september 12 – 21 “arabic culture and islam”...• sulayman bin sleyum had brought a proposal...

September 12 – 21“Arabic Culture and Islam”

• Videos: ‘Caravans of Gold’‘Islam: Empire of Faith’

• Visiting Speakers: Michael Frishkopf (Music)Iman Mersal (MEAS/MLCS)

The Culture of Islam

What aspects of Arabian Bedouin culture and society do we see embedded in Islam?(referencing in particular ‘Islam: empire of faith’)• Orality and veneration of language• Role of clan• Concern for the vulnerable• Issues/values of desert life• Belief in spirits, mysticism (sufism)

What aspects of Islam in turn shaped culture and society? (referencing both videos ‘Islam’ and ‘Caravans of Gold’, as well as “Readings”)

• Arabic and literacy• law• Rules governing images and worship• Rules governing gender relations/patrilineality• The role of the Mosque• The role of the hajj (pilgrimage)• Conversion

The Culture of Islam: Arabic and literacy

• Because Arabic was the language of the Qu’ran, it was learned even in non-Arabic speaking regions – as Islam spread, so too did the use of Arabic

• Written in different ways in different regions; in some areas primarily ‘oral’ (language of the book), written only by scholarly/religious elite

• Some areas, alphabet adopted to transcribe local languages (ef Hausa)

• Other areas Arabic used in conjunction with local languages, written in Arabic script (eg Swahili – East Africa; Hassaniya - Mauritania)

• Reluctance to depict people in art led to more attention given to Arabic itself as art-form (see ‘Readings – Arabic Calligraphy), including decoration on pottery, paintings, rugs, cloth, buildings

• Created basis for trans-national ‘culture’ and communication

• Arabic literacy usually included understanding numbers, calculations, book-keeping facilitating expansion commercial networks, ‘diaspora’ Arabic scholars

The Culture of Islam: law

• Shari`a ["The way (to the watering hole)"]: The body and content of Islamic law. Traditionally divided into: Religious duties and Obligations to other people

• Fiqh: The study, or science, of Islamic jurisprudence.

• “Roots” of law: The Qur'an, hadith and umma (‘concensus of the community’); concept of ‘ijtihad’

• Four main schools (tend to dominate in different parts of Muslim world):– Hanifi– Maliki– Shafi'i– Hanbali

Shi’ite law –Ja’fari

(see ‘Islamic Law’ and ‘History of Islamic Schools of Law’ under “Readings – Additional Resources)

The Culture of Islam:Rules governing images, worship

• Move from depicting and worshiping many Gods to worshipping only one and not depicting him/her other than in calligraphy, as well as fear that recreating the image of a person invited undo attention (potentially ‘worship’) generated distinctive art styles favouring flora, fauna

““’atomism’ .... is the notion that all things, living or not, are made up of combinations of exactly identical atoms. The composition of atoms into “things” it is argued, is a divine prerogative, but artists or artisans, who must not compete with God, are allowed to organize these atoms in any arbitrary way they wish. Thus the free and imaginative variations of Islamic ornament or unusual combinations of motifs were seen as reflections of a philosophical doctrine on the nature of reality.”(from ‘Islamic Textile Arts)

• Work such as Moroccan Kilims (rugs) often contain imperfections:

This is why the “mistakes” we see in kilims have significance: were the kilim-maker to become too proud of their own skill, to seek perfection in their work and place too much importance upon their own abilities and creations, this would place them in danger. To be an act of devotion their work needs to show humility, an acknowledgement that their skill is given them by God, their materials and leisure provided by God ...... any beauty which they create from their labours is a small light from Allah, a hint of the unlimited beauty created by Allah in the next world . (from ‘Islamic Textile Arts)

The Culture of Islam:Art, Islam, Gender and Textiles

During the Ottoman Empire, the economy was largely based on textile production and trade, which the rulers subsidized and regulated. Carpets, silks, cottons, and other luxury goods comprised the wealth of commodities that through trade, mainly with Europe, led to the maintenance of a healthy economy during the Ottoman Empire. Women played an extremely important role in this textile economy, and the outlet they found in embroidery and cloth spinning allowed for an undeniable amount of power and financial independence in a world dominated by men.One significant aspect of the Ottoman textile industry involving women was embroidery, both domestic and in workshops. Most of the embroidery in the empire came from the Imperial Harem and other harems of high officials, from the workshops and factories, and from domestic women working independently in their homes. The latter group was the largest and produced the most unique and intricate works, with a widespread reputation for excellence. Ottoman women in the city centers, confined to their homes by social convention, used embroidery mainly to pass the time, but the beautiful pieces they produced became a source of income as well, thereby allowing them some financial independence. Because these women were often working individually and could support themselves, they actually had the authority and respect to be able to refuse commissions if they so wished, even from the Imperial Palace.

