Chapter Four: Religious, Social, and Intellectual Changes, 632-1258

At the same time that Arab armies were winning an empire, Muslims were also grappling with a series of fundamental questions about their society and religion. How should they organize their community to best please God? How were people to determine correct behavior in situations for which the Prophet, having never experienced them, had not provided guidance? Would God judge them based on their faith alone, or a combination of faith and works? What role should human reason play in understanding God’s plan?

Above all, they struggled with the momentous question of leadership. As we have seen, Muhammad had died without naming a successor or articulating what authority that person would possess. As a result, the leading Muslims had no clear political path to follow regarding the question of who would succeed Muhammad as the umma’s political leader and whether that person would also inherit the Prophet’s religious authority. As recounted in Chapter Three, these issues produced intense factional infighting and even civil war among the Muslim elite. The question of leadership did not remain confined to the ruling class, however. Instead, the debate spilled over into the broader Muslim community where it would produce a religious conflict of enormous consequence.

The Division of Islam

How was it that a dispute within the leadership transformed into a broader, popular debate about religion? It did so as a function of the peculiar structure of the early community of believers. Since Islam had begun as a movement in which religion and politics were tightly intertwined, any conflict over politics inevitably acquired a religious dimension and vice versa. As a result, what had started as a narrow political disagreement over the succession inevitably transformed into a much broader debate over religion, one that would permanently divide the community of believers between Sunnis, Shi’a, and adherents of the small, but-influential movement known as Kharijism.

Sunnism

Sunnism has been the largest branch of Islam since the religion’s gradual separation into different branches in the seventh and eighth centuries. Today, Sunnis account for about 85 percent of the world’s estimated 1.8 billion Muslims. The term itself is derived from the word sunna, the habits, practices, and words of Muhammad, and reflects the view that Muslims should live in emulation of the Prophet and the early umma. Sunnis hold that all Muslims can follow the religion without the need for intercession by a formal priesthood or religious hierarchy, and they rely on ulema, male religious scholars more akin to rabbis than to Christian priests or ministers, to interpret the Muslim social and religious code and to resolve legal disputes

It is a belief system centered far more on behavior than theology. That is, in keeping with the prevailing Muslim rejection of theological debate as idle speculation, Sunnis focus their attention more on living according to the Straight Path that they believe Muhammad had outlined than on adhering to correct doctrine.

The Emergence of Sunnism

Sunnism began in the eighth century as a broad, populist movement that explicitly rejected any special religious role for the caliph. It grew out of popular revulsion with the fighting and elite political intrigue that took place during the Fitnas, which in their eyes directly contradicted the idea that the umma should be unified in imitation of God’s tawhid, or divine oneness. The movement subsequently gained strength as a result of growing dissatisfaction with Umayyad rule. The dynasty’s embrace of pre-Islamic political practices, its pursuit of luxury, and its incorporation of Byzantine legal practices nurtured the sense that the caliphate was an intrinsically worldly institution that was ill suited to the social laws and customs that would structure life under Muslim rule. For a brief period following the demise of the Umayyads, Sunnis hoped that the Abbasids might govern as devoutly as the first four caliphs and thus be able to provide the guidance they sought; they quickly abandoned that expectation, however, when the first few leaders of the new dynasty made clear that they were every bit as focused on earthly concerns as the Umayyads had been. By the latter half of the eighth century, as a result, the Sunnis had abandoned the expectation that the caliph would establish the type of community Muhammad had called for. Instead, they would create that society themselves based on the explicit commandments outlined in the Qurʾan and on the sunna of Muhammad.

