by A R Azzam
an unquestioning belief in the literal meaning of the Quran. God sees,
hears, is moved to anger; He smiles, sits and stands. The how passes human
understanding and humans ought not to meddle in such things.^^ Between
these two opposing positions, the Asharis (named after Abu al-Hasan al-
Ashari) assumed a middle ground and held a position in which orthodox
dogma was 'diluted by a few rationalistic flourishes';^^ conceding to the
Hanbalis a literal interpretation of the Quran, while reserving the right to
defend it rationally. This middle ground, which found most favour with the
Shafiis, would ultimately become recognised as the largest school of theo-
logy and the orthodox view in Islam.^' The early Sunni response to the Shiite
challenge was Hanbali in flavour. Indeed the Abbasid caliph himself was a
Hanbali. Adopting a literalist interpretation of the Quran and militant in
its assertion, the Hanbali school has been the 'favourite whipping boy of
modern scholarship in Islamic studies',^^ and it is easy to see why. Unlike
the other three schools, they were regarded as troublesome and reactionary.
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1: T H E W E A K E N I N G OF T H E ABBASID C A L I P H A N D S U N N I REVIVAL
due to their intolerance of views other than their own and their reluctance
to give personal opinion on matters of law. That said, at a time when the
Sunnis felt besieged by the Shiite presence, it was the Hanbalis who took
up the challenge with their strong support for the Qadiri Creed, and they
did so with a typical militant vigour - they set fire to the mausoleum of
al-Husayn in Karbala.
This was the intellectual background that confronted Nizam ul-Mulk,
and his genius lay in his understanding that the anti-rational, anti-Ashari
literalist Hanbali position could not form an ideological platform on which
to build a middle-of-the-road Sunni orthodoxy. The Qadiri Creed had
warned of punishment and exile for those Muslims who intellectually trans-
gressed, but such a confrontational attitude, perhaps necessary while the
caliph was under a Shiite siege, could not be maintained in the long term.
In reality, and paradoxical as it may sound, Nizam ul-Mulk, the architect of
the Sunni Islamic revival, found the caliphal doctrine too 'Islamic'. He him-
self was a Shafii, but Toghril Beg, the sultan whom he served, was a Hanafi
and the caliph was a Hanbali. If that wasn't enough, both the sultan and the
caliph were rigorous in their refusal to accept the viewpoints of others.
Toghril Beg had ordered the cursing of Asharis from the pulpits and their
exiling from their homes. The Hanbali scholar Ibn Aqil, famously censured
by the Hanbalis for listening to the opinion of scholars from the other mad-
habs, summed up the acrimonious situation well: 'My Hanbali colleagues
wanted me to flee the presence of a group of other ulama. Doing so would
have deprived me of useful knowledge.' The theological arguments between
the different schools of law were often resolved not through intellectual
debate or sophistry but by thuggery and violence, and brawls spilt on to the
streets of Baghdad, often claiming victims, accompanied by chants such as
'Today is the day for Hanbalis, not Shafiis or Asharis!' Anecdotes relating to
the hostility between the schools were numerous; when the judge Mansur
Abu al-Maali al-Jili, a Shafii, was told that a man had lost his donkey in a
quarter of Baghdad which was predominandy Hanbali, he ordered that the
man go into that quarter and take what he desired, since he would not find
anything there of greater value than his donkey.
Zealously enforcing conformity to opinion, the Hanbali ulama judged
every action and idea by its Islamic value, and nothing it seemed was beyond
an Islamic interpretation. Everything was now formulated and expressed
through religion: politics, personal behaviour, intellectual endeavours. Indeed
• 17 •
SALAD I N
if the more zealous ulama had had their way, no Muslim would have been
allowed to learn anything that was not certified as religiously edifying by the
ulama themselves. Even chronicles and belles-lettres would have been barely
tolerated.^® This utilitarianism, had it been given its full rein, would have
suffocated Islam. The religion needed to 'breathe' and rigour to be bal-
anced and given more depth. The Muslim community was a large one,
and the spiritual inclinations of almost everyone needed, within the limits
of orthodoxy, to be accommodated. This is where al-Ghazali came in.
Recognised as the undisputed figurehead of the revived Sunnism of the
Seljuq period, al-Ghazali's oudook was close to that of Nizam al-Mulk and
not just because the latter was his patron, for both men understood that
in the post-caliphate era government and religion had to be linked. In
al-Ghazali's often repeated dictum, 'religion and government are twin-
brothers'. Through the experiences of his personal life, where he dramatic-
ally abandoned his successful teaching career to live the life of a wandering
sufi, to his writings, especially the Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (Deliverance
from Error) and his magisterial Ihyd 'Ulum al-Din (Revival of Religious
Sciences), al-Ghazali built the spiritual platform for the political order that
was the work of his patron Nizam ul-Mulk. To put it another way, if for
Nizam ul-Mulk an ecumenical approach - the attempt to offer the emerg-
ing Sunni orthodoxy a certain 'width' - was a political necessity, then al-
Ghazali's efforts to offer it 'depth' was borne out of spiritual necessity.
