A History of the Muslim World to 1405: The Making of a Civilization

by Vernon O Egger

  The earliest treaties that the Muslims signed with cities in Syria and Iraq suggest that the entire city was responsible for paying a tribute to the central government. It was not long before these terms were revised so that dhimmis were assessed an individual head tax (jizya). Also, because they were initially the only land owners and Muslims were not, the dhimmis paid taxes on their land and other property. Policies towards dhimmis varied according to period and place across the huge empire. For example, despite the concept that non-Muslims were paying taxes in return for protection, they could, and did, serve in the army during the period of conquest. Their services in some cases were so critical that certain governors refused to allow them to return to civilian life. Policies never became fully standardized across the empire, and in general, life for dhimmis continued as before. Even on such issues as the drinking of wine or the eating of pork, both of which are forbidden to Muslims, the authorities rarely interfered with such practices as long as the dhimmis did not try to sell those items to Muslims.

  On the whole, non-Muslims received much better treatment than Jews did in Europe from the medieval period on, although we shall see that circumstances arose that could make life difficult for them. Throughout history, the same factors have affected the relationship between Muslims and other religious groups as those affecting the relationship between religious and ethnic groups anywhere in the world: the health of the economy, the sense of personal security that people feel, the attitudes of the leading members of the regime, and the political and military relationship between the society in question and its neighbors.

  The Administration of Muslims

  From the beginning of the conquests, the Muslim Arabs differentiated themselves from their subjects both ethnically and religiously. They sought to institutionalize the differences through the enactment of regulations, while they simultaneously tried to implement the religious injunctions of the Qur’an into their own daily life.

  Arab Warriors

  One of the most pressing concerns for the Muslim leadership was that of regulating the movements of the Arabs who made up the bulk of the conquering army. On the one hand, it was essential to prevent them from assimilating into the conquered territories. If they became settled into the majority culture and economy, their military skills would be compromised and they would not be able to respond instantly to a mobilization order. On the other hand, their very unruliness needed to be controlled in order not to disturb the social order. It appears that ‘Umar was the caliph who created the basic framework for dealing with the Arab troops. First, he created garrison towns—Kufa and Basra in Iraq, and Fustat in Egypt were the best known—that were designed to house Arab soldiers and their families to keep them from assimilating into the countryside. For several decades, Kufa and Basra were used as staging areas for regular campaigns into Iran to collect tribute and to enforce the terms of the treaties made with the cities there. The garrison cities were thus strategically located: They were easily accessible from Arabia in order to facilitate migration. They were also on the margins of the settled areas of the newly conquered territories in order to discourage interaction between the Arabs and the local inhabitants.

  According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad’s practice in his military campaigns had been to award four-fifths of the plunder captured in raids to the troops and to retain one-fifth for administrative purposes. The first caliphs continued this policy in the early conquests. But as the frontiers expanded, regular campaigning was more difficult to maintain, and the spoils of war could not be relied upon to provide a steady income. Another method of subsistence had to be devised to supplement the plunder and to keep the troops content. ‘Umar seems to have been responsible for beginning the awarding of regular pay to the troops and promising them a share in the revenue of abandoned lands. The amount to be paid to an individual was determined by how long he had been involved in the campaigns. Those who fought for Medina in the Ridda wars and initial conquests received much more than those who began in the last stages of the Iraqi campaign. After the battle of Nahavand in 642, ‘Umar equalized the stipends of the latecomers with those of the veterans. Reflecting Sasanian military policy, members of the cavalry were paid twice or even three times that of the infantry. The attraction of the share in the spoils of victory and the security of regular pay encouraged Arabs from the peninsula to migrate to the garrison cities.

  Non-Arab Converts

  The ruling elite of the Umayyad dynasty never fully came to terms with the fact that Islam might be attractive to non-Arabs. Islam had begun as a religion for the Arabs. It arose in Arabia, the revelation was delivered in the Arabic language, and it was Arabs who conquered in the cause of Islam. Many Arabs seemed surprised that non-Arabs began to convert to Islam, and they became annoyed when non-Arab Muslims insisted on being treated equally with the Arabs on the grounds of Islamic brotherhood. It was one thing to regard members of other Arab tribes as having a claim to equal treatment, but quite another for non-Arabs to claim such rights. The claims of the non-Arabs challenged not only the ethnic prejudice of the Arabs, but also the viability of the tax policy that had been devised for the new empire. To try to accommodate the non-Arab Muslims, the Arabs allowed them to become clients of Arab tribes, much as the bedouin had long done for the practitioners of low-status, but essential, occupations, such as metalworking and the tanning of leather.

