# Islam: The First 138 Years

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Nosratollah Rassekh, Islam: The First 138 Years, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Islám: The First 138 Years
> The Second of Three Studies on Religion and Society
> By Nosratollah Rassekh
> World Order: Fall 1980/Winter 1981
> Mankind were one community, and Allah sent (unto them) Prophets as bearers, of good tidings and as warners, and
> revealed therewith the Scripture with the truth that it might judge between mankind concerning that wherein they
> differed. And only those unto whom (the Scripture) was given differed concerning it, after clear proofs had come unto
> them, through hatred one of another. And Allah by His will guided those who believe unto the truth of that concerning
> which they differed. Allah guideth whom He will unto a straight path.
> Qur’án 2:213
> Every religious community stands in need of a leader who will watch over it, in the absence of its Prophet, and enforce the
> rules and prescriptions of its religion and be looked upon as his successor …. Moreover, in view of the need for authority
> in every human grouping and society, a chief is needed who will guide men towards objects which are advantageous to
> them and will force them to keep away from those things that are harmful. Such chiefs are known as Kings:
> Now in the Muslim religion, which is all-inclusive in its appeal and seeks to convert all, by persuasion or by force, the Jihad
> [Holy War] against infidels is obligatory. Hence, in Islam, Caliphate and Kingship are conjoined, in order to unite all
> efforts towards a common end.
> [The religious leaders other than Islám] do not concern themselves with political affairs, but leave the temporal power in
> the hands of men who have seized it by chance or for some reason with which religion has nothing to do. Sovereignty
> exists among such peoples owing to social solidarity, as we said before; their religion as such, however, does not impose
> any sovereignty on them seeing that it does not demand of them dominion over other peoples, as is the case with Islam,
> but merely the establishing of their faith among themselves ….
> Ibn Kaldun of Tunis
> 
> SIX HUNDRED and twenty two years after the crucifixion of Christ, Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, and the
> handful of His followers were forced to leave the city of Mecca and find refuge among the people of Medina. This
> was the year of the Migration (hegira). The persecution of the Prophet and of His converts in His home city had
> become so intolerable that to have stayed there would have meant the annihilation of the new Faith. The journey
> was dangerous and desperate, but the event changed the course of Islám and the history of man. In Medina,
> Islám survived and expanded. Some seventeen years later the Caliph ‘Umar made the lunar year (beginning 16
> July) in which the hegira took place the official starting point of the Muslim era.
> 
> By the year AH 138 the followers of the Prophet had swept aside two magnificent empires—the Persian
> Sassanid and the Byzantine. In the west they had crossed North Africa and entered Spain and France. In the
> north they had reached the gates of Constantinople. In the east they had marched into central Asia beyond the
> River Oxus and into the Indus Valley.
> 
> In the year 138 the great grandson of al-‘Abbás, the Prophet’s uncle, Abú-Ja‘far, called al-Manṣúr (meaning
> “rendered victorious”), was the ruler of the most extensive empire the world had yet seen. He was personally
> conducting a reconnaissance to find a site for the location of a new capital; he found it on the west bank of the
> Tigris River, not far from the ruins of the old Sassanid capital, Ctesiphon. Here the Tigris was joined by a
> navigable canal to the Euphrates; the land was centrally placed between Arabia, Egypt, and Syria, on one hand,
> and Persia, Transoxiana, and the Punjab, on the other.
> 
> Two years later (AH 140 or AD 762) some 100,000 architects, craftsmen, and laborers were to begin the
> construction of the legendary city of Baghdád, which was destined to become the most illustrious city on the face
> of the earth. It was truly a city of gold, for every building was covered with it. Baghdád was a round city within a
> double circle of brick walls. Its chief glory was the royal palace at the center, which, with its annexes for the
> officials, eunuchs, and the harems, occupied a third of the city. Resplendently furnished, the audience chamber
> was to be the setting for an elaborate ceremonial continuing that of the Byzantines and Sassanids down to minor
> details.
> 
> The supporters of the dynasty, the bureaucrats, and the ordinary citizens were to live in the suburbs outside
> the walls. This remarkable isolation of the Prince of the Faithful in his luxurious palace, protected by walls and
> carefully chosen retainers, stood in dramatic contrast to the simplicity of the early Muslim society in Medina,
> where the Prophet and His immediate successors, barefoot and in mended clothes, mingled freely and
> unceremoniously with the crowds in market places. In 138 years the Arabs and Islám had, indeed, come a long
> way.
> 
> The setting
> WHEN Muḥammad was born, the Arabs were not barbarians, though they lacked the refinement of Romans
> and Persians. Arabia was, and still is, almost completely desert, where it might not rain for ten years, and had
> only a narrow strip of habitable land around the periphery. But long before the advent of Islám the Peninsula had
> begun to emerge from its isolation to play a part in world affairs. The camel was an essential part of
> communication. In the long, dry, and lonely landscape it could carry loads weighing up to four hundred pounds,
> cover a distance of sixty miles in a day, and travel for twenty days without water in 120 degree [F] temperatures.
> Thus Arabia, though it had no easy access to the outside world, was criss-crossed by caravan routes. Caravans
> carried trade between the civilized parts of southern Arabia and the Fertile Crescent, East Africa and the Far East,
> and the Mediterranean world. From the beginning the southern Arabs traditionally had been economically and
> culturally advanced. They had developed Yemen, at times colonized Ethiopia, and traded across the Indian
> Ocean. Some areas in Yemen and the Ḥijáz (regions along the Red Sea) had adopted Christianity and had their
> own bishoprics and churches, such as the great one in Najrán.
> 
> With the immigration of considerable numbers of Jews influences of the Hebraic religion had entered Arabia.
> In the first and second centuries AD the Roman government had violently crushed the Jewish independence
> movements. It may have been during the dispersal that Jews came to Arabia and settled in Yemen and the Ḥijáz
> city of Yathrib, where they greatly increased the area of land under cultivation and established numerous date-
> palm plantations.
> 
> By the latter half of the sixth century AD the Jews accounted for a large share of the total population of that
> city.
> 
> The Arabs of the north had been more isolated, but even there, two centuries before the Prophet’s time, some
> of the tribes had moved across the frontier into Syria and ‘Iráq, and some had adopted Christianity and Judaism.
> In the northeast the Arab kingdom of Ḥírah had allied itself with the Persian empire, and in the northwest the
> kingdom of Ghassán usually was in alliance with Byzantium.
> 
> A number of markets and fairs had grown up along the caravan routes, particularly from Syria to Yemen and
> from the Fertile Crescent to the Indian Ocean, and had become permanent fixtures.
> 
> Some forty-eight miles inland from the Red Sea in a rocky valley was the city of Mecca. It was purely a trading
> community and owed its existence to a well, Zamzam, with tepid, salty, bitter water. By the end of the fifth
> century AD it had become the commercial center of the Peninsula, wealthy and sophisticated in comparison with
> the life in the surrounding desert. The city also had religious significance because it housed the Ka‘bah (“cube”),
> the square temple, which contained the sacred Black Stone and in which each major tribe had its idol—all
> together perhaps as many as three hundred of them—some in human forms, others in the shape of animals, and
> some even in the form of vegetables.
> 
> In towns and the oases the social structures governing the life of the desert were formed and continued. The
> basic units were small groups, clans, or subtribes. Each clan was independent, protected its own members, and
> all considered one another as if one blood, subject to the authority of the sheikh. Not all clans were equal
> because some had become rich by trade, plunder, or raids.
> 
> A tribe was made up of clans that, rightly or wrongly, acknowledged some kind of kinship. Each tribe had its
> eponymous ancestor, and the chief of the tribe performed functions that in a more complex society are assumed
> by scores of officials; he was the political head, the commander-in-chief, the chief judge, and the treasurer.
> 
> Thus the government was simple, direct, and unorganized. There was no written code of law; there was no
> state or police force. Each group did elect a leader, but his authority depended strictly on his personal prestige.
> And he, as Bernard Lewis has pointed out, was “rarely more than a first among equals.”
> He followed rather than led tribal opinion. He could neither impose duties nor inflict penalties. Rights and obligations
> attached to individual families “within” the tribe but to none outside …. He was advised by a council of elders called
> the Majlis, consisting of the families and representatives of clans within the tribe. The Majlis was the mouthpiece of
> public opinion.1
> 
> 1   Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History (London: Hutchinson’s Univ. Library, 1958), p. 29.
> 
> In Mecca the Quraysh tribe, the custodians of the Ka‘bah, comprised a dozen or more clans and had been
> dominant for more than a century.
> 
> The Arabs had little time for religion, the arts, or architecture. The poverty of environment left little room for
> artistic expression except in words. The Arabs admired eloquence. Poetry was their supreme art. The
> vocabulary was rich, and the sense finely shaped and allusive. The poet was the spokesman of the tribe who sang
> the praise of its heroes and leaders and attacked its enemies. As Professor Hitti has put it, “[b]eside being oracle,
> guide, orator and spokesman of his community, the poet was its historian and scientist, in so far as it had a
> scientist. Bedouin measured intelligence by poetry. ‘Who dares dispute my tribe … its pre-eminence in
> horsemen, poets and members?,’ exclaimed a bard.”2
> 
> Arabic poetry also embodied the Arab’s code of values—bravery in battle, patience in misfortune, persistence
> in revenge, protection of the weak, defiance of the strong, loyalty to the tribe, hospitality to guests, generosity to
> the needy, and fidelity to promises.
> 
> To judge by his poetry the pagan Bedouin before Islám had little if any religion. There were living things of a
> beastly nature called jinn—or demons. They differed from gods in that the latter were on the whole friendlier to
> man than the hostile jinn. The Bedouin did not believe in personal immortality. Magical superstition dominated
> what religious sentiments existed among the Arabs.
> 
> The Call
> AMID the solemn grandeur of Arabian wilderness, in the deep solitude of a cave in the hill of Hirrá’, [Ghár
> Ḥirá’, the Cave of Hira] a few miles northeast of Mecca, a bare, arid upland “devoid of all beauty”, its “dull,
> monotonous coloring varying from dirty yellow to dirty light brown and muddy grey”, Muḥammad, a forty-year-
> old native of the city, heard three Arabic words that were soon to shake the world: “You are the Messenger of
> God.”3
> 
> The experience took place on the night of the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh of the month of Ramaḍán in the
> year AD 610. Muslim tradition has identified the voice as that of the Archangel Gabriel (Jibrá’íl).
> 
> It was a painful and agonizing experience for Muḥammad, Who feared that He might have been possessed by
> some evil spirit. But the voice persisted and commanded:
> 
> Read: In the name of thy Lord who createth,
> Createth man from a clot.
