The Age of Faith

by Will Durant

  Striking northeast from Damascus across the desert, one came to Raqqa on the Euphrates, royal seat of Harun al-Rashid; and then through Hatra and across the Tigris to Mosul; farther northeast lay Tabriz, whose finest age was still to come; then, to the east, Tehran (as yet a minor town), Damghan, and—east of the Caspian—Gurgan. In the tenth century this was a provincial capital noted for its cultured princes; the greatest of them, Shams al-Maali Qabus, was a poet and scholar who sheltered Avicenna at his court, and left behind him, as his tomb, a gigantic tower 167 feet high, the Gunbad-i-Qabus, the only structure standing of a once populous and prosperous city. Along the northern route to the east lay Nishapur, still melodious in Omar Khayyam’s verse; Mashhad, the Mecca of Shia Moslems; Merv, capital of a once mighty province; and—usually beyond the reach of the caliph’s taxgatherers—Bokhara and Samarkand. Over the mountain ranges to the south lay Ghazni. Poets tell of Mahmud’s great palaces there, and of “tall towers that amazed the moon”; still stand the “Triumphal Tower” of Mahmud, and the more ornate tower of Masud II. Moving back westward, one could find in the eleventh century a dozen prosperous cities in Iran—Herat, Shiraz (with its famous gardens and lovely mosque), Yazd, Isfahan, Kashan, Qasvin, Qum, Hamadan, Kirmanshah, Samana; and in Iraq the populous cities of Basra and Kufa. Everywhere the traveler could see shining domes and sparkling minarets, colleges and libraries, palaces and gardens, hospitals and baths, and the dark and narrow alleys of the eternal poor. And at last Baghdad.

  “Blessed be Baghdad!” cried the poet Anwari—

  Blessed be the site of Baghdad, seat of learning and art;

  None can point in the world to a city her equal;

  Her suburbs vie in beauty with the blue vault of the sky;

  Her climate rivals the life-giving breezes of heaven;

  Her stones in their brightness rival diamonds and rubies; …

  The banks of the Tigris with their lovely damsels surpass Kullakh;

  The gardens filled with lovely nymphs equal Kashmir;

  And thousands of gondolas on the water

  Dance and sparkle like sunbeams in the air.89

  It was an old Babylonian city, and not far from ancient Babylon; bricks bearing Nebuchadrezzar’s name were found in 1848 under the Tigris there. It throve under the Sasanian kings; after the Moslem conquest it became the seat of several Christian monasteries, mostly Nestorian. From these monks, we are told, the Caliph al-Mansur learned that the site was cool in summer, and free from the mosquitoes that harassed Kufa and Basra. Perhaps the Caliph thought it advisable to put some distance between himself and those unruly cities, already swelling with a revolutionary proletariat; and doubtless he saw strategic advantage in a site safely inland, yet in touch by water, through the Tigris and the major canals, with all the cities on the two rivers, and then through the Gulf with all the ports of the world. So in 762 he transferred his residence from Hashimiya, and the governmental offices from Kufa, to Baghdad, surrounded the site with a threefold circular wall and a moat, changed its official name from Baghdad (“Gift of God”) to Medinat-al-Salam (“City of Peace”), and employed 100,000 men to build in four years great brick palaces for himself, his relatives, and the bureaus of the government. At the center of this “Round City of al-Mansur” rose the caliphal palace, called the “Golden Gate” from its gilded entrance, or the “Green Dome” from its gleaming cupola. Outside the walls, and directly on the west bank of the Tigris, al-Mansur built a summer residence, the “Palace of Eternity”; here, for most of his years, Harun al-Rashid made his home. From the windows of these palaces one might see a hundred vessels unloading on the docks the wares of half the earth.

  In 768, to provide his son al-Mahdi with independent quarters, al-Mansur built a palace and a mosque on the eastern or Persian side of the river. Around these buildings a suburb grew, Rusafa, connected with the Round City by two bridges resting on boats. As most of the caliphs after Harun made their dwelling in this suburb, it soon outstripped the city of Mansur in size and wealth; after Harun “Baghdad” means Rusafa. From the royal centers, on either side of the Tigris, narrow crooked streets, designed to elude the sun, led out their chasms of noisy shops to the residential districts of the well-to-do. Each craft had its street or mart—perfumers, basket weavers, wire-pullers (in the literal sense), money-changers, silk weavers, booksellers…. Over the shops and beyond them were the homes of the people. Almost all dwellings but those of the rich were of unbaked brick, made for a lifetime, but not for much longer. We have no reliable statistics of the population; probably it reached 800,000; some authorities estimate it at 2,000,000;90 in any case it was in the tenth century the largest city in the world, with the possible exception of Constantinople. There was a crowded Christian quarter, with churches, monasteries, and schools; Nestorians, Monophysites, and orthodox Christians had there their separate conventicles. Harun rebuilt and enlarged an early mosque of al-Mansur, and al-Mutadid rebuilt and enlarged this mosque of Harun. Doubtless several hundred additional mosques served the hopes of the people.

