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

by Vernon O Egger

  Several of the small new states experienced unprecedented economic prosperity due to the fact that their surplus was no longer being siphoned off to Cordoba. The economic boom generated a cultural efflorescence that made the eleventh and twelfth centuries the golden age of Andalusi arts and letters, just as the tenth century had been the pinnacle of its political power. Cordoba’s wealth, however, had depended upon the surplus extracted from other regions, and now that it was no longer able to obtain it, the city began to decline. Toledo, Zaragoza, and Seville benefitted the most from Cordoba’s displacement. Of those three, Seville became the preeminent city of Andalus for the next two centuries.

  The collapse of the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba entailed a reversion to the status quo of most of the previous three centuries: political fragmentation in Andalus. Many, if not most, Muslims of the peninsula seem to have been more content with less power at the political center. As we have seen, the loss of political centralization even enhanced, rather than harmed, the economic and cultural life of eleventh-century Andalus. On the other hand, the feuding of the city-states seems only to have exacerbated the deeply rooted ethnic tensions of Andalus. In some Arab-dominated cities, Muslim Berbers were subjected to the sumptuary laws intended for Christians and Jews but rarely enforced on them. Berbers were even prohibited from riding horses or carrying arms. This humiliation was followed by an anti-Berber pogrom in Cordoba that spread to other cities, and in some clashes between Berbers and Arabs, acts of ritualistic cannibalism were committed on both sides. A revealing insight into the problems of Andalusi society is found in the plight of the last Zirid ruler of Granada, who, although totally Arabized, felt stigmatized by Arabs to the end of his life because of his Berber origins.

  The disintegration of the caliphate played into the hands of the Christian kingdoms to the north, which were growing in strength. They had been prospering ever since the identification in 813 of a site in the extreme northwest of the peninsula as the tomb of St. James. It was soon christened Santiago de Compostela, and it became the third greatest object of Christian pilgrimage (after Jerusalem and Rome) during the Middle Ages. Because of the pilgrimage traffic, Asturias and Navarre increased in wealth. Utilizing its new wealth in its military forces, Asturias pushed to the south as far as the Duero River and then consolidated its power westward to the Atlantic. By the tenth century, it was increasingly known by the name of its southern region, Leon. Its dramatic rise to power was cut short in the middle of the tenth century, however, when its eastern province, Castile, broke away and became a rival kingdom. For the remainder of the century, Leon and Castile—as well as Navarre and Barcelona—were on the defensive against the caliphate, and suffered repeated invasions from ‘Abd al-Rahman III and his immediate successors.

  The eleventh century witnessed a reversal of the balance of power between the Christian north and Muslim south. The political fragmentation of the Muslims after their civil war (1009–1031) provided Christian states the opportunity to exact tribute from the weaker Muslim rulers just as the caliphate of Cordoba had exacted tribute from the Christians in the tenth century. Castile, in particular, became the beneficiary of Muslim weakness after the civil war. Many party-kings now paid tribute in the form of “protection money” to persuade Castile not to attack them. Muslim states not infrequently even allied with one or more of the Christian kingdoms against their Muslim rivals. The wealth of the Christian kingdoms expanded dramatically as the tribute money from Muslim states poured in and as agricultural lands were opened up in the Duero valley once the caliphate was no longer a threat to Christian settlement there.

  By the third quarter of the eleventh century, Castile had come to expect the tribute as a right, and Muslim cities that refused to pay could expect a punitive campaign directed against them. The Muslims of Andalus had not been able to overcome their ethnic divisions and develop a cohesive identity within the framework of the Umma, even in the face of the growing menace to the north. They had gained temporary local freedom only at the expense of military weakness, which meant that in the long run they would fall victim to outside political control.

