Internationalization of Islam

Encarta Historical Essays reflect the knowledge and insight of leading historians. This collection of essays is assembled to support the National Standards for World History. In this essay, Richard Foltz examines the dynamics and consequences of the rapid expansion of Islam that began in the 7th century ad.

Internationalization of Islam

By Richard Foltz

Islam is often thought of as an Arab religion—and for much of the 7th century it was. The third major Abrahamic faith (with Judaism and Christianity, religions that trace their origin to the biblical Abraham) arose in western Arabia. Its prophet, Muhammad, was an Arab; its revealed scripture, the Koran (Qur’an), is written in Arabic; and by the end of Muhammad’s life in 632 all the tribes of the Arabian peninsula had submitted to his authority. Arab-led armies conquered territories from Spain to India within less than a century, and they established a central administration, the caliphate, in which Arabs held most of the positions of power and privilege.

Many Arabs came to view their astonishing military successes as proof of their new religion’s superiority. This notion was apparently confirmed by the rewards of new and unimagined wealth and status throughout the conquered lands. Arabs acquired vast amounts of booty in battle, and following their victories they assumed important and lucrative positions within the new imperial government of the caliphate. Their new empire also gave them control over trade, a situation highly favorable both to Arab merchants and to government officials who collected tariffs.

It is not surprising, then, that the Arabs were loathe to share these vast benefits with people outside the Muslim community. Nor is it surprising that outsiders sought to become part of the privileged group. In large measure, this tension underlay Islam’s dramatic transformation from a specifically Arab cultural expression into a cosmopolitan, universal tradition within little more than a hundred years.

Arab Acceptance of other Cultures

Although many people still believe Islam was a religion spread “by the sword,” it is important to distinguish the spread of rule by Muslims from the spread of Islam as a religious belief. The Koran states that “there is no compulsion in matters of religion,” and the Muslim Arabs, desiring to preserve their power and the mystery of their success, had little interest in bringing others into the community. However, the Koran does enjoin Muslims to spread Islamic rule, so that wherever Muslims live, they are not forced to live according to laws that might go against their faith.

From the first major Arab conquests—of the former Byzantine lands of Egypt and Syria to the west and north, and the entire Persian Sassanian empire to the east—Muslims generally were content to leave existing systems and infrastructures intact. As a traditionally tribal people, the Arabs had no previous experience or models of their own for ruling a whole empire of non-Arabs. They sensibly chose to leave things largely in place, while occupying the top governmental positions and presiding as the ultimate authority in important decisions. Administrative records were kept in Greek, Aramaic, or Pahlavi Persian throughout the 7th century and even later in the east, and coinage only gradually acquired Arabic inscriptions. Taxation systems remained intact, and local communities within the new Arab territories were mostly left under the legal jurisdiction of their own leaders. Centrally appointed Muslim judges, or qadis, ruled only in major cases. Bureaucrats generally kept their positions under nominal Arab bosses. In education, Christian, Jewish, and other non-Muslim teachers continued to teach at the major institutions (such as the medical school at Gundeshapur in southwestern Iran), often instructing Muslim Arab students.

In fact, compared with conditions under the Byzantines and Sassanids, the period of the Arab Umayyad dynasty (661-751) was one of extraordinary religious and cultural tolerance for the non-Muslim subject populations. The ruling policies of the Umayyads were driven less by benevolence than by practical concerns, however. The Arabs considered Islam their own religion; as long as they remained firmly in control politically, the traditions of the so-called protected peoples (conquered residents protected by the Muslims from other invading armies) posed no threat. Furthermore, the Arabs were aware of the many ways in which their subjects’ cultural heritages could benefit them as rulers. The Umayyads allowed and encouraged the immigration of skilled individuals—such as physicians, astronomers, and mathematicians—from the Byzantine world. Many of these immigrants were members of unorthodox Christian sects or were unconverted pagans who suffered persecution under the Byzantines and found the Arab-ruled lands more hospitable. The Arabs also were open to learning from the intellectual traditions of the classical Mediterranean world, including the works of the Greek and Latin philosophers and scientists, shunned by the Christian Byzantines. As a result of this interest, many classical works were translated into Arabic; later these Arabic translations were transmitted to medieval Europe, mainly through Spain.

Through the religious self-confidence of the Umayyads, the Muslim Arabs benefited from the most useful aspects of the civilizations that preceded them. Their adoption of a vast array of administrative, technical, and scientific tools enriched their empire and shaped their own developing Islamic culture.