  While the poor solaced life with heaven, the rich sought heaven on earth. In or near Baghdad they raised a thousand splendid mansions, villas, palaces-simple without, but “within, nothing but azure and gold.” We may imagine this domestic splendor from an incredible passage in Abulfeda, which assures us that the royal palace at Baghdad had on its floors 22,000 carpets, and on its walls 38,000 tapestries, 12,500 of silk.91 The residences of the caliph and his family, the vizier, and the governmental heads occupied a square mile of the eastern city. Jafar the Barmakid inaugurated an aristocratic migration by building in southeastern Baghdad a mansion whose splendor contributed to his death. He tried to evade Harun’s jealousy by presenting the palace to Mamun; Harun accepted it for his son, but Jafar continued to live and frolic in the “Qasr Jafari” till his fall. When the palaces of al-Mansur and Harun began to crumble, new palaces replaced them. Al-Mutadid spent 400,000 dinars ($1,900,000) on his “Palace of the Pleiades” (892); we may judge its extent from the 9000 horses, camels, and mules that were housed in its stables.92 Al-Muqtafi built next to this his “Palace of the Crown” (902), which, with its gardens, covered nine square miles. Al-Muqtadir raised in his turn the “Hall of the Tree,” so named because in its garden pond stood a tree of silver and gold; on the silver leaves and twigs perched silver birds, whose beaks piped mechanical lays. The Buwayhid sultans outspent them all by lavishing 13,000,000 dirhems upon the Muizziyah Palace. When Greek ambassadors were received by al-Muqtadir in 917, they were impressed by the twenty-three palaces of the Caliph and his government, the porticoes of marble columns, the number, size, and beauty of the rugs and tapestries that almost covered floors and walls, the thousand grooms in shining uniforms, the gold and silver saddles and brocaded saddlecloths of the emperor’s horses, the variety of tame or wild animals in the spacious parks, and the royal barges, themselves palaces, that rode on the Tigris, waiting the Caliph’s whim.

  Amid these splendors the upper classes lived a life of luxury, sport, worry, and intrigue. They went to the Maydan or plaza to watch horse races or polo games; drank precious forbidden wine, and ate foods brought from the greatest possible distances at the greatest possible price; robed themselves and their ladies in gorgeous and colorful raiment of silk and gold brocade; perfumed their clothing, hair, and beards; breathed the aroma of burning ambergris or frankincense; and wore jewelry on their heads, ears, necks, wrists, and feminine ankles; “the clinking of thine anklets,” sang a poet to a lass, “has bereft me of reason.”93 Usually women were excluded from the social gatherings of the men; poets, musicians, and wits took their place, and doubtless sang or spoke of love; and willowy slave girls danced till the men were their slaves. Politer groups listened to poetic readings, or recitations of the Koran; some formed philosophical clubs like the Brethren of Purity. About 790 we hear of a club of ten members: an orthodox Sunni, a Shi’ite, a Kharijite, a Manichean, an erotic poet, a materialist, a Christian, a Jew, a Sabaean,
and a Zoroastrian; their meetings, we are told, were marked by mutual tolerance, good humor, and courteous argument.94 In general Moslem society was one of excellent manners; from Cyrus to Li Hung Chang the East has surpassed the West in courtesy. It was an ennobling aspect of this Baghdad life that all the permitted arts and sciences found there a discriminating patronage, that schools and colleges were numerous, and the air resounded with poetry.

  Of the life of the common people we are told little; we may only assume that they helped to uphold this edifice of grandeur with their services and their toil. While the rich played with literature and art, science and philosophy, the simpler folk listened to street singers, or strummed their own lutes and sang their own songs. Now and then a wedding procession redeemed the din and odor of the streets; and on festive holydays people visited one another, exchanged presents with careful calculation, and ate with keener relish than those who feasted from plates of gold. Even the poor man gloried in the majesty of the caliph and the splendor of the mosque; he shared some dirhems of the dinars that were taxed into Baghdad; he carried himself with the pride and dignity of a capital; and in his secret heart he numbered himself among the rulers of the world.

  CHAPTER XII

  Thought and Art in Eastern Islam

  632–1058

  I. SCHOLARSHIP

  IF we may believe the traditions, Mohammed, unlike most religious reformers, admired and urged the pursuit of knowledge: “He who leaves his home in search of knowledge walks in the path of God … and the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr”;1 but these traditions have the ring of pedagogic narcissism. In any case the contact of the Arabs with Greek culture in Syria awoke in them an eager emulation; and soon the scholar as well as the poet was honored in Islam.

