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

by Vernon O Egger

  ‘Abd al-Malik’s process of Arabization took many years—it would be another fifty years before the chancelleries of Khorasan were transformed from the Persian language to the Arabic, and the Coptic accountants in the financial bureaus of Egypt maintained their arcane registry system into the late nineteenth century. But as a result of ‘Abd al-Malik’s policy, Arabic became the language of written communication in administration, literature, and religion over the vast region that the Arabs had conquered. It also became the majority language spoken west of the Iranian plateau. The Arabizing and Islamizing policies of ‘Abd al-Malik’s administration allow us to identify the 690s as a watershed in the cultural history of the area. From then on, visitors to the area knew that a new civilization was emerging.

  Dissolution of the Arab Empire

  In the early, heady, days of conquest, the Arabs could be forgiven for assuming that rapid expansion and the enormous inflow of plunder and taxes would continue indefinitely. The leadership had stumbled on what appeared to be the fulfillment of their goals: the extension of the dominion of God’s rule, the acquisition of a steady source of revenue, and the channeling of the martial culture of the peninsula toward external enemies rather than allowing it to disrupt Muslim society. This euphoria soon faded as the frontiers moved farther away and as the issues of Muslim identity became more complicated.

  As early as the battle of Nahavand (642), it became clear that further conquests would be less rewarding than the earlier ones. Syria, Iraq, and Egypt were wealthy, adjacent to Arabia, and relatively flat. As a result, their acquisition had provided a high return on the investment of troops and effort. Nahavand, however, was in the Zagros, and, like the remaining conquests to the east, north, and west, it was hundreds of miles from the Muslim capital. It was beginning to dawn on Muslim administrators that further conquests would be in mountainous areas or across vast deserts, and usually against peoples who were not as wealthy as the victims of the first wave of conquests. Inhabitable North Africa was a thin strip two thousand miles in length, but only a few miles wide; the Byzantines in Anatolia were Greek and much more loyal to the regime than the inhabitants of Syria and Egypt had been; the Iranian highlands had wealth, but the area was conquered only after terrible fighting. The great wave of expansion in the second decade of the eighth century—the conquest of Iberia, Sind, and Transoxiana—was lucrative, but it came and went very quickly. No more conquests of significance were made, and yet spending was lavish in order to support the court, irrigation projects, monumental building, and a huge army. As early as the caliphate of ‘Umar II (717–720), the empire was facing major financial problems.

  Another challenge facing the Umma by the early eighth century was the social tension arising from the accelerated pace of assimilation within the empire. As we have seen, the early Muslim leaders attempted to thwart assimilation by creating garrison cities for the Arab warriors. The creation of such settlements had been an ad hoc arrangement that served several purposes. The central government could confine the Arab warriors to a limited area where they were more easily controlled; by living in the cities, soldiers were less likely to be corrupted by the non-Islamic environment; control of the non-Muslim majority could be maintained with the threat of a large contingent of the occupation army located within an easy march of rebellious villages or towns; and the new cities were ideal staging points for further campaigns.

  On the other hand, the policy proved to be unworkable for a number of reasons. First, ethnic segregation failed to achieve its goals. The clustering of thousands of troops in hastily constructed cities attracted large numbers of indigenous inhabitants who offered the troops needed goods and services. These new immigrants came from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, and they mixed socially with the Arabs. Inevitably, some Arabs intermarried with them despite the strong social disapproval of most other Arabs. A slowly growing number of Muslims in these cities were, therefore, the offspring of unions between Arab Muslim fathers and mothers who were Christian, Jewish, or Zoroastrian. Multilingual and multicultural, this group of Muslims felt at ease with elements from both the local and the Arab cultures.