Sunni Political Theory

What role, then, did the early Sunnis see the caliphate playing? In terms of defining the obligations and responsibilities of the community, very little. Indeed, the ulema accorded the state almost no power in shaping the legal codes by which the umma lived, and limited its social and religious responsibilities to collecting the zakat tax and punishing those who broke religious laws. Sunnism’s opposition to the caliphs having a religious role is most obvious in the popularization of the term Rashidun, or rightly guided, to describe the first four caliphs. People used that word as a sign of reverence and respect for those influential leaders, but they also employed it as a potent rhetorical device aimed at denying later rulers the power to intrude in the social and religious sphere. That is, the first four caliphs were Rashidun because they had been companions of Muhammad and, as such, had the authority to establish the customs, legal practices, and obligations that were binding on the umma. Later caliphs, in contrast, were not Rashidun and thus enjoyed no corresponding influence over religion or daily life.

However, the caliph did have one very important religious responsibility: the maintenance of order. To Sunnis, political stability was essential. Indeed, it was so paramount, that a popular Sunni proverb declared “‘better sixty years of tyranny than a single day of civil strife.’” Why was order so critical to them? They stressed its importance because they feared that, in its absence, people would violate the legal and social requirements that lay at the heart of Muhammad’s vision of the proper community of believers. Accordingly, by the late-eighth century, Sunni ulema were glad to uphold the legitimacy of the caliph so long as he remained, at least outwardly, a devout Muslim and, more importantly, so long as he preserved the order needed for the umma to function as Muhammed had intended.

Perhaps surprisingly in light of the determination of the Sunni ulema to prevent the caliph from having a meaningful voice in religious affairs, the Abbasid Dynasty would eventually throw its support behind them. It had three reasons for doing so. First, the nascent Sunni movement that the religious scholars led enjoyed popular backing; supporting the ulema would thus pay dividends for the Abbasids by helping them to secure broad approval of the dynasty’s rule. Second, Sunni emphasis on order and stability appealed to the Abbasids because it suggested that they could rule autocratically without risking the emergence of a populist rebellion similar to the one that had toppled the Umayyads. Finally, the Sunni ulema seemed well positioned to solve a vexing problem that had emerged in the first century of Islam. During the caliphate’s rapid expansion, the different regions, towns, and cities of the empire had haphazardly developed competing and even contradictory Islamic customs and laws drawn as much from existing Roman or Persian legal codes as from the Qurʾan or the practices of Muhammad. Not only was the existence of multiple legal systems inconsistent with either tawhid or the religion’s universal nature, but, more practically, it also profoundly complicated the caliphate’s effort to administer justice. As a result, the dynasty was only too happy to support the ulema and their efforts to devise a single legal and social code, shariʿa law, by which all Muslims could live.

Shari’a Law

Shariʿa law became the beating heart of Sunni Islam as it took shape over the course of the eighth century. At its core, the code established the ethical and legal standards under which Sunni Muslims were to live. It did so not merely by prohibiting certain activities but by mandating and regulating others. For example, while it forbade sex outside of marriage and the consumption of pork or alcohol, it also required Muslims to pray daily and stipulated inheritance and divorce rights.

Its formulation proved lengthy and contentious. The problem was one of sources. When Muhammad was alive, ascertaining how believers should act or crafting appropriate laws to handle new situations had been simple: one merely asked the Prophet for his opinion on the subject. After his death and the passing of his companions, however, the community needed to find a different way to determine the traditions and laws by which the umma should abide. The Qurʾa provided the obvious starting point and would go on to serve as the primary source for the shariʿa code. It included some eighty explicitly legal verses that addressed issues such as marriage, inheritance, and female infanticide. It also established a series of moral precepts that could provide religious scholars with critical guidance for the construction of Islamic law. The ulema of the eighth century consequently set about systematically interpreting the Qurʾa for the purpose of refining the shariʿa code. In the process, they won popular backing for a particular understanding of the Qurʾan that held that it was not a living document or the product of a particular time and place, the Hijaz of the early seventh century, but that it was instead the timeless, literal word of God and thus beyond interpretation. Gradually, they also secured acceptance of the idea that the Qurʾan was a divine attribute of God, and that, as such, it was eternal and uncreated; like God, in other words, it had forever existed and was unchanging in form, and its teachings, as interpreted by the religious scholars, were thus beyond question.

