arabic civilization under the muslim caliphate
As a likely descendant of Abraham through Ishmael and his Egyptian slave mother, Hagar -- both banished to Mecca by Abraham's jealous wife, Sarah -- Muhammad (c. 570 – 632) was an Arab political and military leader who set himself up as God's final prophet and his followers, under the caliphate, as the world's final rulers.
Initially, Muhammad was neither a Jew nor a Christian. As a youth, he worshipped all of the 360 Pagan gods in the Kabah in Mecca owned and operated by his Quraish tribe. He was just one of thousands of young Arab men from wealthy families who were set adrift as the former Roman provinces, now under the control of Christian bishops, became embroiled in one theological argument after another, leaving a political vacuum.
At some point in his life Muhammad was converted to the concept of monotheism by the Christians, but being a proud Arab he saw more political gain in reforming his native pagan religion than adopting a foreign religion like Christianity. He took the top pagan god of the Kabah in Mecca (called Hubal and/or Allah), chose it to be his new monotheistic god and set about converting all the Arab people to monotheism.
Mohammad's followers claim that Islam was not a new religion but a restoration of the primordial and supreme religion of mankind professed by Adam. To them, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all of the Hebrew prophets were prophets of Islam, but their message and their texts had become corrupted. All children, according to Islam, are born Muslims, but are converted to another faith by their parents.
In that converts were won by using an existing Pagan deity as the god of Islam -- and Mecca, the home of that deity as the holy place of Islam -- it can be argued that Muslims are not worshipping the same god as the Hebrew prophets and in that respect it was a new religion.
However, Islam -- meaning submission, the total surrender of oneself to God -- is far more like Judaism than Christianity in that it rejects the notion of God begetting or being begotten. Both Jews and Muslims (one who submits to God) totally reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity -- the father, the son and the holy ghost -- which they compare to polytheism.
By uniting the Arabs with Islam, Muhammad believed that the Arabs could easily conquer all of the former Roman provinces that had been torn asunder by Christian theological arguments. He was a political and military strategist who used religion to further his aims, a fact understood too well by his Quraish tribe in Mecca. For 13 years Muhammad preached to the people of Mecca, imploring them to abandon polytheism, until persecution by the leading Meccan authorities caused him to flee to Medina in 622. Called Hegira, this flight dates the birth of Islam.
In Medina, Muhammad established his political and religious authority by appealing to the many disgruntled, alienated and persecuted people of all faiths from the old Roman provinces who were happy to accept Allah as their god and Mohammad as their leader. He fought two battles against Meccan forces -- the victorious Battle of Badr in 624 and the inconclusive Battle of Uhud in 625 -- and conflict with Jewish clans in Medina led to their exile, enslavement or death.
Finally, by bringing surrounding desert tribes under his control, the Meccan trade routes were cut off and by 629 Muhammad was victorious in the nearly bloodless Conquest of Mecca.
In the last ten years of his life, Muhammad organized 65 military campaigns and personally led 27 of them. The more power he attained, the less the excuse needed to go to battle, until finally he began attacking tribes merely because they were not part of his growing empire. By the time of his death in 632 Muhammad ruled over the Arabian peninsula and left instructions for his followers to press the Jihad against the Hindus, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians (Persians) and Buddhists.
Beginning at the age of 40 and continuing for the last 23 years of his life Muhammad reported receiving revelations from God. The content of these revelations was memorized and recorded by his companions. Known as the Qur'an (Koran), these revelations, like those of Jesus recorded in the Bible, were undoubtedly embellished and edited according to the political climate and particular aspirations of later Islamic leaders.
In Muslim tradition, Muhammad is believed to be the last and the greatest in a series of prophets, a man closest to perfection and the possessor of all virtues. Muhammad's life is called the Sunnah (the trodden path) and all Muslims are encouraged to emulate his actions in their daily lives.
Muhammad's first wife -- Khadija, a woman much older than himself -- died a few years before he fled to Medina and, at the age of 49, he was betrothed to Aisha, aged six, the daughter of his closest friend, Abu Bakr. Three years later, following an illness that hastened Aisha's first menstrual cycle, he then formally married and sexually consummated his marriage with her. This was in accordance with acceptable custom at that time, Mary the mother of Jesus being not much older than 9.
Aisha was extremely jealous of Muhammad's other wives -- he had 11, despite God telling him that a man may only have four wives -- and she often resorted to conspiring with the other wives, lying and deceiving, in order to keep Muhammad's attention.
