Lost Islamic History: Reclaiming Muslim Civilization from the Past

167 Pages·2017·0.97 MB·English

by  Firas Alkhateeb

LOST ISLAMIC HISTORY
FIRAS ALKHATEEB
Lost Islamic History
Reclaiming Muslim Civilisation from the
Past
HURST & COMPANY, LONDON
First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by
C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.,
41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL
© Firas Alkhateeb, 2014
All rights reserved.
Printed in India
Distributed in the United States, Canada and Latin America by
Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016,
United States of America
The right of Firas Alkhateeb to be identified as the author of this publication is asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library.
978-1-84904-397-7 paperback
eISBN 978-1-84904-528-5
This book is printed using paper from registered sustainable and managed sources.
www.hurstpublishers.com
For the most important people in my life, my mother Sanaa, my wife Hadeel, and
my sister Huda.
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
“If anyone travels on a road in search of knowledge, Allah will cause him to travel
on one of the roads of Paradise.”
Prophet Muhammad
CONTENTS
1. Pre-Islamic Arabia
2. The Life of the Prophet
3. The Rightly Guided Caliphs
4. The Establishment of the Muslim State
5. Intellectual Golden Ages
6. Upheaval
7. Al-Andalus
8. The Edge
9. Rebirth
10. Decline
11. Old and New Ideas
Bibliography
1
PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA
The dry, mountainous landscape of the Hijaz is not an environment that gives
much life. Situated in the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, this land can be
described with two words: dry and hot. In the summer, temperatures regularly
rise to well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with little precipitation. Further east,
endless sand dunes mark a landscape devoid of greenery or permanent
settlements. Yet it was from this harsh landscape that, in the early 600s, a new
movement emerged; one that would change the course of history in the Arabian
Peninsula and beyond.
Geography
The Arabian Peninsula covers an area of over 2 million square kilometers in the
southwestern corner of Asia. Situated between Asia, Africa and Europe, the land
is unique in its connection with all three continents of the Old World. Despite its
position, it has been mostly ignored by outsiders. The Ancient Egyptians chose to
expand into the Fertile Crescent and Nubia rather than venture into Arabia’s
deserts. Alexander the Great passed by it in the 300s BCE on his way to Persia and
India. The great Roman Empire attempted to invade the peninsula through Yemen
in the 20s BCE, but could not adapt to the harsh landscape and thus failed to
annex the region.
One could hardly blame outsiders for ignoring the Arabian Peninsula. Its dry
climate is barely hospitable, even for the nomads who live there. Monsoon winds
bring seasonal rains to the southern coast of the peninsula in the autumn, but
these are stifled by the quickly rising landscape and never make it deep into
Arabia’s deserts. Similarly, rains from the Mediterranean Sea barely touch upon
the northern extremities of the Arabian Desert. The result is that the vast
majority of the peninsula remains dry year-round. Parched riverbeds known as
wadis run throughout the land, yet they are barely recognizable as rivers. When
clouds gather and rains fall, they become gushing and powerful waterways,
essential for the growth of the seasonal flora that manages to bloom in this dry
land. Once the wet season is over, however, the wadis return to their usual, dry
state, useless as sources of water. More reliable are the oases—small fertile
spots surrounded by the vast expanse of the desert. They were capable of serving
host to small communities, or as waypoints for travelers, but were hardly enough
to sustain an advanced and large society.
The Arabs
Civilizations tend to be greatly shaped by the environments in which they develop,
and the Arabs are no exception. Everything about the life of the Arab was based
around the harsh environment in which he lived. Due to the desert’s inability to
support settled civilization, the Arabs were constantly on the move in search of
fertile land for their flocks. One theory of the etymology of the label “Arab” even
posits that the word itself comes from a Semitic root meaning “wandering” or
“nomadic”. The Arabs would spend the summer months around whatever oases
or wells they could rely on year after year, trying to make supplies and water last
by living on the bare minimum. After months of enduring the summer heat, they
would migrate to the south, near Yemen, where rain fell in the autumn and fertile