  Education began as soon as the child could speak; it was at once taught to say, “I testify that there is no God but Allah, and I testify that Mohammed is His prophet.” At the age of six some slave children, some girls, and nearly all boys except the rich (who had private tutors) entered an elementary school, usually in a mosque, sometimes near a public fountain in the open air. Tuition was normally free, or so low as to be within general reach; the teacher received from the parent some two cents per pupil per week;2 the remaining cost was borne by philanthropists. The curriculum was simple: the necessary prayers of Moslem worship, enough reading to decipher the Koran, and, for the rest, the Koran itself as theology, history, ethics, and law. Writing and arithmetic were left to higher education, perhaps because writing, in the Orient, was an art that required specific training; besides, said the Moslem, scribes would be available for those who insisted on writing.3 Each day a part of the Koran was memorized and recited aloud; the goal set before every pupil was to learn the entire book by heart. He who succeeded was called hafiz, “holder,” and was publicly celebrated. He who also learned writing, archery, and swimming was called al-kamil, “the perfect one.” The method was memory, the discipline was the rod; the usual punishment was a beating with a palm stick on the soles of the feet. Said Harun to the tutor of his son Amin: “Be not strict to the extent of stifling his faculties, nor lenient to the point of … accustoming him to idleness. Straighten him as much as thou canst through kindness and gentleness, but fail not to resort to force and severity should he not respond.”4

  Elementary education aimed to form character, secondary education to transmit knowledge. Squatting against a mosque pillar or wall, scholars offered instruction in Koranic interpretation, Hadith, theology, and law. At an unknown date many of these informal secondary schools were brought under governmental regulation and subsidy as madrasas or colleges. To the basic theological curriculum they added grammar, philology, rhetoric, literature, logic, mathematics, and astronomy. Grammar was emphasized, for Arabic was considered the most nearly perfect of all languages, and its correct use was the chief mark of a gentleman. Tuition in these colleges was free, and in some cases government or philanthropy paid both the salaries of the professors and the expenses of the students.5 The teacher counted for more than the text, except in the case of the Koran; boys studied men rather than books; and students would travel from one end of the Moslem world to another to meet the mind of a famous teacher. Every scholar who desired a high standing at home had to hear the master scholars of Mecca, Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. This international of letters was made easier by the fact that throughout Islam—through whatever diversity of peoples—the language of learning and literature was Arabic; Latin had no wider realm. When a visitor entered a Moslem city he took it for granted that he could hear a scholarly lecture at the principal mosque at almost any hour of the day. In many cases the wandering scholar received not only free instruction at the madrasa, but, for a time, free lodging and food.6 No degrees were given; what the student sought was a certificate of approval from the individual teacher. The final accolade was the acquirement of adab—the manners and tastes, the verbal wit and grace, the lightly carried knowledge, of a gentleman.

  When the Moslems captured Samarkand (712) they learned from the Chinese the technique of beating flax and other fibrous plants into a pulp, and drying the pulp in thin sheets. Introduced to the Near East as a substitute for parchment and leather at a time when papyrus was not yet forgotten, the product received the name papyros—paper. The first paper-manufacturing plant in Islam was opened at Baghdad in 794 by al-Fadl, son of Harun’s vizier. The craft was brought by the Arabs to Sicily and Spain, and thence passed into Italy and France. We find paper in use in China as early as A.D. 105, in Mecca in 707, in Egypt in 800, in Spain in 950, in Constantinople in 1100, in Sicily in 1102, in Italy in 1154, in Germany in 1228, in England in 1309.7 The invention facilitated the making of books wherever it went. Yaqubi tells us that in his time (891) Baghdad had over a hundred booksellers. Their shops were also centers of copying, calligraphy, and literary gatherings. Many students made a living by copying manuscripts and selling the copies to book dealers. In the tenth century we hear of autograph hunters, and of book collectors who paid great sums for rare manuscripts.8 Authors received nothing from the sale of their books; they depended on some less speculative mode of subsistence, or upon the patronage of princes or rich men. Literature was written, and art was designed, in Islam, to meet the taste of an aristocracy of money or of blood.

  Most mosques had libraries, and some cities had public libraries of considerable content and generous accessibility. About 950 Mosul had a library, established by private philanthropy, where students were supplied with paper as well as books. Ten large catalogues were required to list the volumes in the public library at Rayy. Basra’s library gave stipends to scholars working in it. The geographer Yaqut spent three years in the libraries of Merv and Khwarizm, gathering data for his geographical dictionary. When Baghdad was destroyed by the Mongols it had thirty-six public libraries.9 Private libraries were numberless; it was a fashion among the rich to have an ample collection of books. A physician refused the invitation of the sultan of Bokhara to come and live at his court, on the ground that he would need 400 camels to transport his library.10 Al-Waqidi, dying, left 600 boxes of books, each box so heavy that two men were needed to carry it;11 “princes like Sahib ibn Abbas in the tenth century might own as many books as could then be found in all the libraries of Europe combined.”12 Nowhere else in those eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries of our era was there so great a passion for books, unless it was in the China of Ming Huang. Islam reached then the summit of its cultural life. In a thousand mosques from Cordova to Samarkand scholars were as numerous as pillars, and made the cloisters tremble with their eloquence; the roads of the realm were disturbed by innumerable geographers, historians, and theologians seeking knowledge and wisdom; the courts of a hundred princes resounded with poetry and philosophical debate; and no man dared be a millionaire without supporting literature or art. The old cultures of the conquered were eagerly absorbed by the quick-witted Arabs; and the conquerors showed such tolerance that of the poets, scientists
, and philosophers who now made Arabic the most learned and literary tongue in the world only a small minority were of Arab blood.