> Read: And thy Lord is the Most Bounteous,
> Who teacheth by the pen,
> Teacheth man that which he knew not.4
> 
> What a change in the life of a man who had lived a quiet, happy, simple, and abstemious life. He had been
> born a few years after the death of the great Byzantine emperor Justinian, in the reign of Khusraw Anúshirván,
> the illustrious Persian king.5 His father ‘Abdu’lláh, who through His mother’s side was related to the Quraysh
> tribe, had died either during his wife’s pregnancy or shortly after her delivery, while on a business trip to Medina
> on his way home from Gaza.6 He had left his wife Áminah very little in worldly goods—one slave, five camels, and
> a few sheep. Muḥammad was six years old when His mother died on her way home from a journey to Medina
> with her slave Umm Ayman. His eighty-year-old grandfather ‘Abdu’l-Muṭṭalib then took Him to live in his house.
> The grandfather died two years later, and young Muḥammad became the ward of Abú-Ṭálib, His uncle and the
> son of the same mother as Muḥammad’s father. Abú-Ṭálib, the leader of the clan known as the Banú-Hashím, was
> a merchant in comfortable circumstances in Mecca. Muḥammad most probably learned to read and write,
> though the extent of His learning is not known. He was known for His intelligence and His calm, confident, and
> 2   Philip Hitti, The Arabs: A Short History (South Bend: Regnery/Gateway, Inc., 1970), p. 27.
> 3   Maxime Rodinson, Mohammad, trans. Anne Carter (New York: Random, 1974), pp. 73–74.
> 4   Qur’án 96:1–5. All the quotations from the Qur’án in the text are from Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall, trans. The Meaning of the
> Glorious Koran (New York: Knopf, 1930).
> 5   The generally accepted date of Muḥammad’s birth is AD 571, though by means of highly dubious calculations various dates have been
> given between 567 and 579.
> 6   Muḥammad’s grandfather ‘Abdu’l-Muṭṭalib, a prosperous trader, had obtained certain profitable privileges at the shrine of Mecca. He had
> a number of wives from different tribes who gave him ten sons and six daughters
> 
> balanced way of conducting Himself both in His own affairs and in His dealing with others. He was also highly
> respected for His honesty and integrity.
> 
> He did not marry until He was about twenty-five years old, having remained a bachelor longer than most of
> His contemporaries perhaps because of His poverty. Then He married Khadíjah, a widow, who had already been
> married twice and was fifteen years His senior. Her caravans brought merchandise from Syria and Byzantium to
> Mecca and made her prosperous. The marriage brought material comfort and economic security to Muḥammad,
> but it also was a union of two individuals who strongly loved and respected one another. His deep affection for
> His wife never wavered.
> 
> They had four daughters, but their sons died at an early age. One was al-Qásim, who died when he was about
> two years old. There seemed also to have been another son by the name of ‘Abdu’lláh. But Muḥammad adopted
> His young cousin ‘Alí, whose father Abú-Ṭálib was experiencing some business difficulties. He also adopted as a
> son, Zayd, a slave given to Him by His wife—a young Christian man from Syria from the tribe of Kalb.
> 
> Thus at the age of forty Muḥammad was living a serene life, surrounded by affection, respected by all, and
> could have gone on living happily the rest of His life. The mystical experience in the hill of Hirrá’, however,
> interrupted it all. He ran from the cave and threw Himself over a precipice, when suddenly He saw Gabriel “in the
> form of a man, with his feet astride the horizon.” 7 In the stress of the great emotion caused by the vision, His face
> covered with sweat, Muḥammad was seized with a violent shuddering and lay unconscious for some time.8 He
> then rushed home in alarm and asked His wife Khadíjah to put some covers over Him. Once again the voice
> commanded Muḥammad: “O thou enveloped in thy cloak, Arise and warn!”9
> 
> Khadíjah then and there became the first to believe in her husband’s mission. Thus, inconspicuously, a
> religion was born in the heart of the Arabian desert. The significance of that Night of Power was known only to
> two individuals on the face of the earth. Otherwise there were no outward signs to herald the coming of a New
> Day—no falling of stars, no darkening of the sun, no trembling of the earth. Life continued as it had before; the
> potency of the spiritual forces released was yet to be demonstrated.
> 
> For three years Muḥammad, now the Prophet (an-Nabí’), did not publicly declare His mission. The Messenger
> of God (an-Rasúl) shared His Faith but with a very few. His first converts were members of His own family. After
> Khadíjah, ‘Alí, His cousin, still in his teens, embraced the new religion. Abú Bakr’s conversion was helpful since he
> was a prominent merchant and a recognized member of the Quraysh tribe. ‘Umar and ‘Uthmán, who, like Abú-
> Bakr, were to become after the death of the Prophet the leaders of the Muslim community, were also among the
> early believers.
> 
> Among the handful of converts were a few who were younger sons of influential men of the leading families
> and clans of Mecca. The majority, however, were young men of no great social standing. Some had neither family
> nor clan ties; others had ceased for one reason or another to receive their clans’ protection. Early Islám, as one
> historian has characterized it, “was a movement of young people mostly well under forty years old” and
> predominantly “weak people.”10
> 
> The public preaching of the Faith began around AD 615. During the early formative years of Islám the new
> religion had transcended but had not destroyed tribal customs and traditions. Through new revelations Islám’s
> strong monotheistic principle was becoming more clearly defined and the break with the paganism of the past
> more discernible. Now the city and the tribe had to take some action. At first the Quraysh had tolerated the little
> community, and the Banú-Háshim clan had stuck by the Prophet. Abú-Ṭálib, His uncle, had not approved his
> Nephew’s ideas but nonetheless had extended his family’s protection to Him; and many Meccans had considered
> the Prophet as a harmless visionary, possessed, perhaps, like the káhins (“soothsayers”), magicians, and poets, by
> a spirit of lesser order. Were there not a number of others who had also claimed prophethood for themselves?
> Was there not Maslamah (or Masaylimah) who was also reciting revelations in rhythmic prose?11 Was there not
> 
> 7  Sir John B. Glubb, A Short History of the Arab Peoples (New York: Stein and Day, 1975), p. 30.
> 8  Muḥammad’s revelations always caused a great deal of agony. As He testified Himself: “Never once did I receive a revelation without
> thinking that my soul had been torn away from me.” Jalal al-Din Suyuti al-itgam fi ‘Ulúm al-Qur’án (Cairo: AH 1318), I, 46, quoted in
> Rodinson, Mohammad, p. 74.
> 9 Qur’án 74:1.
> 10 Sydney Nettleton Fisher, The Middle East (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 31.
> 11 Maslamah, with marked ascetic tendencies, after the death of the Prophet, raised his entire tribe against Muḥammad’s successor.
> 
> the prophetess Sajáḥ of the tribe of Tamím? Had not Khadíjah’s own cousin preached some of the very ideas now
> being espoused by Muḥammad?
> 
> Names of Christians and Jews were quoted by the townspeople from whom the Prophet was said to have
> received His information and whose teachings He was merely repeating. But as the Prophet became bolder in
> preaching His religion and more clearly emphasizing its truth and independence, the persecution and opposition
> began. The Prophet was subjected to verbal insults and tongue-lashings. His unprotected followers were beaten
> by their fellow clansmen, as were the Quraysh Muslims. Economic pressures were exerted. Meccans refused to
> pay their debts to Muslims, and severe boycotts greatly reduced the fortunes of many, including Abú-Bakr’s.
> When Abú-Ṭálib refused to withdraw his protection from the Prophet, other Quraysh families initiated economic
> boycotts against that clan and its closest ally, the al-Muṭṭalib clan.
> 
> In the year AD 615 the Prophet sent His followers to Abyssinia for sanctuary under its Christian king. There
> may not have been more than fifteen of them, though the list of emigrants was certainly added to at a later date.
> At the same time the little community of believers that remained in Mecca perhaps counted some forty men and
> ten or twenty women.12
> 
> The year of emigration: Hegira
> IN THE YEAR 619, Khadíjah and Abú-Ṭálib, the two significant persons who to a great extent had supported
> and sheltered the Prophet, died within a few days of one another. Now the historian enters a period in the life of
> Muḥammad and the development of Islám in which the chronological order of events can be treated with
> comparative safety.
> 
> Abú-Ṭálib was succeeded as the head of the Banú-Háshim clan by his brother, Abú-Lahab. His hostility to his
> Nephew caused the withdrawal of clan protection from the Prophet. As a result the infant community’s
> prospects for the future looked hopeless. No spectacular conversions were being made. Physical persecution
> became common, and the Prophet’s warnings to the Meccans were to no avail: “So We took each one in his sin; of
> them was he on whom We sent a hurricane, and of them was he who was overtaken by the (Awful) Cry, and of
> them was he whom We caused the earth to swallow, and of them was he whom We drowned. It was not for Allah
> to wrong them, but they wronged themselves.”13 At the same time God also comforted the believers with
> promises of punishment to their oppressors:
> And if Our revelations are recited unto them in plain terms, they say: This is naught else than a man who would turn
> you away from what your fathers used to worship; and they say: This is naught else than an invented lie ….
> And We have given them no Scriptures which they study, nor sent We unto them, before thee, any warner.
> Those before them denied, and these have not attained a tithe of that which We bestowed on them (of old); yet they
> denied My messengers. How intense then was My abhorrence (of them)!
> Say (unto them, O Muḥammad): I exhort you unto one thing only: that ye awake, for Allah’s sake, by twos and singly,
> and then reflect: There is no madness in your comrade. He is naught else than a warner unto you in face of a terrific
> doom ….
> Couldst thou but see when they are terrified with no escape, and are seized from near at hand,
> And say: We (now) believe therein. But how can they reach (faith) from afar off,
> When they disbelieved in it of yore.
> They aim at the unseen from afar off.14
> 
> But the unbelievers were not moved. As the fate of the little community of Muslims seemed doomed in Mecca,
> they had to look to Medina for future success.
> 
> Medina, some two-hundred miles northwest of Mecca, was also on the south-to-north caravan route. It was in
> an oasis of some twenty square miles, rich in underground water and dense plantations of date palms and other
> 
> 12 Montgomery Watt has made valuable and detailed biographical studies of the first forty of the faithful and on the whole found them
> among the most independent-minded in Mecca. See W. Montgomery Watt, Muḥammad at Mecca (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953);
> Muḥammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956); and their abridgment Muḥammad, Prophet and Statesman (Oxford: Clarendon
> Press, 1961). They are valuable sources of information.
> 13 Qur’án 29:40.
> 14 Qur’án 34:43–46, 51–53.
> 
> fruit trees. The tribes who lived there had small forts to which they could retreat when attacked by their
> enemies. There was no concentration of houses or anything resembling a city at the time.