land appeared for their herds. The rain-fed pastures gave their flocks of sheep,
goats and camels enough food to live off through the winter months as they
pitched their tents and temporarily settled. By the time the rains stopped and the
dry season began again in the spring, the Arabs returned to their oases and wells
to wait out another summer. This harsh cycle had been the norm for the nomadic
Arabs since time immemorial, and it remains in place for the Bedouin Arabs who
still live in Arabia’s deserts.
In pre-Islamic Arabia, hospitality was of such importance that a guest at the
home of an Arab was guaranteed at least three days of total security and
protection before he would even be questioned about why he was there.
This tradition was further reinforced by the Prophet, who stated that a guest
has the right to be hosted for three days.
The desert was not a place to be alone. With so many threats to the survival of
the Arabs, community cooperation was essential. Reliance on relatives was the
first line of defense against famine and the heat that constantly threatened
survival. Families were expected to share resources and shelter, and the concept
of pure individualism was strongly frowned upon. As such, the family (and by
extension, the tribe) served as the most important unit within Arab society.
Groups of families travelled together and were considered a qabilah, or clan.
Several clans would constitute a tribe, led by a tribal leader called a shaikh. Tribal
identity and belonging were vital in the pre-Islamic world. Belonging to a tribe
brought protection, support and economic opportunities. Tribes would go to
battle to defend one of their own, and tribal warfare was unnervingly common
before the arrival of Islam. Competition over grazing lands and flocks regularly
brought tribes into devastating wars which could last years and extract a heavy
human toll on the participants. For the Arabs, struggle was a constant, against
both man and nature.
In a tribal, nomadic society like this, artistic expression becomes difficult. The
resources and time necessary to complete great sculptures and paintings like the
ancient civilizations of Egypt and Greece were almost non-existent. Yet the
natural human desire to search for beauty could not be extinguished by the
desert sands. Instead it took on a new form: language. Perhaps more than any
other language in the world, Arabic itself is a form of artistic expression. Word
and sentence structure is fluid, creating many different ways for a person to
express the same idea. Poetry thus naturally became the de facto art of Arabia;
long, epic poems glorifying tribes and heroism in war were their greatest works of
art. The finest poets were revered celebrities in every way. Their words were
memorized by the masses and repeated for generations. The seven most
magnificent pre-Islamic poems were known as the mu’allaqat, meaning “the
hanging ones”. They were so called because they were hung on the walls of the
Ka’ba in Mecca, or alternatively because they were hung in the hearts of all Arabs
due to their reverence for the poetic medium. Despite being an advanced literary
society, writing was rare in the Arabian Peninsula. While a written form of the
language did exist by the 500s, it was rarely learned. Memorization was enough
for the Arabs, who were capable of learning poems that were thousands of lines
long by heart so they could repeat them to future generations. Memorization
would prove to be a vital skill once Islam arrived in the peninsula in the 600s.
When it came to religion, the pre-Islamic Arabs were almost exclusively
polytheistic. Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and his
son, Isma‘il (Ismael), built the Ka‘ba in the valley of Mecca in ancient times as a
house of worship for one God. The Ka‘ba was built as a plain rectangular building
on a foundation set by the first man—Adam. From this shrine, Isma‘il was able to
preach the monotheistic message to the Arabs, who adopted him as one of their
own. Over the centuries, however, the progeny of Isma‘il distorted his
monotheistic teachings. Stone and wood idols were carved to represent
attributes of God. Later, they would go on to represent separate gods entirely. By
the time of the Prophet Muhammad, there were 360 gods in the Ka‘ba. The
message of Ibrahim and Isma‘il was not entirely lost on the Arabs, however. The
two prophets were still revered figures in the minds of the Arabs and even some
of their basic teachings still held weight in this society. They certainly believed in
the God of Ibrahim and Isma‘il, called Allah in Arabic. But they believed he was
one among many different gods, represented by the idols. This belief system was
far removed from the strict monotheism those two prophets had preached, and