(See samples next slide)

Right: Berberrug weaving, Morocco(see Readings – Islamic Textile Art)

OttomanEmbroideredTextiles(Woven byWomen)

The Culture of Islam:Rules governing images, worship

• But particular styles of portraiture and human representation continued to flourish –especially under influence of western art forms in 17th and 18th centuries (fictional treatment in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red )

• Note lack of perspective, human likeness

• More Representations can be found at (under ‘Readings -- Additional Resources’):Topkapi webpage (Ottoman): http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/%7Ehistory/topkapi.html‘My Name is Red’ (excerpts from resource page)

http://www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr/%7Ehistory/topkapi.html

The Culture of Islam:Rules governing gender relations

• Impact on architecture -- separate quarters for men and women (see ‘Public and Private Space’ and Timothy Insoll ‘The Archaeology of Islam , Book, pdf file especially pp. 17,19-20; both under “Readings – Additional Resources).

• Harems (also see ‘Public and Private Space)

• Impact on dress – ‘modesty’ for women (see Islamic Dress, Islamic Clothing under “Readings – Additional Resources”

LeftTurkish

RightPersian

FarModern

The Culture of Islam:role of the mosque

• Islam requires collective prayer on Fridays, usually in a Mosque: traditionally, it was said that a Muslim community was defined by the distance the call for prayer could be heard; ‘prayer’ unites Muslims everywhere

• While Mosque’s differ all over the Muslim world (according to local building materials and the wealth of a given community), architecturally they tend to aim for similarity in terms of minarets, prayer spaces and often attached social services like libraries, hospitals, schools

The Ka'aba mosque, in Mecca, is an important part of the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Sankore Mosque at Timbuktu in Mali is built in traditional Sahelian style out of dried mud.

The Grand Mosque in Kuwait was inaugurated in 1986,

The Culture of Islam:role of the hajj

• Hajj literally means 'to set out for a place'. In Islam, however it refers to the annual pilgrimage that Muslims make to Mecca with the intention of performing certain religious rites in accordance with the method prescribed by the Prophet Muhammad

• While today one flies there and back, traditionally it took months, often years. Some never returned but the pilgrimage process became a means of spreading ideas and cultures over very long distances.

(See ‘Short History of the Hajj’ under “Readings – Additional Resources”)

The Culture of Islam:role of the mosque

Telemcen, Algeria (1303-36)

Istanbul, Turkey (1610-1616)

Damascus, Syria 706-713Tahoua, Niger 1962-82

Sulayman Mosque Istanbul 16th C

Hesseki Hurem, Istanbul 1540 (mosque, school, soupkitchen) 1550s added women’s hospital, bathhouse

Early Medieval Empires in Africa and Asia 12-15th Centuries

Early Medieval Empires West Africa 12-16th Centuries

Western Eurasia: 1258-1405

OttomanEmpire14th c.through17Th c.

Spread of Islam:conversion

• Arabian Peninsula: combination attraction to tenets of faith, attraction to military success, military conquest (video: ‘Empire of Faith’)

• Central Asia, Anatolia (Turkey): combination but largely conquest – other religions continued to co-exist

• North Africa: combination conquest and voluntary conversion (conquest itself did not ‘convert’ populations – Berbers gradually attracted to ‘power’ and culture of Islamic societies – most of Muslim army that conquered Spain Berber not Arab)

• West Africa: attraction to law, literacy ‘power’ – in context of commerce; conquest?