> 
> Among the leading families of Medina were some Jewish clans who had settled there, adopted Arab customs,
> and spoke a dialect of Arabic. The Jewish name for Yathrib was the Aramaic medinta, which meant simply “the
> city”.
> 
> In March 620 the Prophet met seven men from Medina who had come to Mecca on a pilgrimage. He had a
> private conversation with them that led to their conversion. The following year the seven men came back and
> brought five more with them. The twelve met the Prophet at night in a little valley east of Mecca and pledged
> their loyalty to Him. In March 622 seventy-three men came from Medina and offered their allegiance. Now, with
> His eyes set on that city, the Prophet asked the Meccan Muslims to leave the city. The Faithful set out for Medina
> in small groups, the departures taking place over a period of about three months—July, August, and September.
> In Medina the emigrants, perhaps no more than seventy (though some have estimated two hundred), were
> welcomed by the local adherents. Muḥammad and a few of His closest disciples were the last to leave Mecca.
> 
> On 28 June 622 a Jewish peasant looking over the walls of his settlement saw the weary Prophet and His
> companions urging their camels toward the cool shade of the palm trees. He ran to take the news to the Muslims,
> and some five hundred men, women, and children rushed out joyously and shouted, “The Prophet of God has
> come!”15
> 
> The date and the event proved to be of major significance in the history of Islám and the fortunes of the
> Prophet. In Medina Muḥammad founded the Islamic ummah, or community, apart and independent from others.
> Ummah was a congregation of Alláh, a community governed by a divine plan as revealed by God’s Messenger.
> 
> Here in Medina, isolated from their base and separated from their familial tribes, the Emigrants and the
> Helpers still calling themselves the Faithful (mu’min, in the singular), rather than Muslims, slowly gained
> autonomy, developed their own organization, and saw its limits and objectives becoming more defined and its
> doctrinal capital growing. In the City of the Prophet a state of a special kind—a theocratic state—was
> developing. Emphasis on a community of belief rather than blood relationship brought peace to settlements
> heretofore torn by interfamily feuds.
> 
> Though very early there formed an “inner circle” composed of a small group of the believers closest to the
> Prophet, believers whose advice He often would ask, Muḥammad was the one force unifying the group. Here the
> Prophet became also a statesman. Here the process of the Arabization and the nationalization of Islám began.
> 
> When the Emigrants came to Medina, they, as a whole, possessed no funds and had no material base. But the
> Quraysh tribe did have a thriving trade with Syria, and the caravans had to pass within sixty miles of the oasis.
> Medina was a convenient center for any expedition against these enterprises of the rich. Soon after the Hegira
> the Muslims did in fact start to raid the caravans. At first the attacks were no great matter since extreme care was
> taken to refrain from bloodshed. But in the month of Rajab, the second year of the Hegira (January 624) the first
> blood was spilled when one of the four caretakers of the caravan was killed, two were taken prisoners, and one
> escaped. The caravan was captured and taken to Medina in triumph.16
> 
> Not too long after this incident (March 624) a caravan of one thousand camels returning from Damascus was
> due to pass close to Medina. The Muslims in the city decided to intercept it. But the leader of the caravan, Abú-
> Sufyán, of the Umayyad family became aware of the plot while still in Syria. He immediately dispatched a swift
> camel rider to Mecca, urging the Meccans to send an armed force to protect the caravan and escort it past
> Medina.
> 
> Muḥammad with a force of approximately three hundred men, seventy camels, and two horses waited some
> twenty miles south of Medina near the well of Badr where the route from Syria left the coast and ran a little way
> inland on the way to Mecca, and from which point a road branched off toward Medina. The Quraysh had sent an
> army of well over nine hundred with three hundred camels, and one hundred horses, hoping to make a strong
> 
> 15 The date of the arrival of the Prophet to the city of Medina has been subject to some speculation. One version has it as 2 July and one as
> 24 September. The Prophet named the Emigrants al-Muhájirún and gave the Muslims of Medina the title of al-Anṣar (the “Helpers”).
> 16 The prisoners were released after ransom of 1,600 dínár each. One of them became a Muslim and stayed in Medina.
> 
> impression on the dissidents in Medina. When the two armies met, after a few single combats between
> champions, the Quraysh advanced. But they fought as individual clans, whereas the Muslims had the unified and
> unifying command of the Prophet. The Quraysh were facing the east and had the morning sun in their eyes; they
> were thirsty and had no particular desire to fight their kinsmen for the protection of a caravan which, they had
> now heard, had already passed safely. Their principal leader was killed at the very beginning of the battle. They
> could not withstand the fierce enthusiasm of the Muslims, and before noon the Meccans broke in flight, leaving
> fifty to seventy of their comrades dead and seventy others prisoners. On the Muslim side there were only fifteen
> dead.
> 
> The Muslims returned in triumph to Medina. The Quraysh had not met a defeat for generations. The spoils of
> war were significant: a great quantity of arms and armor, 115 camels, and 14 horses. It was Islám’s first great
> success, and it confirmed the Prophet’s position in Medina and laid the foundation of His temporal power.17
> 
> The Battle of Badr signalized the emergence of Islám as a militant religion. The Prophet Himself had led an
> army. Defense of the Islamic community was not only justified, it became the responsibility of the Faithful. “Fight
> in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but begin not hostilities. Lo! Allah loveth not
> aggressors.”18
> 
> Now, to intercept all trade between Mecca and Syria, thus ruining the economy of the Quraysh, became
> Muḥammad’s strategy. But the open deserts crossed by the caravans were inhabited by nomadic tribes whose
> cooperation had obviously become essential. One tribe, the Juhaynah, was won over; but two other tribes,
> further east, remained loyal to the Quraysh. With the memory of the defeat at Badr firmly impressed in their
> minds, and the threat to their very way of life becoming more real every day, the Meccans determined to strike
> back at the Muslims and once and for all to eliminate the Islamic community and its leader.
> 
> Almost exactly a year after the disaster of Badr, a Meccan force three thousand strong, including two hundred
> cavalry, under the command of Abú-Sufyán, who had led the caravan to safety at the time of that battle, set out for
> the city of the Prophet. Muḥammad had no more than one thousand men under His command, only one hundred
> of them with armor, and only two horses. Nonetheless, the Muslims sallied out of town. The Qurayshites had
> reached Mount Ubud some two miles north of Medina on the evening of Thursday, the fifth of Shawwál in the
> year AH 3 (21 March 625). On Sunday morning the Muslims arrived, and the battle was joined. Muḥammad
> Himself wielded a spear and drew a bow. A stone split His lips and broke one of His teeth. Another smashed into
> the cheek piece of His helmet, and there was blood on His face. A Qurayshite dealt Him a blow that sent Him
> stumbling backward into a hole. Some fifteen Muslim warriors formed about the Prophet and slowly fought their
> way back with Him to the shelter of the hill. Someone cried that the Prophet was dead, and panic increased
> among His followers. Ḥamzah, His uncle, was killed. Qurayshí ranged over the plain, finishing off the wounded.
> 
> Muḥammad’s army had been totally defeated by nightfall. The victors, however, did not march on Medina. As
> Sir John Glubb has observed, “the old Arabs did not practice total war. Final victory was not to them a familiar
> concept.”19 Abú-Sufyán, standing in the plain below, addressed the fugitives clinging to the rocks of the hill:
> “Today is in exchange for Badr. We will meet again next year.” 20 The Quraysh then mounted their camels and
> rode toward Mecca.
> 
> The Muslims, soon after the defeat, were confronted by the Prophet:
> Faint not nor grieve, for ye will overcome them if ye are (indeed) believers.
> If ye have received a blow, the (disbelieving) people have received a blow the like thereof. These are (only) the
> vicissitudes which We cause to follow one another for mankind, to the end that Allah may know those who believe and
> may choose witnesses from among you; and Allah loveth not wrong-doers.
> 
> 17 One-fifth of the booty was offered to Muḥammad to be allotted or used by the state for the sake of orphans, poor, and travelers. This set a
> precedent for the future Islamic state.
> 18 Qur’án 2:190. As is obvious in the Qur’anic verse, fighting was to be clearly limited to defense. The only apparent exceptions were in the
> Qur’án 9:5 where the context of the command was to “slay the idolaters”—but that applied to those idolatrous tribes of Arabia assembled
> at the Pilgrimage who had first made an agreement with the Muslims and then violated it—and in the Qur’án 9:29 where the Faithful
> were enjoined to fight “those who have been given the scripture” (that is, Jews and Christians) but “believe not in Allah nor the Last Day.”
> Nowhere did the Qur’án command Muslims to propagate their Faith by the sword.
> 19 Glubb, Short History, p. 38.
> 20 ibid.
> 
> And that Allah may prove those who believe, and may blight the disbelievers.21
> 
> The Meccans and their allies returned, not in a year as promised, but in two. They were some ten thousand
> strong, including four thousand of the Quraysh. The Muslims this time did not go out to challenge such an
> overwhelmingly superior force but shut themselves within the fortresses of the city. The drudgery of a siege did
> not suit the temper of the tribesmen, who enjoyed their galloping desert battles. After three weeks of frustrating
> blockade the Meccans withdrew.
> 
> The Prophet, taking advantage of circumstances, proceeded to consolidate His power as the undisputed
> leader of the city. The loyalty of the believers was unwavering, but the loyalty of the Jews who were such a major
> force in the settlement was another matter.
> 
> The tension between the two communities was not only political; it was religious as well. At first the Jews had
> shown a great deal of consideration and tolerance for Muḥammad and His followers. They had welcomed Him to
> Medina in the year of Hegira. His teachings seemed remarkably close ‘to their own. Did He not claim Abraham as
> His ancestor as they did? Had He not referred repeatedly to Moses, Joseph, Noah, Ishmael, Lot, Saul, Daniel,
> Solomon, Elijah, Job, and Jonah?22 Did not the Prophet recount the story of the creation and fall of man, the flood,
> and Sodom? Might not He, in fact, be the Messiah? After all, there were Jewish prophecies that had forecast the
> end of the world at the end of the fifth century AD. War between the two great empires of the region—the
> Persian and Byzantine—had resumed and seemed to confirm the prediction. “When you see kingdoms fighting
> among themselves, then look for the footsteps of the Messiah. Know that it will be so because so it was in the
> days of Abraham. When nation made war against nation [Gen. xiv] then was redemption granted to Abraham.” 23
> Other Jewish prophecies had claimed that a great war between Rome and Persia would take place just before the
> end:
> 
> Rejoice, Exult, O Constantinople, city of Wicked Edom [another name for Rome and the Romans], built on the soil of
> Romania, possessed of the countless armies of the people of Edom! For Thou also shalt be chastized. The Parthians
> [the Persians] shall ravage Thee, the accursed cup comes to meet Thee and Thou shalt be made drunken and cast out.