At the same time, the Qurʾan quickly revealed itself to be of limited utility in the effort to craft an Islamic legal and social code. Focused largely on establishing the broad moral principles by which Muslims were to live rather than on providing explicit legal rulings or guidance, it offered only minimal assistance for resolving many pressing questions of behavior and law. As a result, the ulema soon found themselves stymied in their effort to construct a comprehensive shariʿa code.

The legal scholar Malik ibn Anas (711-795) was the first to suggest a way out of this situation. He argued that when the Qurʾan did not provide explicit direction on an issue, the ulema should look to the practices and laws of the city in which the Prophet’s community first existed: Medina. He subsequently founded a legal school in that city, the Maliki School, and published the Muwatta, in which he collected the customs, laws, and traditions of contemporary Medina that he believed dated to the time of Muhammad. Malik’s approach would prove highly influential in the development of Islamic fiqh, or jurisprudence. At the same time, however, doubts soon emerged regarding his reliance on Medina for the construction of Muslim law and custom. As critics asked, was it not possible that the traditions and laws of Medina included accretions and innovations made in the century after Muhammad’s death? If so, contemporary Medina could not serve as a model for Islamic behavior and law. These objections proved persuasive. In the end, they convinced most ulema that the practices of contemporary Medina could not serve as the basis for shariʿa law. Thus, despite Malik’s important contributions, Islamic jurisprudence appeared once again to be stuck.

One of Malik’s students, Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi’i (767-820) provided a way out of the impasse. The founder of the Shafi’i school of jurisprudence, he argued that shariʿa law had four legitimate sources. The first two were direct ones: the Qurʾan and the hadith, the documented accounts of the sunna of Muhammad. The other two, qiyas or analogical reasoning, and, ijma, or the consensus of the Muslim community, were indirect interpretive methods derived from the Qurʾan and the sunna that he argued could be used to determine the law in areas on which the direct sources did not provide clear guidance.

Like Malik, Al-Shafi’i argued that the Qurʾan was the revealed word of God and should thus be the first source to which the religious scholars should look in the creation of shariʿa law. However, when it did not directly address an issue or when its dictates needed clarification he contended that they should seek guidance not in the customs of Medina but instead in the sunna of Muhammad as recorded in the hadith. He maintained that since the Prophet was the archetype of the perfect Muslim, the documented stories of his life constituted indirect divine revelation that outlined the kind of society in which God wanted humanity to live.

Al-Shafi’i’s argument was persuasive, and soon won broad support among the ulema. The hadith provided answers to many questions on which the Qurʾan was silent and proved pivotal in breathing new life into the effort to develop a comprehensive religious and social code. At the same time, however, the hadith were surprisingly problematic as a source for Islamic law. The primary issue was the sheer quantity of them. By the time that scholars such as Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (815-875) began compiling hadith in the ninth century, their number had exploded into the hundreds of thousands. Making matters worse, the hadith frequently contradicted one another. While religious scholars agreed that many were valid, they also believed that large numbers were forgeries fabricated by rulers or other individuals to advance their own narrow interests. How, then, could the ulema use them to devise the shariʿa code? That is, how could they separate the legitimate hadith from the many forgeries?

Here, too, al-Shafi’i provided a path forward. He developed a rigorous approach which the ulema could assess the validity of the hadith using techniques similar to the methods that modern-day historians use to critically assess the credibility of sources. Al-Shafi’i’s approach called on the ulema to examine carefully the isnad, or chain of people who transmitted the story from the time of Muhammad to the ninth century. Valid hadith needed to be traced through a succession of people of unimpeachable moral character back to a person who knew the prophet personally. If an individual in an isnad could not have met the person from whom they purportedly heard a hadith because they lived at different times or in different places, then that hadith could not be authenticated. Likewise, if a person in the isnad was of poor moral reputation, then the hadith could not be trusted. This process was reputed to be quite strict. One story holds that the religious scholar Ismail al-Bukhari (810-870) rejected a hadith because he discovered that one of the transmitters beat his horse; to al-Bukhari, a person who treated his mount in that way could not possibly possess the ethical and moral character of a reliable transmitter.

