1.The Venture of Islam

2. The Ventureof Islam ~~~~Conscience and History in a Warld Civilization MARSHALL G. S. HODGSONVOLUME TWOTHE EXPANSION OF ISLAM IN THE MIDDLE PERIODSTHE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDON 3. Some of the material in these volumes has been issued in a different form in Introduction to Islamic Civilization (volumes 1, 2, 3, Copyright 1958, 1959 by The University of Chicago), in A History of Islamic Civilization (Copyright 1958 by Marshall G. S. Hodgson), and in an earlier version of The Venture of Islam (volumes 1, 2, Copyright 1961 by Marshall G. S. Hodgson).The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London 1974 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 1974 Paperback edition 1977 Printed in the United States of America ISBN: Vol. 1: 0-226-34683-8 (paper); Vol. 2: 0-226-34684-6 (paper); Vol. 3: 0-226-34681-1 (cloth); 0-226-34685-4 (paper) LCN: 73-87243 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 0410 11 12 13 14 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. 4. CONTENTSVOLUME II List of Charts List of Mapsvi viiBOOK THREE: The Establishment of an International Civilization I. Prologue to Book Three I. The Formation of the International Political Order, 945-1118 II. The Social Order: Mercantile Interests, Military Power, Liberty III. Maturity and Dialogue among the Intellectual Traditions, c. 945-1111 IV. The $ufism of the Tariqah Orders, c. 945-1273 V. The Victory of the New Sunni Internationalism, 1118-1258 VI. The Bloom of Persian Literary Culture and Its Times, c. 1111-1274 VII. Cultural Patterning in Islamdom and the Occident BOOK FOUR: Crisis and Renewal: The Age of Mongol Prestige Prologue to Book Four I. After the Mongol Irruption: Politics and Society, 1259-1405 II. Conservation and Courtliness in the Intellectual Traditions, c. 1258-1503 III. The Visual Arts in an Islamic Setting, c. 1258-1503 IV. The Expansion of Islam, c. 1258- 1503 A Selective Bibliography for Further ReadingGlossary of Selected Terms and Names Index to Volume IIvI3 12 62 152 201 255 293 329 369 371 386 437 501 532 575 581 587 5. CHARTSVOLUME II BOOK THREEThe Islamic Earlier Middle Period, 950-1250, with Reference to Events in the Oikoumene 6-7 Comparative Chronology: The Transition into the Middle Periods, 14-17 945-1118 18-21 Chronology of the Individual States, 945-1118 Muslim Belles-Lettrists, Scientists, Philosophers, and Theo16 9 logians, 945-1111 Types of Muslim Esoteric Elitism 197 Filiation of the Tariqahs and Their Founders, 945--1273 215 Sufis of the Earlier Middle Period, 945-1273 223 The Age of Sunni Triumph, 1118-1258 257-59 The Classical Persian Belles-Lettrists to 1291, with a Few Arabic Writers 29 8 Muslim Philosophers and Theologians in the Early Middle Period, 1111-1274 31 6 BOOK FOURThe Islamic Later Middle Period, 1250-1500, with Reference to Events in the Oikoumene The Ages of Mongol Prestige, 1258-145, and of the Timuris, 1405-1500 Early Growth of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1453 Later Learned Men, 130-156 Islamic Expansion in Africa and Southeast Asiavi392 -95 42 9468- 69553 6. MAPSVOLUME II The age of the Fatimid Dynasty The western Mediterranean Samanids, Buyids, and I):ara-khanids The Ghaznavids and the Seljuk empire Trade routes through the Afro-Eurasian Arid Zone and the Southern Seas The Crusading period in Syria and Anatolia The Murabits and Muwa1)1).ids The central Islamic lands in the early thirteenth century Mongol expansiC?n, mid-thirteenth century The spread of Islam to 1250 The Mongol Powers in Hiilegii's time, 1255-65 The central Mediterranean through India, fourteenth century Growth of the Ottoman empire to 1503 The conquests of Timur, 1370 - 1405 The expansion of Islam, 1250-1500 Malaysia and Indochina The Sudanic lands The northern regionsvii24 30 34 40 75 263 270 277 289290 411 413 425 431 534 550 554 565 7. BOOK THREEThe Establishment of an International Civilization All truth is a shadow except the last, except the utmost; yet every truth is true in its own kind. It is substance in its own place, though it be but shadow in another place. . . . -Isaac Pennington 8. PROLOGUE TO BOOK THREE The Middle Periods of Islamicate historyAfter 945 eE, the most characteristic traits of the classical 'Abbasi world, with its magnificent caliphal empire and its Arabic-language culture, were gradually altered so greatly that we must set off a major new era. The world of al-Man~ur, of Harun aI-Rashid, of al-Ma'mun, still readily discernible in its outlines in the time of al-Muqtadir (908-932), was scarcely recognizable five or six generations later. Baghdad gradually became a provincial town and the very name of the caliphate eventually disappeared. During the five centuries after 945, the former society of the caliphate was replaced by a constantly expanding, linguistically and culturally international society ruled by numerous independent governments. This society was not held together by a single political order or a single language of culture. Yet it did remain, consciously and effectively, a single historical whole. In its time, this international Islamicate society was certainly the most widely spread and influential society on the globe. (We shall refer to the period before about 1250 as the Earlier Middle Period; to the period from then to about 1500 as the Later Middle Period.) So far as there has been any common image of Islamicate culture, it has tended to be that of the Middle Periods-the periods after the pre-Islamic traditions in the Nile-to-Oxus region had died out (with the decline of the dhimmi population to markedly minority status), but before the Oikoumenic context (in terms of which the Islamicate culture was formed) began to be disrupted by the basic social transformation of one of its regions, the Occident. Taken narrowly, this means the time between the mid-tenth century at the collapse of the classical caliphate, under whose auspices the culture had been taking form, and the end of the fifteenth century, when a new world geographical balance gave its first intimations with the opening up of the wider oceans by Occidentals. The period of the High Caliphate tends to be seen through the image formed of it in the Middle Periods; those elements of its culture are regarded as normative that were warranted sound by later writers. More important, the problems that we have seen as distinctive of the Islamicate culture as such-the problems of political legitimation, of aesthetic creativity, of transcendence and immanence in religious understanding, of the social role of natural science and philosophy-these become fully focused only in the Middle Periods. This way of seeing Islamicate culture is partly legitimate. To the end of the High Caliphal Period, the Islamicate culture was still in process of formation; it was still winning the population to Islam and transforming the Irano-Semitic traditions into the new form which only after 945 was ready to be carried through large parts of the hemisphere. And by the sixteenth century, quite apart from the first glimmerings of the Occidental trans3 9. 4ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATIONformation yet to come, new tendencies within Islamdom had reached a point where-at least in the t~ree main empires then formed-in many ways, the problems we see at the start of the Middle Periods were at least transposed; even before being superseded by the radically new situation in the Oikoumene that supervened by the eighteenth century. The Middle Periods form a unity which encompasses the bulk of the time of fully Islamicate life. But it must be recognized that the Earlier Middle Period, up to the mid-thirteenth century, differed in its historical conditions rather importantly from the Later Middle Period, the period after the Mongol conquest had introduced new political resources, and the rather sudden collapse of the previously expanding Chinese economy produced-or reflected-a deterioration in the mercantile prosperity of the mid-Arid Zone. What was to be so different in the sixteenth century was well launched in the Later Middle Period. The Earlier Middle Period was relatively prosperous. By Sung times (which began about the end of the High Caliphal Period), the Chinese economy was moving from a primarily commercial expansiveness into the early stage of a major industrial revolution, in which industrial investment was increasing at a fast and accelerating rate in certain areas, especially in the north, while in the south new methods were multiplying the agricultural productivity. The Chinese gold supply multiplied enormously with new mines opened up, and its trade to the Southern Seas (the Indian Ocean and the adjoining seas eastward) naturally increased in quantity and quality as well. Conceivably in part in response to the increased supply of gold, traceable to China, the pace of commerce and of urban activity was speeded up elsewhere also, most notably in the Occident of Europe, itself newly intensifying agricultural exploitation of its cold and boggy north by use of the mouldboard plough. In such circumstances, the Islamicate lands, still at the crossroads of hemispheric commerce, would find their commercial tendencies, over against the agrarian, still further reinforced; the results were not necessarily the most favourable, in the long run, even for commerce, yet they would allow the Muslims to demonstrate the strength and expansiveness of their social order. The precariousness of agrarianate prosperityOpportunities for cultural expression within a society are increased with the diversity and differentiation of social institutions through which individuals can find expression. Institutional differentiation, in turn, depends on a high level of investment, not only in the ordinary economic sense but in the sense of investment of human time-of specialized effort and concern-such as makes possible, for instance, cumulative investigation in science. But high investmedt presupposes prosperity, in the sense not merely of a well-fed peasantry (though in the long run this may be crucial) but of a substantial surplus available for other classes, allowing them both funds and leisure to 10. PROLOGUE TO BOOK THREE5meet specialized needs. Hence while prosperity cannot assure cultural creativity, in the long run it is a presupposition for it. The opportunities for Muslims to take full advantage of the potentialities for prosperity and creativity offered by the Oikoumenic situation were limited by a feature of any society of the agrarianate type: that is, the precariousness of any prosperity, and of the complexity of institutions that tends to come with sustained prosperity, if it rose above a minimum institutional level. Once an urban-rural symbiosis was achieved on a subsistence level, so that agriculture could hardly proceed normally without the intervention of urban products and even urban management, almost no historical vicissitude short of a general natural disaster was likely to reduce the society to a less complex level than that. But many events might ruin any further complexity, beyond this level, that might have arisen in a society, any complexity of institutions either imaginative or especially material; and might force the society (at least locally) down nearer to the basic economic level of urban-rural symbiosis. Massive assault from less developed areas, whose masters were not prepared to maintain the sophisticated pattern of expectations that complex institutions depend on, could reduce the level of intellectual and economic investment and with it the level of institutional complexity of a more developed area, if that area was not so highly developed as to possess unquestionably stronger force than peoples less developed. Gibbon noted this point in comparing the predicament of the agrarianate-Ievel Roman empire with the Occident of his day, which could not be conquered except by people who had themselves adopted its technical level. As Gibbon also noted, internal pressures also could reduce the level of complexity. Spiritual, social, or political imbalances might cripple a ruling elite and its privileged culture in several ways: they could evoke outright disaffection in less privileged classes -a disaffection that might be expressed in a drive for social and spiritual conformity to populistic standards, as well as in outright rebellion; or they could result in paralysis within the ruling elites themselves, which could hasten political collapse and military devastation. Then could emerge a militarized polity, with despotism at the point of military power and anarchy at the margins, neither of which served to support delicate balances among institutions. Complex institutions might survive many a conquest and much serious internal tension, and more often than not the ravages of warfare or the damages of political mismanagement could be repaired if they did not recur too continuously for too long. But in the long run, such resiliency depended on a high level of prosperity, which in turn depended on a balance of many favourable circumstances which were not necessarily self-perpetuating. Too much political failure could undermine the very resources with which ordinary political failure could be counteracted. The disturbance of this balance in any way could lower the level of social complexity or even 11. 