Chapter Study Guide Questions
As you read both the following essay and the text chapter it is designed to accompany, be sure to pay special attention to the following ID and Larger Study topics. They are your best guide to what topics, from this Chapter, will be covered on the 2nd Section's objective exam. These study terms and topics will be highlighted and/or repeated as they appear below. Your Section objective exam will be on how well you understand the below topics covered both in this essay and the accompanying text chapter.Chapter Map Locations:ID Study Terms
Abu Bakr
Shi'ism
the Umayyads
Shi'ism
The Five Pillars of Islam
Shari'a law
Sufism
the mosque
A'isha
MamluksLarger Study Topics
a. Understand who the Sasanids and their empire: briefly, how did they rule, in what era, using what methods and through what elites?
b. Understand the situation in Arabia, for both desert nomad and oasis town Arabs, on the eve of Islam. What was happening to the traditional desert nomad way of life, and what was life like in the oasis towns to which many people had to go? Where did Muhammad fit into it shortly before he began receiving his revelations?
c. Understand the reasons for Islamic Empire's great 7th and 8th century expansions. Situation at Muhammad's death? Thanks to what combination of forces, circumstances and policies, what lands and peoples were Islamic by c. 732?
d. Describe the achievements of Abbasid Islamic arts, architecture and learning.
e. Describe and assess the situation of women within Golden Age high Abbasid Islam.
Make note of all of the following map locations; they will be included on the Section 2 Map Exercise. Most are included on maps within this essay, but for a few (ex: areas of Cartheginian Empire), consult also maps in your text.
CtseiphonChapter Introduction:
Area of Persis
Area of Parthia
Arabia
Area of Yemen
Area of Syria
Mecca
Medina
Damascus
Baghdad
Cairo
Area of Turkestan
Area of Armenia
Area of Spain
Area of Egypt
The big focus of this chapter is Islam - the context out of which it rose (that is in good part where the fairly short section on Sasanid Persia comes in), the story of Muhammad and Islam's beginnings, and then the story of the first great Islamic society and era under the Abbasids. Do note that the date given in the Chapter 10 logo is different from that on the textbook's Chapter 10 title, which says "600 BCE -1200." Frankly, that seems to be a very large typo, since Sasanid Persia begins in 224 CE and Islam in 610 CE.
Sasanid Persia, 224 - 651 CE
The Sasanid story takes up only a few pages of Chapter 10, which is the perhaps understandable fate of a dynasty that had the bad luck to exist just before the rise of one of the great new world beliefs and empires (Islam). But they are worth noticing both for the sake of understanding Persia (or Iran, as they are called today) and because of their influence on developing Islamic culture and rule.
To set the stage, you are reminded that the Persia of Cyrus and Darius developed a glorious Imperial style on top of the legacy of long-time Mesopotamian civilization. Persia was then conquered by Alexander the Great, and sank back into being just one part of a larger Greek/Hellenistic world. It did manage to stay free of Roman rule, thanks to the military ferocity of nomad-origin rulers such as the Parthians. But as a consequence of the Parthians central Asian nomad ties plus hostilities with Rome, Persia drifted further and further from its earlier city, Mesopotamian character.
The 3rd century CE Roman decline and Sasanid rise tilted Persia (somewhat) back towards its pre-Greek centralized imperial style. Your first Chapter Study Topic asks you to
Understand who the Sasanids and their empire: briefly, how did they rule, in what era, using what methods and through what elites?The Sasanids were warriors, but warriors who came from the area of southwest Persia next to the Persian Gulf (Persis on the map, below) and therefore close to the world of cities and trade. They defeated the old, weak Parthian dynasty in 224, and so made themselves Persia's new rulers. They built Ctesiphon, their new capital, not on the central Persian grasslands (about Parthia on the map, below) as had previous nomad rulers, but rather where the trading action was, right in the center of Mesopotamia.
The resulting Persian state and rule, while certainly continuing Hellenistic and warrior elements, also took Persia more firmly back to the urban, imperial, Mediterranean-leaning elements first made glorious in the time of Cyrus the Great (6th century BCE). This sense of a Persian glory, separate from and coming before Greece and Rome, would eventually be important in letting Persia keep a distinct identity even after becoming part of the Arab-led Islamic world (starting in the 7th century).