This was all good for certain issues, but what if both the Qurʾan and the hadith failed to clarify a legal or ethical question? Al-Shafi’i argued that in those cases, the ulema could seek guidance through the indirect interpretive methods of qiyas and ijma. Qiyas, or analogical reasoning, allowed the ulema to extend the precepts and logic of the Qurʾan and the sunna to subjects that those sources did not explicitly address. For example, religious scholars used qiyas to forbid the consumption of drugs such as marijuana that were unknown to the early community of believers and that Muhammad had consequently never discussed. They argued that if alcohol was forbidden because it was an intoxicant, then other intoxicants, including marijuana, should likewise be prohibited. The second indirect method that al-Shafi’i articulated, ijma, or consensus, was based on Muhammad’s declaration that “my community will never agree on an error” and held that any decision that a substantial majority of the religious scholars agreed to was binding as Islamic law. Ironically, ijma permitted the ulema to validate legal decisions, such as one that called for adulterers and prostitutes to be stoned to death, even when those decisions appeared to contradict the Qurʾan.

While al-Shafi’i maintained that the only appropriate sources for shariʿa law were the Qurʾan, the hadith, ijma, and qiyas, other religious scholars argued that a third, indirect, interpretive method, ijtihad, or independent reasoning, could be used when those sources failed to provide a clear answer. Supporters of ijtihad argued that a well- respected ulema could render a judgement about an unprecedented situation based on his understanding of Islamic law. If, over time, most other religious scholars supported his reasoning via ijma, then that decision would acquire legal precedence and thus permanence. During the ninth and tenth centuries, ijtihad enjoyed widespread support among the ulema and constituted an important source of shariʿa law. As we shall see, however, enthusiasm for its use would soon fade.16

Using al-Shafi’i’s approach, four Sunni schools of jurisprudence developed in the ninth century to articulate shariʿa law and to erect the theological foundation on which it rests. Along with the aforementioned Maliki and Shafi’i Schools, there emerged the Hanifa School founded by Abu Hanifa (699-767) and the Hanbali School established by Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855). Each of these schools adopted approaches to the formulation of the shariʿa code that differed in terms of the sources that they emphasized. The Hanifa School stressed the importance of the qiyas, for example, while the Hanbali School drew most heavily on a strick adherence to the Qur’an and authentic sunna. Regardless of their differing views on the appropriate sources, however, the schools developed remarkably similar codes. Indeed, they differed more in terms of tone than in the substance of their legal rulings. The four schools thus enjoyed equal status and authority; that is, the sum of their rulings collectively constituted the core of shariʿa law, and all of them gained widespread support among Sunni Muslims, though depending on the region one was often dominant over the others.

Importantly, the ulema presented the code that they had developed as one that was not subject to debate or challenge. As they argued, it was founded not on fallible, mortal faculties nor was it developed incrementally in response to the specific circumstances of a given place or historical period. Instead, they maintained that the shariʿa law was a direct and indirect extension of two perfect sources, the Qurʾan and the sunna of Muhammad—the Qur’an because it was the timeless, literal word of God, and the sunna because God Himself had chosen the Prophet to serve as his final messenger. Thus, the religious scholars declared, the shariʿa law that they had developed was divine in origin and, as such, beyond the capacity of humans to question or dispute.

The Historical Debate: Hadith Scholarship

The preceding understanding of the code’s origins dominated the Muslim world without serious question for over a millennium. In recent decades, however, scholars have mounted a sustained challenge to it. Central to their critique have been doubts about the validity of the hadith from which the ulema had constructed the sunna.

Scholars have raised two main objections to their reliability. First, they have persuasively demonstrated that many of the laws ostensibly derived from the hadith in fact predate Islam and originated in the Talmudic, Roman, or Persian legal traditions, meaning that the code itself reveals that it had roots that extended well beyond the sunna. Second, scholars have uncovered evidence that indicates that many of the isnad that the ulema had analyzed with such apparent rigor almost certainly did not extend back to the time of the Prophet.