Al-Ghazali's intention was to build a comprehensive foundation for
the religious life of the community. Well-versed in the theological, philo-
sophical and spiritual debates that were raging in the Muslim world, he pro-
foundly understood that, to a large extent, they reflected particular needs in
human souls, since not all men were the same. Sunni Islam had undergone
a rapid phase of scholastic elaboration which had touched on all fields of
loiowledge - from the codification of the law, to the compiling of the
hadith, to the refinement of the theological debates which continued to
rage. Yet this process of integration and development, brilliant though it
was, threatened to neglect the vital sphere of the inner life, the individual
soul's deeper relationship with God. In other words, without the dimension
of spirituality, constituted in practice by sufism, the reUgion remained a
dead letter.^® With al-Ghazali the age of Asharism was ushered in, but the
undoubted contribution made by the other schools of thought was equally
recognised. In this way a new, integrated, inclusive Sunni orthodoxy was
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1: T H E W E A K E N I N G OF T H E ABBASID C A L I P H A N D S U N N I REVIVAL
built.^^ Divergent legal interpretations and opinions among the schools of
law needed to be accepted as orthodox by all Muslims. Heated debates and
colourful accusations could not be allowed to obscure this fundamental
point. No longer would the Hanbalis be allowed to become the moral
patrol of the Muslim world. Ultimately Nizam ul-Mulk's moderate ortho-
&nbs
p; doxy, articulated by al-Ghazali and more or less universally accepted by all
Muslims, was the theological trilogy of Shafiism as the school of law,
Asharism as its dogmatic theology, and Sufism as its mystical tradition. The
first of the three was interchangeable with the other schools of law, but the
other two theologies became the cornerstones on which Sunni orthodoxy
was built. However, rather than persecute those who intellectually opposed
him or even ignore them, Nizam ul-Mulk welcomed them and bestowed
his friendship, a friendship often smoothed by financial support. And so he
tolerated Abu Yusuf al-Qazwini, for example, a rationalist who was in the
habit of brazenly announcing himself to Nizam ul-Mulk's doorman as 'Abu
Yusuf the Mutazili'.^^ Interestingly, the ecumenicalism of this Sunni ortho-
doxy extended as far as the Shiites - the Imami or Twelver Shiites, it needs
to be emphasised, and not the Ismailis. So, for example, Ibn Hubayra, who
was a contemporary of Saladin and who died in 1165 and who was the vizier
under two Abbasid caliphs, preached an ecumenical policy which was
directed towards Shiism.
It was in Baghdad, a city denuded of political power, that the seeds of
the Sunni Revival were sown. To that city, and from the east and the west,
travelled theologians, philosophers, mystics and jurists, and gradually a new
Sunni orthodoxy began to emerge. Initially literalist and confrontational, it
was transformed, thanks to the political wisdom and acumen of men such as
Nizam ul-Mulk, al-Ghazali and Ibn Hubayra - into a broad church which
was inclusive enough to gather within its orthodoxy the views of the vast
majority of Muslims. Now, this idea began to spread west and into the land
of Syria, and it did so at the same time as the arrival of the crusaders.
• 19 •
ChpLpter 2
The Turning of the Tide
The sultans disagreed and the Franks seized the lands.
Ibn al-Athir
Baghdad was transformed by the Sunni Revival and now, as the ideas
flowed west into Syria, another former imperial capital city would be
transformed. Damascus once had been the capital of the Umayyads but,
with the Abbasid revolution in 750, it had dramatically lost its position and
with it its importance and allure. For though it remained at the centre of
the Islamic world, it was a centre which in truth was a political backwater,
one deprived of the military manpower and the opportunity for plunder
normally found on the frontier regions. In the words of Chamberlain,
Damascus' geographical centrality ensured its political marginality.^ With
the arrival of the crusaders however, the situation was dramatically trans-
formed and Syria, with Damascus at its centre, would step - as it had in
the early years of the Islamic conquests - once again into the spotlight. The
Syria of this period was a region bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the
west and by the Byzantium empire in the north. The Euphrates river was its
natural frontier in the north-east, while the Arabian desert lay in the south-
east and Egypt in the south-west. Within these borders one could travel
from sandy beaches to snowy cedars and from abundant plains to barren
deserts. Two parallel north-south mountain ranges cut through the land,
dividing the wetter — hence more fertile — land in the west from the arid land
• 20 •
2: T H E T U R N I N G OF T H E T I D E
lying in the east. The mountain ranges are accompanied by two rivers: the
Jordan and the Orontes. Within this Damascus was geographically ideally
located, for not only was it one of the main centres for assembling the
pilgrimage caravans, but also formed a vital crossroad for the control of the
military and trade routes between northern Syria and Iraq on the one hand
and between Palestine and Egypt on the other.