• East Africa: cultural conversion in context of commerce, settlement


• Takrur, West Africa: story of the King who converted after years of drought (9th- 11th

C)

• Sahara: rise of the AlmoravidsInfluenced by Islam by 10thC; 11th C leader made the Hajj – requested scholar to return with him to bring ‘true’ faith

“When he (Abd Allah b. Yasin) arrived with Yahya b. Ibrahim in the land Sanhaja ... he began to teach them religion and to explain the Law and the Sunnah to them, to command them to do good and to forbid them to do evil.”

• Initial resistance; Ibn Yasin ‘retreated’ to place where he attracted followers, returned to desert to fight those who refused to accept; eventually fought into Spain

• “Al-murabit generated a spate of scholarship which formed the nucleus of the educational centers in the region of West Africa. This scholarship appear to have set the tempo of and continued to influence the intellectual climate for along time leaving a permanent stamp on the he intellectual tradition in the region. This intellectual tradition produced chain of scholars for the region, through whose activity knowledge and scholarship spread far and wide in the vast region – origins of famed Timbuktu.”(“Tradition of Tajdeed” http://www.webstar.co.uk/~ubugaje/tradtajdid2.html)


• Swahili, East Africa: tied by trade to Arabian-Persian Worlds (Muscat, Shiraz)Tradition has it Persian traders founded series of towns along the coast – most famous, Kilwa, ‘purchased’ for the amount of cloth it took to encircle the island in 11th c…Clearly set in context of Commerce

• Coins struck in name of ‘founder’

• Archeological evidence shows gradual growth of Muslim community (Shanga), building of larger mosques (see Timothy Insoll)

• Continued existence of ‘traditional’ town suggesting synergy between communities

Spread of Islam:‘cutlure’

• Emergence of Swahili (from Arabic ‘sahil’ or coast, same origin as ‘sahel’ in West Africa) – language of Bantu origin, grammar, large Arabic vocabulary, also Persian words

• Mixed ‘Arab-Persian’ influence seen in architecture, literature (poetry – utendi)(see ‘Swahili Poems’ and ‘Islam, Language and Ethnicity’ under “Readings”)

• New development: 1830s Sayid Said (Oman) established capital at Zanzibar, developed extensive commercial empire extending to interior (as far as eastern Congo)

• Traders of mixed descent: ‘Swahili’ and African

• Took language, ‘culture’ and religion to settlements far in interior – many continued to look not only to Sultan in Zanzibar, but to customs of Oman

• Network provided basis for spread of Islam, especially during Colonial era


• Tippu Tip (Muhammad bin Hamid c.1830-1905) ruled a commercial empire in Equatorial Africa from the 1860s to 1890.

• Born in Zanzibar of a Swahili merchant and a Nyamwezimohter, he began his ventures in the early 1860s south of Lake Tanganyika


• “The Marriage that was Not to Be’ (story reflecting nature of Islamic-Arab culture in East Africa, early twentieth century)

• Sulayman bin Sleyum had brought a proposal to marry Zuwayna bint Muhammad. It must have been sometime before 1910. Zuwayna had not been in Tabora long—she had fled into German East Africa from the Congo Free State after her father, Muhammad bin Khamis al-Kiyumi (an Arab born in Oman) had been killed fighting the Belgians in the late 1890s. Both Sulayman and Zuwayna were part of a community of Omanis who lived in Tabora, a bustling town on the central plateau of East Africa. Tabora had grown up in the mid-nineteenth century from a series of hamlets in the Unyanyembe region, more than 500 miles from the Indian Ocean. Groups of Arabs and coastal traders established a base for themselves in Unyanyembe in the 1830s and 40s by allying with local chiefs, making them business partners and fathers-in-law. The best known example of this is Muhammad bin Juma al-Murjebi, whose son Hamed, also known as Tippu Tip, was one of the most famous traders in the interior in the late nineteenth century.


• The trading post and way-station of Tabora was far from the interior oases of Arabia, and the number of Arabs who claimed Omani heritage in Tabora was not large. In the early years of the town, the size of the community varied seasonally, as traders arrived and departed with the caravans. Increasing numbers of Arabs and coastal Muslims settled there in the latter half of the nineteenth century, making Tabora the most important Muslim town in the interior. Men of Omani descent controlled important sectors of the economy and, through business partnerships, linked the Congo River basin with the Indian Ocean.