These findings offer insights into the goals that motivated the religious scholars to engage in the effort to link the shariʿa code to the practices of the early umma through hadith scholarship. As the religious scholar Reza Aslan has shown, while the sunna on which the shariʿa code is based may correctly reproduce some of the customs and practices of the early community of believers, any instances of accuracy on the part of the ulema are more a function of accident than intent. This is so because the real purpose of hadith scholarship was not to separate authentic hadith from the chaff but instead, through the manufacture of hadith and isnads, to connect ninth-century legal and religious views to the early umma and, in doing so, to give sanction to ulema-approved laws and customs that either pre- or post-dated Islam. Hadith scholarship was a tool used to create a past consistent with the present rather than the reverse. Tellingly, the hadith that appeared to enjoy the strongest claims to legitimacy were the least reliable. Regardless, the religious scholars’ campaign worked. Their effort to give the existing laws and customs that they endorsed the official sanction of Islamic precedence gained broad acceptance, and their control of the past through hadith scholarship came to form a central plank in their contention that they held sole authority over shariʿa law.

Their ability to gain broad acceptance of their understanding of the Qurʾan constituted a second critical element of that claim. As previously noted, the ulema had succeeded in gaining broad approval both for their interpretation of the Qurʾan and for their assertion that it was the literal, uncreated, eternal word of God. That is, they had managed to simultaneously advance a particular understanding of the Qurʾan and to assert that it was beyond interpretation, thereby establishing their view as the only valid one. Coupled with their monopoly over hadith scholarship, it ensured that they commanded the main sources of Islamic law and afforded them a degree of authority over the shariʿa code that even the caliph had to respect.

As modern-day scholars point out, their control over the sources of the shariʿa code would give Sunnism a conservative, backward-looking character. By limiting the law directly or indirectly to the Qurʾan and the life of Muhammad, the religious scholars ensured that the main venue for legal and social debate would not be the present day or the use of reason, but instead the interpretation of the Salaf, the first three generations of Muslims, which the ulema had successfully assumed control over through hadith scholarship. In the process of creating the shariʿa code, the legal scholars had also institutionalized the view that the Sunni community should address challenges not by developing new practices or institutions, but instead by doing the precise opposite: eliminating accretions and innovations, bidʾah, and returning to the customs, however ahistorical, of the Salaf. This framework would prove enormously influential. Indeed, as we shall see later, it would shape many of the ways in which Sunnis would respond to difficult challenges such as the Mongol conquest in the thirteenth century and the growing power of the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Shiʿism

Not all Muslims shared this emphasis on the first few generations of believers. Instead, almost from the start, a minority that would come to be known as Shiʿa rejected the Sunni religious scholars’ focus on the Salaf in favor of a conception of Islam centered on the descendants of Muhammad through the line of his daughter Fatima (605-632) and his son-in-law Ali ibn-Talib (r. 656-661). In doing so, they would articulate an interpretation of Islam’s nature and a set of beliefs regarding both who should rule and the extent of their religious authority that sharply contrasted with the views of the Sunni majority. Though its adherents have at times faced persecution, Shiʿism has persevered. Indeed, according to a 2009 Pew Forum study, the world’s 154 million to 200 million Shiʿan account for 10-13 percent of the global Muslim population.

Origins

Shiʿism originated in a political dispute that went back to Islam’s earliest days. As discussed in Chapter Three, a crisis had emerged following Muhammad’s death regarding who should succeed him. With the Prophet having died without first explicitly naming a successor, the umma quickly divided into factions over the question of who should replace him. One of those groups, the Alids—also known as the Shi’at Ali, or Party of Ali—argued that Muhammad had in fact made clear that he wanted his son-in- law, Ali, to succeed him. However, other prominent Muslims balked at the idea.

