by Will Durant
The simple and hardy Arabs gazed in wonder at the royal palace, its mighty arch and marble hall, its enormous carpets and jeweled throne. For ten days they labored to carry off their spoils. Perhaps because of these impediments, Omar forbade Saad to advance farther east; “Iraq,” he said, “is enough.”72 Saad complied, and spent the next three years establishing Arab rule throughout Mesopotamia. Meanwhile Yezdegird, in his northern provinces, raised another army, 150,000 strong; Omar sent against him 30,000 men; at Nahavand superior tactics won the “Victory of Victories” for the Arabs; 100,000 Persians, caught in narrow defiles, were massacred (641). Soon all Persia was in Arab hands. Yezdegird fled to Balkh, begged aid of China and was refused, begged aid of the Turks and was given a small force; but as he started out on his new campaign some Turkish soldiers murdered him for his jewelry (652). Sasanian Persia had come to an end.
BOOK II
ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
569–1258
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE FOR BOOK II
570–632:
Mohammed
610:
Mohammed’s vision
622:
His Hegira to Medina
630:
Mohammed takes Mecca
632–4:
Abu Bekr caliph
634–44:
Omar caliph
635:
Moslems take Damascus
637:
and Jerusalem & Ctesiphon
641:
Moslems conquer Persia & Egypt
641:
Moslems found Cairo (Fustat)
642:
Mosque of Amr at Cairo
644–56:
Othman caliph
656–60:
Ali caliph
660–80:
Muawiya I caliph
660–750:
Umayyad caliphate at Damascus
662:
Hindu numerals in Syria
680:
Husein slain at Kerbela
680–3:
Yezid I caliph
683–4:
Muawiya II caliph
685–705:
Abd-al-Malik caliph
691–4:
Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem
693–862:
Moslem rule in Armenia
698:
Moslems take Carthage
705–15:
Walid I caliph
705f:
Great Mosque of Damascus
711:
Moslems enter Spain
715–17:
Suleiman I caliph
717–20:
Omar II caliph
720–4:
Yezid II caliph
724–43:
Hisham caliph
732:
Moslems turned back at Tours
743:
The Mshatta reliefs
743–4:
Walid II caliph
750:
Abu’l-Abbas al-Saffah founds Abbasid caliphate
754–75:
Al-Mansur caliph; Baghdad becomes capital
755–88:
Abd-er-Rahman I emir of Cordova
757–847:
The Mutazilite philosophers
760:
Rise of the Ismaili sect
775–86:
Al-Mahdi caliph
786f:
Blue Mosque of Cordova
786–809:
Harun al-Rashid caliph
780–974:
Idrisid dynasty at Fez
803:
Fall of the Barmakid family
803f:
Al-Kindi, philosopher
808–909:
Aghlabid dynasty at Qairuan
809–10:
Moslems take Corsica and Sardinia
809–77:
Hunain ibn Ishaq, scholar
813–33:
Al-Mamun caliph
820–72:
Tahirid dynasty in Persia
822–52:
Abd-er-Rahman II emir of Cordova
827f:
Saracens conquer Sicily
830:
“House of Wisdom” at Baghdad
830:
Al-Khwarizmi’s Algebra
844–926:
Al-Razi, physician
846:
Saracens attack Rome
870–950:
Al-Farabi, philosopher
872–903:
Saffarid dynasty in Persia
873–935:
Al-Ashari, theologian
878:
Mosque of Ibn Tulun at Cairo
909f:
Fatimid caliphate at Qairuan
912–61:
Abd-er-Rahman caliph at Cordova
915:
fl. al-Tabari, historian
915–65:
Al-Mutannabi, poet
934–1020:
Firdausi, poet
940–98:
Abu’l Wafa, mathematician
945–1058:
Buwayhid ascendancy in Baghdad
951:
d. of al-Masudi, geographer
952–77:
Ashot III and 990–1020: Gagik I: Golden Age of Medieval Armenia
961–76:
Al-Hakam caliph at Cordova
965–1039:
Al-Haitham, physicist
967–1049:
Abu Said, Sufi poet
969–1171:
Fatimid dynasty at Cairo
970:
Mosque of el-Azhar at Cairo
973–1048:
Al-Biruni, scientist
973–1058:
Al-Ma’arri, poet
976–1010:
Al-Hisham caliph at Cordova
978–1002:
Almanzor prime minister at Cordova
980–1037:
Ibn Sina (Avicenna), philosopher
983f:
Brethren of Sincerity
990–1012:
Mosque of al-Hakim at Cairo
998–1030:
Mahmud of Ghazna
1012:
Berber revolution at Cordova
1017–92:
Nizam al-Mulk, vizier
1031:
End of Cordova caliphate
1038:
Seljuq Turks invade Persia
1038–1123:
Omar Khayyam, poet
1040–95:
Al-Mutamid, emir and poet
1058:
Seljuqs take Baghdad
1058–1111:
Al-Ghazali, theologian
1059–63:
Tughril Beg sultan at Baghdad
1060:
Seljuq Turks conquer Armenia
1063–72:
Alp Arslan sultan
1071:
Turks defeat Greeks at Manzikert
1072–92:
Malik Shah sultan
1077–1327:
Sultanate of Roum in Asia Minor
1088f:
Friday Mosque at Isfahan
1090:
“Assassin” sect founded
1090–1147:
Almoravid dynasty in Spain
1091–1162:
Ibn Zohr, physician
1098:
Fatimids take Jerusalem
1100–66:
Al-Idrisi, geographer
1106f:
fl. Ibn Bajja, philosopher