106010551017/18After 1000997-10309 899 6996o? Traditional date for conversion of Turks along Syr (]axartes) river9 60 /1Almoravids found MarrakashItalian cities rise to international importance, look to E. Mediterranean and Black Sea tradeI:Iamdanids collapseNormans invade S. ItalySunni Selju~s into Baghdad and lands N. and W.Caliphate of Cordova collapsesMa1).mud of Ghaznah; expands into India, Khurasan, and Transoxania Samanids collapse and their domains divided between Ma1)mud and J5:ara-khanids; I):ara-Khitays press Turks from E.Prince of Kiev converted to ChristianityShi'i Fatimids in Egypt (to 1171); found CairoByzantines strong in Anatolia, push into Syria (to 1025)Shi'i Buyids in Baghdad, to 1055Sh i' i I:Iamdanids in Aleppo; Samanids virtually independent in TransoxaniaAfter goo, towns begin to grow in N.W. Europe; Baltic countries, Hungary converted to Christianity94590Nile-to-Oxus RegionEuropean RegionThe Islamic Earlier Middle Period, 950-1250, with Reference to Events in the OikoumenePaper money used as well as coins Sungs lose control of territories in their N.W. and N.E. to steppe peoples (?)Sungs encourage sea trade; compass in use; printing of classical texts using movable type Cities proliferate and flourish; merchants more importantCivil service examination system; merit system built around knowledge of literary classicsSung dynasty in China; steppe peoples to N.W. and N. remain strongFar Eastern Region 12. Death of Roger II of Sicily, patron of Islamic learningJ5:ara-Khitays (to Turkestan 1211)begin rule in E.Crusaders into Syria (to 1291); take Jerusalem (to 1187)Nizari assassins formed126112 5812 44 12 49-5 0Saint Louis in Egypt Mongols sack Baghdad, kill caliph Mamliik forces turn back Mongol forces in Syria, Mamluks displace Ayyiibid rulers; Hiilegii distracted from Syrian venture by troubles with BerkeMongols devastate Transoxania and Khurasan Crusaders lose Jerusalem for last time121 51220'SMagna Charta1204 1211Mongol detachment appears N.E. of Transoxania, ~ara-Khitays go down before Khwarazm shahs and steppe nomads -Ilgo?Latin Crusaders take ConstantinopleKhwarazm shahs expand their power; Ghuris take Delhi, 1190118 71154Saladin takes Jerusalem from the Crusaders and most of the rest of Syria113011221099Saint Mark's Cathedral built at Venicelogobegin pushing into AnatoliaToledo falls to Reconquista Christian forcesSelju~sNormans invade England (and Sicily, 1060)10851066Chingiz Khan takes Yenching (capital) from JuchenJuchen, from N.E. enter and rule N.China, displace Khitays, who move toward W., set up '~ara-KhitayJ empireKhitay people (related to 'Mongols') rule N. China as Liao dynasty 13. 8ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATIONoccasionally reduce it, at least locally, to the minimum economic base-level of society of the agrarianate order. To some degree, in some periods and areas in Islamdom in the Middle Periods, this precariousness of agrarianate-level prosperity did make itself felt. On the whole, the prosperity of much of Islamdom evidently declined especially in the later part of the Middle Periods, and a limit was presumably put to further development of institutional complexity. In some cases, there was a retrogression; though the impression that has been prevalent among historians, that there was a general retrogression proceeding through the Middle Periods, is probably incorrect. We have far too little evidence, as yet, to define precisely what happened. In any case, there was clearly no economic expansion within most Muslim lands comparable to what took place in western Europe or in China during the first part of the Middle Periods. This fact forces the student of the society to confront two questions. First, the great political question, in many cases, must be: how was the inherent threat of political disintegration to be met? Second, if any general consequences of hemispheric economic activity are to be looked for, we must often inquire what sorts of social orientation were encouraged as a result in the mid-Arid Zone, rather than expecting an overall higher level of investment and of institutional differentiation. But though such questions must repeatedly be posed, economic precariousness is not yet the same as general economic decadence. Documentable decline in prosperity often turns out to have been local rather than general. Moreover, the effect of any economic decline on cultural activity and institutional complexity may be temporary; if a new (lower) level of resources is stabilized, prosperity on that base can again be a very effective foundation for cultural activity. It must be recognized that, at least in some fields, effectively high levels of prosperity were often reached in Islamdom. An agrarianate economic base-level was almost never fully reverted to, and even in the most unprosperous periods and regions a certain amount even of economic development was taking place. Meanwhile, in many parts of Islamdom some portions of the Middle Periods were very prosperous indeed, even if sometimes on a quantitatively narrower base than once. Such prosperity led to high creativity; probably at least as high as in most periods and most areas of the Oikoumene before the Modern Technical Age. On cultural unityBetween 950 and 1100 the new society of the Middle Periods was taking form. A time of disintegration for the classical "AbbaSI patterns was thus a time of institutional creativity from the perspective of the Middle Periods themselves. By the beginning of the twelfth century, the main foundations of the new order had been laid; between 1100 and 1250 it flowered, coming to its best in those fields of action most distinctive of it. 14. PROLOGUE TO BOOK THREE9This society was at the same time one and many. After the decline of the caliphal power, and with the subsequent rapid enlargement of the Dar aI-Islam, not only Baghdad but no other one city could maintain a central cultural role. It was in this period that Islam began to expand over the hemisphere: into India and Europe, along the coasts of the Southern Seas and around the northern steppes. There came to be considerable differentiation from one Muslim region to another, each area having its own local schools of Islamicate thought, art, and so forth. In the far west, Spain and the Maghrib were often more or less united under dynasties sprung from the Berber tribes of the Maghrib hinterland; these countries had a common history, developing the art which is known from the Alhambra palace at Granada, and the philosophical school of Ibn-Tufayl and Ibn-Rushd (Averroes). Egypt and Syria, with other east Arab lands, were commonly united under splendid courts at Cairo; they eventually became the centre of specifically Arabic letters after the decline of the Iraq with the Mongol conquests (mid-thirteenth century). The Iranian countries developed Persian as the prime medium of culture, breaking away seriously from the standards of the High Caliphal Period, for instance in their magnificent poetry. Muslims in India, opened up to Islamicate culture soon after 1000, also used Persian, but rapidly developed their own traditions of government and of religious and social stratification, and their own centres of pilgrimage and of letters. Far northern Muslims, ranged around the Eurasian steppes, likewise formed almost a world of their own, as did the vigorous mercantile states of the southern Muslims ranged around the Indian Ocean. Yet it cannot be said that the civilization broke up into so many separate cultures. It was held together in virtue of a common Islamicate social pattern which, by enabling members of any part of the society to be accepted as members of it anywhere