Believing that Ali was too young, they instead chose Muhammad’s father-in-law, and close friend, Abu Bakr (r. 632-634), as the Prophet’s successor. Grudgingly Ali and his backers accepted the decision. Later, and with greater reluctance, they also acknowledged the decision of the leading Muslims to pass over Ali in favor of Umar (r. 634-644) in 634 and Uthman (r. 644-656) a decade later.

Finally, following Uthman’s murder in 656, Ali at last became caliph. As we have seen, his tenure as leader of the umma was neither happy nor successful. Ali faced significant rebellions, including one led by ʿAʾisha (c. 613-678) and two of the Prophet’s former companions and an even more formidable one headed by the powerful governor of Syria, Muawiyah ibn Abi Sufyan (r. 661-680). He also had to deal with an uprising by militant former supporters known as Kharijites, or “seceders,” who had broken with him over his willingness to enter into arbitration with Muawiyah. Ali’s short and difficult reign ended in 661 when a Kharijite assassin murdered him in the Mosque in Kufa using a poisoned sword. With Ali dead, leadership of the Shi’at Ali fell to his eldest son, Hasan ibn Ali (624-670). A deeply religious man, Hasan had been horrified by the fighting that had occurred between Muslims during the First Fitnah. Eager to avoid a continuation of the civil war, he proposed a settlement wherein he would accept Muawiyah as the new caliph on the condition that a shura would choose his successor. With Muawiyah agreeing to abide by this proposal, Hasan retired to Medina where he died in 670. Following his death, his brother, Hussein ibn Ali (626-680), succeeded him as the leader of the Shiaʿt Ali.

Ultimately, Muawiyah did not stand by the agreement he had made with Hasan. Instead of calling for a shura to determine who should succeed him, he arranged during his final months as caliph for his son, Yazid (r. 680-683), to take power, thereby establishing the Umayyad Dynasty. This move was not a popular one. Many Muslims were upset about it because they felt that dynastic rule was antithetical to Islam’s egalitarian message. The Shiaʿt Ali joined those who complained about Muawiyah’s actions, but they objected on substantially different grounds. For them, the issue was not the shift to a hereditary caliphate but instead the fact that it would run through Banu Umayya. That is, they were happy to have a dynastic system, indeed, they were enthusiastic about the idea, but only so long as it followed the descendants of Muhammad through the line of Fatima and Ali.

Furious at Muawiyah’s betrayal, Hussein moved to challenge Yazid shortly after the latter acceded to power. Launching a rebellion was a tall order for the Prophet’s grandson, however. Living in distant Medina, he was isolated from the main Muslim population centers and was thus in a poor position to organize an effective revolt. Southern Iraq, however, had large numbers of Alids whose backing could possibly give him the numbers needed to triumph over the Umayyads. Accordingly, after he received a message from troops in the pro-Alid garrison town of Kufa expressing their support and inviting him to come and take command, he and a small band of supporters departed for Iraq in the late summer of 680. It was a risky move. Yazid would surely attempt to intercept him before he reached Kufa. Accordingly, Hussein instructed his Kufan supporters to march out to meet him when he neared Iraq. However, they failed to do so. While Hussein was traveling north, the powerful Umayyad governor of Iraq, Ubayd Allah brought his army to Kufa where he intimidated the Alids into inaction through a show of force. As a result, when Hussein finally entered Iraq near the town of Karbala, he met not the Kufan supporters he expected but instead Ubayd Allah’s large and powerful army. Unsurprisingly, the ensuing fight was entirely one sided. With little difficulty, Ubayd Allah’s soldiers slaughtered Hussein and his seventy- two companions at the Battle of Karbala, thus ending the Alid revolt before it even began.

By all reasonable expectations, the battle should have been the end of the Alids; instead, the battle marked the point at which the Shiaʿt Ali transformed from a political faction into a new religious sect: Shiʿism. This process started quietly. In 684, penitents from Kufa assembled in Karbala on the anniversary of the battle to mourn the death of Hussein and to seek atonement for their failure to help him. In doing so, they turned what had been a political and military defeat into a noble act of moral suffering and righteousness. According to this new interpretation of the battle, Hussein had understood clearly that he faced certain death if he continued into Iraq; nonetheless, he pushed on and sacrificed himself as an act of devotion to God. In this way, the early Shiʿa remade the defeat at Karbala from a failed rebellion to an act of righteous martyrdom.