> And then shall Thy sign be expiated, O community of Zion! Thou shalt be delivered by the Messiah Thy King and by
> Elijah the priest.24
> 
> Though there were prophecies and predictions, soon after Muḥammad’s arrival in Medina its large Jewish
> population rejected Muḥammad’s initial conciliatory gestures symbolized by the adoption of such Jewish
> practices as praying in the direction of Jerusalem. The Jews could appreciate Islám’s recognition of the divine
> mission of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, but they resented Muḥammad’s inclusion of Jesus and Ishmael
> among God’s messengers, as well as His own claim to be God’s Apostle.25
> 
> For His part, the Prophet considered the presence of pockets of disaffected Jews as a source of political
> weakness. During the last unsuccessful Meccan siege of Medina, a Jewish tribe, Banú-Qurayẓah, had been in
> contact with the enemy. The Prophet ordered the capture of its settlement; the able-bodied men of the tribe
> were put to death; and the Emigrants were established on the date plantations thus made ownerless. Soon
> thereafter the Jews who were not converted were expelled from the Ḥijáz.
> 
> Now, almost without opposition in Medina and its environs, the Prophet became the cohesive force uniting
> every segment of Medinese society. Hitherto, Islám had been a religion within a state; but within six years, under
> Muḥammad, it passed, as Professor Hitti pointed out, “into something more than a state religion—it became the
> state. Then and there Islám came to be what the world has ever since recognized it to be—a militant polity.”26
> 
> 21 Qur’án 3:139–41.
> 22 In the Qur’án Abraham is cited no less than seventy times in twenty-five chapters, and the fourteenth Súrih is entitled after His name.
> Muḥammad called Abraham a true Muslim who founded the Ka‘bah and was His ideal predecessor (see Qur’án 2:124; 3:65, 68; 4:125; et
> seq.). Súrih 12 is dedicated to Joseph. Moses’ name appears in thirty-four different chapters. The creation and fall of man is cited five
> times; the flood, eight.
> 23 cf. A. Cohen, The Talmud (Paris: Payot, 1950), pp. 417–18, quoted by Rodinson, Mohammad, p. 66.
> 24 Targúm Threni, in Monumenta Talmudica (Vienna and Leipzig: Orion Press, 1914), I, 52. Also quoted by Rodinson, Mohammad, p. 66.
> 25 “Say (O Muḥammad): O mankind! Lo! I am the messenger of Allah to you all—(the messenger of) Him unto whom belongeth the
> Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth. There is no God save Him. He quickeneth and He giveth death. So believe in Allah and His
> messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, who believeth in Allah and in His words and follow him that haply ye may be led
> aright.” Qur’án 7:158.
> 26 Hitti, Arabs, pp. 35–36.
> 
> In March 628, during one of the months in which raiding and fighting were forbidden by all Arab tradition,
> Muḥammad declared His intention of making a pilgrimage to the temple of Mecca.
> 
> Some fourteen hundred Muslims followed the Prophet on that trip. The Meccans, not at all convinced that the
> Muslims would honor the code, mobilized their forces and took up a position to defend the city. The Muslims
> halted at Ḥudaybíyyah, a short day’s march from Mecca, and all took the oath to fight to the death for their
> Faith.27 However, there was no war and the two sides concluded a truce by which the Muslims were to return to
> Medina, but were allowed to make the pilgrimage after the expiration of one year.
> 
> The next year the Prophet led some sixteen hundred Muslims on the pilgrimage. The Quraysh tribe had
> evacuated the city and camped in the surrounding mountains. The Prophet went to the Ka‘bah and performed
> the seven circuits of the building, as had been done by the pagan Arabs long before. There were no expressions
> of antagonism toward the Meccans and no insults to the sanctity of their religion. He called the Ka‘bah the House
> of God, a monument built by Abraham. The Arab’s sin was to place idols in its precincts; once the idols were
> removed, its sacredness would endure.
> 
> Now a number of Meccans were converted to His cause, among them the two great future military, luminaries,
> Khálid Ibn al-Walíd, the conqueror of Syria, and ‘Amr Ibn al-‘Áṣ, the future victor in Egypt.
> 
> On the tenth of Ramaḍán in AH 8 (1 January AD 630) the Prophet, at the head of an army of ten thousand,
> camped two days’ march from Mecca. Obviously, this was no ordinary pilgrimage!
> 
> The Meccans sent Abú-Sufyán, the conqueror of Uḥud, to the Muslim camp to negotiate with the Prophet.
> Instead, he became a convert and went back to his city to tell the townsfolk of the Prophet’s terms. The sanctity
> of life and property of all was promised, as long as the Meccans laid down their arms and shut themselves in their
> houses or took refuge in the house of Abú-Sufyán.
> 
> On Thursday, the twentieth of Ramaḍán (the eleventh of January) Muslims in four columns, led by
> Muḥammad, entered the deserted streets of the city. What little resistance there was, al-Walíd easily brushed
> aside.
> 
> Mounted on a camel, with a long wand in His hand, in the midst of a rejoicing army and a crowd of men,
> horses, and camels, the Prophet made His way to the sacred Black Stone, touched it with His stick, and cried out
> in a loud voice “Alláh-u-Akbar!” He then made the seven ritual circles, asked for the key to the Ka‘bah and went
> inside. Upon returning from the sanctuary, He made a speech inviting the Quraysh to acknowledge Him as God’s
> Messenger. As He sat on the rock of Ṣafá, a long column of Meccans—men first, women behind—filed past Him
> and swore allegiance to Alláh. He proclaimed a general amnesty, and with His clemency on this day of triumph
> He won the hearts of the Meccans. The Prophet, finally, had been honored by His own people!
> 
> From Mecca He sent a number of small expeditions into the surrounding country. On the twenty-seventh of
> Dhul’l-Qa‘da in the year AH 8 (18 March AD 630) the Prophet returned to Medina. The year AH 9 is known as the
> Year of Delegation. Representatives from all the major tribes went to Medina to offer their submission to the
> Prophet and promised to furnish troops and not to attack one another. In the same year He concluded treaties of
> peace with the Christian chief of al-Aqabah and the Jewish tribes in the oasis of Magná, Adhzúh, and Jarbá of the
> Ḥijáz to the south. To these Jews and Christians was extended the protection of Islám on payment of a special tax
> —jizyah.28
> 
> In March 632 the Prophet once again led a multitude of His followers to Mecca for pilgrimage. This was His
> “Farewell Pilgrimage.” He gave a sermon to the assembly of the Faithful, and closed His preaching by looking up
> to heaven and crying, “O Lord, I have delivered my message and fulfilled my mission.” 29 One day soon after His
> return to Medina the Prophet complained of high fever and severe headache. For a week His condition
> deteriorated. On the tenth day the symptoms were greatly aggravated, and He was racked with pain. However, to
> 27 Years later those who had sworn their allegiance to the Prophet at Ḥudaybíyyah held the deepest respect of the Islamic community,
> second only to those who had fought the Battle of Badr.
> 28 Originally the term dhimmís included Christians, Jews, and Sabeans, but dhimmí status was later extended to Zoroastrians, Berbers, and
> other non-scriptuaries. They remained under the jurisdiction of their spiritual heads even in matters of civil and criminal procedures.
> Muslim law was not applicable to them except in cases in which Muslims were included.
> 29 Glubb, Short History, p. 40. For further details of this significant sermon of the Prophet, see H. M. Balyuzi, Muḥammad and the Course of
> Islám (Oxford: George Ronald, 1976), p. 149.
> 
> the surprise of all, He appeared the next day in the mosque at the hour of the dawn prayer, smiled at the
> congregation, and told them to go ahead with their devotions. But He was weak. Within a few hours He returned
> to His room and fell back on His bed. His head, resting against His wife’s breast, suddenly grew heavy. He called
> for water and wet His face. “O Lord,” were the Prophet’s last words, “I beseech Thee to assist me in the agonies of
> death,” and in a faint whisper He prayed, “Lord, grant me pardon. Eternity in Paradise.” 30 On that Monday at
> noon, late in May or early in June, the Prophet met His Lord.31
> 
> The Message
> THE PROPHET’S messages since His first revelation on the Night of Power were, over some twenty-two years,
> taken down on scraps of leather, flat camel bones, potshards, palm leaves, parchment, even stones or memorized.
> In His lifetime these fragments began to be collected into súrihs and became known collectively as “The
> Recitation” in Arabic, al-Qur’án.
> 
> However, during the course of the wars following the death of Muḥammad, so many Qur’án memorizers and
> reciters were lost as to endanger the perpetuation of the sacred words. Abú-Bakr, the Prophet’s first successor,
> began the collection of the materials that, some nineteen years later, resulted in the compilation of the entire
> Qur’án in the days of ‘Uthmán (644–56)—the third successor—who canonized the Medinese code and ordered
> all others destroyed. In no other major religion before had there been such early agreement on the official
> version of the Founder’s words and teachings.
> 
> The Book made Islám a literate religion. It constitutes the smallest basic scripture of any great religion, about
> two-thirds the size of the New Testament, but is the best authenticated, and was arranged so early that it must be
> considered ipsissima verba of the Prophet, almost unaltered. Of the 114 súrihs, 92 were revealed in Mecca and 22
> in Medina, though the Medinese chapters are longer and constitute about one-third of the Book. Meccan
> revelations were mainly concerned with faith in God and devoted mainly to spiritual principles grounding the
> Muslims in that faith. Medinese revelations were mostly intended to translate that faith into action.
> 
> The arrangement of the súrihs was arbitrary and mechanical. All except the first are placed automatically in
> diminishing order of length and bear no relation to chronological sequence or subject matter.32
> 
> The Qur’án was designed to be recited. Anyone who has listened to its verses being chanted can attest to the
> Qur’án’s cadence, melody, and power.
> 
> Because the Qur’án must never be used by Muslims in translation for worship, the spread of Islám created an
> impressive degree of linguistic unity that remains today. By forbidding its translation, Islám imposed Arabic as
> the enduring cultural bond to hold the adherents together long after the religious bonds had become weakened. 33
> There are significant parallels with Judaism, which through the use of Hebrew has given the community a strong
> sense of cultural and spiritual unity, and with Roman Catholicism, which by the imposition of the use of Latin
> gave Western Europe a cultural heritage of lasting value.
> 
> The theological doctrines of the Qur’án are simple. The central tenet of Islám is monotheism. There is but
> one God, and Muḥammad is His Messenger: “Say: He is Allah, the One! Allah, the eternally Besought of all! He
> begetteth not nor was begotten. And there is none comparable unto Him.”34
> 
> 30 Glubb, Short History, p. 40.
