and more of (the old virtues). They forget the quality of bravery that was their protection and defence. Eventually, they come to depend upon some other militia, if they have one … This is what happened to the Turkish dynasty in the East. Most members of its army were Turkish clients. The (Turkish) rulers then chose horsemen and soldiers from among the white slaves (Mamelukes) who were brought to them. They were more eager to fight and better able to suffer privations than the children of the earlier white slaves (Mamelukes) who had grown up in easy circumstances as a ruling class in the shadow of the government.
Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History, transl. F. Rosenthal, vol. I (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967) p.342.
To illustrate the point we may quote a few verses with which the already mentioned Seljuk vizier Nizam al-Mulk concluded the chapter on the decline of the Samanid dynasty in his Book of Government: ‘One obedient slave is better than a hundred sons: for the latter desire their father’s death, the former long life for his master.’ Quoted from D. Ayalon, The Mamluk Military Society (London: Variorum Reprints, 1979) p.216.
Abdallah Laroui, The History of the Maghreb, transl. R. Manheim, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977) p. 158.
The epic of the Maghreb is tellingly reported in Charles-André Julien, History of North Africa.
The extent to which the Christian churchmen asked the Mongolian rulers for help against their rivals within their own churches is astonishing, as is the amount of privileges which they were granted by the Ilkhans. However the latter were not consistent in their sympathies and antipathies. This can also be seen from their shifts in bestowing favours now upon the Sunnites, now upon the Shi’ites, while often being ill-disposed towards Islam in general. For more detail see B. Spuler, Die Mongolen in Iran (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1968) pp. 198–244.
F. Tauer, Svět Islámu (The World of Islam) (Prague, Vyšehrad, 1984) pp. 66–7.
D.C. Dennett, Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam (Harvard and Oxford University Press, 1950) pp. 116–18.
Ann Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) pp.29–30, 52.
C. Cahen, L’évolution de l’iqta du IX au XIII siècle, (Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations) t.8, no.1, Paris, 1953, pp.27–54.
In Ann Lambton’s view, the element of mutual obligation is notably absent from Islamic feudalism. A. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant pp. 53–4.
B. Vladimirtsov, Le régime social des Mongols, le féodalisme nomade, transl. from Russian by M. Carsov (Adrien-Maisonneuve, Paris, 1948) pp. 134–5.
I.P. Petrushevskiy, Zemledelie i agrarnye otnosheniya v Irane XIII–XIV vekov (Moscow-Leningrad: Izdatel’stovo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1960)
A.N. Poliak, Feudalism in Egypt, Syria, Palestine and the Lebanon, 1250–1900, (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1977) p.64 and Appendices; and
L.A. Semenova, Salah ad-Din i mamljuki v Egipte (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo vostochnoi literatury, 1960), p. 51 ff.
Hassanein Rabie, The Financial System of Egypt, A.H. 564–741/A.D. 1169–1341 (London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1972) pp.30–1.
Rabie, Financial System of Egypt, pp.63–72.
Tauer, Svět Islámu, p. 160.
Petrushevskiy, Zemledelie, pp.394–6.
Ibid., pp.310–11; the term avamili panjganeh points to the counting of the tools and the animals as one unit (Lambton, Landlord and Peasant) p.423.
Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p.83.
A sympathetic account of the Sarbadar venture, stressing the progressive role and class-conscious policy of the Sufi shayks, by Petrushevskiy (Zemledelie, pp.424–66), contrasts with a more recent and sober analysis of the sources by J.M. Smith, Jr, The History of the Sarbadar Dynasty 1336–1381 A.D. and its Sources (The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1970).
Grousset, Histoire de la Chine, p. 164.
C.D. Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969) p.347.
Hitti, History of the Arabs, p.375.
J. Poncet, ‘Le mythe de la ‘catastrophe hilalienne’ (Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, Paris, 1967), p. 1118.
Julien, History of North Africa, pp. 138–9.
Al-Hakim ordered the demolition of many churches, including that of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (1009 AD), a deed which 86 years later, after the church had been rebuilt by his son and successor, was invoked as one of the reasons for the Crusades; he subjected Christians and Jews to petty discrimination, forcing them to wear black robes, to ride only on donkeys, and while bathing to display visible signs of their religious affiliation. In that respect he surpassed by far the vexatious measures introduced by the exceptionally pious Umayyad Caliph Umar II, who was however prevented by the shortness of his rule (717–20) from doing more serious damage.
Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and His Time (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 112.
Levy, Social Structure of Islam, p.267.
Klaus Röhrborn, Untersuchungen zur osmanischen Verwaltungsgeschichte (W. de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1973) esp. pp.54–5.
Mehmed Fuad Köprülü, Les origines de l’Empire ottoman (Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1978) p. 123.
Franz Babinger, Mehmed, p.413.
R. Savory, Iran under the Safavids (London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980) p.23.
Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 105.
Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. I, p. 401.
Savory, Iran under the Safavids, p.80.
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© 1990 Jaroslav Krejčí
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Krejčí, J. (1990). The Ways of Islam: Integration and Disintegration. In: The Civilizations of Asia and the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-11147-3_5
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