A History of the Muslim World to 1405

by Vernon O Egger

  The Impact of the Shari‘a

  By the ninth century, the Shari‘a was the authorized basis for qadis to make their judgments in court. The Shari‘a, however, was not a codification of laws to which a qadi could refer when confronting a case. It was largely a set of norms regarding how to live the godly life, and included a remarkably broad range of topics from the scholars who reflected on the duties that humans owed their Creator. In it one could find details on the proper way to consummate a marriage or to defecate, as well as regulations regarding contracts, theft, and inheritance. Despite the intent of its architects to provide guidelines for all of life, its primary utility was for issues relating to religious rituals, marriage, divorce, inheritance, debts, and partnerships.

  Among the most notable legacies of the Shari‘a have been norms regarding the roles and status of women. Like other topics treated by the jurists, the decisions relating to women arose out of an interplay among Qur’anic injunctions, the Hadith, and deeply rooted customs of a given region regarding women’s roles. The Qur’an itself insists on the essential equality of women and men (3:195, 33:35, 4:124), but it also suggests that God views men to be “more equal” in rights than women (4:34). Because the Qur’an became the chief source of the Shari‘a, the jurists followed that lead. In addition, however, a Mediterranean tradition of honor and shame, a centuries-long Greek tradition of keeping women out of public life, the misogynistic teachings of some of the Christian theologians, and a Sasanian culture in which women were second-class subjects were powerful forces in the Fertile Crescent. At the Abbasid court—which was influenced by both Byzantine and Sasanian norms—the women were already being secluded even as the Shari‘a began to be delineated. The jurists of Islam worked within societies influenced by one or more of these factors as they interpreted the Qur’an and the Hadith.

  According to the Shari‘a, a woman was to have a male guardian—father, husband, brother, or uncle—and the marriage contract was technically between the bridegroom and the woman’s guardian, not the bride. A father could give his daughter in marriage without her consent if she had not yet reached age of puberty. Once a young woman had attained puberty, she technically could not be married against her will, but if she was a virgin, consent could be given “by silence,” a condition which was often exploited. A woman could marry only one man at a time, whereas a man could have up to four wives and as many slave concubines as he could afford. (The Hanbali school recognized the legitimacy of the marriage contract to stipulate that the husband could take no concubines or additional wives, but the other schools did not allow that provision.) The woman was entitled to a dowry and to maintenance (food, clothing, and lodging).

  All of the law schools agreed that the husband could divorce his wife unilaterally and for any cause, but the wife’s rights to divorce were more limited. According to some legal schools, the husband could divorce his wife by simply stating that he had divorced her in the presence of witnesses, and she did not even have to be present or to be informed of the act. Women, by contrast, could obtain a divorce only by mutual consent or by petitioning a qadi. The Hanafi school allowed a woman to request a divorce on the grounds of impotence, whereas the Maliki school allowed a wife to cite impotence, cruelty, desertion, failure of maintenance, or the threat posed to her by her husband’s disease. In the event of divorce, the woman would have custody of the children of the marriage and the duty of bringing them up until they reached a certain age (typically seven for boys and nine for girls) or until she remarried, in which case the children’s age was irrelevant. At that point, the father or his family would assume custody of the children.

  Women in urban areas from Transoxiana to Andalus did not play an active, visible role in public life either before or after the arrival of Muslims, unless they were from poor families that needed them to engage in trade, services, or the crafts. Most scholars agree that, if anything, the status of women in the area probably rose slightly in the formerly Byzantine and Sasanian territories due to the ethical principle of the equality of the sexes before God that runs as a leitmotif throughout the Qur’an. Legally, women were guaranteed a share of an inheritance, as well as the right to own and sell property. Many women from prosperous families did engage in business activities, but typically that meant renting out a shop, buying and selling property, and lending money—activities which did not necessarily thrust them into the public eye. On the other hand, the traditions of concubinage and seclusion that both the Byzantines and the Sasanians had practiced prior to the advent of the Muslims continued into the Islamic era and shaped Muslim mores in a profound manner. Women had clearly demarcated roles that left them subservient to those of men.

  Qadi courts dealt with criminal cases as well as family issues, but the state increasingly appropriated the responsibility for criminal law because the Shari‘a’s rules of evidence precluded a qadi from investigating criminal cases. In principle, only oral testimony from reputable witnesses was acceptable. Written evidence was only occasionally acceptable, and circumstantial evidence was not recognized at all. Because of the constraints on the qadi in this regard, the state transferred the greater part of criminal justice cases to the police. Both commerce and taxation were also spheres in which governments increasingly found that they needed a more flexible framework than what the Shari‘a provided.

  Thus, although the Shari‘a became a central feature of Muslim life, it never became a comprehensive law code for all of society’s needs. Two parallel systems of law existed in the Islamic world: the Shari‘a and one that served the needs of the state. As we have seen, the Shari‘a itself arose not from the needs of the state, but rather from the sense of moral responsibility that pious Muslims felt toward God. The Shari‘a was the guide to living a life acceptable to God. Rulers were willing to accommodate the Shari‘a because it served as a guide for judges and its implementation gave religious legitimacy to the state that employed it. Nevertheless, governments frequently faced issues that the Shari‘a did not address, and they utilized a variety of expedients for resolving their legal problems.