> 31 There is no agreement among historians about the exact date of the Prophet’s death. Montgomery Watt gives the date as 8 June 632, or
> 13 Rabí‘ al-Awwal AH 11. The Shí‘ih tradition, however, has it as the twenty-eighth of Safar, which corresponds to 25 May. See Balyuzi,
> Muḥammad, p. 154.
> 32 A number of attempts have been made to translate the Qur’án in chronological order. The most recent is the French
> version by Regis Blanchère, an excellent work (Le Probléme de Mahomet [Paris: P. U. F., 1952]). Richard Bell’s English
> translation (The Qur’án, 2 vols. [Edinburg: T. T. Clark, 1937]) is traditional, but he does give precise details concerning the
> chronology of the text.
> 33 The first and, naturally, unauthorized translation of the Qur’án in a European language was that into Latin by Peter the Venerable, abbot
> of Cluny in the twelfth century. The motivation, naturally, was not to instruct the good monks in the Faith of Muḥ ammad but rather to
> refute its claims and discredit the Prophet. The first English translation was made by Alexander Ross, Vicar of Carisbrooke, and appeared
> in 1649. Ross’ translation was from a French version and the introduction well represents the spirit of the translator: “The Alcoran of
> Mohamet … newly Englished, for the satisfaction of all that desire to look into the Turkish vanities.” See Hitti, Arabs, p. 43.
> 34 Qur’án 112:1–4.
> 
> Though there is only one God, Islám, like Christianity, recognized other supernatural beings, such as angels
> (very similar to those described in the Bible) and jinn, spirits midway between angels and men, some good and
> others evil.
> 
> Though the Prophet was the Apostle of God for His day, there had been many other Apostles before Him. The
> Qur’án mentions twenty-eight, of whom four are Arabian, eighteen are found in the Old Testament, and three
> (Zachariah, John the Baptist, and Jesus) in the New Testament.35
> 
> In the Qur’án Muḥammad presents a majestic procession of the Messengers of God from Adam to His own
> Person:
> Say (O Muslims): We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham,
> and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the
> Prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered.
> Qur’án 2:136
> 
> Lo! Allah preferred Adam and Noah and the Family of Abraham and the Family of Imrán above (all His)
> creatures.
> They were descendants one of another. Allah is Hearer, Knower. Qur’án 3:33–34
> And verily We gave unto Moses the Scripture and We caused a train of messengers to follow after him, and We gave
> unto Jesus, son of Mary, clear proofs (of Allah’s sovereignty), and We supported him with the holy Spirit. Is it ever so,
> that, when there cometh unto you a messenger (from Allah) with that which ye yourselves desire not, ye grow
> arrogant, and some ye disbelieve and some ye slay? Qur’án 2:87
> And verily We have raised in every nation a messenger, (proclaiming): Serve Allah and shun false gods. Then some of
> them (there were) whom Allah guided, and some of them (there were) upon whom error had just hold. Do but travel
> in the land and see the nature of the consequence for the deniers! Qur’án 16:36
> 
> God’s attributes of love and mercy are overshadowed by those of majesty and might; nevertheless, all the
> súrihs of the Qur’án are introduced with the same formula: “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.”
> The Faithful must also believe in resurrection, the day of judgment, heaven and hell.
> 
> The Qur’án raised the ethical standard of the Arab society to an infinitely higher plane than it had known
> before. Charity, humility, patience, forgiveness of enemies are strongly prescribed, and avarice, lying, and malice
> are condemned. The humane treatment of slaves is enjoined, and their manumission encouraged. Special care
> and love for orphans is called for. Dowries, divorce, and inheritance are regulated in detail. Fraud, perjury, and
> slander are repeatedly and severely condemned. Rules of social behavior are laid down in several passages.
> 
> The status of women in general, by contrast with the anarchy of pre-Islamic Arabia, was enormously
> enhanced. Though the Qur’an explicitly ‘maintains the superior right both of the father and of the husband,
> women were allowed a share in property, and their legal rights were recognized. It limited polygamy to four
> wives. Further than that the Prophet did not legislate; rather He tried to set an example of proper respect for
> women.
> 
> Unfortunately, soon after Muḥammad’s death most of the rights accorded women were curtailed by
> restrictions imposed by their guardians and by the ingenuity of Muslim jurists.
> 
> Polygamy was sanctioned, but for the first time in all legal and religious traditions a limit was established. No
> man could have more than four wives: “And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the
> women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one
> (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess.” 36 And though divorce was still easy, the divorced wife
> could not be sent away penniless.
> 
> Idolatry, infanticide, and usury were prohibited, as were gambling and the drinking of wine. A dietary law,
> somewhat like that of the Jews, banned certain foods, especially pork. There was also a rudimentary code of law
> designed to check the selfishness and violence that had prevailed among the Arabs. Arbitration was to take the
> place of the blood feud, and elaborate rules of inheritance safeguarded the rights of orphans and widows.
> 35 Jesus’ virgin birth was accepted by the Qur’án (19:16–23), for God sent His spirit into Mary. But Jesus was not God. Like His mother, He
> took food. The Jews thought that they had crucified Jesus; but, in fact, God had raised Him to Himself, and He was with His mother in a
> “refuge on a height, a place of flocks and water-springs” (Qur’án 23:50).
> 36 Qur’án 4:3.
> 
> In pagan days a man acted with his tribe: morality was tribal. Islám abolished tribal ties and morals. The
> new brotherhood was religious. Morals were what God enjoined. In the Battle of Badr the Muslims took arms in
> the name of their Faith against their own tribes and families.
> 
> The principal religious practices of Islám were as simple as its theology. The requirements of Islám were not
> severe. Five times a day in prayer, facing toward Mecca, the Muslim must bear witness that there is no God but
> God and that Muḥammad is His prophet. During the sacred month of Ramaḍán he must fast. He must give alms
> to the poor. If he can, he must make a pilgrimage to Mecca once during his lifetime.
> 
> Pervading Islám was the principle of religious equality. Islám provided for no organized church, for it had
> neither priesthood nor a sacramental system. Each individual had to assure his salvation by his own right belief
> and good conduct. It was customary for the Faithful to meet together for prayers, especially on Friday, and from
> the earliest period certain men devoted themselves to explaining the Qur’án. But neither the assembly nor the
> theologian was essential; anyone could accept Islám without waiting for the organization of a religious
> community, and any believer could preach the Faith without waiting for the coming of an ordained priest.
> 
> The Islamic community as established by the Prophet was an excellent example of a theocratic state, one in
> which all power resides in God on Whose behalf political, religious, and other forms of authority are exercised.
> 
> The dilemma of succession
> THE NEWS of the Prophet’s death was shattering to His community. He had been the Father in the
> Brotherhood of Islám. He was the soul and the spirit of the theocracy that He had created. His followers had not
> even entertained the idea that one day He would be absent from amongst them. It has been recounted that ‘Umar
> refused even to listen to the news of Muḥammad’s physical departure, and with “drawn sword he stood in the
> thoroughfare defying anyone who dared to assert the fact of the Prophet’s death.” 37 It was the gentle Abú-Bakr
> who finally pacified him.38
> 
> But once the Prophet was gone, what was the community to do? Who should succeed Him? And what should
> be the role and function of the successor?
> 
> It is a divine mystery why the Prophet left neither a will nor any other document to specify a successor. From
> a historical perspective it seems that the urgency for such a document was far greater for the success of Islám as
> a religion than for the success of Christianity. Upon His crucifixion Jesus left nothing but a handful of disciples—
> no organization, no state, no community in a political sense. His teachings, one can reason, were enough as a
> guideline for the individual conduct of His followers on this earth. But Muḥammad had created a nation, and
> because of it spiritual guidelines were not enough. There was also a need for communal behavior, an infallible
> source to direct the polity, to resolve disputes and prevent doctrinal schism. Some Muslims—the Shí‘ihs,
> primarily—have maintained that the Prophet orally had mentioned His cousin and son-in-law ‘Alí as His
> successor. But if this had been the case, only a few must have been witnesses to the event, since it is highly
> improbable that so many Muslims would knowingly have violated their Prophet’s command. Though it would
> not be impossible, one would find it hard to believe that the calm, wise, and earnest Abú-Bakr, who had spent a
> lifetime devoting his personal energies and his material resources to his Faith, would now, for selfish reasons,
> declare that a successor to the Prophet had to be chosen.39
> 
> The controversy over the succession was the first major political and spiritual problem that confronted Islám.
> There was confusion in the ranks of His followers and rebellion on the part of recently converted tribes. The
> Companions—the Emigrants—claimed the right of succession on the basis of blood kinship and priority in belief.
> The Medinese—the Helpers—contested that claim and argued that without their support Islám would have
> perished in its cradle. The Shí‘ihs—the Legitimists—believing that God and His Messenger could not have left
> such an issue to the determination of the community at large, maintained that ‘Alí was the rightful and divinely
> appointed imám (“the guardian”) of the community. Even the Umayyad family, the aristocratic branch of the
> 
> 37 Balyuzi, Muḥammad, p. 165.
> 38 ibid.
> 39 It should be noted that Abú-Bakr was not seeking the office for himself, that he asked the community to choose either ‘Umar or
> Abú-‘Ubaydah as the successor, and that the two refused. It was ‘Umar who said, “You are to be preferred over us you, who were the
> companion of the Messenger of God when He journeyed from Mecca.” See Balyuzi’s excellent chapter on “The Successor”, Muḥammad, pp.
> 165–89.
> 
> Quraysh tribe, claiming their traditional role as the head of the tribe, felt that they should continue to do so even
> though they were the last to believe!
> 
> This was a dangerous moment in the history of the infant cause. But, acting swiftly, some of Muḥammad’s
> closest associates selected the fifty-eight-year-old Abú-Bakr as the first Caliph or “deputy” of the Prophet. The
> choice, naturally, did not end the controversy, and in the words of a twelfth-century Arab historian of Islamic
> sects, “no other issue in Islam brought about more bloodshed.” 40 However, the choice seemed appropriate. Abú-
> Bakr was well respected by all and was also a father-in-law of Muḥammad. He could, and did, maintain the
> political unity that the Prophet had created. Since a number of tribes considered their religious and political
> allegiance to have ended with the Prophet’s death, the first Caliph’s first task was to prevent the disintegration of
> the Islamic community. In the two short years of life left to him he accomplished the goal by a series of military
> campaigns, headed, among others, by a brilliant young Qurayshí general, Khálid Ibn al-Wálid—the “Sword of
> Islám”.
> 
> After Abú-Bakr the Caliphate went to another of the Prophet’s earliest companions, the shrewd, strong-willed,
> and capable ‘Umar, whose ten-years’ rule proved to be a turning point in the history of the world.