Shiʿa Rituals and Theology

In keeping with this idea, the nascent sect rapidly developed a set of beliefs that centered on the themes of atonement, martyrdom, and sacrifice but also, for those who kept the faith through hard times, redemption. This emphasis on loss and penance reflects the Alids’ bitter experiences in the first few decades of the caliphate. While the Sunnis could point to a string of successes, Muhammad’s victory over Mecca, the defeat of the Byzantines, the conquest of the Persian Empire, triumph over the Alids, the Shiʿa could instead look back only to a series of defeats and setbacks. As a result, they placed less emphasis than the Sunnis on right behavior and strict observance of Islamic law and instead stressed the creation of emotional rituals through which they could simultaneously express their devotion to God and seek forgiveness for their failure to aid Hussein in his hour of need. In reenactments of the Battle of Karbala staged during the holiday of Ashura, for example, penitent Shiʿa engage in acts of self- flagellation such as whipping their backs with chains in order to demonstrate their faith and to atone for the community’s failure in 680. Similar rituals occur at the shrine of Hussein in Karbala during Arbaeen, the holiday that marks the end of the traditional forty-day period of mourning following Ashura.

The Imamate

The differences between Sunnism and Shiʿism went well beyond the latter’s embrace of ritual. Indeed, the most obvious point of disagreement between the two sects was over the question of political leadership. As we have seen, Sunnis argued that any outwardly devout male member of the Quraysh tribe could serve as caliph so long as he maintained the peace. The Shiʿa disagreed. After Karbala, they elaborated an increasingly complex political-religious doctrine that held that leadership of the Muslim community rightly belonged to the Imams. To Sunni Muslims, the term imam, or leader, refers to the people who direct the communal prayers in the mosques. To the Shiʿa, in contrast, it is a proper noun, a term of great respect reserved only for the line of male descendants of Muhammad through Ali and Fatima, who, they believe, God had ordained to rule. Thus, to the Shiʿa, Ali should have become caliph immediately following Muhammad’s death, and, thereafter, the succession should have remained confined to his descendants with Fatima.

Central to Shiʿism then and now is the belief that the Imams are more than just political leaders. To the Shiʿa, they are instead divinely appointed figures endowed with the same authority and power as Muhammad. Most notably, Shiʿism holds that Ali and his descendants had inherited from the Prophet his baraka, his special ability to see beyond the Qurʾan’s literal, surface meaning and to understand and interpret its more profound, hidden, esoteric message. This belief had important ramifications for the Shiʿa. It led them to reject the Sunni view that the age of revelation had ended with the Prophet’s death and that the Qurʾan was to be understood literally and to instead embrace the idea that the Muslim community continued to receive direct, divine guidance, and even new revelation, through the Imams’ interpretation of God’s message. It also led the Shiʿa to claim that the Imams had a special role to play in helping others to achieve salvation. This position emerged in the ninth century when Shiʿa religious scholars began to argue that since ordinary believers lacked the ability to understand the hidden message of the Qurʾan, they were incapable of securing God’s grace on their own. However, God had not forsaken them. Instead, He had granted the Shiʿa Muhammad, Fatima, and the line of infallible Imam, the power to intercede in order to help people attain salvation.