The Sasanids came to power in the era in which Mediterranean-centered Rome was first weakening (the 200s CE) and then re-centering itself in the east, as the Byzantine Empire (300s on). The Sasanids then continued Persia's fight with Rome, just as the Byzantines continued Rome's fight with the Persians. The map above (see yellow striped areas) shows the area of land contested between Byzantium and Persia over much of the Sasanid era. Basically, the Sasanids created a state the worked a good deal the same way as did the Bzyantine one; that is, with a strong central government based on taxes coming from urban areas. This is really not surprising, since both states were based in the ancient lands of earliest civilization, with all of their traditions of urban wealth and struggles to find ways to create more stable central governments. Both had to squeeze all possible income out of their bases in order to do so, since they had to support large armies and their own very expensive central royal courts. In the case of the Persians this meant leaving immediate rule of their eastern hinterlands to the control of family members or trusted allies - and making sure royal garrisons were also their to help these representatives keep basic control and/or remind them to do so. Such limited central authority was seen a worth its cost as long as these garrisons also help defend the hinterlands from new central Asian nomad attacks and maintained the stability that allowed lucrative trade (from which the locals also benefited).
Zoroastrianism was another element of Sasanid central control. As you should recall, Zoroastrianism first emerged during the great Persian imperial era of Cyrus and Darius, teaching of a great struggle between just two universal forces of good and evil. From the time of Alexander it had remained one of many faiths within Persia, but certainly was neither dominant nor required. The Sasanids were Zoroastrians, and upon conquering Persia, began favoring it as the unifying Persian belief, headed by a Priest of Priests appointed by themselves. Peoples of other organized faiths (Christians, Jews, Buddhists) often suffered some level of persecution within the Persian lands, although such communities usually managed to survive. The problem may well have been mostly political, as such faiths had their central authority outside of Persia, and thus could be seen as likely to owe allegiance to outside authorities with often hostile bordering lands. This interpretation of motives is also supported by the fact that breakaway believers of such enemy-dominated faiths were often welcomed inside Persian lands (ex: both Nestorianism and the Monophysites - see text for details).
Overall, the resulting situation in Persia, in terms of society and culture can be called both varied and urban dominated. From earlier eras in which rulers had either borrowed from the Greeks or held power mostly based on rural-based nomad-warrior control of the eastern hinterlands, the Sasanids built their society on western urban bases controlled through a return to ancient Persian patterns of rule and faith. But they also did so over a society and culture that continued to contain many of the elements of their more recent Greek and warrior rulers. So Sasanid rule was also a fairly vigilant one, based on military conquest power and the ever-present threat of repression. Minority religions, eastern warriors, and heavily-taxed merchants all had some basis for complaint against Persia's victorious conquerors - and under Islam, would prove fairly quickly willing to submit to a new conqueror's new system of belief and society.
The Origins of Islam
Arabia on the Eve of Islam.
Your text interweaves a lot of good information on the Arab tribes into its coverage of the Byzantine-Sasanid conflicts of the 3rd-6th centuries CE. In this period both the Bzyantines and the Sasanids lived in a state of long-standing hostility within the desert region between their two frontier areas of Syria and northern Mesopotamia. Much of the skirmishing was done by tribes from the areas of Arabia on the southeast border of Byzantine-held Syria and the southwest borderSasanid-held northern Mesopotamia (again, see yellow striped areas of map above). This is the starting context of the story you are asked to be able focus on the next Study Topic
Understand the situation in Arabia, for both desert nomad and oasis town Arabs, on the eve of Islam. What was happening to the traditional desert nomad way of life, and what was life like in the oasis towns to which many people had to go? Where did Muhammad fit into it shortly before he began receiving his revelations?As has happened so often before with peripheral in history, gradually these desert Arab tribes came to be better acquainted with settled civilization. The desert-dwelling Arabs of this period used the camel both as a mount for battle and as a beast of burden in caravans carrying trade goods. They had been carrying trade goods already for many centuries, especially carrying frankincense and myrrh (for use in almost all ancient cultures' religious ceremonies) across the desert from Yemen. Although this particular trade declined with Christianity's distaste for earlier ceremonies, other trade goods kept caravans going fairly well. Thus through both trade and their contract-warrior roles, the Arabs learned about both the wealth and the sophisticated beliefs of settled Byzantium and Persia. These models were also of interest to many settled Arabians, who by this era formed the majority of the Arabian population (see text for more on this). During this era many Arabian communities seem to have been struggling with a need to develop new ways of running their communites, since the nomad, communal-property, kinship way of life of the desert really didn't work in towns where individuals were on their own.