> 
> Triumph and tragedy
> WITH THE UNITY of Arabs restored, the young, dynamic state had begun to look outward. To Arab historians
> the motivation for expansion was religious; the Arab triumph was providential as was that of Islám. However,
> modern historiography maintains that what triumphed was not Islám the religion but Islám the state—the Arab
> state. The motives for expansion were the age-old ones of conquest for living space and booty. There was a need
> to find an outlet for the physical energies of the desert warriors and search for supplies to sustain the
> impoverished Muslim community. The prospect of rich and fertile territory, as well as of plunder, proved a strong
> incentive to a people who had been eking out a bare existence from the unyielding soil.
> 
> The Arabs had long been in the habit of raiding their wealthier neighbors to the north. Even the Prophet in
> the year AH 8 (September 629) had sent an expedition northward into the outskirts of the Byzantine empire, and
> its commander was none other than Muḥammad’s adopted son, Zayd Ibn Ḥáritha. But at that time Theodore the
> Vicar had raised a force of Arab auxiliaries, both Christians and pagans, from the frontier regions and had
> inflicted on this “band of brigands” a resounding defeat.41
> 
> Times had changed. The Prophet’s sanctification of warfare bred fanatical courage in the Arabs, already a
> fierce fighting people. The proud and tenacious Bedouins were magnificent warriors. Their natural fighting
> ability was augmented by military techniques learned from the Byzantines and the Persians and by their adroit
> use of the desert, from which they could strike the enemy and to which they could retreat. By moving outside of
> Arabia into the civilized agricultural lands on the edge of the desert, the Fertile Crescent, they could find glory
> and profit without risks to the peace and internal security of the Peninsula.
> 
> Under the banner of Islám the Arabs were unified while both the Persian and Byzantine empires had been
> weakened by the disastrous wars that had begun under Justinian and had continued into the reign of Heraclius.
> Moreover, the non-Greek subjects of Byzantine emperors were disgusted by the religious policy of a government
> that offered them no toleration. They had little reason to give the empire their support. The Greeks had never
> succeeded in their attempts to impose their Hellenistic culture and their own orthodox Christianity on the
> Egyptians, who spoke Coptic (a language derived from ancient Egyptian), and the Syrians, whose tongue was the
> Semitic Aramaic and who professed the Monophysite heresy.
> 
> In Mesopotamia the natives were in constant rebellion against their Persian overlords. The persistent wars
> between the two great empires were particularly devastating for the border territories. There had been war
> between Persia and Byzantium from 502 to 505; it resumed in 527 and continued until 532 when the Persian
> king Khusraw offered to make eternal peace with Justinian. The “eternal peace” lasted eight years. Anatolia fell
> to the Persians in 540, an armistice was signed in 545, and a fifty-year peace concluded in 562. But the fifty-year
> 
> 40 See Hitti, Arabs, p. 206.
> 41 It was a bloody affair in which among the dead were three successive Muslim leaders including Zayd, and a brother of Abú-Ja‘far Ibn Abú-
> Ṭálib. The fleeing Muslims were rallied by Khálid Ibn al-Walíd, who led the disgruntled survivors back to Medina. The Byzantine
> historian Theophanes wrote about the encounter; he is the first non-Muslim historian to mention an incident that occurred during the
> Prophet’s lifetime.
> 
> peace lasted for only ten years. In 572, about the time of the Prophet’s birth, the two empires were at it again.
> Four years after Muḥammad’s emigration to Medina (AH 4, AD 626) a Persian army camped in Chalcedon, across
> the Bosporous from Constantinople. But the Byzantine naval superiority as well as the heroic defense of the city
> kept the empire’s capital safe. Then Byzantium took the war to Írán. In February 628 as Heraclius was moving
> toward Ctesiphon, the Iranian capital, the mutinous Iranian generals put to death the king of kings and had his
> son crowned in his place. On 3 April once again a peace treaty was signed; and in August of 629, after an absence
> of six years, the Byzantine emperor returned triumphantly to his capital. In March 630—the same year in which
> the Prophet conquered Mecca—Heraclius performed a solemn pilgrimage to Jerusalem, ceremoniously bringing
> back the True Cross. But militarily, financially, and emotionally, the two great empires had exhausted one
> another.
> 
> Thus the first probing attacks of the Arabs met such slight resistance that soon the nature of conflict changed.
> Raids turned into wars of conquest. Though it is true that the Arabs’ success was due to the propelling force of
> their internal dynamism and military prowess, it should at the same time be emphasized that the campaigns of
> Khálid Ibn al-Wálid and ‘Amr Ibn al-‘Áṣ were, as one authority has said, “among the most brilliantly executed in
> the history of warfare, and bear favorable comparison with those of Napoleon, Hannibal, or Alexander.”42
> 
> Syria was the first to fall. As the Arabs moved north toward Damascus, Heraclius sent an army of fifty
> thousand, commanded by his own brother, to block their way. The Arab commander Khálid had half as many
> men, but when on 20 August 636 the two armies met in the Valley of the Yarmúk, a tributary of the Jordan River,
> history took a new course. The battle was fought in one of the world’s most torrid spots, and the hot day was
> clouded by windblown dust. The chants and prayers of the priests and the presence of their crosses were not
> enough to save the Byzantine army. The rout became a slaughter. Damascus fell after six months’ siege. Two
> years later Jerusalem surrendered to ‘Umar. By 640, less than eight years after the death of the Prophet, the
> Arabs had conquered all of Syria, and Khálid had won his proud title as the “Sword of Allah”.
> 
> In 642 the battle of Nahávand brought final victory to the Arabs over the Persians. Already the Persian
> capital, Ctesiphon, had fallen to the invaders without a fight (in June 637); and, when Yazdigird, the last of the
> proud Sassanid dynasty, was killed as he fled before the conquerors in 651, the Persian empire that had lasted
> with little interruption for twelve hundred years had come to an end.
> 
> From Syria the Arabs moved to Egypt. In December 639 the Arab general, ‘Amr Ibn al-‘Áṣ, with a force of three
> thousand cavalry appeared at al-‘Arísh, which is still Egypt’s eastern frontier. The Egyptians offered no
> resistance. He easily reduced the fortress of Babylon, near the present site of Cairo. Only Alexandria held out for
> another fourteen months. The second strongest city of the Eastern Roman Empire fell to the Arabs in September
> 642, the same year in which they defeated the Persians at Nahávand. “I have captured a city,” write ‘Amr, the
> commander of victorious Arabs, to the Caliph ‘Umar in Medina, “from the description of which I shall refrain.
> Sufficient to say that I have seized therein 4,000 villas with 4,000 baths, 40,000 poll-tax paying Jews, and 400
> palaces of entertainment for the royalty.”43
> 
> Now all of North Africa lay open before the conquerors. They took Carthage in AD 698 and subjugated the
> native Berber tribes who had resisted Romans, Vandals, and Byzantines. Once they had subdued the North
> African coastal belt including Morocco, the next logical jump was across the Strait of Gibraltar into the kingdom
> of the Visigoths in Spain. By then a durable political fusion of Arabs and Berbers had been forged. The great
> Arab—Berber cities of Kairouan in Tunisia and Fez in Morocco had been founded, and the systematic Arab
> settlement of the countryside had begun.
> 
> In 711 Ṭáriq, a Berber ex-slave of the Arab governor of North Africa, Músá Ibn Nuṣayr, with an army of seven
> thousand, crossed the body of water separating North Africa from Spain. The Arab chroniclers commemorated
> the event by calling the spot the Mountain of Ṭáriq (Arabic Jabal Ṭáriq ‘Gibraltar’). Ṭáriq easily defeated the
> Visigoth King Roderic. The Jews particularly welcomed the invaders. By 714 all of Spain and Portugal, except a
> small independent state in the northwest, were in Arab hands. In 717 they moved across the Pyrenees into the
> fertile lands of the Franks. By 732 they had taken over Nimes, Narbonne, and Bordeaux. However, the Frankish
> kingdom was not quite so helpless as Spain. The Franks could not defend the south, but when the invaders
> 
> 42 Hitti, Arabs, p. 57.
> 43 Philip K. Hitti, The Near East in History (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961), p. 210.
> 
> pushed north, the course of war changed. On a cold Saturday in October 732, at a place between Poitiers and
> Tours, Charles Martel (The Hammer), the Mayor of the Palace, having assembled an effective army, met a
> marauding Moorish band under ‘Adb ar-Raḥmán ash-Shadífí. Charles’ foot-soldiers, wearing wolfskins, stood
> shoulder to shoulder, forming a square “firm as a wall and inflexible as a block of ice.” 44 For the first time the
> Arabs had met their match. It should also be pointed out that the climate of central and northern Europe never
> attracted the Arabs, and the line of communication from Damascus, their capital, was dangerously stretched.
> 
> The Battle of Tours was fought in the year AH 110, the year of the centennial commemoration of the Prophet’s
> death. During that one hundred years His followers had created an empire greater than any in ancient times and
> comparable only to the British and the Russian empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Tours marked
> the extreme limit of that empire’s western expansion. Spreading east from Persia throughout what today is
> Russian Turkistan, the Muslims had reached the Indus River, Sind, and the western boundaries of China.45
> 
> What price glory?
> THE GREAT Ibn Khaldún, the fourteenth-century intellectual giant of the Islamic world and one of the greatest
> creative minds in the history of civilization, commented that:
> 
> … Generally speaking, Arabs are incapable of founding an empire except on a religious basis such as the Revelation of a
> Prophet or a Saint. This is because their fierce character, pride, roughness and jealousy of one another especially in
> political matters, make them the most difficult of peoples to lead, since their wishes concord only rarely. Should they,
> however, adopt the religion of a prophet or a saint, they have an internal principle of restraint and their pride and
> jealousy are curbed, so that it becomes easy to unite and to lead them. For religion drives out roughness and
> haughtiness and restrains jealousy and competition. If, therefore, there should arise among them a prophet or saint
> who calls upon them to follow the ways of God, eschew evil, cling to virtue, and unite their wills in support of
> righteousness, their union becomes perfect and they achieve victory and domination.
> 
> Yet Arabs are, withal, the quickest of peoples to follow the call to truth and righteousness. For their natures
> are relatively simple and free from the distorting effects of bad habits and evil ways; their only grave moral defect
> is their roughness, which indicating as it does a primitive and uncorrupted nature, can be rectified. For, as the
> Prophet said, ‘Each child is born with an unformed nature,’ as we said before.46
> 
> But even as they were establishing their empire, “their pride, touchiness and intense jealousy of power” were
> already weakening its foundation and framework and compromising their spiritual zeal.