• Zuwayna, the bride to be, was born in East Africa. Her father was born in Oman and emigrated to East Africa in search of new opportunities. With the expansion of trade and trade routes throughout eastern and central Africa, many Arabs, coastal people, and their clients moved into the Congo Free State where ivory was plentiful and the market good for trade items from Zanzibar. In the 1890s, representatives of Belgium’s King Leopold and their mercenaries came into increasing competition with the east coast and Indian Ocean traders. They fought openly for the first half of that decade, and many Zanzibari Arab and Swahili people escaped or were killed. Zuwayna and her two sisters [went] …to Tabora where their father’s business partner, Sulayman bin Zahir al-Jabri, resided. Sulayman had been established in the interior for many years. Zuwayna lived with Sulayman and his family, and it was with him that the young suitor Sulayman bin Sleyum was to finalize the wedding.


• Old Sulayman bin Zahir was ill when the wedding day arrived, and he had to ask his trusted slave, Marjani bin Othman to conclude the wedding arrangements. Everyone wore their finery, and when Sulayman bin Sleyum arrived, he was well dressed in Omani style, with a long white kanzu [dishdasha] and a joho, the woolen cloak favored by well-to-do Arabs for occasions such as these. Sulayman bin Sleyumgreeted Marjani and the assembled group, “Al-Salaam ‘alaykum,” and the servant Marjani answered, “Wa’alaykum al-salam, ya shaykh Sulayman.”

• Sulayman corrected the slave. He was not a shaykh, he said, but a servant of shaykhs. With that, as the story is told, the wedding was called off. Sulayman bin Sleyum was a baysar, and thus, to Omanis and their trusted slaves, unfit for marriage to an Omani of noble birth.

• This failed attempt at marriage between two people of Omani descent in the town of Tabora, several hundred miles from Zanzibar and several thousand miles from Oman, hinged on notions of status imported from Oman, yet fully embedded in ‘African’, Islamic culture.


• West Africa: integration of north and west through activities of scholars like al-Maghili

• Scholar from Tuat (Algeria) concerned to uphold sharia (15th C)

“Coming from North Africa, whence most of the basic Islamic literature in West Africa came, operating within the same Maliki Mazhab al-Maghili found himself intellectually at home in the region. Thus almost where ever he went, Air, Katsina, Kano, Gao, he was highly welcomed and immediately involved in the process of the application of Islam. A great teacher in Takedda, in Air; Qadi in Katsina for many years; a legal and political adviser in Kano where he wrote for Sarki Muhammad Rumfa, Taj al-Din fi ma yajib ala'lmuluk; in Gao, Songhay, the ideologue and architect of the State of Songhay under AskiaMuhammad; al-Maghili succeeded in injecting a new drive into intellectual tradition and invigorated the social and political clime of the whole region. (see ‘Tradition of Tajdeed)

• Other scholars also had influence : those who made the hajj passed through Egypt, brought back books, spread knowledge; al-Maghili probably most influential as ‘advisor’ to ruler of Songhay

• Influence can be traced to later, 19th C leaders who practiced jihad to purify their states


• Empire of Mali rose in the 13th C., encompassing much of West Africa

• Most famous for ruler Mansa Musa and his pilgrimage to Mecca:

"It is said that he brought with him 14,000 slave girls for his personal service. The members of his entourage proceeded to buy Turkish and Ethiopia slave girls, singing girls and garments, so that the rate of the gold dinar fell by six dirhams. Having presented his gift he set off with the caravan."Cairo born historian al-Maqurizi.

• He returned with architects from ‘Middle East’ to built famous mosques of Gao, Jenne and Timbuktu among others

• attracted scholars to Timbuktu such that it became a leading centre of learning and teaching

• Established long-standing intellectual connections with Fez (Morocco)-- ultimately epitomized in the person of Ahmed Baba, taken prisoner to Morocco and called upon by local Moroccan scholars in Marrakech


• Also culture spread through literature and poetry, as for example the poet from Kanem encountered by a Greek bookseller (12th C) in Morocco:

“Kanem …is part of the land of the Berbers in the farthest west in the land of the Sudan. Some say that the Kanem are a people of the Sudan. At the present day there is a poet at Marrakesh in Maghrib known as al-Kanimi (the one from Kanem) whose excellent work is attested to, but I have never heard any of his poetry nor learnt his proper name."