  On the other hand, the Shari‘a, because of its focus on the issues of marriage, divorce, and inheritance, was much better known to the public than the secular codes, and it was the system that provided a common identity from one end of the Islamic world to the other. The very fact that the Shari‘a had not been created to resolve the issues of a given state endowed it with the capacity for universality, and when the political unity of the Abbasid empire began breaking up, it was the Shari‘a that provided for a commonality among all Muslims regardless of their membership within a given state. Governments could come and go without affecting the stability of their respective societies.

  The development of the Shari‘a also seems to have been instrumental in crystallizing an identity for most of the Muslims who were not Alids. Oddly enough, we do not know when Sunnis began to call themselves by that term. However, the expression, ahl al-sunna wa al-jama‘a, discussed earlier, evoked the confidence that this group had that God’s will could be found when individuals cooperated in ascertaining the model of the Prophet’s life. It set them in contrast to those who relied for such guidance on a supernaturally inspired individual such as the Shi‘ite Imam. Those who came to be known as Sunnis argued that God’s will could be ascertained in the legal sciences, which were based on guidance from the Qur’an, the Hadith, analogy with similar cases, and the consensus of learned and pious scholars. A Hadith from the Prophet was often cited that expressed this confidence: “My community will never agree on an error.” Over the years, more and more of the Muslims who sought religious truth from the consensus of the community referred to themselves as Sunnis to distinguish themselves from the Shi‘ites, whose sense of identity was already established.

  Early Sufism

  In the late seventh and early eighth centuries, as Shi‘ism, the Hadith movement, and the Shari‘a were developing, a devotional movement arose in Kufa and Basra that eventually became
the most widespread and characteristic form of Islamic piety. Because some of its adherents wore the rough woolen garments that had been the characteristic clothing of ascetics in the area for centuries, the movement came to be called Sufism, and its members Sufis (sing. sufi, from suf, or wool). At the heart of Sufism was a burning passion to transcend the externals of religion and to experience the spiritual reality for which rituals and texts were the representation. Although Sufism would come to embrace a wide variety of devotional practices and ways of life, most of the early Sufis sought a personal relationship with God through a combination of asceticism, a concern for ethical ideals, and a mystical form of worship.

  The Contemplative Life

  For over a century, many of the most prominent Sufis were among those who were engaged in the gathering of the Hadith in order to have a guide for living according to the will of God. What set many of the early Sufis apart from the other Hadith collectors was their emphatic renunciation of this world. Some favored a mild form of asceticism, while others took self-denial to an extreme. Just as Shi‘ism and the Hadith movement contained elements of pious opposition to the Umayyad dynasty, the private piety and asceticism of the Sufis were in many cases expressions of disapproval or even active opposition to the same governmental authority. Throughout the Umayyad period there were examples of individuals who shunned the trappings of wealth and who sought a highly disciplined life of the spirit that stood in sharp contrast to the increasingly flamboyant way of life of the Umayyad court.

  Sufism cannot be reduced to a movement of political protest, however. A movement of pious self-discipline had arisen early within Islam. The Sufis point to the Prophet himself as their model, and he certainly led a simpler life than his political power and his access to the community’s resources would have allowed him. Moreover, many passages in the Qur’an stress the necessity of focusing on eternal goals rather than on worldly, material ones. Still other verses suggest the nearness of God that complements his transcendence and that allows him to be approached in a personal relationship. One that had a central role in the development of an accessible God was, “Indeed we created man; and we know what his soul whispers within him, and we are nearer to him than his jugular vein” (50:16).

  Those Muslims who felt the need to cultivate the life of the spirit had a wealth of traditions in their midst from which they could borrow. On the one hand, Sufism was an indigenous development within Islam. Mystics in all the world’s great religions share in a quest for the purification of the heart, a disregard for—if not renunciation of—worldly concerns, and a search for a deeper knowledge of God. It is unnecessary, and even misguided, to try to identify the source of borrowing of these elements from other traditions, because the dynamic of the mystical quest leads inexorably to some form of these features. However, many references in Sufi literature make it clear that Muslim, Christian, and Jewish mystics exchanged information on the contemplative life. Christian monks were particularly influential: In eighth-century Iraq and Syria, Christians still outnumbered Muslims, and awareness of monasticism was unavoidable. Indeed, the literary sources make it clear that Muslim mystics deliberately sought out conversations with pious members of the People of the Book who seemed to exemplify genuine spirituality. Even the woolen clothing characteristic of early Sufis was almost certainly a direct borrowing from Christian monasticism.