> 
> The rule of succession not having been conclusively established by the Prophet, the controversy over it never
> ceased among His followers. Unlike the slow rise of Christianity, the rise of Islám was meteoric. Its quick military
> triumphs and the conquest of great empires made the material stakes formidable. The worldly prizes at the
> disposal of the Faithful were tempting and very early tested the spiritual fervor of the ruling Muslims. The
> Prophet, even in triumph, had lived a simple and unpretentious life. He was often seen mending His clothes and
> was at all times within the reach of His people. The little wealth He left, He regarded as state property. The luster
> of the Prophet’s life had not ceased to shed its light and influence over the thoughts and acts of the first four
> Caliphs, who were all close associates or relatives of the Prophet.
> 
> But all this changed when the Umayyad family took over the reign. The Caliphate of Abú-Bakr and ‘Umar
> already has been mentioned. When ‘Umar was assassinated during the tenth year of his rule (AD 644), ‘Uthmán,
> also a son-in-law of the Prophet, was chosen as the third Caliph. He had been a wealthy Umayyad merchant who
> had lived in luxury; his capacity to rule was mediocre at best. He appointed his relatives as governors of
> provinces and practiced other forms of nepotism. He chose Mu‘áwíyah, the Prophet’s secretary and his own
> kinsman, as governor of newly conquered Syria.47 The unscrupulous but very able governor, with an unusual
> administrative skill, developed out of chaos an orderly society in his province. He occupied Cyprus and Azadus
> 
> 44 ibid., p. 225.
> 45 It should be added that not Arabs but Turks (Seljuks and Ottomans) spread Islám, from the eleventh century to the fourteenth century, to
> China and the Balkans. In Malaysia the itinerant Muslim traders rather than conquering armies spread the Faith. Similarly, from newly
> Islamized North Africa, Islám pressed southward along the ancient oasis highways of the Sahara into Central Africa. In most cases it was
> the ruling classes of these black African states who were converted to Islám. By 1400 the whole of North Africa as far south as Lake Chad
> and from Senegal on the Atlantic to Somalia on the Indian Ocean was covered with a network of Muslim regimes.
> 46 Charles Issawi, trans. and arr., An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332–1406)
> (London: John Murray, 1950), p. 58.
> 47 Mu‘áwíyah was the son of Abú-Sufyán Banú-Umayya of the Quraysh tribe, who as already pointed out, was one of the last to believe in
> Islám. But soon he became one of Muḥammad’s most trusted advisers and had his son appointed as the Prophet’s secretary.
> 
> (649–50), sent a naval expedition against Constantinople, and destroyed the Byzantine fleet commanded by
> Constans II, grandson of Heraclius, off the Lycian coast (AD 655), providing Islám with its first maritime victory.
> 
> But in the next year ‘Uthmán too was murdered. The plot against his life was conceived and carried out not by
> the outsiders or the infidels but by fellow Muslims. His favoritism had alienated many of the early believers who
> were more distinguished for their faith than for their political ability and yet felt that they were not being
> properly rewarded for their services. The band that broke into the Caliph’s house and laid violent hands on him
> was led by one of Abú-Bakr’s sons, who also put the dagger in his heart. ‘Uthmán’s blood reportedly flowed over
> the copy of the Qur’án that he was reading. The first murder of a Caliph by a Muslim was not to be the last. His
> death ended the political unity of Islám, and soon Islám’s religious unity would also come to an end. In less than
> a generation after the death of the Prophet Islamic society had entered upon a period punctuated by civil strife
> and doctrinal schism from which it never emerged.
> 
> Upon the assassination of ‘Uthmán, ‘Alí, the son-in-law, cousin, and adopted son of the Prophet, was chosen as
> the fourth Caliph. He was the paragon of Arabian nobility and Islamic chivalry. 48 But the Syrian governor,
> Mu‘áwíyah, did not recognize ‘Alí’s right to succession and called for vengeance against those who had killed his
> cousin ‘Uthmán. In the mosque of Damascus the blood-stained shirt of the Caliph, along with the chopped off
> fingers of his wife who had tried to defend him, were exhibited. Mu‘áwíyah demanded from ‘Alí that he either
> produce the assassins or accept the role of accomplice. With the support of ‘Amr, the conqueror of Egypt,
> Mu‘áwíyah now led his army eastward to challenge ‘Alí.
> 
> To ‘Alí’s side rallied the Ḥijazís who saw in him a symbol of Arab nationalism, puritanical piety, and bravery, as
> well as the people of ‘Iráq, whose city of Kúfah, ‘Alí had chosen as a second capital. In July 657 the two armies
> faced each other at Ṣiffín, on the west bank of the Euphrates. Only twenty-five years after the death of the
> Prophet, His followers, disputing the right of succession, were shedding each other’s blood in the first—but alas!
> not the last—civil war.
> 
> As ‘Alí’s army was gaining the upper hand in the battle, the Syrian commander ‘Amr sent his men with copies
> of the Qur’án fixed to the points of their spears, as if calling upon God to choose the victor. Chivalrous 'Alí halted
> the fighting, and arbitration was agreed upon. But the mere fact of arbitration with the Caliph raised Mu‘áwíyah’s
> status to the caliphal level and weakened ‘Alí’s position. Thousands in fact deserted his camp. The partisan
> representatives did not meet until January of 659. The arbitration session was a public one held in southern
> Palestine and witnessed by a large crowd. What transpired is not recorded, but it seems that ‘Alí had lost the case
> even before it was opened. Until then Mu‘áwíyah had not dared to announce his candidacy, and in fact he did not
> claim the title of Caliph for himself until 661 after ‘Alí had been struck with a poisoned sabre by one of his former
> followers. His assassination left no rival for Mu‘áwíyah.
> 
> Thus was the office of the Caliph usurped be one totally lacking any moral or spiritual qualities. He and his
> family, the rulers for the next one hundred years, established a new style of Caliphate. It was monarchial, worldly,
> ruthless, and efficient. Any pretense to the principle of “election” was buried by Mu‘áwíyah when five years
> before his death he induced the leaders of his empire to recognize his son, Yazíd, as his successor. Henceforth,
> the Caliphate was to be, in fact, though never in law, a hereditary office.
> 
> Mu‘áwíyah transferred the capital of the empire to Damascus. This was typical of him and his family—the
> Umayyad—who put far more emphasis on politics than on religion. Unlike the simple city of the Prophet,
> Damascus had been a Byzantine metropolis, with magnificent public buildings and a large group of experienced
> and educated civil servants. It was a more centrally located city; and, conveniently, it had few Arab inhabitants.
> Anchored in Syria, the Umayyad looked less toward the Arabian desert for new inspiration and more toward the
> West. Now the behavior of the rulers of Islám mirrored more the majestic practices of the Byzantine emperors
> than the simplicity and piety of the Apostle of God. The Umayyad changed the Arab empire from a loosely
> organized theocracy into a centralized, secular state, retaining the basic structure of government and
> administration bequeathed to them by the Byzantine system, but bestowing key positions on members of Arab
> aristocracy, primarily their own clan.
> 
> 48 The Shi‘ites consider ‘Alí as sinless and infallible. Some extremists among them have elevated him even above Muḥammad and consider
> him the incarnation of the Deity.
> 
> As secular rulers the Umayyad, on the whole, were exceptionally effective and competent. It was their armies
> that marched to Poitiers and Sind and to the Rhone and the Indus. They built roads and beautified cities. The
> Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was built under Caliph ‘Abdu’l-Malik (died on 8 October 705) over the rock from
> which Muḥammad had ascended to heaven. It was a monumental structure of noble beauty. The builders were
> native architects trained in the Byzantine school, but the intention was that the Dome should outshine the
> adjacent Church of the Holy Sepulchre—and it did. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, next in chronology to the
> Dome of the Rock, was built on the site of the basilica of St. John the Baptist, originally a temple of Jupiter. It was
> a far cry from the Prophet’s simple mosque in Medina. The majesty of the plan and the splendor of ornaments
> served notice that the believers in the new religion were not inferior to the followers of Christ worshiping in their
> great cathedrals in Byzantium.
> 
> Under the Umayyad Islám lost its puritanical character. It was not only the lust for power that corrupted the
> regime. The family’s total disregard for both the letter and the spirit of Islamic laws was appalling. Yazíd, the
> appointed successor of Mu‘áwíyah, was corrupt and frivolous, a drunkard who kept a drunken pet monkey. 49 His
> behavior toward the saintly grandson of the Prophet expressed well the spiritual degeneracy of the clan. When
> Ḥusayn, the son of ‘Alí and Fáṭimah, Muḥammad’s only surviving daughter, emerged from retirement in Medina
> to challenge Yazíd and claim the rule as a God-chosen Imám, the Caliph wasted no time. Ḥusayn was richly
> endowed with the spiritual qualities of his forebears. As he approached Kúfah with his little army, he was met
> and surrounded by a body of Umayyad cavalry at Karbilá, about twenty-five miles northwest of Kúfah. On the
> tenth of Muḥarram AH 58 (10 October AD 680) the cavalry moved in. They were four hundred strong; Ḥusayn
> had seventy-two relatives and retainers. After his companions had fallen at the hands of the archers, Ḥusayn,
> bleeding from several wounds, stood at bay alone, except for the women crouching in the tents behind. The
> troops under Shimr closed in, and Ḥusayn fell beneath their swords. The head of the Prophet’s grandson was
> sent to Damascus as a trophy. This brutal act would remain the greatest blot on the Umayyad family record.
> 
> The death of Yazíd in November 683 once again brought about fratricidal civil war that lasted for twelve years.
> It was not until 3 October 692 that another member of the family, ‘Abdu’l-Málik, could claim to be the sole ruler of
> the Muslim world. But despite the civil wars and intertribal rivalries, the Arab armies’ advance to the east and
> the west went on. In fact, it was in the Caliphate of ‘Abdu’l-Málik’s heir, Walíd (AD 705–15), that the Muslims
> entered the Spanish peninsula in the west and added Bukhara, Balkh, and Samarkand, centers of Buddhist
> culture, in the east. By then the followers of the Prophet were straddling, like a colossus, a territory stretching
> from the Atlantic Ocean to the borders of China.
> 
> However, as the empire grew, the challenge of its administration became even greater, the latter Umayyad
> Caliphs were less capable than the first ones. The second Yazíd, the brother of Walíd (who ruled from AD 720 to
> 724) spent far more time chasing women and game, and drinking wine, than on state affairs. Walíd II (who ruled
> for only fifteen months, 743 to 744) was a blasphemer and a cynic whose great joy and relaxation was swimming
> in a pool of wine, drinking as he swam. When he was killed, his head was raised on the point of a lance and
> paraded through the streets of Damascus. His successor, Yazíd III, was born of a slave mother, as were the next
> two Caliphs, including the last Umayyad ruler, the fourteenth of the line, Marwán (known as Marwán the Ass)
> who ruled from AD 744 to 750.