  The Incorporation of Andalus into the Maghrib

  While Ibn Tashfin was conquering the vast territory between the Atlantic and Ifriqiya under the Almoravid banner, Castile and Leon intensified their campaigns against the “party-kings” of Andalus, who belatedly realized the vulnerable position of their mutually hostile city–states. By 1082, the ulama of several cities in Andalus were appealing to Ibn Tashfin to aid them in thwarting the designs of King Alfonso VI of Castile. Ibn Tashfin, however, considered the urban Muslim elites of Andalus to be a decadent class, hardly more worthy of aid than were the Christians. He was not surprised when, in 1085, Alfonso took over Muslim Toledo, practically without a fight. This large city, which had represented the first line of defense against the Christian powers for the other Muslim city–states, had been under the “protection” of Alfonso for some years, and Alfonso had actually buttressed the authority of its inept and corrupt ruler against his fellow Muslim challengers. He had had to intervene several times to save the ruler from his own mistakes and crimes. Tired of expending energy in order to protect such incompetence, Alfonso decided to take over the city directly.

  Despite Ibn Tashfin’s dislike for Andalusi society, he viewed the Christian capture of Toledo as an assault on the Dar al-Islam that he could not ignore. He crossed the Strait of Gibraltar for the sake of Islam, but not to save the party-kings, for whom he did not bother to hide his contempt. In 1086, his Berber army defeated Alfonso’s Castilian forces, and he laid siege to Toledo. While his army was investing Toledo, Ibn Tashfin applied to the Abbasid caliph—at that time under the leash of Malik-Shah and Nizam al-Mulk—for recognition as ruler of the Maghrib and for the right to use the title amir al-muslimin, or “commander of the Muslims.” The title was remarkably close to the caliph’s own title of amir al-mu’minin, or “commander of the faithful.” The caliph, however, flattered to be recognized as possessing authority and desperate to exercise it, eagerly granted him both requests. Moreover, he could not be unaware of the fact that, thanks to the Almoravid movement, the Friday prayers in the Maghrib were being recited in the name of an Abbasid caliph for the first time in over three hundred years.

  Despite having defeated Alfonso in the field, Ibn Tashfin could not retake Toledo by siege. Moreover, relations between him and the party-kings deteriorated quickly from suspicion to hostility. He and they belonged to two radically different cultures: He was pious and ascetic; they were worldly and self-indulgent. He was rustic and spoke Arabic with difficulty; they were cosmopolitan men who valued elegance, education, and refinement. He and his male followers wore veils whereas their women did not; this scandalized the menfolk of Andalus, whose women were veiled. When the party-kings failed to cooperate with Ibn Tashfin’s military campaigns, his first impulse was to abandon them to their fate at the hands of the Christians, and he returned to Morocco. After several months of reflection in the quiet of his palace, however, his sense of responsibility for defending the Umma overcame his dislike for the Andalusi elites. He knew that it was his calling to keep the Christians out of Andalus and to reform the society along the lines laid out by Ibn Yasin. He returned to Andalus, and from 1090 until his death in 1106, Ibn Tashfin methodically captured all the city–states but Zaragoza, which did not fall to the Almoravids until 1110. Although he managed to capture and unite the Muslim city–states, he was not able to win back any significant territory that the Christians had captured prior to his arrival in Andalus.

  Conclusion

  By 1100, the Umayyad caliphate of Andalus was as dead as its namesake in Damascus. The Fatimid caliphate was under the control of its wazir–military general, just as the Abbasid caliphate was under the control of the Saljuq sultan. The institution of the caliphate had lost its aura for many Sunnis. The caliph was not a source of religious leadership. Doctrinal and ethical leadership was to be found among private scholars�
��the ulama—who discovered God’s will by means of jurisprudence. A deeper, personal relationship with God was to be found by seeking out the guidance of a Sufi master (who, increasingly, might also be one of the ulama). The caliph was also not the model of the Just Ruler. The government itself was increasingly viewed as remote, oppressive, and interested in its subjects only for the taxes they owed. Shi‘ites, on the other hand, were convinced that the problems of society were caused precisely because the majority of Muslims had not recognized that the only legitimate caliph was to be found in the lineage of Muhammad through ‘Ali. That the Twelvers, Musta‘lis, Nizaris, and Zaydis all disagreed over who the legitimate caliph-Imam should be was a stumbling block for the Sunnis, but it did not shake the confidence of the Shi‘ites themselves.

