The History of Foundation of Islam - Essay Example

Islamic History The history of foundation of Islam is clothed with the veils of legend and obscured by multiple conflicting accounts that make its true outline all but impossible to discern with any clarity. But it is incontrovertible that Northern-Arabia prior to Muhammad was a predominantly tribal environment, structured by exigencies of camel herding, trading, feuding, and raiding. The 'civilized' area of Arabia was not in the heartland where Islam was born, but rather had long been located in the coastal south and along the gulf. Inland, the only possible location for development of any sort of state was in the impoverished and remote region dominated by Mecca and the Quraysh clan, where ancient pilgrimage centers protected markets in perfume, leather, and other trade goods. But no such development occurred until the advent of Muhammad, who was born around 570, received his first revelations at the age of forty, undertook his momentous journey to Medina (the hijra) in 622 (year one in the Muslim calendar) and died in 632, having led his people in the conquest of the whole Arab peninsula, and having initiated their great and ultimately successful war against the surrounding Sasanid and Byzantine empires. The religion of Islam is from the Muslim point of view, "the religion of Abraham and Ishmael" the forefathers of the Muslims. According to Ibn al-Kalbi, who conveys also the belief of his predecessors, Ishmael settled in Mecca where he became the father of many children who supplanted the Amalekites of Mecca; to him is ascribed the origin of the Arabs. The Qur'an states that Abraham and Ishmael "raised the foundation of the House" and established a "proper worship". The rites of the pilgrimage, the circumambulation, the visitation of the lesser pilgrimage, the vigil of Arafat, the sacrifice of the she-camels and the acclamation of the name of the deity "came down from the time of Abraham and Ishmael", according to Ibn al-kalbi, and they constitute a part of the religion.(Tamara) Islam had come upon the world scene in the seventh century in connection with the explosion of Arabic-speaking, horse mounted warriors out of the Arabian desert under the leadership of the Prophet Muhammad and his successors. The period of hemispheric history from 1000 to 1500 A.D., what we will call the Islamic Middle Period, witnessed a steady and remarkable expansion of Islam, not only as religious faith but as a coherent, universalist model of civilized life. The spread of Islam into new areas of the hemisphere during the Middle Period was given impetus by two major forces. One of these was the advance of Turkish-speaking of Muslim herding people from central Asia into the Middle East, a movement that began on a large scale with the conquests of the Seljuk Turks in the eleventh century. The second force was the gradual but persistent movement of Muslim merchants into the lands rimming the Indian ocean, that is, East Africa, India, Southeast Asia and China, as well as into Central Asia and West Africa south of the Sahara. A close look at the patterns of travel and migration in the post-Abbasid centuries reveals a quiet but persistent dispersion of legal scholars, theologians, Sufi divines, belle- lettrists, scribes and architects outward from the older centers of Islam to these new frontiers of Muslim military and commercial activity. (Spencer) The Islamic world in Ibn Battuta's time was divided politically into numerous kingdoms and principalities. Muslims on the move regarded the jurisdictions of states as a necessary imposition and gave them as little attention as possible. Their primary allegiance was to the Dar al-Islam as a whole. The terrible Mongol conquests of Persia and Syria that occurred between 1219 and 1258 appeared to Muslims to threaten the very existence of Islamic civilization. Yet by the time Ibn Battuta began his traveling career Mongol political dominance over the greater part of Eurasia was proving conducive to the further expansion of Islam and its institutions. It was in the last decade of the Pax Mongolica that Ibn battuta made his remarkable journeys. In a sense he participated, sometimes simultaneously, in four different streams of travel and migration. First he was pilgrim, joining the march of pious believers to the spiritual shrines of Mecca and Medina at least four times in his career. Second he was a devotee of Sufism, or mystical Islam, traveling as thousands did, to the hermitages and lodges of venerable individuals to receive their blessings and wisdom. Third he was juridical scholar, seeking knowledge and erudite company in the great cities of the Islamic heartland. Finally he was a member of the literate, mobile, world-mind edelite, an educated adventurer as it were, looking for hospitality, honors and profitable employment in the more newly established centers of Islamic civilizations in the further regions of Asia and Africa. In any of these traveling roles, however