> 
> But even if these men had been endowed with extraordinary abilities, they would have still found it most
> difficult to rule effectively an empire that included dozens of different nationalities, among whom Islám had not
> created a bond of unity. The non-Arab Muslims and the new converts resented the domination and privileges of
> the Arab aristocracy. At first the Arabs had not attempted to proselytize in the conquered territories north of
> their peninsula. It was their faith. Recognition was granted to Sabeanism, Judaism, Christianity, and
> Zoroastrianism. Pagans and members of other faiths were theoretically forced to submit to Islám or perish; but
> generally the Arabs had allowed them to live if they paid their taxes.
> 
> However, within a generation or two after the death of the Prophet, every year increasing numbers of the
> conquered races Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Berbers, and so on—professed Islám. Should non-Arabs be
> allowed to become Muslims? Clearly the Qur’án had sanctioned it, but the idea was at first so alien to the Arabs
> 
> 49 Mu‘áwíyah died in April AD 680.
> 
> that any convert not a full-blooded Arab, had to become a Mawálí (a “Client”) of one of the Arab tribes. In theory
> they were to be equal; in practice they were treated with contempt.
> 
> In the empire Peoples of the Book (dhimmís) enjoyed religious and personal toleration but not equality before
> the law; since they paid most of the taxes, mass conversion would have created financial disaster. Some Caliphs,
> in fact, discouraged too many conversions.
> 
> As the empire grew, Arab manpower was no longer sufficient for its further extension or the control of
> conquered territories. The Arabs were forced to recruit mawálís—but not dhimmís—and though they fought in
> Muslim armies, they received less pay and a smaller share of the booty than the Arabs and were confined to the
> infantry and were not permitted to join the cavalry, which remained an Arab privilege. The Arabs paid no taxes
> on the lands they acquired by conquest. Though a minority within the empire, they provided its leaders and
> government officials and controlled millions of conquered people.
> 
> Naturally, resentment, especially among the non-Arab Muslims, many of whom had possessed cultures much
> more advanced than that of their rulers, increased every year. Without them the economic and cultural life of the
> empire could not have survived; yet they were considered and treated as second-class citizens.
> 
> The non-Arabs were not the only ones resentful of the Umayyad rule. The Muslim puritans loathed the
> family’s luxury and worldliness, and the Shi‘ites, never forgetting the memories of ‘Alí and Ḥusayn, considered
> them as breakers of the Prophet’s covenant and usurpers of a divinely ordained office.
> 
> Open revolt against the Umayyad broke out in AD 747. Two years before that the Byzantine emperor
> Constantine V (774–75) had already taken the offensive against them as his armies pushed the Arab forces along
> the entire border of Asia Minor and carried the war into Syria itself. But it was in the eastern part of the empire,
> in the Khurásán province of Írán, that the challenge began in earnest. Under the leadership of Muḥammad Ibn
> ‘Alí Ibn al-‘Abbás, the great-grandson of the Prophet’s uncle, Iranians, Syrians, ‘Iráqís, and other non-Arabs joined
> the Arab tribes who were traditional rivals of the Umayyad, and raised the standard of rebellion. By August 749
> their forces had occupied Kúfah and were threatening all of ‘Iráq.
> 
> Marwán the Ass, with an army of twelve thousand loyal Syrian troops, marched east to Great Záb, a tributary
> of the Tigris River some eighty miles from Mosul. On 25 January AD 750 the two armies met. Marwán was
> decisively defeated and fled to Syria and then to Egypt where on the night of 5 August he was caught hiding in a
> church in the little village of Busir.50 He was killed, and his corpse, decapitated.
> 
> Soon after, some eighty members of the royal family were invited by the ‘Abbásid family to a banquet near
> Jaffa. While eating, the guests were brutally cut down by the order of al-‘Abbás. Leather covers were spread on
> the dead and the dying, and the ‘Abbásid officers and hosts continued their repast to the accompaniment of
> human groans. Caliphal tombs in Damascus and elsewhere, with the exception of those of Mu‘áwíyah and ‘Umar,
> were opened and their contents exhumed and desecrated.51 This abominable act by one Arab family against
> another took place only 132 years after the Year of Emigration and 122 years after the death of the Prophet. Four
> years later al-‘Abbás, called as-Saffáḥ (“the blood-letter”) died and was succeeded by his brother Abú-Ja‘far, called
> al-Manṣúr (“rendered victorious”). He was the ancestor of the next thirty-five ‘Abbásid Caliphs who were to rule
> the empire, in name if not in fact, until AD 1258, when the last of them, al-Musta‘ṣim, was murdered by the
> Mongol invaders.
> 
> The replacement of Umayyads by ‘Abbásids was far more significant than a mere change of dynasty. “It was,”
> according to Bernard Lewis, “a revolution in the history of Islam, as important a turning point as the French
> Revolution and Russian Revolution in the history of the West. It came about not as the result of a palace
> conspiracy or coup d’etat, but by the action of an extensive and successful revolutionary propaganda and
> 
> 50 Sir John Glubb considers the Battle of Záb as one of the decisive battles of the world because the success of the ‘Abbásid, as the result of it,
> orientalized Islám. The Umayyad empire had been basically a Mediterranean empire. For one thousand years Damascus, Egypt, North
> Africa, and Spain were parts of the Graeco-Roman world. Under the ‘Abbásid rule the center of gravity of Islám shifted to Irán, Punjab,
> and Turkistan. See Short History, pp. 92–93.
> 51 The only survivor of this massacre was the nineteen-year-old ‘Abu’r Raḥmán, grandson of the tenth caliph, who fled the ‘Abbásid cavalry
> and, after five years of wandering, landed in Spain and continued the Umayyad rule in that country.
> 
> organization, representing and expressing the dissatisfactions of important elements of the populations with the
> previous regime and built up over a long period of time.”52
> 
> Epilogue
> SIX HUNDRED YEARS before Islám, Christianity, against the magnificent background of the Roman imperial
> system, had crept half hidden along the foundations of society. In the year AD 138 a Christian could look at the
> world around him and see nothing but obstacles to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. Rome was
> a thriving empire. It was in its golden age. Pax Romana extended from Britain to the Caspian Sea, from the Rhine
> and the Danube to the Sahara. It included more than 1,250,000 square miles and one hundred million people
> representing almost all races, nationalities, and creeds. The Empire had created a concept of “civilization” that
> was an impressive phenomenon and perhaps the most enduring legacy of the peculiarly Roman genius.
> 
> A Christian was viewed, by an overwhelming majority of the Romans, as a member of one of the multitude of
> the mystery sects aspiring to capture their hearts. He was suspected by his government, despised by his fellow
> citizens, and challenged by other cults. The New Testament had not as yet been arranged; and without a
> canonized literature and a centralized spiritual authority, unity and uniformity could not be expected to prevail
> over the small Christian communities that had sprung across the Empire. In different provinces of Rome
> different systems of church government existed. Christianity was still exclusively a faith and a movement rather
> than a Church or an institution.
> 
> But despite the obstacles and oppositions, that transcending faith in Christ and the Second Coming, in heaven
> and in hell, drove the “multitude of obscure enthusiasts” to do their share, unceasingly and unhesitatingly, to
> bring about the promised Kingdom of God on earth. Persecution and threats of persecution kept the unbeliever
> out; and the faithful, humble men and women, unnoticed by history, but fortified and guided by the Spirit of
> Christ were to become the architects and builders of a whole new civilization that was to be the foundation of
> Western society for the next two thousand years.53
> 
> Islám, on the contrary, almost from the moment of its inception, burst out in a flame of conquest. By AH 138
> the Islamic state was well established, and the Islamic religion was triumphant. Between the military conquests
> of the Arabs and the religious conversion to Islám of the peoples who lived within their empire, a long period
> intervened. But from the beginning of the conquest Islám was presented to the world as the religion of the
> conquerors. It had to be respected, even if not accepted. No one can tell how many of the millions of the converts
> were motivated by self-interest: to escape tribute, to avoid the status of an outcast, or to be identified with the
> ruling class. But one thing is certain. In the empire the Arabs created, the followers of the Prophet never suffered
> the trials of religious persecution, and thus the purity of their motives and the depth of their convictions were
> never really tested. Hence whether the much-too-early worldly success of Islám compromised its spiritual
> strength must remain one of the great unanswered questions of history.
> 
> In the year AH 138 Islám had authoritative religious literature—the Qur’án and the Tradition—but in the
> absence of an authenticated will of the Prophet, the issue of the legitimacy of His successors had remained
> unresolved.
> 
> Muḥammad had created a total theocracy for the Islamic community. He had asserted His temporal
> leadership by political and military means, and His spiritual leadership was, naturally, undisputed because the
> umma’ had accepted His Prophethood. But what about His successors? Prophethood was a divine station for
> Muḥammad only. The Caliphs were mortal men, and though they too claimed temporal as well as spiritual
> leadership, their actions were an open testimony to their incapacity to fulfill both. By political and military
> means they kept the community and the empire together, but their worldly and too often cruel behavior had
> demoralized and despiritualized the office. The Caliphate had become a body without a soul.
> 
> But despite this great handicap, the spiritual forces released by the new religion were to give birth to a new
> civilization. The Umayyad era had been, in general, an age of incubation. Too many wars and too many unsettled
> social and economic conditions had made it difficult to develop intellectually. Under the ‘Abbásids, however,
> conversion to Islám minimized the differences between the ethnic groups, and through the use of the Arabic
> 
> 52 Lewis, Arabs in History, p. 80.
> 53 See Nosratollah Rassekh, “Christianity: AD 138”, World Order, 14, No. 3 (Spring 1980), 7–21.
> 
> language, ideas circulated freely. The cosmopolitan spirit that permeated the ‘Abbásid rulers supplied the
> tolerance necessary for a diversity of ideas so that the philosophy and science of ancient Greece and India could
> find a welcome in Baghdád.
> 
> One hundred years after that city was founded, it had become the cultural capital of the world. While the
> West Saxon rulers strove to deliver England from the Danes, while France was but a mutilated fragment of the
> vanished empire of Charlemagne, and while St. Peter’s in Rome fell prey for a short time to Muslim invaders, the
> luxurious and cultivated court of the ‘Abbásids fostered learning and the arts. The ‘Abbásid period well
> demonstrated Islám’s great ability to synthesize the best in the non-Arab cultures over which it held sway. The
> high attainment of the Muslims in intellectual and artistic fields can be attributed, primarily, to those peoples
> who embraced Islám in Persia, India, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. And it was that Islamic
> civilization, radiating first from Baghdád, that was to illumine the world for the next five hundred years.
>
> — *Islam: The First 138 Years (Used by permission of the curator)*