After Muhammad’s death, his most faithful followers and even his own family immediately turned on each other -- creating the Shia and Sunni factions -- making one wonder whether they were acting piously by following the Sunnah (emulating Muhammad’s actions) or behaving lawlessly without the slightest regard for the religion they professed to follow.
Aisha was a ringleader in the first Muslim civil war -- the first time Muslims took arms up against other Muslims. In the Battle of the Camel, between Aisha (later the Sunni faction) and Ali ibn Abi Talib -- the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad (later the Shia faction) -- thousands of Muslims were killed fighting against each other.
Aisha's side lost, and she was put under house arrest by Ali. At the age of 18, Aisha's life was thus virtually over because whereas a man may marry up to four wives if he believes he can treat them equally, a woman may marry one man only. And, as the wife of the Prophet, she was his in this world and the next.
Muhammad’s own daughter, Fatima -- married to Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s cousin -- died of stress from persecution within three months of her father's death, and Ali was later assassinated. Their son (Muhammad’s grandson) was killed in battle with the Sunni faction. This slaughter was surely not what Muhammad would have wanted, but without annointing a successor maybe it is exactly what he intended in order to ensure that the next leader was as strong and ruthless as himself.
There were four Caliphs (leaders) in the first twenty-five years. Three of the four were murdered. The third Caliph was murdered by the son of the first. The fourth Caliph was murdered by the fifth, who left a 100-year dynasty that was ended in a gruesome, widespread bloodbath by descendants of Muhammad’s uncle.
Despite it's early horrors -- and four centuries of Muslim armies invading many lands, plundering them and forcing the survivors to either convert or pay tribute at the point of a sword -- the Arabic civilization under the Caliphate was one of the most advanced in the world during the Middle Ages. This was made possible by the monolithic Arab empire giving way to a more religiously homogenized Muslim world respecting the caliph's titular authority yet bringing new legal, philosophical, and religious ideas to Islamic scholarship.
Had Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Al-Farabi been allowed to incorporate Greek principles into Islamic theology, relations between the Islamic world and the newly forming western civilization may have taken a less bloody path.
This article first appeared as Islam, a restoration of Abraham's ideal?
Initially, Muhammad was neither a Jew nor a Christian. As a youth, he worshipped all of the 360 Pagan gods in the Kabah in Mecca owned and operated by his Quraish tribe. He was just one of thousands of young Arab men from wealthy families who were set adrift as the former Roman provinces, now under the control of Christian bishops, became embroiled in one theological argument after another, leaving a political vacuum.
At some point in his life Muhammad was converted to the concept of monotheism by the Christians, but being a proud Arab he saw more political gain in reforming his native pagan religion than adopting a foreign religion like Christianity. He took the top pagan god of the Kabah in Mecca (called Hubal and/or Allah), chose it to be his new monotheistic god and set about converting all the Arab people to monotheism.
Mohammad's followers claim that Islam was not a new religion but a restoration of the primordial and supreme religion of mankind professed by Adam. To them, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all of the Hebrew prophets were prophets of Islam, but their message and their texts had become corrupted. All children, according to Islam, are born Muslims, but are converted to another faith by their parents.
In that converts were won by using an existing Pagan deity as the god of Islam -- and Mecca, the home of that deity as the holy place of Islam -- it can be argued that Muslims are not worshipping the same god as the Hebrew prophets and in that respect it was a new religion.
However, Islam -- meaning submission, the total surrender of oneself to God -- is far more like Judaism than Christianity in that it rejects the notion of God begetting or being begotten. Both Jews and Muslims (one who submits to God) totally reject the Christian doctrine of the Trinity -- the father, the son and the holy ghost -- which they compare to polytheism.
By uniting the Arabs with Islam, Muhammad believed that the Arabs could easily conquer all of the former Roman provinces that had been torn asunder by Christian theological arguments. He was a political and military strategist who used religion to further his aims, a fact understood too well by his Quraish tribe in Mecca. For 13 years Muhammad preached to the people of Mecca, imploring them to abandon polytheism, until persecution by the leading Meccan authorities caused him to flee to Medina in 622. Called Hegira, this flight dates the birth of Islam.