This certainly seems to have been the case in Mecca, a caravan town about half way between Yemen and Syria (a major center for Mediterranean trading cities). An ancient oasis town believed to be the location of various Biblical events (see text), Mecca experienced new growth starting in the 5th century CE when a once-nomadic tribe, the Quraysh, settled many of its members there. By this time it was growing increasingly hard to live completely in the Arabian desert. Where once tribes might have lived mostly off of herds moved from oasis to oasis, with a little trade and fighting on the side, there just wasn't enough grass to graze all herds full time. Also Byzantine-Persian fighting was spilling over into disorders that made all caravan travel more dangerous. So increasingly tribes found stable bases in oasis towns, and from their sent out trade caravans to the settled towns of Yemen, Syria and Mesopotamia. But once settled in towns, and exposed to the excitements of big city life, some shcolars suggest that there was a worrying decline in the decencies of caring for kin, keeping ones word, and honoring both men's and women's (different) roles.
Cetainly this is one part of the story told about Muhammad, who Muslims believe received many revelations from Allah, the one god. Muhammad was a member of the junior (Hashimite) line of Mecca's dominant Quraysh tribe. [There were enough Quraysh that individual members were generally identified as belonging to the line of decent of one or another Quraysh men. Muhammad was decended from a Quraysh named Hashim.] Because his father died before he was born (in about 570 CE in Mecca), he was brought up in the household of first his grandfather and then - when his grandfather soon died - in that of his uncle, Abu Talib. Like most Quraysh, Muhammad's immediate family had connections both with Quraysh still in the desert and those doing business permanently in oasis towns. Soon Muhammad was going along on caravan trips, thus learning a "trade" in caravan-dominated Arabia. Because his line was not wealthy, he soon went to work for a prominant Quraysh widow, Kadija, who owned a caravan business and needed men to work as "road managers" for her. Apparently Muhammad did such a good job that she soon proposed marriage to him, which he accepted. Although she was a good deal older than he (perhaps as much as 15 years), they had a number of children, but their only son died in childhood.
Islam in the Time of Muhammad
Muhammad appears to have been an extraordinarily decent, honorable, hardworking man who struggled to make sense of the many ways of life and belief to which he was exposed. Traditional subsistance Arabian desert ways could only work for limited numbers of people (the desert could support only so many). The great eastern Mediterranean cities were impressive and their Christian and Jewish beliefs impressive in theory - but in practice may well have all seemed very corrupt. The desert towns had no codes of their own - they couldn't live as did subsistance nomads, but should/could they copy the great Mediterranean cities? Probably partly to think about these questions - and almost certainly others - at about age 40, in 610 CE, Muhammad began doing what many of his era did. He began going into the desert (not a long trip from a desert oasis town) to meditate at night. Following one such night, he returned home to report to his wife, and then a very few other relatives and friends, that he had been visited by the Angel Gabriel, sent to him by God (Allah in Arabic), as God's last prophet.
According to Muhammad's revelations, Allah's basic message was quite simple. He had revealed its core before, to a series of earlier prophets, including both Moses and Jesus, as well as Noah. There is only one god, who created the universe and all within it, and who will eventually judge humankind on the balance of good deeds vs. sins. Sinners will go to hell while those who behave well will go to paradise. Good deeds include ethical, moral behavior and worship of the one, true god. While this message was, in Muhammad's time, contained within both Judaism and Christianity, in the details and practices of those religions, error and corruption had been allowed to creep in, corrupting the message somewhat. (Think of a somewhat blurred xerox copy, or perhaps a radio message heard imperfectly through static.) Now Muhammad's God was giving humankind one final chance, with one final perfect revelation to Muhammad.