  Far from the garrison cities, on the distant frontier province of Khorasan, the assimilation of Arabs into local society was even more evident. The mass Arab colonization of Khorasan in 671, discussed earlier, entailed the relocation of perhaps 50,000 Arab troops and their families from Basra. This enormous population transfer meant that, overnight, Khorasan acquired the third largest Arab population outside Arabia, after Iraq and Syria. Many of the settlers were already married, but many others now married Iranian women. Social assimilation progressed rapidly in the province as Iranians converted to Islam and Arabs adopted local customs. The Arabs of Khorasan became landowners and merchants, began dressing like Iranians, and learned to speak Persian dialects. An Arab landowning class came into being whose members were reluctant to assume the military duties their fathers and grandfathers had welcomed.

  By the end of the seventh century, many Muslim Arabs were “going native,” while increasing numbers of non-Arabs were becoming Muslims. By serving in the military on crucial fronts, the new Muslims diluted the Arab nature of what had originally been an all-Arab force. In Khorasan, Iranians made up a large proportion of the military units that engaged in the conquest and defense of the Amu Darya frontier, and in North Africa and in the Iberian Peninsula, Berbers constituted a majority of the military units. New converts were beginning to question the rationale for Arab social dominance as mixed communities containing Arabs and non-Arabs emerged in cities scattered all over the empire. With the passage of time, the ethnic slurs they received from some Arabs and the unequal distribution of revenue granted to non-Arabs became less tolerable.

  The assimilation taking place in the garrison cities of Iraq and the Arab colonies in Khorasan was producing a new type of Muslim society that stood in stark relief to the Arab identity of the Muslims of Arabia and Syria. Arabia and Syria still lived by a tribal ethos, and the caliphs, with rare exceptions, were dependent on the loyalty of certain Arab tribes for their power. For the most part, the leadership seems to have failed to recognize the changes that were taking place, and only rarely did they make any attempts to address the new social realities. The first “Arab civil war” of ‘Ali and Mu‘awiya was followed by an even more destructive conflict from 685 to 692 that resulted from the development of tribal coalitions and a jockeying for power that ensued upon the death of Mu‘awiya in 680. The caliph ‘Abd al-Malik, who had to fight that civil war from the time of his accession in 685, relied on Arab immigrants to Syria for his support. For that reason, the Umayyad army developed a well-deserved reputation as a “Syrian” army. Tensions between the Syrians and the garrison cities became so great that in 701 ‘Abd al-Malik created Wasit, a garrison city located between Kufa and Basra. Staffed by Syrian soldiers, it was patently an effort to control and intimidate the Arabs of the two older Iraqi garrison cities, whose ideas and actions were becoming irksome to the ruling elite. Later Umayyad caliphs tended to rely on one or another Syrian tribe for military support, with the result that even the Syrian Arabs became splintered into factions.

  The caliph ‘Umar II (717–720) attempted to address the resentments of both the non-Arab Muslims and the assimilated Arabs towards the Syrian elites, as well as the growing financial problems of the empire. He ended the practice of having non-Arab Muslims pay the head tax, and he ordered that all Muslims serving in the army be paid an equal stipend, regardless of ethnicity. He also removed the Syrian garrisons from Iraq. To the dismay of non-Muslims, he ordered all religious images, including Jewish and Christian, to be destroyed, and he forbade non-Muslims from wearing silk clothing and turbans. He seems to have been the first Muslim ruler to have instituted social distinctions between Muslims and non-Muslims based on the style of dress. He also ordered a halt to the wars of conquest, apparently with the objective of saving money, and he reorganized the caliphal finances in an effort bo
th to economize and to eradicate corruption.

  Those who benefitted from the policies of ‘Umar II had little time to rejoice. When he died in 720, all of his major policies were almost immediately reversed. Local governors resumed their raids and conquests, and some successes were recorded: From Sind, the Arabs invaded India, and plundered the whole of Gujarat. These gains were rapidly lost, however, when Indian princes counterattacked. By 729, the Arab presence in Sind was threatened with extinction. In Europe, Muslims crossed the Pyrenees in the 720s and captured Narbonne, Carcassonne, and Nîmes, with the result that Muslims controlled the coast from the Pyrenees to the Rhone River. In the Iberian Peninsula, quarreling among the Arab factions precluded further expansion into Europe for half a decade, but the Muslim successes north of the Pyrenees had alarmed Eudo, the Duke of Aquitaine. He joined forces with a Berber rebel against the Muslim governor of the peninsula, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi. ‘Abd al-Rahman defeated Eudo and began moving north, sacking churches and monasteries. Eudo called for aid from his former rival, the Frankish warrior Charles Martel, who met and defeated ‘Abd al-Rahman between Tours and Poitiers, probably in October 7332.