he regarded himself as a citizen, not of a country called Morocco, but of the Dar al-Islam, to whose universalist spiritual, moral, and social values he was loyal above any allegiance. His life and career exemplify a remarkable fact of Afro-Eurasian history in the later Middle Period. (Sharon) During the early Muslim conquests a pressing need for additional manpower was felt by the Muslim leaders. The Muslims who from the beginning had set as their goal the islamization of the entire world, were enable both to man the newly conquered territories and to continue to expand without supplementing their rather small, purely Arabic armies. Already in the reign of Caliph Umar bi al- khattab we see the incorporation of the units of the former Iranian army, such as the Asawira, the hamra and the Hamra al- daylam into the Muslim diwan (military register) all of whom received quite good conditions in return1. During the Umayyad period there is some scattered evidence for the existence of mamluks, in fact if not in name. The earliest and most important mention of them is when Abdullah bi al-Isbahani, a commander in Musaab bi al- Zubayr's army in the war against Mukhtar. Is said to have had 4000 mamluks. A second report is from the year 125/742-3, when Nasr bi sayyar bought 1000 mamluks, arming and mounting then on horses. These developments were paralleled by weakening and breakdown of the Arab tribal armies. (Ignac) It was during the Abbasid Period that the "iranization and mamulkization" of the main Islamic armed forces were greatly accelerated. The Abbasids having come to power on the spears of their Khurasani soldiers were already inclined towards peoples of the north- eastern frontier of the Islamic world. Other factors facilitating the large scale introduction of the mamluk system into the Caliph empire were the final elimination of the Arab tribes from the Diwan, the gradual infiltration of the Caliphs freedman into the socio-military elite of the empire, ant the final " subjugation and islamization of tansoxania and the deep penetration into the land of Turks"2 The Caliph Mutasim (218- 227/833-842) was the first ruler to establish a mamluk which was composed of Turks. Within the span of several years, and inspite the opposition from other military and semi- military elements, these mamluks would become the predominant factor in the Muslim armies. In the following decades the Abbasid empire began to disintegrate with smaller successor states forming around its periphery. Throughout the Islamic history the army emerged as the most predominant institution in the state. Its importance was first and foremost due to the fact that almost from the very inception of the Islamic empire it was the army which decided the identity of the ruler and the duration of their rule. Because of the commanding position of the army in the Muslim political and social life, it is no wonder that it has remained the most organized and the most influential institution in the Arab and Muslim world in this everyday. In modern times the armies in most of the Arab states has been responsible for the rapid transformation of the short lived civilian political system into military regimes. The Fatimids in Egypt were not like their Abbasid counterparts in the east. The Buyids, for example, assumed control over the Abbasid caliphs in a similar way but they ruled rather more directly and in their own name. In fact the Buyid amirs appointed their own wazirs, who invariably came from the ranks of the scholars and the bureaucracy. The Saljuk sultans likewise had their own wazirs who, as in the case of the famous Nizam al-Mulk, were men of the pen. Therefore in east the Caliph simply ceased to rule in almost every way, except in name and the real power lay with the military. The wazirate was thus an office subordinate to the sultan, not to the Caliph. Fatimids attack on Egypt in A.H 341., the surviving specimens might represent a minting error or an issue struck in anticipation of forthcoming victory. Mamluk Egypt And Takrur(West Africa) Takrur first appeared in the Arabic sources as the name of the Kingdom on the lower Senegal. According to Al-Bakri writing in 1067/8, Warjabi bi rabis, the King of Takrur, who died in 432/1040-1, "embraced Islam, introduced among them Muslim religious law and compelled them to observe it, and thus opening their eyes to the truth and the people of Takrur are Muslim today"3. REFERENCES Elad, Amikab. Islamic History And Civilization, 1995. Arshad, Mohammed. An Advanced History of Islam, 1967. Shaban M A. Islamic History: a new Interpretation, 1976. Sharon M. Studies in Islamic history and civilization, 1997. Yusuf Sayed. Studies in Islamic History and culture, 1970. Sonn Tamara. Brief History of Islam, 2004. Goldzhier Ignac. Introduction to Islamic Theology and law, 1981. Netton Ian Richard. Sufi Ritual: The parallel Universe, 2000. Penney Sue. Islam Foundation, 1999. Spencer Herbert, Levy Reuben. An Introduction to Sociology of Islam, 1930. Read More