else, assured the circulation of ideas and manners throughout its area. Muslims always felt themselves to be citizens of the whole Dar aI-Islam. Representatives of the various arts and sciences moved freely, as a munificent ruler or an unkind one beckoned or pressed, from one Muslim land to another; and any man of great stature in one area was likely to be soon recognized everywhere else. Hence local cultural tendencies were continually limited and stimulated by events and ideas of an all-Muslim scope. There continued to exist a single body of interrelated traditions, developed in mutual interaction throughout Islamdom. Not only the cultural dialogue that was Islam as such, but most of the dialogues that had been refocused under its auspices in the Arabic language, continued effective even when more than one language came to be used and Arabic was restricted, in the greater part of Islamdom, to specialized scholarly purposes. But the unity of the expanded Islamdom of the Middle Periods did not hold in so many dimensions of culture as it had, in the greater part of Islamdom, under the High Caliphate. The Islamicate society as a whole had initially been a phase of the Irano-Semitic society between Nile and Oxus, building 15. 10ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERN ATION AL CIVILIZATIONon the everyday cultural patterns of its underlying village and town life. In the Islamicate lettered and other high-cultural traditions we find a greater break with the past than in most traditions of everyday life in the region; yet the Irano-Semitic high-cultural traditions, of which the Islamicate formed a continuation, had always been nurtured by the humbler regional traditions of everyday life. But as Islamdom expanded extensively beyond the Nile-to-Oxus region, the cultural break became more total. The everyday culture of the newer Muslim areas had less and less in common with that in the original Irano-Semitic lands. Not only language differed, and many patterns of home life. such as cuisine or house building, but also formative features like agricultural technique, and even much of administrative and legal practice. What was carried throughout Islamdom, then, was not the whole IranoSemitic social complex but the Islamicized Irano-Semitic high cultural traditions; what may be called the 'Perso-Arabic' traditions, after the two chief languages in which they were carried, at least one of which every man of serious Islamicate culture was expected to use freely. The cosmopolitan unity into which peoples entered in so many regions was maintained independently of the everyday. culture, and on the level of the Perso-Arabic high culture; its standards affected and even increasingly modified the culture of everyday life, but that culture remained essentially Indic or European or southern or northern, according to the region. Indeed, even between Nile and Oxus local cultural patterns had varied greatly and the Islamicate unity prevailed only limitedly on the local, everyday level. Customary law could be as distant in Arabia itself from the Shari'ah law of the books as in the remotest corner of the hemisphere. Yet the Irano-Semitic core region continued to be distinguishable within the wider Islamdom. There the Islamicate society and its specifically high culture, because of its original relation to local conditions and patterns, had deep local roots as compared to the areas in which the Perso-Arabic tradition meant a sharp break especially with the high culture of the past and had little genetic connection with the everyday levels of culture. We may call this central region the 'lands of Old Islam', though the point is not the priority of Islam there but its continuity with earlier traditions; Islam in the Maghrib was almost as old as between Nile and Oxus, yet the Islamicate culture was not much founded in the Latin culture which had preceded it there and the Maghrib cannot be regarded as part of its core area. Throughout the Middle Periods, the lands from Nile to Oxus maintained a cultural primacy in Islamdom which was generally recognized. Muslims from more outlying areas were proud to have studied there and, above all, emigrants from those lands, men whose mother tongue was at least a dialect of Persian or Arabic, had high prestige elsewhere. The social patterns and cultural initiatives of the core area were accorded a certain eminence even when not followed. The Middle Periods, then, vhich pre-eminently represent Islamicate culture 16. PROLOGUE TO BOOK THREEIIto US, suffered two pervasive cultural limitations: despite considerable prosperity, their high culture was repeatedly threatened with a reduction of economic and social investment toward minimal agrarianate levels; and in the increasingly wider areas of Islamdom outside the region from Nile to Oxus, the Islamicate high culture was always tinged with alienness. These facts pose underlying problems, which may not be the most important historical problems for the student of the Middle Periods, but which are never quite to be escaped. Why should such weaknesses have appeared in the civilization at all? But then why, despite them, the tremendous cultural vigour, power, and expansiveness of Islam and the Islamicate civilization throughout these periods, when in the name of Islam a richly creative culture spread across the whole Eastern Hemisphere? 17. The Formation of the International Political Order, 945"-1118 The Earlier Middle Period faced problems of totally reconstructing political life in Islamdom. The time saw great political inventiveness, making use, in state "building, of a variety of elements of Muslim idealism. The results proved sound in some cases, but provided no common political pattern for the IsIamicate society as a whole; but that society nonetheless retained its unity. This was provided rather by the working out of political patterns on relatively local levels, both military and social, which tied the world of Islamdom together regardless of particular states. The lamali-Sunni caliphate assumed a new role as a symbolic rallying point for all the local units. The resulting political order turned out to have remarkable toughness and resiliency and expansive power. Development of political and cultural multiplicity From the point of view of what had preceded, the political developments of the tenth century can be looked at as the disintegration of the caliphal empire. Where opposition Shi'i movements did not gain a province outright, the provincial governors became autonomous and founded hereditary dynasties, or local herdsmen-soldiers seized power and gave the caliph only a nominal allegiance. In any case, this one generally acknowledged authority was rendered impotent "and, after 945, the government he headed, already internally disrupted by its mercenary soldiers, lost control even of its home provinces. The caliph became a mere cipher in an empire parcelled out among usurpers. What broke down, of course, was the political idea that had supported the caliphal power. It is what may be called a Ipolitical idea' which gives individuals and groups a historical basis for expecting that the state will endure as a power to be reckoned with despite any given current crisis. This implies not merely the subjective prestige of legitimacy (important though that is) but also concrete geographical, economic, military, and sociocultural components which gather together standing group interests effectively enough to give most groups concerned a practical reason for hoping the state will survive, or at least for expecting others will so hope. On this basis they will, willingly or by way of precaution, forgo short-term interests if they conflict with the long-term interests of the state power. 