  The Arrival of al-Hajjaj in Kufa (694–695)

  The Arab garrison cities were notorious for their unruliness, but none was more troublesome to the Umayyad authorities than Kufa. In 656, ‘Ali had found his base of support there, and after his murder, it remained a center of opposition to Mu‘awiya’s dynasty. In 694, the Umayyad caliph ‘Abd al-Malik appointed al-Hajjaj (661–714) to be the governor of Iraq. Al-Hajjaj had won a reputation for absolute loyalty to the Umayyads and for great brutality in suppressing revolts against the dynasty. As governor of Iraq, he proved to be an administrator of great ability, implementing many policies that promoted economic prosperity and sending out the expedition that conquered Sind in 711–713. The selection that follows is from his first speech as governor. It is one of the most famous speeches in early Muslim history, and several versions of it survive, with only slight variations.

  Al-Hajjaj set out for Iraq as governor, with 1200 men mounted on thoroughbred camels. He arrived in Kufa unannounced, early in the day…. Al-Hallaj went straight to the mosque, and with his face hidden by a red silk turban, he mounted the pulpit and said, “Here, people!” They thought that he and his companions were Kharijites and were concerned about them. When the people were assembled in the mosque he rose, bared his face, and said:

  I am the son of splendor, the scaler of high places.

  When I take off my turban you know who I am.

  By God, I shall make evil bear its own burden; I shall shoe it with its own sandal and recompense it with its own like. I see heads before me that are ripe and ready for plucking, and I am the one to pluck them, and I see blood glistening between the turbans and the beards.

  By God, O people of Iraq, people of discord and dissembling and evil character! I cannot be squeezed like a fig or scared like a camel with old water skins. My powers have been tested and my experience proved, and I pursue my aim to the end. The Commander of the Faithful emptied his quiver and bit his arrows and found me the bitterest and hardest of them all. Therefore he aimed me at you. For a long time now you have been swift to sedition; you have lain in the lairs of error and have made a rule of transgression. By God, I shall strip you like bark, I shall truss you like a bundle of twigs, I shall beat you like stray camels. Indeed, you are like the people of “a village which was safe and calm, its sustenance coming in plenty from every side, and they denied the grace of God, and God let them taste the garment of hunger and of fear for what they had done” (Qur’an, xvi, 112). By God, what I promise, I fulfill; what I purpose, I accomplish; what I measure, I cut off. Enough of these gatherings and this gossip and “he said” and “it is said!” What do you say? You are far away from that! I swear by God that you will keep strictly to the true path, or I shall punish every man of you in his body. …

  And then he went to his house.

  SOURCE: Lewis, Bernard, ed./tr. Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople: I. Politics and War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974, 23–24.

  The Battle of Tours/Poitiers was an important achievement for Martel, but it was not, as many Europeans have claimed, the decisive blow that stopped Muslim expansion into Europe. Muslims continued to plunder the lower Rhone valley with impunity throughout the remainder of the decade, capturing Arles and other cities, until Martel intervened in 739, taking the area for his kingdom. It would be legitimate to argue that the Muslim conquests had always been a matter first of reconnoitering, and then of raids that, if successful, in turn resulted in expeditions of conquest. In that sense, Martel’s accomplishment can be seen as slamming the door shut on raiding the interior of Frankish territory. However, it had been clear for almost a decade before Tours that the Muslims’ supply and communications lines were overextended whenever they crossed the Pyrenees on a raid.