  The violence of the late tenth and eleventh centuries had been exhausting and destructive. The bedouin and Turkmen enjoyed the skirmishes, but all pious urban Muslims, at any rate, could agree that the struggle among ambitious warlords was an affront to God’s desire for order and justice, and that invasions by nomads and by Christian Europeans were detrimental to the development of a cultured and stable life. What they could not know at the end of our period was that the violence of the previous 150 years was minor compared to what lay ahead.

  FURTHER READING

  The Buyid Sultanate

  Kraemer, Joel L. Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age, 2d ed. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1992.

  Mottahedeh, Roy P. Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980.

  The Fatimid Empire

  Brett, Michael. The Rise of the Fatimids: the World of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the fourth century of the Hijrah, tenth century C.E. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2001.

  Halm, Heinz. The Fatimids and Their Traditions of Learning. London: I.B. Taurus in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 1997.

  Lev, Yaacov. State and Society in Fatimid Egypt. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991.

  The Advent of the Turks

  Bosworth, C.E. The Ghaznavids. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963.

  Bosworth, C.E. “The Political and Dynastic History of the Iranian World (A.D. 1000–1217),” in John A. Boyle, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 5, The Saljuq and Mongol Periods. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1968.

  Cahen, Claude. Pre-Ottoman Turkey. Tr. J. Jones–Williams. New York: Taplinger, 1968.

  Cahen, Claude. The Formation of Turkey. Tr. and ed. by P. M. Holt. Harlow: Longman, 2001.

  Sinor, Denis, ed. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

  The Nizaris

  Daftary, Farhad. The Isma‘ilis: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

  The Muslim West

  Abulafia, David. Italy, Sicily and the Mediterranean, 1100–1400. London: Variorum Reprints, 1987.

  Abun-Nasr, Jamil M. A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period, 3d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

  Safran, Janina M. The Second Umayyad Caliphate: The Articulation of Caliphal Legitimacy in al-Andalus. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000.

  Wasserstein, David J. The Caliphate in the West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

  Wasserstein, David J. The Rise and Fall of the Party-Kings: Politics and Society in Islamic Spain, 1002–1086. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985.

  CHAPTER 7

  Barbarians at the Gates, 1100–1260

  In the previous chapter, we saw that the Dar al-Islam suffered from major episodes of violence from the mid-tenth to the end of the eleventh centuries. But worse was yet to come. As the eleventh century waned, the Dar al-Islam began shrinking for the first time due to attacks from non-Muslims. Prior to that time, the Byzantine resurgence of the tenth century, the Norman conquest of port cities in Ifriqiya (1034–1060) and of Sicily (1061–1090), and the Castilian conquest of Toledo (1085) were rationalized as temporary defeats in the great ebb and flow of warfare to which everyone had become accustomed in frontier areas.

  In 1099, however, the Crusaders seized Jerusalem after a three-year land campaign from western Europe. In itself this was not significant, for the Crusaders were eventually evicted from the eastern Mediterranean shores (unlike the Normans from Sicily and the Castilians from Toledo). What is significant, however, is that the Italian city–states that supplied them with provisions quickly dominated the entire Mediterranean sea. Muslim navies and commercial vessels would not be able to compete again until the Ottoman navy asserted its power in the sixteenth century. A little over a century after the fall of Jerusalem, the small Christian kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula won a decisive victory in their so-called Reconquista, tolling the death knell for Andalus. Shortly thereafter, the pagan Mongols obliterated eastern Iran, cultural area, and at mid-century a second Mongol campaign conquered Iraq and threatened the very existence of the Muslim heartland. These events mark a major turning point in Muslim history.