Probably not very surprisingly, most Meccans didn't immediately accept Muhammad's revelations. First of all, he seems not to have talked about them very widely at first, perhaps fearing they were sent by playful demons (see text for more on this) or perhaps suspecting - rightly - that the senior Quraysh wouldn't be likely to bow down to a prophet from their own junior line. Also (again see text) Mecca had something of a "tourist" business with tribes visiting the Ka'ba shrine, which at that time housed hundreds of statues representing the individual gods of different Arabian clans. (If one was in the area, apparently it was believed only courteous to visit one's god's statue - and one didn't want to annoy one's god with rudeness!) Accordingly belief in Muhammad's revelations spread only slowly, accompanied by increasingly persecution by senior Quraysh. By 619 when Muhammad's two greatest defenders died (his wife Khadija and his uncle Abu Talib), Muhammad was in serious trouble and may correctly have feared for his life.
He therefore eagerly accepted the 622 offer, from the smaller oasis town of Medina to the north, to come and preach his revelations to their community. It seems that Medina was deeply divided among different populations, and so wanted a new, shared, faith to bring them together. Tradition tells of Muhammad having to leave Mecca in secret to escape possible attack, helped by his cousin Ali (son of Abu Talib) putting on Muhammad's clothes to act as decoy. This 622 hijra ("flight" or "emigration") marks the beginning of the current Muslim (Islamic) era. In Medina Muhammad established and led a new kind of community (see text for more), based on shared submission of Allah rather than kinship. Thus the decline of workable kinship-based society, which may have helped spur Muhammad's meditations, is solved by a new "kinship" of shared belief. In this circumstance, it is historically understandable that Muhammad eventually called for the expulsion (and sometimes execution) of those Medinan Jews who refused to accept him as their God's final, perfect prophet. Anyway, the resulting community then accomplished amazing things as their armies regularly defeated the much larger armies of Mecca that they were soon fighting. As the Medinans succeeded on the field of battle (seen in those days as a powerful sign of a god's favor), more and more non-Meccan Arab tribes submitted to Muhammad's powerful new god. By 630 the Meccans (when offered once chance at a gentle peace with no punishments), surrendered by opening their city to Muhammad, who cleansed the Ka'ba of what were now called false gods, and established it as the most holy shrine of the new faith, Islam. Muhammad then returned to Medina, where he lived two more years until his sudden death in 632. By that time essentially all of the tribes of the desert lands of Arabia had formally submitted to his leadership, as Allah's Last Prophet (see above map for deeper yellow areas showing the Islamic lands as of 632).
Islam After Muhammad: Islamic Empire Established, 632-750
Many new faiths have emerged over world history, led by many prophets. Many warriors have briefly united to rule large areas. But few faiths have endured to build the institutions necessary to form lasting religions, just as few warrior conquests have lasted to form great empires. But Muhammad's Islamic followers did both. The following Chapter Short Essay question asks
Understand the reasons for Islamic Empire's great 7th and 8th century expansions. Situation at Muhammad's death? Thanks to what combination of forces, circumstances and policies, what lands and peoples were Islamic by c. 732?The Era of 4 Righteous Caliphs. The era between Muhammad's death in 632 and the establishment of the first hereditary Islamic monarchy (the Umayyads) in 661 is traditionally called the era of the 4 Righteous Caliphs. "Caliph" means successor, and refers to the men appointed (one at a time, each following the other) during that era to lead Islam. The leaders of the Islamic community (the "umma") quickly chose Abu Bakr as Islam's first Caliph. At that time the umma faced a crisis: Muhammad had named no successor, and many of the warrior tribes that had submitted to God's Prophet were now announcing that his death freed them from any further obligations to Islam. Furthermore the Muslim community was divided, with some believing that leadership should go to Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law Ali (who was married to Muhammad's daughter Fatima). The Umayyads, more senior line of Quraysh, tended to opposed this, as did many believers who wanted leaders chosen based on purity of faith not family lineage. Abu Bakr was a close associate of Muhammad's (see text for details of his identity). who belonged to neither the Hashimite or the Umayyad lines, so was a good temporary solution. He quickly moved to send Muslim armies against those tribes trying to default on their submission to the faith, stopping defections (and keeping the remaining faithful in line with the loot they won with their victories). He thus began the tactic of stabilizing Islam's Arabian core by sending her Arab armies outward in holy war against backsliders (and those not of the faith); he also stabilized the faith by commissioning a complete written version of all of God's revelations to Muhammad (the Quran). In some ways he was a stopgap (someday there would be no Companions of the Prophet left alive; how then would the Caliphate be chosen?). In some ways he laid firm foundations (the Quran). In some ways he chose a good short term strategy (keep Arab Islamic tribes loyal with the religious and material benefits of a holy war) that would later need to be amended.