  The conquest of “Frankland” was the farthest object from any Muslim’s mind. Much more instrumental in the halt of the Muslim expansion process were internal factors. Factional fighting among the Arabs of the Iberian Peninsula in the 720s led to extended periods of anarchy there; after 734, Qayrawan was the regional capital of both the Maghrib and of Muslim Europe, and the officials in Qayrawan had no interest in dissipating their resources against the Franks; Berber revolts in the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghrib in the 740s ended Umayyad control in those areas; and the overthrow of the Umayyad dynasty itself in 750 led to a wholesale reordering of the administration of the western Muslim world. No one was surprised when Pepin the Short (son of Charles Martel and father of Charlemagne) recaptured Narbonne in 751, ending the Muslim presence in Provence. Muslims, however, continued to raid southern Europe for centuries to come, by land and by sea.

  An almost frenetic pace of campaigning across the empire characterized the period 720–740, apparently in an effort to resolve the empire’s financial crisis by plunder. Few gains were registered, and several catastrophic military failures occurred, particularly on the fronts in the Caucasus and in Transoxiana. Tens of thousands of Arabs lost their lives in ill-planned battles, and Muslim rulers lost control over large areas on those frontiers. By 741, the Caucasus, Transoxiana, and Sind were again securely in Muslim hands, but for reasons due more to the weakness of the Umayyads’ opponents than to Umayyad policy. Rather than producing revenue, the campaigning was extremely expensive and resulted in even graver economic problems. During the administration of the caliph Hisham (724–743), the Umayyad army numbered perhaps 400,000 troops,3 and the plunder with which to reward them had largely dried up. Periodically, soldiers on most of the major fronts—in Sind, the Caucasus, and Transoxiana—expressed their displeasure at the relentless campaigning, sometimes in the form of deposing and killing their commanders.

  In addition to the deepening financial crisis, another problem for the Umayyads was that the non-Arab Muslims showed their anger at having had their financial disabilities reimposed. In Transoxiana and in North Africa, they rose in revolt almost immediately upon the death of ‘Umar II. The simmering resentment broke out again a decade later in a major rebellion in Khorasan, in which both Iranians and Arabs participated. Twenty thousand Syrian troops had to be brought in to quell the uprising. The biggest outburst, however, began in 740 in North Africa, with the outbreak of the Great Berber Revolt. Policies toward the Berbers had varied from governor to governor, but after 720 these North Africans had more reasons to resent the Arabs than to appreciate them. They had never been paid military stipends, and now they were sometimes denied a share in the captured booty; Muslim Berbers (especially females) were often taken as slave tribute to the East; and Berber property was constantly threatened by seizure by unprincipled Arab generals and governors. The revolt of 740 took place simultaneously in several locations in North Africa, and it spread into the Iberian Peninsula. Thousands of Arab troops were sent to those two areas to try to suppress the rebellion, but the Umayya
ds lost the entire region west of Qayrawan. Qayrawan itself was retained by the Arab governor, but the rest of North Africa became a collection of quarreling Berber principalities.

  When Hisham died in 743 after a caliphate of nineteen years, the empire entered a period of great instability. The expansionist policy was bankrupt both ideologically and financially. The majority non-Muslim population had no stake in it, and by now, many Muslims, as well, had no desire to make sacrifices for it. Many Arabs had lost confidence in expansionism as it had been practiced, and non-Arab converts chafed under a discriminatory policy. The Syrian army upon which the Umayyads had traditionally based their power was by now greatly reduced in size, having been scattered to trouble spots all over the empire, with thousands of its members having been killed. Intertribal Arab conflicts broke out in Syria, Iraq, and Khorasan, and by the end of the decade, one major Arab confederation seemed poised to seize the caliphate from the Umayyads. Before it was able to do so, however, it was thwarted by a well-organized revolutionary movement that transcended ethnic identities. Beginning in 747, an army marched from Khorasan into Syria, systematically defeating the armies of the last Umayyad caliph. When it overthrew the dynasty in 750, a new era in Muslim history had begun, that of the Abbasid caliphate.