Consequences of Conversion to Islam

Many of the Arabs’ subjects sought membership in the community of Muslims for the very reason that Arabs were protective of their privileged group. Bureaucrats under Arab rule envisioned an increase in power through conversion: They imagined that their relationships with their superiors would improve and that their positions would be more secure if they adopted a Muslim identity. Businessmen saw advantages in belonging to an increasingly Muslim-dominated global trade network, in which Muslims were routinely given favorable terms and concessions. Intellectuals hoped to win legitimacy for their views and ideas by presenting them in an Islamic framework. By converting, professional soldiers could fight in the Islamic army and thereby hope to win booty and other benefits of the continuously successful Arab campaigns. Some converts also might have seen an advantage in freedom from the jizyah, or poll tax, that the protected peoples were required to pay their Muslim overlords. The Muslims saw this as a protection tax because non-Muslims were not supposed to serve in the army. However, while some non-Muslims may have considered this tax discriminatory, during the first years of the Umayyad caliphate the jizyah was significantly less than the heavy taxes that had been exacted by the Byzantines and the Sassanids. Therefore, it probably did not seem particularly onerous to most of the Caliph’s subjects.

A problem facing those who wished to join Islamic society was that the society was still organized according to Arab tribal norms. A major theme of the Koran is the equality of all believers before God, but in reality hierarchical divisions among the Arabs had never disappeared. Earlier converts and their descendants felt entitled to special status, and clans from Mecca felt rivalry with those from Medina. As certain clans immigrated to new homes throughout the empire and acquired local power bases, tensions arose between Arab groups in different geographical regions. Thus, while the Arabs could define themselves as Muslims in relation to outsiders, among themselves they remained keenly aware of the clan affiliations that formed the basis of their identity within their own communities.

By definition, anyone who was not an Arab had no Arabian clan identity. Becoming a Muslim was easy enough, the only requirement being the recitation of the shahada, the profession of faith: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his Messenger.” But becoming a member of Arab society was another matter. For a non-Arab convert the solution was to seek an Arab patron to serve as a sponsor within a given clan.

The Abbasid Revolution

The system of sponsorship by which non-Arabs gained admission into the Muslim community did not guarantee them the full equality laid down in the Koran. Each client’s place within the Arabs’ clan-based social structure was ensured only by the Arab patron, upon whom the client remained dependent. By the late 7th century it seems that many of the converts were beginning to express dissatisfaction with this state of affairs and to seek ways to assert their equal rights as Muslims.

The clients were not the only dissatisfied Muslims, however. Discontent arose among the various Arab clans over regional inequalities in political and economic power. Many Arabs felt that the Umayyad caliphs and their families, who ruled from Damascus (in present-day Syria), were imitating the corrupt lifestyles of the ousted Byzantine governors. The Umayyads were accused of drinking, debauchery, nepotism, and other vices. The conflict between the first Umayyad governor, Muawiyah, and the fourth caliph, Ali, led indirectly to Ali’s murder in 661. Likewise, it was Muawiyah’s son Yazid who sent the army that killed Ali’s second son, Husayn, and his followers at Karbalā’, Iraq, in 680.

The issue of legitimacy served as a rallying point for Muslims with all manner of complaints against the Umayyads. For the many opponents of the Umayyads, a natural alternative was to support the leadership of the House of the Prophet, or Shi’ites. In Khorāsān—on the eastern Iranian fringe of the empire farthest from the reach of caliphal power—widespread opposition to the rule of Damascus, in combination with popular pro-Ali sentiment within the local military, inspired a revolt that succeeded in dethroning the Umayyads in 751. The movement was led by Iranian general Abu Muslim in the name of a descendent of the Prophet’s uncle Abbas; hence the name of the new dynasty, the Abbasids.

The Growing Influence of Non-Arab Converts

By the dawn of the 8th century the number of non-Arab converts was increasing steadily, and with this increase came a corresponding rise in influence. As Muslims with a recognized place in Islamic society, these converts could claim access to the divine authority embodied in the Koran alongside—and sometimes in competition with—their Arab patrons. To do this they had to learn Arabic, and they became the first Arabic grammarians. As the converts adopted Arabic as the premier language of the increasingly ecumenical Islamic culture, they transformed the very language itself. Those engaged in translation work had an especially strong influence in shaping the language. Arabic, originally a language of desert nomads, lacked vocabulary for expressing many abstract scientific and philosophical concepts. The many new words and expressions coined by translators converted Arabic into a language of high civilization, capable of communicating the most complex and sophisticated ideas.

As more and more non-Arabs came to identify themselves as members of the Muslim community, tensions arose over norms of proper lifestyle and behavior. The Koran explicitly addresses no more than a handful of legal and lifestyle questions. Although many Muslims believe that, correctly interpreted, the Koran contains guidance in all matters of life, interpretations often do not concur. As long as all or most Muslims were Arabs, Arab social custom prevailed when the Koran did not instruct otherwise. However, non-Arabs often had different norms, and conflicts arose as the number of non-Arab Muslims grew. Appeal to the common authority of the Koran did not always resolve these issues, and Muslims sought a supplemental source of authority in the example of the prophet Muhammad. The Koran validated this recourse by stating, “You have a good example in the Messenger of God.” If one party in a dispute could claim that the Prophet himself had set a precedent for a given behavior or position, that was seen as authoritative for Muslims. This could only be known, however, from anecdotes about the Prophet that had been transmitted orally by those who had known him in person.