  The Period of the Crusades

  For several centuries, Europeans launched numerous armed “crusades” against Muslims in a variety of locations. Usually, however, the phrase “the Crusades” denotes a series of military expeditions directed against targets in Syria and Egypt (and one against Christian Constantinople) during the century and a half after 1096. Only the first Crusade was an unambiguous success. The others were attempts to regain lands lost to Muslim counterattacks or, in the case of the Fourth Crusade, a looting operation against fellow Christians. By the thirteenth century, the presence of the Crusaders had been reduced to a few isolated castles; by 1291, they had all been evicted.

  The First Crusade

  Saljuq rule in southwestern Asia resulted in persecution for Shi‘ite Muslims, but not for Christians and Jews. Some Christians—Armenians and members of other small churches—actually preferred Muslim rule to Byzantine Orthodox rule. The Christians of Anatolia, to be sure, suffered at the hands of Turkmen gazis before the battle of Manzikert, and in that battle’s aftermath, they continued to suffer from lawless banditry. However, they were not singled out in the later period. Muslim peasants and townsmen who happened to be in the way of Turkmen bandits suffered as much as Christians. In those areas under the effective control of either the Saljuqs of Rum or the Great Saljuqs, Christians and Jews had little to complain about. It is true that Orthodox Christianity declined and ultimately disappeared in central Anatolia over the next several centuries, but that was due in large part to its isolation from the Orthodox urban centers on the coast, and not to a policy of persecution. The Saljuqs of Rum and the Byzantines viewed each other as rivals, rather than as implacable enemies. They engaged in trade and cultural exchanges and occasionally even aided each other militarily. Because of the turmoil caused by gazis in parts of Anatolia, it is not surprising that the Orthodox Church itself regarded the Turkmen as a disastrous agent, but the non-Orthodox Christians under the rule of both the Sultanate of Rum and the Great Saljuqs were effusive in their praise of their enlightened policies towards them.

  The Christians under Saljuq rule, then, did not call upon western Europe for help. The Crusades were the result of a number of developments taking place within Constantinople and western Europe that coincided in the last decade of the eleventh century. In Constantinople, a new emperor, Alexius Comnenus (1081–1118), came to the throne ten years after Manzikert and began taking steps to bring stability to his empire. His first order of business was to arrange a truce with the Saljuqs of Rum, who had earlier aided various contenders for the Byzantine throne. In the course of the next decade, he secured his realm in the Balkans from Norman invaders and, with the help of Cuman (western Qipchaq) Turks, he became the first Byzantine emperor to inflict a decisive defeat on the Pechenegs, a Turkish group that had been marauding in the Danubian basin since the tenth century.

/>   With his borders secure, Alexius could begin to build a solid foundation for a revival of Byzantine glory. One of his goals was to recruit mercenary soldiers from western Europe. Frankish and Norman heavy cavalry and armored infantry were among the most effective military forces of the age and had been important units in the Byzantine army until Manzikert. Having them in the army again would come in handy against future threats, whether from Normans or Turks. With that goal in mind, Alexius dispatched a delegation to Italy in 1095 to seek the pope’s aid in recruiting soldiers.

  The response was not at all what Byzantine emperor had in mind. When Pope Urban II conveyed the appeal at Clermont in November 1095, western Europe was in the midst of an unprecedented wave of religious enthusiasm as a result of the papal and monastic reforms of the previous decades. Moreover, the nobility of western Europe were experiencing economic hardship due to the “baby boom” that had begun in the eleventh century. As Urban’s sermon spread by word of mouth throughout an overwhelmingly illiterate Europe in the winter of 1095–1096, many knights interpreted it to mean that Christians who helped deliver Jerusalem from the hand of infidels would have the opportunity simultaneously to gain whatever loot they could gather and to avoid time in purgatory.