All of these strategies were followed by the next two caliphs, Umar (also known as Omar; r. 634-644) and Uthman (also known as Othman, r. 644-656). Both were also Muhammad's close companions, both supported continued growth of Islamic holy texts, and both continued to send Arab armies outward in conquests that quickly formed an empire. (Again see map above: combined lighter and darker yellow areas = Islamic lands by time of Uthman's death in 656.) Islamic expansion then continued further, soon including Egypt and all of North Africa, the ancient Mesopotamian lands plus Armenia to the north and Persia to the east, and eventually coming by 732 to reach all the way from Spain to Sind on the Indus and Turkestan in Central Asia (see below map of Islam in 732).
Islam at full extent of Umayyad era conquest empire
Your text offers you a very detailed consideration of the many factors at work behind Islam's amazing expansion between 632 and 732, when it reached the basic limits of its first great era of expansion. Briefly note here that your text considers the many reasons often given as sufficient explanation for this success, and suggests some weaknesses to each. These tradtional explanations include lust for booty, fanatic religious fervor, and fatal divisions/powerlessness within their adversaries. Your text then suggests that the dominant reason for Arab Islamic military successes lay in the power of its own society's basic organization, which was still semi-warior, and in the decisions of its leadership took to limit the warriors' power over their own conquests. This policy was begun by Umar, the second caliph, who forbad Islamic conquerors from making themselves the new overlords over conquered lands and property. Instead - after an initial period in which some looting was allowed, occupying armies lived in urban-based garrisons, supported by a share of established taxes, much of which had to be forwarded on to the central government. This kept conquering armies moving (as new conquest bonuses beckoned) and also kept them from driving dispossessed populations into rebellion (because garrison policies meant they were forbidden to take most land and other valuable property - they could only tax it). Note: this ends the content needed for the Islamic Empire expansion short essay.
Islam After Muhammad: Succession Struggles 650s-750
Inside of Islam, all did not go smoothly in terms of succession and
ruling philosophies. In fact, it took almost 120 years, until the Abbasids
took power in 750, for Islam to establish a stable form of internal rule
and leadership. The first crisis ended the era of the 4 Righteous Caliphs
and produced a split that still exists today within Islam. This is the
crisis that produced Shi'ism
as
the major minority form of Islam. The roots in the crisis lay in the question
of who should be caliph. Many believed that the only true successor to
Muhammad was Ali (again, his cousin and son-in-law, and therefore also
the father of Muhammad's grandsons who carried "the blood of the prophet").
Yet Ali was not chosen the first 3 times a caliph was selected - again
perhaps partly for reasons we don't know, but also almost certainly because
the Umayyads didn't want only that line of Quraysh blood to count as qualified
(thus leaving them out) while others didn't want any dynasty ruling automatically.
The hard feelings within different lines of the Quraysh grew stronger when
the 3rd caliph selected, Uthman, was one of the
Umayyads. Full crisis was reached when Uthman was
killed in 656 by a fanatic (for reasons having nothing to do with succession
decisions) while most of his Arab army supporters were away on conquest,
and Ali supporters quickly declared him caliph (see text for more details).