Many critically minded individuals assumed the task of collecting stories about the Prophet. They attempted to establish the credibility of these stories by analyzing the biographies of those who had transmitted them. The result of this vigorous scholarly activity, which continued into the 9th century, was an immense body of literature called hadiths. Most Muslims came to accept hadiths as second only to the Koran in authority. It appears that the increasing internationalism of Islam was key in bringing about the compilation of hadith literature, because all six of the hadith collections recognized as canonical by Sunni Muslims were compiled in the Iranian world. Some scholars have speculated that it was the divergence in social norms between Arabs and non-Arab converts that gave rise to the need for a commonly accepted basis of authority. That is, as long as all Muslims were Arabs, questions not explicitly addressed in the divine revelation would be resolved on the basis of Arab norms; whereas, if the disagreement were between Arabs and non-Arabs, the established norms of the respective parties would not be the same, hence the need for a second authority.

The Rise of Iranian Influence

Under the Abbasids the imperial capital was moved to Mesopotamia, at the western edge of the Iranian world. From that point on, Iranian influence on secular and religious life was paramount. The new caliphs chose Iranians (most notably from the Barmak family, or Barmecides, who formerly had been Buddhist priests) for most of the important ministerial positions. Under the influence of their Iranian advisors the Abbasids adopted the Sassanian imperial system almost entirely, including court protocol, the system of tax farming (local landlords collecting imperial taxes), the solar calendar and equinox festivals, patronage of court literature, and music. They even adopted the ideologies and symbolism of the pre-Islamic Sassanian emperors; these ideologies and symbols were based on absolute kingship in which the ruler was seen as the “shadow of God on Earth.”

The latter half of the 8th century saw an enormous rise in the prominence of Iranian factors shaping the development of Islamic civilization. In 762 the caliph Mansur built a new imperial capital between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers near the former Sassanian capital of Ctesiphon; the new city was called Baghdād, Persian for “given by God.” Along with the Barmak family, other Iranians attained high administrative positions under the Abbasids. Among them was Ibn al-Muqaffa’, who is best known for translating literary works from Persian into Arabic. Although Arabic was not his native language, Ibn al-Muqaffa’ viewed these translations as a means of asserting Iranian cultural superiority.

This paradox goes to the heart of Iranian identity. Ibn al-Muqaffa’ was a convert to Islam, and within a few centuries nearly all Iranians would become Muslims. Yet it was the Arabs—viewed as uncivilized inferiors by Iranians since ancient times—who had brought Islam to them. Even today, many Iranians perceive the Arab destruction of the Sassanid empire as the single greatest tragedy in Iran’s long history. In the 8th century, Iranian intellectuals such as Ibn al-Muqaffa’ saw Persian translations into Arabic as a way of establishing Iranian legitimacy and status throughout the Islamic world. These intellectuals initiated a literary movement known as the shu’ubiyya, through which works such as the Thousand and One Nights were translated into Arabic and won their place in the world of Islamic literature. The shu’ubiyya movement symbolized the many means by which Iranians and other non-Arabs claimed Islam for themselves and integrated their history into Islamic culture.

The power of the Iranian cultural heritage proved strong. Throughout subsequent centuries, a heavily Iranian-influenced Islamic civilization spread and took root across the Asian continent into India and parts of China. In the 11th century Mahmud of Ghazna, a recently converted Turk from Central Asia who established Islamic rule in northern India, sought to legitimize himself by sponsoring the composition of the great Iranian national epic, the Book of Kings, which glorifies Iran’s pre-Islamic Persian past. Around the same time, a Central Asian translator might write in his preface to an important work on local history, “Few people these days have the desire to read a book in Arabic. Therefore, on the advice of friends, I have translated this book into Persian.”

Continuing Legacy of Islamic Expansion

In little more than a century, the early tensions between non-Arabs and their Muslim counterparts helped create the international religion of Islam. By the time the Mongols destroyed the caliphate in 1258, Islamic literature, painting, architecture, and education had been shaped by Iranian norms. When one considers the earlier Iranian contributions to Islamic administration, finance, law, theology, and philosophy, it is clear that Iranian culture played an important role in shaping the development of Islam—a role that, as one scholar has put it, was not less than that of Hellenistic civilization in shaping the emergence of Christendom. During the same period the Islamic West, Syrians, Egyptians, Berbers, Spaniards, and others also contributed to development of Islam. And, from the 11th century on, Turks, Indians, and other Asian peoples also brought new influences to the dynamic Islamic civilization.

Today less than 15 percent of the world’s 1 billion Muslims are Arab, and more than twice as many Muslims live in South Asia as in the Arab world. From Senegal to the Philippines, converts to this world religion have infused their own native cultural traditions into the diverse reality that is the Islamic world. Their continuing contributions are part of a process initiated by the first converts more than 13 centuries ago.

Richard C. Foltz is the author of Religions of the Silk Road and several other publications. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

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