In Medina, Muhammad established his political and religious authority by appealing to the many disgruntled, alienated and persecuted people of all faiths from the old Roman provinces who were happy to accept Allah as their god and Mohammad as their leader. He fought two battles against Meccan forces -- the victorious Battle of Badr in 624 and the inconclusive Battle of Uhud in 625 -- and conflict with Jewish clans in Medina led to their exile, enslavement or death.
Finally, by bringing surrounding desert tribes under his control, the Meccan trade routes were cut off and by 629 Muhammad was victorious in the nearly bloodless Conquest of Mecca.
In the last ten years of his life, Muhammad organized 65 military campaigns and personally led 27 of them. The more power he attained, the less the excuse needed to go to battle, until finally he began attacking tribes merely because they were not part of his growing empire. By the time of his death in 632 Muhammad ruled over the Arabian peninsula and left instructions for his followers to press the Jihad against the Hindus, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians (Persians) and Buddhists.
Beginning at the age of 40 and continuing for the last 23 years of his life Muhammad reported receiving revelations from God. The content of these revelations was memorized and recorded by his companions. Known as the Qur'an (Koran), these revelations, like those of Jesus recorded in the Bible, were undoubtedly embellished and edited according to the political climate and particular aspirations of later Islamic leaders.
In Muslim tradition, Muhammad is believed to be the last and the greatest in a series of prophets, a man closest to perfection and the possessor of all virtues. Muhammad's life is called the Sunnah (the trodden path) and all Muslims are encouraged to emulate his actions in their daily lives.
Muhammad's first wife -- Khadija, a woman much older than himself -- died a few years before he fled to Medina and, at the age of 49, he was betrothed to Aisha, aged six, the daughter of his closest friend, Abu Bakr. Three years later, following an illness that hastened Aisha's first menstrual cycle, he then formally married and sexually consummated his marriage with her. This was in accordance with acceptable custom at that time, Mary the mother of Jesus being not much older than 9.
Aisha was extremely jealous of Muhammad's other wives -- he had 11, despite God telling him that a man may only have four wives -- and she often resorted to conspiring with the other wives, lying and deceiving, in order to keep Muhammad's attention.
After Muhammad’s death, his most faithful followers and even his own family immediately turned on each other -- creating the Shia and Sunni factions -- making one wonder whether they were acting piously by following the Sunnah (emulating Muhammad’s actions) or behaving lawlessly without the slightest regard for the religion they professed to follow.
Aisha was a ringleader in the first Muslim civil war -- the first time Muslims took arms up against other Muslims. In the Battle of the Camel, between Aisha (later the Sunni faction) and Ali ibn Abi Talib -- the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad (later the Shia faction) -- thousands of Muslims were killed fighting against each other.
Aisha's side lost, and she was put under house arrest by Ali. At the age of 18, Aisha's life was thus virtually over because whereas a man may marry up to four wives if he believes he can treat them equally, a woman may marry one man only. And, as the wife of the Prophet, she was his in this world and the next.
Muhammad’s own daughter, Fatima -- married to Ali ibn Abi Talib, Muhammad’s cousin -- died of stress from persecution within three months of her father's death, and Ali was later assassinated. Their son (Muhammad’s grandson) was killed in battle with the Sunni faction. This slaughter was surely not what Muhammad would have wanted, but without annointing a successor maybe it is exactly what he intended in order to ensure that the next leader was as strong and ruthless as himself.
There were four Caliphs (leaders) in the first twenty-five years. Three of the four were murdered. The third Caliph was murdered by the son of the first. The fourth Caliph was murdered by the fifth, who left a 100-year dynasty that was ended in a gruesome, widespread bloodbath by descendants of Muhammad’s uncle.
Despite it's early horrors -- and four centuries of Muslim armies invading many lands, plundering them and forcing the survivors to either convert or pay tribute at the point of a sword -- the Arabic civilization under the Caliphate was one of the most advanced in the world during the Middle Ages. This was made possible by the monolithic Arab empire giving way to a more religiously homogenized Muslim world respecting the caliph's titular authority yet bringing new legal, philosophical, and religious ideas to Islamic scholarship.
Had Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Al-Farabi been allowed to incorporate Greek principles into Islamic theology, relations between the Islamic world and the newly forming western civilization may have taken a less bloody path.
This article first appeared as Islam, a restoration of Abraham's ideal?
Labels: abraham, abu bakr, aisha, arabic civilization, Avicenna, caliphate, hagar, ishmael, islam, kahab, khadija, koran, mecca, mohammed, muhammad, muslims, quaraish, shia, sunnah, sunni
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