1107–85:
Ibn Tufail, philosopher
1117–51:
Sanjar, Seljuq sultan
1126–98:
Ibn Rushd (Averroës), phil’r
1130–1269:
Almohad dynasty in Morocco
1138–93:
Saladin
1148–1248:
Almohad dynasty in Spain
1162–1227:
Jenghiz Khan
1175–1249:
Ayyubid dynasty
1179–1220:
1181f:
Alcazar of Seville
1184–1291:
Sa’di, poet
1187:
Saladin defeats Crusaders at Hattin & takes Jerusalem
1188:
fl. Nizami, poet
1196:
Giralda tower at Seville
1201–73:
Jalal-ud-Din Rumi, poet
1211–82:
Ibn Khallikan, biographer
1212:
Christians defeat Moors at Las Navas de Toledo
1218–38:
Al-Kamil sultan at Cairo
1219:
Jenghiz Khan invades Transoxiana
1245:
Mongols take Jerusalem
1248f:
The Alhambra
1250–1517:
Mamluk rule in Egypt
1252:
Moorish rule in Spain confined to Granada
1258:
Mongols sack Baghdad; end of Abbasid caliphate
1260:
Mamluks repel Mongols at Ain-Jalut
1260–77:
Baibars Mamluk sultan
CHAPTER VIII
Mohammed
570–632
I. ARABIA*
IN the year 565 Justinian died, master of a great empire. Five years later Mohammed was born into a poor family in a country three quarters desert, sparsely peopled by nomad tribes whose total wealth could hardly have furnished the sanctuary of St. Sophia. No one in those years would have dreamed that within a century these nomads would conquer half of Byzantine Asia, all Persia and Egypt, most of North Africa, and be on their way to Spain. The explosion of the Arabian peninsula into the conquest and conversion of half the Mediterranean world is the most extraordinary phenomenon in medieval history.
Arabia is the largest of all peninsulas: 1400 miles in its greatest length, 1250 in its greatest width. Geologically it is a continuation of the Sahara, part of the sandy belt that runs up through Persia to the Gobi Desert. Arab means arid. Physically Arabia is a vast plateau, rising precipitously to 12,000 feet within thirty miles of the Red Sea, and sloping through mountainous wastelands eastward to the Persian Gulf. In the center are some grassy oases and palm-studded villages, where water can be reached by shallow wells; around this nucleus the sands stretch in every direction for hundreds of miles. Snow falls there once in forty years; the nights cool down to 38 degrees Fahrenheit; the daily sun burns the face and boils the blood; and the sand-laden air necessitates long robes and head-bands to guard flesh and hair. The skies are almost always clear, the air “like sparkling wine.”1 Along the coasts an occasional torrent of rain brings the possibility of civilization: most of all on the western littoral, in the Hejaz district with the cities of Mecca and Medina; and southwest in the district of Yemen, the home of the ancient kingdoms of Arabia.
A Babylonian inscription of approximately 2400 B.C. records the defeat of a king of Magan by the Babylonian ruler Naram-Sin. Magan was the capital of a Minaean kingdom in southwest Arabia; twenty-five of its later kings are known from Arabian inscriptions that go back to 800 B.C. An inscription tentatively ascribed to 2300 B.C. mentions another Arabian kingdom, Saba, in Yemen; from Saba or its North Arabian colonies, it is now agreed, the Queen of Sheba “went up” to Solomon about 950 B.C. The Sabaean kings made their capital at Marib, fought the usual wars of “defense,” built great irrigation works like the Marib dams (whose ruins are still visible), raised gigantic castles and temples, subsidized religion handsomely, and used it as an instrument of rule.2 Their inscriptions—probably not older than 900 B.C.—are beautifully carved in an alphabetical script. The Sabaeans produced the frankincense and myrrh that played so prominent a role in Asiatic and Egyptian rituals; they controlled the sea trade between India and Egypt, and the south end of the caravan route that led through Mecca and Medina to Petra and Jerusalem. About 115 B.C. another petty kingdom of southwest Arabia, the Himyarite, conquered Saba, and thereafter controlled Arabian trade for several centuries. In 25 B.C. Augustus, irked by Arabian control of Egyptian-Indian commerce, sent an army under Aelius Gallus to capture Marib; the legions were misled by native guides, were decimated by heat and disease, and failed in their mission; but another Roman army captured the Arab port of Adana (Aden), and gave control of the Egypt-India route to Rome. (Britain repeated this procedure in our time.)