The geographical diversity of the land was matched by its political
fragmentation. Cities and provinces were ruled by princes and governors as
well as semi-independent Arab shayldis, Turlanen chieftains and Fadmid
supporters. The majority of Syria's population was Arab, but the military
tended to be ovemhelmingly Turldsh or Kurdish. Although it can be fairly
claimed that most Muslims in Syria in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
were Sunni Muslims, who were loyal to the Abbasid caliph, the distinction
between the Sunni and Shiites needs to be qualified. There were, as Irwin
has pointed out, many Sunnis who had Shiite leanings, while there were
many Shiites who gladly served the Sunni caliph and Seljuq sultan. In other
words Sunnis and Shiites lived cheek by jowl in the big Muslim cities,^ and
in cities such as Tripoli and Aleppo it was the Shiites who may well have
formed the majority. Equally present were established Christian commun-
ities: Maronites, Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians and Melkites. And within
them too there existed distinctions; the Melkites, for example, looked to
the Byzantine emperor for guidance and leadership, while the Jacobites,
Maronites and Nestorians appeared to be content to practise their faith
under Muslim rule. However, if the religious situation in Syria appeared
complex on the eve of the arrival of the crusaders, it was clarity itself when
compared to the political one, for Syria during this period was a war zone.
Politically the strife followed established patterns familiar to all: an amir
seized a city and asserted his suzerainty over it and over a small territory
around it, and then immediately launched into a bewildering foray of pro-
tracted struggles and alliances with those in the city's vicinity. Al-Jahiz
captures the spirit of the times when he wrote that amirs fought 'not for reli-
gion nor for interpretation of the scripture nor for sovereignty nor for taxes,
nor for patriotism nor for jealousy . . . nor for the defence of the home nor
for wealth, but only for plunder'.^ To the Syrian, however, the endemic
strife, plots, treacheries, alliances and calculated perfidies were less a sign of
a breakdown of any legitimate political or social order than the inescapable
environment.'' In any case the fragmentation had an advantage; since almost
• 21 •
SALADIN
every town had its own ruler, Syrians only needed to travel a few miles to
change political allegiances.
Lack of legitimacy was the cause of the strife; in Syria the founders of the
'dynasties' were military commanders who to survive needed to establish
themselves and to deny their military supporters any autonomy, but needed
to do so in the absence of any legal status which would formalise their posi-
tion vis-a-vis the other amirs. If there is one theme that stands out during
this period, it is that of illegitimacy and search for legitimacy. Rarely, if
ever, did an amir enjoy universal assent to his rule, and though it cannot
be denied that the ties between the amir and his military supporters were
strong, these ties were not so much contractual as much as affectual,^ and
the terms used - suhba (companionship), for example - hinted at this.
These were fiercely independent men who gave their word grudgingly and
believed that his star was in the ascendant and they would benefit to be in
his wake. Above all personal, family and dynastic ambition was what mat-
tered. In all this the caliph was regarded as the repository of ultimate Islamic
legal legitimacy and each independent local ruler was required to hold a
diploma from him as evidence of the legitimacy of his position. In effect, the
caliph recognised, often via the despatch of robes of honour, whichever of
the amirs had emerged triumphant from his local bloody struggle. Denuded
of any power and unable to interfere in the struggles, the caliph simply
certified their outcome. This fig leaf of moral authority, however, should
not be underestimated, for it was valued highly by the competing amirs,
who included his name on their coins and who, through constant long let-
ters of appeals or eloquent ambassadors, sought a formal investiture from
him in an attempt to cover the fact that their rule was illegitimate.
The arrival of the Crusades in Syria
The First Crusade hit Syria like a bolt from the blue.^ Had the crusaders^
arrived just a few years earlier they would have had to confront Nizam
ul-Mulk and the Seljuq sultan Malik Shah, but both men had died in 1092,
within a month of each other, and the familiar - for the two men had ruled
for a combined total of 50 years - had given way to the uncertain. For the
Muslims these were turbulent times and for the crusaders propitious ones.®
In June 1097 the crusaders conquered the Seljuq capital at Iznik, inflicting
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2: T H E T U R N I N G O F T H E T I D E
a heavy defeat on Kilij Arslan at tlie battle of Dorylaeum. Edessa fell to them
in March 1098, as did Antioch in June of the same year. In 1099, with the
capture of Jerusalem, the goal of the crusaders was achieved, and Godfrey
of Bouillon became its first ruler. As news spread of the brutal massacres
perpetuated by this strange and unexpected enemy' on the inhabitants of
Maarrat al-Numan and Jerusalem in 1098-9, floods of refugees and dis-
placed poured into the two major cities of Syria - Aleppo and Damascus.
The demographic complexity of Syria undoubtedly helped the crusader