12 18. FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ORDER13It was a conception of the advantages of the unity of the Muslims that had held the caliphal state together through a series of major crises-the first fitnah at the time of 'All, the second at that of 'Abd-al-Malik, then the revolution which overthrew Marwanl power, and finally the division of the empire between al-Ma'mun and al-Amin. All parts of the arid region from Nile to Oxus had relatively close ties with the rest; men in any part of the region were likely to travel to other parts or at least have connections there, and were concerned to see a common political stability. Sustained by the concentrated resources of the Sawad, the central bureaucracy was able, on the whole, to command peace within the region as a whole and to suppress local inequities, and to assure the free flow of trade and the existence of large concentrated markets. Throughout the empire, the idea prevailed among the politically active that not only the greatest moral prestige but also the greatest material advantage was to be had through unity-in practice, that is, through accepting whichever claimant to central power could command strongest support. In the last resort, if secondary interests proved inconsistent with unity there were usually enough who chose to bet on the side of unity to ensure its victory. Consequently in any crisis, when some section of the body politic defected, the central power was able to command the support of other sections in sufficient strength to break up the points of resistance. But by the time of al-Mutawakkil, the central civil authority was becoming discredited. However much ideally the notion of Muslim unity was still cherished, in practice the idea had ceased to work. The court was financially mismanaged and unable to give effective leadership; under these circumstances, the soldiery, which as a body of mercenaries did not identify itself with the Muslim community at large so much as with their individual commanders, ceased to respect the court; their commanders were therefore in a position to override the civil authority; and-the crucial point-there was no other section of the population which identified its interests with the central caliphal power and possessed enough solidarity to counterbalance the soldiery if the soldiers ever united on anything. With the central power thus paralyzed at home, respect for it failed in the provinces; those who counted there politically found it profitable and feasible in the immediate circumstances to support a governor who retained the revenues at home rather than send them to Baghdad. As the court's revenues diminished, its power of attraction dwindled and defection snowballed. In the tenth century it was still locally established powers, or the armies they had originally raised, that took up the leadership that the Baghdad court no longer provided. But the separate governors and generals stood, in themselves, for no serious political ideas; they presented mere fragments of the old caliphal state. By the eleventh century political disintegration had proceeded so far that alien wandering Turkic nomads, possessed of the single unpurchasable virtue of military loyalty to their tribe, had solidarity 19. 14ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATIONComparative Chronology: The 'fransition into the Middle Periods,945- IIIR945-1055 Predominance of Shi'i powers, failure to establish a Shi'i caliphate961-976 al-I:Iakam II of Spain (and Morocco), fosters science and letters at C6rdova; improves Cordova mosque 978-1008 aI-Mansur (and son, "1002-8) effective rulers in Spain; peak of Muslim power there *969-1171 Fatimid dynasty in Egypt on basis of Isma'ili Shi'ism (not recognized by other Shi'is); builds naval empire 952-975 al-Mu'izz: Cairo founded and becomes Fatimid capital, 972996-1021al-~akim: his eccentric life is occasion for founding of Druze sect; patron of optician Ibn-al-Haytham (965-1039)944-967 The I:Iamdanid Sayf-al-dawlah tries to head off Byzantine aggression at Aleppo, where I:Iamdanids hold till a bout 1015 in some form; patronized al-Mutanabbi' .(915-965), poet; also the pioneering Faylasuf, aI-Farab! (d. 950) 968 Antioch lost to Byzantines 949-82 'Adud-al-dawlah, maintains Bftyid centre in Iran and Iraq; caliph, since 945, figurehead under Bftyids976-997 Nul}. II, last strong Samanid ruler maintaining caliphal administrative traditions; his libraries educate Ibn-Sina (980-137), physician reckoned the greatest Faylasuf1010 A king at Gao on the Niger converted to Islam *See the following chart, on the chronology of the individual states, for further details. 20. FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ORDER1031-90 Numerous small dynasties rule various parts of southern Spain (called Reyes de Taifas); peak of Spanish Arabic poetry1034-67 'Ali aI-Da'I, first $ulay1).id, rules much of Yemen and the Arabia~ijaz;high point of Fatimid Isma'llism in999-1165 Ileg-khans, heads of a Turkish tribe since 932, small Muslim power at Kashghar, take Transoxania from Samanids*998-(1161) Khurasan goes to the Ghaznavids in the Afghan mountains (from 976 the area had been newly Islamized under Samanid aegis); after 1001 the Ghaznavids also control the Panjab 998-1030 Ma1).mnd of Ghaznah devastates N. W. India and attracts scholars from former Samanid territories1010 Shah-Na1nah written by Firdawsi, epic of pre-Islamic Iranian kings973-1048 aI-Blrnnl, historian and mathematician, makes a sophisticated study of Indian culture1050 The Fatimids send the Arab Bedouin Bann Hilal into N. Africa to punish defection from Isma'ili cause; they devastate large areas973-1058 Abu-l-'Ala'al-Ma'arri, sophisticated ascetic poet of Syria, last great figure of classical Arabic tradition1055-1220 Restoration of Sunnism on an international basis (with caliph acting as a political accreditor. Military leaders as amlrs: madrasahtrained 'ulama' setting the intellectual tone and that of civil administration, $ftfi shaykhs leading in spiritual life, all-amirs, 'ulama', and shaykhs -tending to hold position as much by personal prestige as by hereditary position or by subordination to authority, and to be relatively free to move from one Islamic land to another with role unchanged15 21. 16ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATIONComparative Chronology-continued.*1055-92 Toghril-beg, Alp-Arslan, and Malikshah, the three great Selju~ sultans (having first, as Turkish tribal leaders, seized power in Khurasan, 1037) rule in succession as Sunnis throughout Transoxania, Iran, Fertile Crescent, and much of Arabia, displacing Buyids as masters of the caliphs Ni~amulmulk, vizier who tried to organize the empire on the basis of compromise between the military Turkish regime of the SeljuJ.rs and the civil Sasant-caliphal administrative tradition, staffed by Sunnt lulama,'1063-92 Rule of1065Ni~amiyyah madrasah in Baghdad, most important of his schools for lulama'1071 Battle of Malazgirt, Seljurs defeat Byzantines; Anatolia open to Turkish immigration (172-117, Siilayman rules in Anatolia)*1036-94 al-Mustan~ir in Egypt (1062-74, crisis in Cairo; 1074-94, Badr al-Jamali military vizier; to 1121, his son Af:arlu~?) Turks E. of Syr (J axartes) river including I):ara-khanids (called also Ileg-khan), purported ruling house of I>:arlu~s Alptigin, Turkish military chief under the Samanids, and possibly a I>:arlulj:, siezes Ghaznah; his slave commander and son-in-Iav Subuktigin founds Ghaznavid dynasty (976-1186) I~ara-khanids and Ghaznavids take over and divide Samanid domains betveen them, the :f5:ara-khanids holding the lands E. of the Oxus river except for Khvarazm, the Ghaznavids the other lands; Turkish groups nov in firm political and military control of these landsThe Buyids Imami (Twelver) Shili mountaineers from Daylam, the three founding brothers rising to pover in the 930s; took over W. Iran, and in 945 Baghdad, S. Iraq, and for a short vhile 'Uman; ,var ,vith I:Iamdanids to N.W., Samanids to E.; Baghdad begins to lose its singular prominence; Shiraz begins to rise in importance, also Cordova, Cairo 25. 20ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATIONChronology of the Individual States-continued. 98310301031-7597 6-997999- 10301118Bftyid unity begins to fall apart, local provincial autonomy begins to appear; Ikhwan al-~afa' flourishes, also the poet al-Ma'arr! Mal}.mftd of Ghaznah takes Rayy; Ghaznavids strong in W. Iranian plateau areas Reign of Caliph al-Qa'im; he champions a revival of Sunnism and (in Iraq) a limited personal powerThe Ghaznavids Sabuktigin extends his power from Peshawar in N.W. India through Khurasan Ma1}.mftd of Ghaznah, enthusiastic Sunn!, conducted campaigns in N.W. India, founded permanently effective Muslim power and expansion there; called ghaz (warrior for the faith); acknowledged suzerainty of the caliph; took over Khwarazm, Rayy, I~fahan, libal; benefited from enormous wealth of booty gained in Indian expeditions, maintained splendid court (Firdawsi, C. 1010); but maintained also large army and heavy taxes Selju~s defeat Ghaznavids; their power in Khurasan and W. Iranian lands collapses; they are henceforth confined to Ghaznah area and N.W. India where they continue in power and to expand in N. India Ghaznavids become tributary to Selju~s Selju~s990SI030S155 1063-9 2Selju~Turkish family become Muslims; located along lower Syr (Jaxartes) river; leaders of Oghuz Tiirkmen nomads Beginning eleventh century: Selju~s and followers enter Transoxania and Khwarazm, warring with and against factions of ~ara-khanids SeljuJ.rs and followers in Khurasan then into W. Iran, war against Ghaznavids, raid towns; campaigns are destructive, so also the Tiirkmen pastoralism to settled agriculture; 1040, decisively defeat Ghaznavids there; Tiirkmen especially little amenable to bureaucratic system depending on settled agriculture; Selju~ leaders begin to recognize necessity of imperial control, yet parcel out governing regions to members of family Tiirkmen push into Azerbaijan and the Jazirah; successes attract more Tiirkmen from Khurasan and Transoxania; Toghril-beg (1038-63), exercising Selju~ authority in W. Iran, tries to control or divert to hinterlands these Tiirkmen Toghril andSelju~s intoBaghdadAlp-Arslan rules for 10 years, followed by his son Malikshah; vizier Ni~amulmulk; Tiirkmen sent westward into Syria and Anatolia; attempt at centralizing administration and protection of agriculture and towns; roads and mosques built 26. FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ORDER211065-6 7Ni.~amiyyah17 1Crushing of Byzantines at battle of Malazgirt (Manzikert) assures Anatolia's being open to Tiirkmen, who within a decade penetrate to Aegean Sea, are involved 'vith Byzantine claimants to the throneI07SSelju~swar with Fatimids and local rulers in Syria settle their capital at Baghdadmadrasah built at Baghdad19 1Selju~s1094Byzantine emperor appeals to pope for help199Jerusalem taken by Crusaders; Baghdad and Selju~s do nothing Beginning twelfth century: local Tiirkmen dynasties begin to arise1111Death of al-Ghazali:1118With death of Mu1}.ammad, Selju~ domains now permanently break up into independent principalities, noteworthy being Selju~s in Rum (Anatolia-traditional dates 177-137), in Khurasan (Sanjar nominal sultan of all-l097-1157); Iraq and Syria under local provincial rulers including Selju~ claimants ~ara-khanids (orIleg [Ilig]-khans): Muslim Turkish group important in lands E. of Syr (Jaxartes) river including Semirichye and Kashghar converted to Islam 950S990STake over Samanid domains N. and E. of Oxus (TransQxania); later split into a W. line centered on Samarqand and Bukhara, and an E. line centered on Balasaghun and Kashghar; in early eleventh century they received patent of authority from caliph (like Ghaznavids); Selju~s and Tiirkmen tribesmen in their territories become a faction in 1020S Eleventh century: ~ara-khanid groups war with each other, hold sway in various provincial capitals of lands including Sentirichye, Kashghar, Transoxania1069Yusuf of Balasaghun writes allegorical poem in Turkish; first example of belles-Iettrist literature Late eleventh century: Seljuk campaigns against ~ara-khanids, hold nominal suzerainty in parts of TransoxaniaThe Fatimts: a Sht't state based on the Nile and a navy Before those tribes came on the scene, the most grandiose of the efforts to restore Muslim unity had been worked through. The ideal of the Fatimid rulers of Egypt, and of the Isma'iU Shl'i sect which supported them in all the lands of Islam, was to reunite the Muslims under a new 'Alid caliphate and to bring it to final victory in the whole world. In this they failed. They did succeed, however, in making of Egypt, and of their new capital Cairo, a centre of commerce and of the arts and sciences, which rivalled Baghdad in the eleventh century. The Fatimi state was one of the most successful in overcoming the threat of reduction to despotism and anarchy. This state was based on a threefold political idea. A primary component in the political 27. 22ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATIONsynthesis was the agrarian wealth of Egypt. The Fatimis maintained in full the bureaucracy of the Nile valley. A second, and more distinctive" foundation of the Fatimi Egyptian prosperity was sea commerce. On the basis of this commerce (combined with the natural productivity of Nile-fertilized Egypt), wealth flowed into Cairo, to be distributed again from there. The government at Cairo was thereby enabled to hold the sort of loyalties that Baghdad had forfeited, and to set the fashions within its sphere. Finally, a third component in the political idea, of more ambivalent effect, was the standing appeal of the Cairo regime to the Isma'ill subjects of its rivals throughout Islamdom. Egypt has commonly been two societies in one: that of the land and that of maritime commerce. Flooded yearly with silt-rich Nile water" Egypt has for millennia been a fabulously productive agricultural land" apparently not subject to the natural vicissitudes of the Iraq. Though sometimes agriculture was more extensive than at other times, Egypt's rulers have never wanted for agrarian wealth. But the peasants and their gentry have tended to form a closed society, set apart from the constantly changing society of the cosmopolitan commercial classes" which in turn have often had alien origins and sympathies. (This may partially1"account for the relative sterility of Egypt in bringing forth figures great beyond its own confines.) These commercial classes have sometimes been more dominant and sometimes less" for the use made of Egypt's geographical position for commerce has been less unvarying than its agriculture" and has largely determined its relative prosperity from time to time. It is perhaps especially in Ptolemaic, Fatimi, and latterly in Levantine Egypt that the 'alien' commercial classes set the tone of the Egyptian state. The Egyptian rulers and merchants of Hellenistic and Roman times had much increased their wealth from the trade between India (and all the Southern Seas) and the Mediterranean lands, one of the two best routes for which was the nearly all-water route across the Arabian Sea, up the Red Sea" and across a brief portage (sometimes made into a canal) to the Nile and thence the Mediterranean. India and the Indies produced a variety of luxury goods-spices, perfumes, fine cloths, steel goods" etc.-which found a ready market in Syria, Anatolia" the Ukraine, Greece" and the other Mediterranean lands; they were paid for with fine glassware" cloths, and other works of handicraft or else with unworked products of the northern and southern hinterlands such as furs and gold. Much of this trade passed through Alexandria" and the Egyptian middlemen reaped great profit. But always other routes were at least as advantageous, and especially since about the third century, when the Sasanian empire had come into being" the Egyptian trade route had been less prominent; for a still larger share of the trade than usual went along the chief rival route (the best route by nature): passing up the Persian Gulf and the Tigris-Euphrates rivers" in Sasanian territory, and thence overland through Syria to the Mediterranean. With the breakdown 28. FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ORDER23of 'Abbasi authority and the reduction of purchasing power at Baghdad itself, and the advent of a number of petty states in the Fertile Crescent, often at war with each other, the Euphrates trade route apparently became less profitable as compared with the route via the ever-opulent Nile delta. The Egyptians, under a series of essentially independent governors, took advantage of the situation to lure a larger share of the trade back to the Red Sea and the Egyptian ports. This policy came to full fruition under the Fatimid dynasty, which was able to maintain in dependency many distant provinces important for the trade, to the advantage of the Egyptian privileged classes. The Isma'iU Shi'is who had come forth in rebellion in 909 in North Africa and established their imam in place of the Aghlabid ruler in what is now Tunisia, had enlarged on the strong Aghlabi position in the west Mediterranean, extending their sway even to Morocco. In 969, after numerous tries, they annexed Egypt with the aid of a few local Shi'i supporters, of many other Egyptian malcontents, and of Berber tribal troops from the Maghrib. In Egypt they continued to be naval-minded. There they built a new city, next to the old capital, Fustat; this was Cairo, designed to rival Baghdad; and they ruled as caliphs. But Cairo was not only a strategic centre but also an inland port with busy ship traffic up the Nile; it quickly became a major transshipment point between the Mediterranean and the Southern Seas. The first caliph at Cairo, al-Mu'izz, was glad to foster the prosperity of his new seat of power.! In accordance with the Isma'ili ideal of making Islam triumphant in all the world, it was hoped the strong Fatimi navy could be used in the conquest of Constantinople and the Christian empire. In the meantime, it was useful in ensuring Egyptian prosperity. Already Ibn-Killis (d. 991), the vizier of al-Mu'izz, took pains toward the end of the tenth century to foster trade. The Fatimids had strong religious reasons for controlling Mecca and Medina, where their caliphate could be proclaimed to all the Muslim world. This coincided with a need to maintain political oversight of the coasts of the Red Sea as far south as the Yemen, so that there could be no excessive interference with trade by local middlemen there. The Fatim! navy controlled both the Red Sea and the eastern Mediterranean seaways; Fatimi power was respected from Sicily, which owned Fatimi overlordship, to Sind, where an Isma'ili da'i was established. Though the Isma'ili party was very strong in the inland areas of the Iraq and Iran, the Fatimis had little fortune there; 1 S. D. Goitein, 'From the Mediterranean to India: Documents on the Trade to India, South Arabia, and East Africa from the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries', Speculum, 29 (1954), 181-297, on the trade patterns of the time must be corrected by his later books. His experience is revealing: at first he thought that India exported chiefly ra"w materials and saw the Mediterranean as a more active economic centre; only later he came to realize that this was untrue and moreover that it led to a serious misconception of the trade as a whole (and of the relations to societies)-in fact, Indian export of manufactured goods was a major determinant of the trade. 29. 24ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATIONto the end, it was the reach of the Fatimi navy that determined the extent of the dynasty's control outside Egypt. Nevertheless, Isma tili loyalt,ies helped mould both the internal and the foreign policy of the state. By the time the Fatimis took over Egypt, they had little of the revolutionary left in their practical programme. But they intensified their radical theoretical appeals to the underground IsmaCili movement that still was proving popular with malcontents in the central Muslim lands. The Qarmatians of Bal).rayn, independent in east Arabia, were not disposed to recognize the enthroned imam. But the ordinary 1smacili datis in the Iraq and Iran mostly decided to recognize the new power, which was quick to honour them and their ideas; with fresh vigour, they renewed their efforts and hopes for completing the goals of the Isma cili movement throughout 1slamdom.100200300'. ' 400 i 200 10I400 " 6000The age of the Fatimid DynastyThese Ismacilis living outside the Fatimi state supplied both a ready-made foreign policy and a source of internal leadership. Unless it disowned them altogether, the Egyptian government had to serve as an eccentric focus for revolutionary forces from Nile to Oxus, and necessarily stood opposed to the entire series of Iranian regimes that were occupying the former cAbbasi territories, whatever their relations among themselves. But these foreigners also contributed a certain number of disciplined and intelligent administrative leaders to Egypt itself. Parallel to the regular state organization was a religious hierarchy, charged with teaching the Isma tili doctrine to those who chose to .be initiated, and also with organizing and disciplining the movement both beyond the Fatimi frontiers and within them. This Ismacili hierarchy had almost as much prestige as the governmental hierarchy; the chief daci at its head ranked alongside the vizier; indeed, the same man sometimes served in both posts at once. 30. FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ORDER25The consequences of this Isma'ill presence may have been felt chiefly in the continuity and dependability of the Fatim! policies, which gave the dynasty a prestige and longevity unparalleled in Islamdom in that period. Indeed, the social structure within Egypt continued little changed-unless, perhaps, so far as it was marked by a systematic concern for the needs of the commercial and tradesman classes. But the intellectual atmosphere was one of notable ferment (though much of its more distinctive activity, being restricted to an Isma'lli context, had little overt effect on later periods in Islamdom). The old Isma'ili interest in Falsafah was now given free rein among the intellectuals; it was, in effect, just another sort of luxury indulged in by those who could afford it. Isma'lli thinkers had only their hierarchical superiors to answer to for their inner beliefs, and delighted in a wide range of speculation. Much of this was a matter of strictly Isma'lli allegorism and symbolism: beautiful systems were built up in which the figures mentioned in the Qur'an and in Shi'ilore shadowed forth the spiritual structure of the universe. But an interest was also taken in every aspect of natural and philosophic inquiry. The Isma'llts made Cairo a centre of learning. The Azhar mosque, the chief mosque of the city, was (as it is even now, under lama'i-Sulllli auspices) above all a centre of study, endowed for this purpose by several Fatimid caliphs, notably al-'Aziz (976-996) and al-~akim (996-1021), the successors of al-Mu'izz. It had a library, and stipends for teachers and students. The brilliance of Fatiml high society shows most readily in its fine arts. Egyptian commercial prosperity was not based only on the transit trade. Egyptian handicraft industry was itself an important element in the trade. Among other things, fine fabrics were made, especially in certain towns near the coastline or actually on it, where the air was conducively humid. These industrial arts were inherited from the pre-Islamic Coptic times. They were controlled by the government, which absorbed a large part of the product. The rest went to the luxury markets everywhere between Nile and Oxus, and far beyond. These luxury crafts were significant both from an economic and from an artistic point of view. By way of productive activity they contributed to the opulence of the Egyptian ruling classes both directly and by providing articles of trade. Thereby they assured several flourishing town populations / of a share in Egypt's agricultural produce. At the same time the craft work had aesthetic merit. This appeared in the colour designs in the cloth, and in the form and decoration of pottery and of crystal ware as well as of bronze pieces, of all kinds of jewellery, and generally of all articles of use which were susceptible of being made beautiful. The lovely treasures of our museums labelled 'Fatimid' allow us to share remotely in the luxury those craftsmen made possible. The Fatiml period is famous for solidly beautiful pieces of glaze or crystal ware. Some older Coptic traditions were used in its design; Iranian themes 31. 26ESTABLISHMENT OF AN INTERNATIONAL CIVILIZATIONare more evident; but all were reworked for Fatimi taste. The growing independence of Egypt as an artistic centre is especially clear in architecture. Under the Fatimids, forms continued to be borrowed from Iran-for instance, the domed tomb-but in the course of this there was established the distinctive tradition that was to culminate in the Mamluk mosques: for instance, the early experimentation with 'stalactite' forms at the corners where a square base meets a domed roof, and the grooved treatment of the mi1)rab, the niche indicating the qiblah toward Mecca, which at times could produce an effect of wonderful concentration. In such ways, the Fatimi aesthetic life was endowed with a notable continuity of style which set off this side of the state, complementing its political and social life. The decline of F atimi powerOnce it had been well established, the independent cultural and economic prosperity of Egypt long outlasted the specifically Isma'ili forms with which it was tied up in early Fatimi times. So long as the Red Sea trade route flourished, the main lines of the Egyptian state remained sound. On the other hand, Isma'ilism began to weaken even before the end of the Fatimid dynasty. Isma'ilism, however, had been a key element in the Fatimi elan within the limits imposed by naval possibilities. It had brought with it special cultural and political opportunities and also special paradoxes and weaknesses. With the slowing down of the Isma'ili impulse, the Egyptian power became more localized, never bearing quite so wide a sway; and the peculiar Isma'ili intellectual and political experiments did not outlast it. The decline of the Fatimid dynasty was tied in with the special paradoxes of Isma'ilism itself. It had begun already before the end of the tenth century, when the Fatimids' lieutenant on the North African mainland, Ibn-Ziri, relying on his Berber tribal connections, refused to acknowledge the imam any further but set up an independent dynasty. Nevertheless Fatim! authority completely disappeared in the Maghrib and Sicily only gradually in the first half of the eleventh century. More serious from an Isma'ili point of view-and hence from the point of view of the stability of the dynastic appeal-were internal schisms. The first of these occurred under the eccentric al-J:Iakim (996-1021). Al-ij:akim seems to have been an effective ruler. Defying dynastic precedent, he appointed a Sunni chief qa