In the second century before Christ some Himyarites crossed the Red Sea, colonized Abyssinia, and gave the indigenous Negro population a Semitic culture and considerable Semitic blood.* The Abyssinians received Christianity, crafts, and arts from Egypt and Byzantium; their merchant vessels sailed as far as India and Ceylon; and seven little kingdoms acknowledged the Negus as their sovereign.† Meanwhile in Arabia many Himyarites followed the lead of their king Dhu-Nuwas and accepted Judaism. With a convert’s zeal, Dhu-Nuwas persecuted the Christians of southwest Arabia; they called to their coreligionists to rescue them; the Abyssinians came, conquered the Himyarite kings (A.D. 522), and replaced them with an Abyssinian dynasty. Justinian allied himself with this new state; Persia countered by taking up the cause of the deposed Himyarites, driving out the Abyssinians, and setting up in Yemen (575) a Persian rule that ended some sixty years later with the Moslem conquest of Persia.
In the north some minor Arab kingdoms flourished briefly. The sheiks of the Ghassanid tribe ruled northwestern Arabia and Palmyrene Syria from the third to the seventh century as phylarchs, or client kings, of Byzantium. During the same period the Lakhmid kings established at Hira, near Babylon, a semi-Persian court and culture famous for its music and poetry. Long before Mohammed the Arabs had expanded into Syria and Iraq.
Aside from these petty kingdoms of south and north, and to a large extent within them, the political organization of pre-Islamic Arabia was a primitive kinship structure of families united in clans and tribes. Tribes were named from a supposed common ancestor; so the banu-Ghassan thought themselves the “children of Ghassan.” Arabia as a political unit, before Mohammed, existed only in the careless nomenclature of the Greeks, who called all the population of the peninsula Sarakenoi, Saracens, apparently from the Arabic sharqiyun, “Easterners.” Difficulties of communication compelled local or tribal self-sufficiency and particularism. The Arab felt no duty or loyalty to any group larger than his tribe, but the intensity of his devotion varied inversely as its extent; for his tribe he would do with a clear conscience what civilized people do only for their country, religion, or “race”—i.e., lie, steal, kill, and die. Each tribe or clan was loosely ruled by a sheik chosen by its leaders from a family traditionally prominent through wealth or wisdom or war.
In the villages men coaxed some grains and vegetables from the unwilling soil, raised a few cattle, and bred some fine horses; but they found it more profitable to cultivate orchards of dates, peaches, apricots, pomegranates, lemons, oranges, bananas, and figs; some nursed aromatic plants like frankincense, thyme, jasmine, and lavender; some pressed itr or attar from highland roses; some cupped trees to draw myrrh or balsam from the trunks. Possibly a twelfth of the population lived in cities on or near the west coast. Here was a succession of harbors and markets for Red Sea commerce, while farther inland lay the great caravan routes to Syria. We hear of Arabian trade with Egypt as far back as 2743 B.C.;3 probably as ancient was the trade with India. Annual fairs called merchants now to one town, now to another; the great annual fair at Ukaz, near Mecca, brought together hundreds of merchants, actors, preachers, gamblers, poets, and prostitutes.
Five sixths of the population were nomad Bedouins, herdsmen who moved with their flocks from one pastureland to another according to season and the winter rains. The Bedouin loved horses, but in the desert the camel was his greatest friend. It pitched and rolled with undulant dignity, and made only eight miles an hour; but it could go without water five days in summer and twenty-five in winter; its udders gave milk, its urine provided hair tonic,* its dung could be burned for fuel; w
hen it died it made tender meat, and its hair and hide made clothing and tents. With such varied sustenance the Bedouin could face the desert, as patient and enduring as his camel, as sensitive and spirited as his horse. Short and thin, well-knit and strong, he could live day after day on a few dates and a little milk; and from dates he made the wine that raised him out of the dust into romance. He varied the routine of his life with love and feud, and was as quick as a Spaniard (who inherited his blood) to avenge insult and injury, not only for himself but for his clan. A good part of his life was spent in tribal war; and when he conquered Syria, Persia, Egypt, and Spain, it was but an exuberant expansion of his plundering razzias or raids. Certain periods in the year he conceded to the “holy truce,” for religious pilgrimage or for trade; otherwise, he felt, the desert was his; whoever crossed it, except in that time, or without paying him tribute, was an interloper; to rob such trespassers was an unusually straightforward form of taxation. He despised the city because it meant law and trade; he loved the merciless desert because it left him free. Kindly and murderous, generous and avaricious, dishonest and faithful, cautious and brave, the Bedouin, however poor, fronted the world with dignity and pride, vain of the purity of his inbred blood, and fond of adding his lineage to his name.