  Most of the converts during the early Umayyad period came from the huge number of prisoners of war captured during the conquests. Some of them became slaves of the conquerors, but most were freed. Some found that they could not return home, and others decided that the fastest route to social mobility was to assimilate into Arab culture and society. Despite their efforts to assimilate, the majority of Arabs would not accept them as social equals. Normally, even if they fought in the armies, they were given neither pay nor a share in the spoils of war, since their adopted tribe was supposed to support them. As we have seen, when the military campaigns became as distant as Transoxiana and North Africa, military commanders felt compelled to share the plunder with their soldiers who were non-Arab converts. The unequal treatment regarding pay and the constant humiliation of taunts and discriminatory behavior, however, caused their resentments to build.

  Over the years, more and more rural individuals and families converted to Islam. In village societies where religion is the primary identity marker, conversion to another religion can be inferred by others as a rejection of one’s family or heritage. It is not uncommon for families to disown, and for neighbors to shun, someone who has converted to an outside religion. This pattern seems to have been the case with particular relevance to Iraq and Khorasan. The social isolation of new converts to Islam in their villages could often be intolerable, and as a result, many migrated to cities where they could practice their religion in an environment in which Muslims predominated. Their departure from the village meant that the collective tax obligation fell more heavily on the remaining villagers, causing them considerable economic difficulty. In those areas where a significant percentage of the population converted, a tax crisis occurred. The remaining villagers could not pay the collective sum, and many more peasants fled the land, leaving lands uncultivated. By the last quarter of the seventh century, the large number of Iraqi peasants fleeing the villages and converting to Islam is said to have prompted the governor, al-Hajjaj, to send the new converts back to the land and to have forbidden further conversions.

  Regulating Women’s Roles

  The development of Islamic norms for women has been a controversial issue. Little is known about the status of women in pre-Islamic Arabia or even in the Byzantine and Sasanian empires in the seventh century, making it difficult to assess the impact of Islam in any of those areas. Early Arabic chronicles provide little information regarding the roles and activities of women. When they are mentioned, only the activities of the women of the ruling class are described. At present, we have only tantalizing clues regarding the early expectations of
women’s roles and status.

  From the evidence available to us, it appears that women in early seventh-century Arabia participated freely in public life. Khadija, the Prophet’s first wife, owned property, sought out Muhammad for marriage, and was sufficiently influential in Mecca to serve as a protector for his early career. On the other hand, when she died, Muhammad was reduced to poverty, suggesting that her property reverted by custom to relatives, and was not hers to dispose of. Other women served as prophets and soothsayers, and in the battles between Mecca and Medina, women appeared on the battlefield to jeer the enemy, to mutilate the bodies of wounded and dead enemy soldiers, and even to use the sword and bow in combat. Female critics of the Prophet were not hesitant to belittle him publicly. Marriage and divorce practices varied considerably in the peninsula. Some tribes were matrilineal (descent was traced through the females) and others patrilineal; in some tribes, polygyny was practiced, whereas others practiced polyandry. Wives were referred to as the “property” of their husbands, and some scholars think that women had no right of divorce. Others point out that some women did divorce their husbands, and these scholars assume that women initiated divorce equally with men.1

  The Qur’an includes some verses that appear to represent increased opportunities for women, whereas others seem to be curbs on activity that had been possible earlier. One famous Qur’anic teaching is that Muslim men are allowed to have up to four wives if they treat them equitably (4:3). Some commentators infer that the limit on the number of wives that a man may have represents a gain for women, assuming that in the pre-Islamic era, a man may have had an unlimited number of wives. Others argue that the verse is an exhortation to Muslim men after the battle of Uhud to marry more than one woman at a time of a surplus of women, while simultaneously limiting women to one husband at a time. The Qur’an specifies that a bridegroom must give his bride a dowry which she keeps with her, regardless of the fate of the marriage. The Qur’an also guarantees women a share of their family’s inheritance equal to one-half that which would accrue to their brothers. Again, many commentators think that both developments represent an advance in the rights of women. The dowry served as an economic buffer in the event of divorce, and although the stipulated inheritance share is less than that of males, the guarantee of a specified amount of inherited property gave women an economic security that women in other societies, including Europe, did not have for many centuries to come.

  The topic of relations between the sexes receives a significant amount of space in the Qur’an. Husbands are given guidance on how to deal with recalcitrant wives (4:34–35) and how, if necessary, to divorce them. When the Qur’an treats the topic of divorce, it addresses men only. (See 2:226–237, 241; 65:1–7.) It goes into some detail on the fair—and even generous—way to treat a divorced wife, but it does not address the issue of a woman who wishes to divorce her husband. The issue of sexual modesty is also addressed, and subsequent interpretations of those verses have had an important influence on Muslim life for centuries. The issue arose initially as a problem within the Prophet’s own household. The Prophet’s home in Medina became the gathering place of more and more people as the community grew. It had a large courtyard around which his wives’ apartments were placed, and the courtyard itself served as Medina’s first congregational mosque. Inevitably, some people began to treat the courtyard as public space, without consideration for the privacy of the family. Some would show up at the Prophet’s door uninvited. Others, like guests throughout history, would fail to notice when it was time to go home after a dinner or wedding feast, with awkward consequences for the family. Still others would seek out the apartments of the Prophet’s wives in order to deliver a petition, in the hope of having access to the Prophet himself. The revelation of 33:53–59 instructs the community to respect the privacy of the Prophet’s house and to speak to his wives only from behind a curtain or screen. Another revelation (or perhaps a cluster of revelations) that seems to have been sent soon after this one is 24:27–32, which repeats the injunction to ask permission before entering a house. The passage adds that men and women alike must lower their eyes when encountering others and guard their private parts. Women were to cover their bosoms with veils and to refrain from showing off their beauty, except to close relatives.