(The author, Yaqut was sold into slavery to a Syrian merchant. He was later freed and travelled widely).

• Dress was another ‘marker’ of Islamic-Arabic culture, as commented upon by the 11thC scholar al-Bakri (speaking of an earlier Kanem not yet completely ‘Islamized’:

“The inhabitants of Kanem are idolatrous Sudan. It is said that there exists in those parts a clan descended from the Umayyads, who took refuge there when they were persecuted by Abbasids. They dress in the fashion of the Arabs and follow their customs."


• Some aspects of Arabic culture, not necessarily Islamic but having been introduced through Islam, are also seen in Music.

• Compare, for example, early Songhay music (audio clip ‘BBC Story of Africa – Early Kingdoms, Songhay) with that of Ottomans( http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~amcdouga/Hist323/- click on Introducing the Ottomans, then ‘Ottoman Music’)

• In the 16th and 17th century, Ottoman political connections with Bornu (West Africa) led to the provision of arms by the former to the latter but also major influences on the structure of the Bornu court, the rituals, the etiquette, the establishment of a harem – generally a strong ‘Ottoman’ culture in the heart of West Africa

“


• Islam and Culture often brought together most strikingly with respect to women and slaves (‘law’ and ‘custom’ clear on treatment of both)

• Mansa Musa was informed by Egyptian scholars that if he 'possessed' the beautifuldaughters offered to him by his subjects, he must marry them; however, he waspermitted only four such wives. Only slaves could be concubines and free womencould not be treated as slaves.

• Askia Muhammed (Songhay) was advised by al-Maghili concerning slave girls, soldand then married to the purchaser. Because they were frequently already pregnant; quarrels then errupted between the merchants. The Askia was concerned for ‘peaceand fairness according to law’ in the marketplace. For the theologian, most important was the fact that sharia stipulated sold slave girls should be placed in the care of a trustworthy man until their next menstration in order to assure that they were not already pregnant (muwada’a); and it was the responsibility of good Muslim rulers to enforce this law. The implication here is a recognized responsibility on the part of the 'father' not to sell the mother of his child, umm al- walid. We can also infer from thisexchange that female slaves were sometimes married, becoming actual 'wives'; bothmarriage and concubinage provided immediate social mobility and the potential of freedom if sharia was respected


• Key Question: to what extent was this ‘new’ culture imposed, to what extent negotiated – and with what consequences?

• With respect to ‘law’ regarding children of concubines, for example: law says must be regarded as free but oral tradition (Mali) shows that this was not always the case: a Malian ruler who had not treated his slave concubine well was forced to raise herson a slave. As a man, he sought revence: civil war came to the land in his quest for

his 'rightful' power.• In spite of ‘patrilineality’ of Islam – most African societies were matrinlineal:

- Ibn Battuta (14th C) noted that in the Sahara a man's heirs were the sons of hissister, and women had higher status than men - 'legitimacy' in the oral epics to the south was almost always expressed throughfemale kin relations

• Oral traditions recounting the decline of Ancient Ghana reflect continuing matrilinealsuccession in spite of adoption of Islam by the state. Seventeenth-century Saharangenealogies were rewritten to 'prove' patrilineal descent, but their oral histories and poetry continued to betray matrilineal values.-


• Marriages continued to cement alliances between Saharan clans, as well as powerful 'emirs' through the 19th century.

• Clan histories of origin and migration feature women as 'causes' of conflict but alsoas the means by which reconciliation later occurs.

• A late 15th century Queen of Hausaland, immortalized in a poem referencing hermortar of 'scented Guinea wood' and her pestle of 'solid silver', is called both(Muslim) "Amina" and (African)"Gumsa"; in asking Allah to give her the long life of a frog and the dignity of an eagle, the poet collapses into one cultural identity and definition of power in belief systems of two different but not necessarily competingworlds.