Confrontations led to open war among Muslims, and then Ali was assassinated
in 661 (as with Uthman, by a fanatic, in this case for not being combative
enough in his cause).
Persian miniature of Muhammad & Ali in ship, with Ali's 2 sons standing to side (tradition requires veiling faces of religious figures) |
Uthman's most powerful relative, Mu'awiya, then sized power in the name of the Umayyad cause; this rule then became permanent (for a while) when the Umayyad caliphate was left to his son. Mu'awiya then bought off one of Ali's sons (Hasan), and hoped that the other (Hussein) would also submit to Umayyad domination. Unfortunately Mu'awiya's rather stupid son and successor Yazid killed Hussein in 680, making him a martyr to the cause of his line's right to the Caliphate. The result was a permanent, usually minority, variant of Islam called "Shi'ism" meaning followers of the party of Ali. As long as Shi'ites refrained from open rebellion they were usually tolerated within Umayyad (and later) Islam, since any massive oppression of the cause of Muhammad would be too destructive to what was still a rather fragile, forming community of Islam. |
The Umayyads then continued in power for another 70 years, until 750, but never really established stable, popular rule over many areas and parts of Islam. This is because they had a number of problems, some more of their making than others. First, they were unfortunate enough to have a number of rather stupid, self-indulgent rulers. These men soon openly flaunted behaviors very much against the teachings of Islam (we will be looking into these teachings below, in Part II of this essay). The Umayyads really quite reasonably moved Islam's capital out of the desert to Damascus in the richer, more accessible lands of Syria. But there they soon assumed immoral lifestyles including open drinking (forbidden to Muslims) and carousing (while men may have multiple sexual partners, ideally it is to be within stable relationships offering dignity and protections to the women involved). This shocked Islamic "puritans" as did the whole idea of an inherited Caliphate. They of course we opposed by Shi'ites. And finally, they also were opposed by increasing numbers of non-Arab Muslims who resented the Umayyads continuing the early policy that only Arab Muslims could be full citizens of the Islamic empire (see text for details). This policy might have made sense to motivate the early conquering Arab armies and keep them from fragmenting. But once there was an established empire, increasing numbers of non-Arabs wanted to convert to Islam, and deeply resented the "glass ceiling" over how high they could rise within the Islamic state and society.
The result of all of this was multiple rebellion against Umayyad rule, quickly escalating in the 740s, which brought their dynasty down in 750. The Umayyads in 661 had pulled off quite a coup, as they - Muhammad's original Quraysh opponents within Mecca - seized control of his Islamic state. But by blindly holding on to Umar's original Arabs-first policies, by forcing Ali's line into martyrdom but being unable to suppress Shi'ism, and by stupidly faunting their own religious cynicism in public, they soon lost what Mu'awiya grabbed for them. What they did not do, however, was to destroy Islamic belief, society or empire. All they lost was their own hold on it; by then Islam was well along in the process of developing the foundations for what was to become (and remains today) one of the world's greatest faiths and cultures.
Abbasid Golden Age Islamic Civilization and Society
Institutional Islam Emerges
By "institutional Islam" I mean the organization, roles and practices that grew up around the core beliefs introduced by Muhammad. As long as Muhammad lived, being Muslim (that is, a follower of Islam) was easy: you believed and did as he did, since you believed he was God's Final Messanger. But once he was gone, and as many new believers joined the religion, there needed to be a firm set of teachings, expectations, rules, structures, etc.
In terms of basic personal behavior, Islam soon recognized a core set of five expected behaviors, which came to be seen as especially crucial ways for Muslims to behave as part of a community formed around their shared faith (as opposed to the earlier, narrower ties of kinship). These five expectations are known as the Five Pillars of Islam. Some are expected often, some only once (or never if too difficult). The first is at least once to make a public avowal of belief that there is only one god and Muhammad is his (final) messenger. The idea here is simply to stand up, publically, for ones faith, something that in the early years could in fact be very dangerous, but later was simply a matter of formally joining the majority community of believers (whether as a convert or a young person come to the age of religious responsibility).