  The text of the Qur’an specifies that the Prophet’s wives were to be veiled and secluded from the harassment that the celebrity status of their husband had brought upon them. On the other hand, the Prophet’s favorite wife, ‘A’isha, continued to play an active role in political life for several decades after his death. When and how veiling and seclusion became extended from the Prophet’s wives to Muslim women in general is unknown, but it almost certainly required many decades to become normative.

  Many historians suspect that the influence of Sasanian and Byzantine mores played an important role in the development of Islamic norms regarding women, but we know practically nothing about what was expected of Sasanian women. Byzantine women of the era were not secluded in their homes and were not subject to rigid dress codes. On the other hand, it was expected that women of the higher Byzantine social classes would wear a veil and not frequent the streets. Observers were shocked when they did happen to see a woman of high status without a veil. What is of importance in this regard is that such expectations were held of women among the elite social classes. It should be noted that the veiling and seclusion of women has never been universal among Muslims, either. Some (admittedly small) Muslim groups throughout history have rejected the practice outright, and it has always been more common among the wealthy urban social strata than among the poor and the rural population. Like the bound feet of aristocratic Chinese women, the wearing of a veil and seclusion within the home were declarations that a woman did not have to engage in manual labor. We shall see in later chapters how the development of Islamic law and the influx of new ethnic groups into the Umma affected the roles and status of women.

  The Rationalization of Society

  For the first half-century or more after the conquests, the subject peoples noticed very few changes in their lives. The ruling elites in the various territories were new, to be sure, but they did not have a social blueprint that they wished to impose on their subjects. This was due in part to the fact that Islamic institutions were still not fully formed and in part to the fact that continued military expansion remained the top priority for the Arab leadership. In huge areas of the empire, the officials with whom the general public had to deal remained reassuringly familiar. The Iranian dihqans, or lesser nobility, were the state’s tax collectors in former Sasanian territories for the first half-century of Arab occupation. Christians and Jews continued to hold high administrative positions for many years in Iraq, and in Egypt the Coptic community maintained a monopoly on the accounting staff in the tax division until the late nineteenth century. In like manner, Persian was the language of administration in former Sasanian territories, while Greek was used in former Byzantine holdings.

  Qasr al-Hayr East, an Umayyad palace in eastern Syria. Source: Ashmolean Museum; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England, U.K.

  A notable example of the appropriation of existing offices was that of the official that Muslims called the muhtasib. The first muhtasib appeared in Syria, but Muslim societies all the way to the Atlantic soon had one. The muhtasib clearly served the function of the Byzantine agoranomos, or market inspector, as well as the astynomos, a public health official whose primary function was to maintain streets in passable condition. The muhtasib’s duties included the prohibition of the disposal of market and household refuse in the streets and the encroachment of buildings into public space. As the market inspector, he made sure that scales were accurate and that customers were not cheated by unscrupulous merchants. This official was so critical to the maintenance of a smoothly functioning urban society that the office remained active for over a thousand years.

  Despite their own proud military tradition, the Arabs recognized advantages in the Sa
sanian military organization, supply, tactics, and arms, and borrowed directly from them. Likewise, the organization of the civilian government borrowed heavily from the Sasanians, first at the provincial level, and later (especially after the Umayyads) in the imperial administration. Sasanian royal traditions of justice, court procedure, control, and enforcement were to prove highly influential in shaping Islamic institutions.

  Sasanian and Byzantine legacies would continue to shape Islamic history for many centuries to come, and in some ways the Sasanian influence on the army and the central government became even more important in the eighth and ninth centuries. On the other hand, the last decade of the seventh century marks an important milestone in the Umayyad government’s development of its Arabic and Islamic identity. Until that time, not only had the Muslim authorities continued to use existing officials, policies, and official languages, but also they had not bothered to mint new coins, allowing the high-quality Byzantine and Sasanian coins to continue to circulate. The caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (685–705) was determined to establish an explicitly Islamic and Arab identity for his regime. First, he began the construction of monumental mosques that symbolized the triumph of Islam over Judaism and Christianity. (The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is the most famous such mosque.) Second, he began the minting of gold coins that bore Arabic inscriptions to replace the Sasanian and Byzantine coins that had been used to that time. This innovation had great symbolic and ideological value, for the high-quality Umayyad coins would soon become prized all over the known world. Third, ‘Abd al-Malik inaugurated a policy of converting the language of administration to Arabic.