• Equally telling are the oral epics in which 'political power' remains inextricably tied to occult powers: battles are won with magic and the source of magic is inevtiably a powerful woman. Women (or their symbols -- food, mortars and pestles) appear as mothers, daughters, sisters and sirens, dynamic catalysts to men's actions who, like

Saharan women, re-appear to 'accept the responsibility' imposed by such power


• Later manuscript versions, like those of the famous Sonjata, founder of Ancient Mali, attempt to displace the importance accorded to the hero’s mother and femalekinfolk. In this case, crippled Sonjata's miraculous cure derives from a token takenfrom his father, rather than his mother; his sister ceases to have a role in his final taking of power.

• This kind of 'Islamisation of the past' is revealing, suggesting (as do traditions thatretain a matrilineal social discourse) that societies may not yet have been as reformed in the Islamic patrinlineal image as historians have assumed.

• Sometimes it was necessary for traditional historians to re-write matrilinealconceptions of origin in order to create contemporary patrilineal identities and facilitate the legitimizing of 'proper' Muslim power.


• In East Africa, coastal traditions reveal early matrilineal inheritance patterns, whileresearch in the hinterland shows land was inherited through female lineages.

• It is generally argued that as these societies became more Islamic, they becamepatrilineal; women lost the powers associated with matrilineality.

• One well known East African epic about a struggle over power between a brotherand half-brother is centred on the tension between the older African tradition of succession and the newer Islamic one, the latter dominates only belatedly.

• In another coastal region, the Muslim 'sultan' descended through the African femaleline for seven generations before a daughter took an Arab husband and it appears

that patrilineal succession begin.


• Female rulers and regents, some combining African titles with Arab Muslim names, others being either purely African or Arab, continue to appear through the early 18th century in East African chronicles.

• One tradition celebrates the winning of power from one such Queen by a sultan whowas himself the son of a humble woman. She had been the daughter of a fisherman, serendipitously 'discovered' by the sultan in answer to her father's prayers to Allah --a 'legitimation' of the throne through a mother which makes sense only when readthrough a matrilineal lens.

• Less obtuse are five seventeenth-century coastal epitaphs commemorating womanrulers, convincing evidence that we may have be mistaken in regarding women as a

"suppressed class".


• Issue of ‘veiling’ and ‘purdah’:how useful as measures of ‘Islamic’ culture?

• The introduction of purdah is attributed to a15th century Hausa-Kano king who alsoordered the 'catching of women and girls' as concubines and the taking of 1000 'first-born virgins' as wives -- contrevening sharia, in spite of his 'purifying' reputation.

• Female seclusion among wealthy Hausa survived into the early twentieth century; yet by the 19th century, another Muslim purist bewailed the fact women in Hausaland no longer knew the basic teachings of their religion, including prayers. Men had 'abused' the notion of submission to Allah in demanding women’s unquestioning obedience in the guise of housework!


• In East Africa, there is no evidence that Islam brought veiling or seclusion to women. One Portuguese source mentioned that the 'Moors' "shut up" their wives, but the manyaccounts of finely dressed women, observant of skin colour and jewellery, belie the existence of general veiling and purdah even among the wealthy Swahili.

• The utendi "Lament for Greatness" implies the existence of gendered living space("men's halls", "harem chambers") [as does historical architectural research in the Kano palace, hausaland West Africa], but this is neither synonymous with seclusion norparticular to Islam although it is consistent with it

• And as for veiling, one scholar suggests that it was not Islamic but cultural in origin: early"Shirazi" settlers did not veil but the Arab immigrants seeking social and politicalascendancy during the 16th and 17th centuries did. Veiling was a measure of their social and cultural status vis-à-vis local Swahili and Africans.

Arab Culture and Islam:conclusion

• As Islam spread into regions outside the Arab heartland, it had to adapt to different languages, customs and environments. This adaptation shows in everything from architecture, to music, to social customs

• Yet, essential tenets of the faith and the centrality of Arabic as ‘the’ language of Islam remained influential everywhere

• We need to look closely at individual societies over time to understand exactly how (and when) these ‘essential’ aspects of culture and religion became integral to their new hosts

• Understanding the processes in their historical context – from the initial rise of Islam through to the mulitude of ways in which and reasons for which people converted as Islam spread – aids us in understanding the attraction of Islam (and to some extent, the ‘culture’ that comes with it) today

september 12 – 21 “arabic culture and islam”...• sulayman bin sleyum had brought a proposal...

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