The second pillar is prayer, and for the observant Muslim, this means praying five times a day, facing Mecca. This was a routine that shaped the entire Muslim community's days, as well as the thoughts and behaviors of individual believers. Trained men cried out the call for prayer at established times, and all stopped to kneel and make the established brief prayer. (See later section on Islamic architecture - specifically minarets - for the impact of daily prayer ritual on building styles).
The third pillar calls for fasting during the month of Ramadan (the month in which Muhammad received his first revelation). Each year during that lunar month, believers (in good health and of sufficient age) are expected to fast during all daylight hours. Fasting means not drinking, eating, or having sexual relations. (This behavior is not expected of very young children, pregnant women, or even travelers on important, difficult journeys. For adults, however, the expectation is that the missed days of fasting will be made up as soon as possible). Here again, as with prayer, the idea is both to have established times in which the focus is on one's relationship with God and to create rituals shared by the whole community.
The fourth pillar calls for all who have any means at all to pay alms (charitable donations) to help their less fortunate fellow believers. Here again the emphasis is on a righteous behavior that helps sustain the total community of believers. Islam does not expect all believers to be equal in this life. But it does expect all believers to feel some obligation to the whole community. Thus many Muslim societies levy about a 5% zakat or alms tax. This charitable income was then usually administered by the learned men of mosques or charitable foundations, which both helped many of the needy - and helped to make those mosques and foundations the stable foundation of an institutional Islam.
Finally, the fifth pillar of Islam calls for each believer, if possible, once in his/her lifetime to make a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. Of course as more distant lands converted to Islam, and in an era in which long distance travel was slow, hard and expensive, most good Muslims had very little hope of doing this. But the expectation was there for those able to do so, and many of those who did were proud and even honored for having done so.
The Five Pillars thus were the core behaviors expected of all observant Muslims, and reflect important basic Muslim values. All were expectations of individual behavior - none required the specialized services of priests, holy water, or anything beyond what Muhammad's revelations had made known to each believer. All in one way or another have to do with connecting the individual to the larger community of believers. Islam very deliberately did not have priests or sacrements - the emphasis is on each individual believer being responsible for righteous behavior, the nature of which was made clear in God's revelations.
But of course Islam required and expected a good deal more than Five Pillars of its followers. Very quickly Islamic societies and then states built their law codes around Islam's teachings and requirements. Islam's most basic teaching was (and is) of course the Quran, the official written version of all of the revelations that Muhammad said came to him from God. Since no rule could be more important than God's own, the Quran thus became also the cornerstone of Islamic, or Shari'a law. Containing altogether 22 years worth of revelations, the Quran covers a wide variety topics, from ones concerning human creation to the specifics of prayer and women's rights. But it quickly became obvious, especially as Islam expanded into new lands and cultures, that it left others untouched. Islam's learned men thus devised a whole array of ways to come up with the most religiously correct set of rules for Muslim society. A majority soon agreed that next to revelations from God himself, the most godly pronouncements surely were those Muhammad had made himself, based on his own judgment.
Thus the second most important source of Islamic law are the "traditions" or hadith, reporting what Muhammad himself said about any subject. (See your text for more details about how these were accumulated, differences between Shi'ite and Sunni, etc.) The third most important source for Islamic law became "analogies," that is, judgments made by learned men in which they say something like - Muhammad said A is OK because it has mostly Y but B in bad because it has lots of X. Now C isn't mentioned, but it has a lot of Y and only a little X, so we by analogy say C is OK also. Independent judgment was the fourth and final element used to give Islam established laws covering all needed topics. This was the judgment of learned men when a question was not only not covered in either the Quran or the hadith, and did not seem to have any analogy possible. Within mainstream Sunni (as vs. Shi'ite) Islam, the "Door to Independent Judgment" was declared closed in the 9th century (by the majority of the leading Islamic learned men), mostly to keep increasingly weak and corrupt caliphal governments from making new, questionable legal pronouncements on religious topics. By tradition, "Independent Judgment" still remains closed for mainstream Islam, making it almost impossible to change - for example - the legal status of women under traditional Sunni Islamic law. What certainly a problem today, this tradition gave Islamic (Shari'a) law great stability during the Golden Age era, and for many centuries after. This in turn gave great unity to Islamic culture and society - wherever a Muslem went, he or she could count on knowing what to expect, and what was expected of him/her.