  Interest in this form of worship had grown by the beginning of the eighth century. In the urban environment of late Umayyad Iraq, a number of ascetics, itinerant preachers, and individuals referred to as weepers called the Muslim community to a more faithful adherence to God’s will. The most famous of this group was Hasan al-Basri (d. 728). He had served as a soldier in the military campaigns of the late seventh century and was later appointed qadi, although he may never actually have served in that capacity. He became a critic of the regime and was often in trouble with the Iraqi governor for his remarks. He was noted for his bouts of weeping for his own sins and for those of Muslim society. He was a respected moral teacher, and people flocked to the mosque when he gave the sermon.

  One of the important themes of the career of Hasan al-Basri was his emphasis on the purity of the intention of any religious act. He denigrated as worthless a religious act that was performed out of habit or even from a sense of duty alone. In the next generation, the celebrated female mystic Rabi‘a (d. 801) extended the concept of purity of intent to the attitude of worship itself: “O God, if I worship you from fear of hell, burn me in hell; and if I worship you in hope of heaven, exclude me from heaven; but if I worship you for your own sake, do not withhold your eternal beauty.” This theme became a central one in later Sufism, as the movement can be seen in large part as a quest for spiritual and ethical perfection. Herein lies the source of a long-running tension between Sufi adepts and many of the ulama who were concerned to establish the precise acts that God willed and those He forbade. Whereas the ulama would have agreed that intention must be inseparable from the act, Sufis often regarded the ulama’s concern for particular behavior to be legalistic, formal, and bereft of true spirituality. Some Sufis, on the other hand, drifted into a disregard for religious law. The law, they believed, was useful for the masses, but was meant to be only symbolic for the spiritually adept.

  One of the most compelling features of Sufism for Muslims everywhere was the new emphasis that it placed on the love of God. On the one hand, it is a mistake to overstate the contrast between the Sufi doctrine of the love of God and the theme of the wrath or justice of God, because every Muslim frequently made reference to the “merciful and compassionate” God to whom he was devoted. Moreover, the Qur’an has many references to the mercy, love, and kindness of God that lend themselves to a fully developed doctrine of the love of God. On the other hand, it is clear that the Sufis found love to be a major theme that had not been mined as diligently before. Sufi writers emphasized not only the love of God for his creatures, but also the love of the believer for God. Like Rabi‘a, they taught that God should be loved for Himself alone, and that when the pure of heart approached God in this way, God in turn would draw near to man.

  By the ninth century, the Sufi tradition had matured sufficiently that spiritual masters (sing. shaykh in the Arabic-speaking lands and pir in the Persian-speaking regions) were writing manuals that described the methods of discipline that had enabled their followers to develop their spiritual maturity. The manuals described a progression of the soul towards God that required the completion of sequential stages (maqamat) and psychological and gnostic “states” (ahwal). Sufi masters might identify as few as four stages or as many as one hundred, but even the most detailed “road maps” for the soul usually followed a basic progression beginning with repentance and moving through stages of asceticism, fear of God, longing for God, and love for God. Most initiates never attained the final stage(s); they remained in a state of arrested spiritual development at one stage or another. Only those who themselves would become shaykhs attained the highest stage. But the passage through even a limited number of stages was more than most humans had experienced, and the seeker who had made any progress felt gratitude to God. In each stage, God granted to the seeker a “state,” or spiritual experience, that demonstrated to him the presence of God in a manner not accessible otherwise. The path required a long and arduous journey of many years, during which initiates learned the virtues of patience and gratitude, even for the hardships that came one’s way. Gradually, their souls became open to the presence of God, and they developed a longing for intimacy for God. Finally, the way culminated in spiritual knowledge and the loving experience of God.

  The characteristic activity for a Sufi was meditation. While the practice of meditation has a multitude of variations, many Sufis began to utilize a devotional practice known as dhikr, or the ritual “recollection” or “remembering” of the name of God. Many worshipers simply chanted “Allah” repetitively; others chanted the formula “There is no god but God;” some would recite the
ninety-nine names of God, perhaps aided by a rosary; still other would utilize a more complex invocation, accompanied by movements of the body, rhythmic breathing, or even music. Like the mantra of South Asia or the “Jesus prayer” of the Eastern church, the purpose of the dhikr was to provide a focus for the soul to fix its gaze upon God and to free itself from the distractions of the world. In both the Muslim and Christian cases, the prayer reflected the idea that the name of God is sacred, and that the act of invoking it in some sense entails contact with the divine.

  Testing the Limits of Transcendence

  As the mystical tradition developed, some writers began describing in more detail the experience that awaited the elite mystics at the end of their quest. This spiritual state was described by the twin concepts of fana’ (“passing away” or “annihilation”) and baqa’ (“survival”). After pursuing a difficult discipline of spiritual cleansing and renunciation of the world, mystics would achieve direct knowledge of God and enter a state of joy and rest. A defining characteristic of the mystical experience is that it is ineffable, for it is not accessible to reason or to empirical experience. Nevertheless, Sufis attempted to describe the experience as one in which their attributes or characteristics merged with those of God. Their worldly longings and physical nature would “pass away,” whereas the direct knowledge of God survived. Some mystics described this experience as one of an intoxicating, rapturous union with God in which the self was extinguished and actually united with God.