At the same time, within this greater unity, new developments within Islam also continued to emerge. One of the most interesting - and, to the West, colorful - of these is Sufism. This trend emerged by the 12th and 13th centuries, reflecting a reaction perhaps to the very institutional stability of Islam. Basically, some Muslims seem to have found established Islam dry and impersonal - saying "read this, follow this pattern of prayer, go about your business." Sufism essentially was a new style of religious observance (thus not a new set of doctrines). Sufis wanted a personal, emotional connection with God, not just an intellectual sense of his revelations and expectations. (Sufism has been compared to the "born again" movement within Christianity.) Sufis used special training and rituals to subdue their worldly senses, trying to free their inner spirit to connect more directly with God. Probably the most famous Sufi technique is that used by the so-called "whirling dervishes," who used a very demanding form of whirling dance to produce a form of ecstasy they believed put them in touch with God. Advanced Sufi often renounced worldly possessions and travelled from place to place, followed by devoted adherants and pupils. These groups would live through donations plus by perfoming simple services (serving as readers and writers for mostly illiterate populations, for example). Quite often when on the fringes of Islamic lands they actually helped to spread Islam, as the simplicity and emotion of their beliefs, plus Islam's underlying impressive nature, appealed to polytheistic peoples familiar only with their own local, childish gods. Sufi brotherhoods also flourished at the center of established Islam, offering a rejuvinating form especially to the many ordinary people not enjoying much prosperity or social mobility.
Islamic Life: Urban patterns dominate
This brings us to consideration of what life was like in settled Islam, once widely established under first Umayyad and then Abbasid rule. Islam may have been born out of the desert, but even in its earliest years it grew up among town dwellers struggling with urban problems if also seeking to continue some desert warrior values. Once Islam had an empire, it quickly became very urban. Of course this was in part because the Middle East has always been a very urban culture. Also, as your text points out, most converts - lacking priests and often being illiterate (so unable to read the Quran) - had to move to towns to be near those already Muslim, who could then be imitated in their behaviors. Thus town and city populations grew all over the settled Muslim world, helped also by the growing trade made possible by stable empire and peaceful roads. The great commercial, trade networks again blossomed, and cash-economy life and prosperity grew and grew.
Before going on to look at Islamic-dominated urban life and culture, we need to be sure to remember that Islam remained very tolerant of religious differences, not only within Islam (ex: tolerating Shi'ism unless its followers actually rebelled) but also of other religions. Muhammad had always shown respect for "people of the book," meaning the Jews and Christians he saw as followers of somewhat flawed earlier versions of his own final, correct revelations. Eventually even Buddhists and Hindus were given similar tolerated status. Soon other elements were emerged, spreading in varied forms throughout all the lands of Islam. But of course, the center of Abbasid culture remained Islamic.
Another Chapter Study Topic asks you to
Understand the achievements of Abbasid Islamic arts, architecture and learning.The center of Islamic life and culture began - and continued - in its mosques. Tall towers (minarets) were added to orginally simple buildings as communities of believers grew, so that the call for prayer can be made from a height, the better to be heard over longer distances. Inside mosques, a prayer niche was added, showing the direction of Mecca. Uniformly, across all Islam, representations of Islamic historic figures were forbidden as part of mosque decoration, as part of a deliberate Islamic policy of rejecting Christianity's saints and icons. Thus even today traditional mosques have no paintings of Muhammad or his followers; in fact no living humans or animals are portrayed within religious settings, and purists shy away from either living plants. Mosques are instead decorated with abstract patterns plus very complicated, beautiful calligraphy (script).
While a challenge, this last limitation certainly didn't keep a very great Islamic archictectural tradition from developing. By these elements mosques are almost always immediately recognizable, yet also reflect the great variety of different cultures and geographic settings that have made up Islam from its first imperial century (see below illustrations).