Unsurprisingly, the Shiʿa did not approve of the government that ruled the community of believers. On the contrary, they were unsparing in their opposition to the caliphate. They did not characterize the first three caliphs as Rashidun, and they outright denied the legitimacy of both the Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties. Save for Ali and Muhammad, in fact, they believed that all of the leaders of the umma had been usurpers. For a time, they translated this sentiment into action. During the eighth and ninth centuries, the Shiʿa organized numerous opposition movements and rebellions in Iraq aimed at restoring the line of Imams to power. Predictably, all of those revolts failed in the face of the Abbasid Dynasty’s enormous power. Indeed, the caliphate’s response to their subversive activities was so overwhelming that it compelled the Shiʿa to abandon militant opposition at the end of the ninth century. Thereafter, they responded to the caliphate’s ongoing efforts to suppress them by adopting a combination of quietism, meaning the acceptance of the existing order, and taqiyya, or dissimulation, the practice of concealing their religious identity to avoid persecution.

Competing Sects: Zaidism, Ismailism, and Twelver Shiʿism

Despite their common veneration of the Imams and their shared experience of being regularly persecuted by the caliphate, the Shiʿa split into competing variants over the course of the eighth century. They did so in part because Shiʿism experienced a regular event that provided the opportunity for its adherents to factionalize: the succession to the Imamate. The death of each Imam raised the question of which son or relative should follow him as leader of the Shiʿa community. In most cases, a consensus existed regarding who should succeed to the Imamate. Twice during the eighth century, however, a significant minority broke with their fellow Shiʿa regarding the succession. As a result, Shiʿism divided into three main variants: Zaidism, also known as Fiver Shiʿism because of its belief that the line of infallible leaders ended with the Fifth Imam, Ismailism, or Sevener Shiʿism, so named because of its view that Ismail ibn Jafar (c. 722-c. 762) was the rightful seventh Imam, and Ithna Asharism, or Twelver Shiʿism, so called because it holds that there have been twelve Imams.

The Zaydis were the first group to split with the majority of Shiʿa. Following the death of the fourth Imam, Ali Zayn al-Abadin (c. 659-713), most Shiʿa recognized his son Muhammad al-Baqir (677-733) as the Fifth Imam. However, a small minority instead claimed that Muhammad’s brother, Zayd ash-Shahid (c. 698-740), was the rightful Fifth Imam, and established a separate Shiʿa sect called Zaydism. Never accounting for more than a small fraction of the global Muslim population, Zaydis differed from other Shiʿa not merely over the correct succession of Imams but also over how they should react to a hostile political order that had, in their eyes, usurped the Imams’ rightful position as the head of the umma. While most Shiʿa responded to Shiʿism’s precarious position in the Sunni-dominated caliphate by practicing political quietism and taqiyya, the Zaydis instead followed the Kharijites in arguing that the Qurʾanic commandment to “enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil” required them to rebel against unjust rule. In keeping with this view, the Zaydis spearheaded several revolts against both the Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties in the eighth and ninth centuries. Predictably, given the power imbalance between them and the caliphal government, none of these rebellions came anywhere close to succeeding and only served to leave the Zaydis weak and vulnerable. The Zaydis were resilient, however, and managed to stage a comeback in the late ninth century. Taking advantage of disarray in the Abbasid court, they succeeded in establishing a long-lasting state in distant Yemen in 897. It survived in various forms until a coup overthrew it in 1962.

Another small sect, the Ismailis, or Sevener Shiʿa, also promoted a militant response to what they argued was an unjust political order. Like Zaydism, Ismailism emerged in the mid- to late-eighth century as a result of a dispute over the succession to the Imamate. In this case, the issue was who should follow the Sixth Imam, Jafar al- Sadiq (702-765) as the leader of the Shiʿa community. Jafar had already answered this question by naming his elder son, Ismail ibn Jafar, to succeed him. However, Ismail had predeceased his father. In response, most Shiʿa acknowledged Ismail’s younger brother, Musa al-Kazim (745-799), as the Seventh Imam. This decision did not enjoy unanimous support within the Shiʿi community, however. On the contrary, a minority vigorously disagreed and argued that Ismail had to be the rightful Seventh Imam; after all, Jafar was infallible, and, as such, could not have made a mistake in choosing his successor. This reasoning was consistent with the belief that the Imams are divinely appointed figures endowed with unerring judgement, but it raised a difficult question: how could one of the infallible Imams have made a decision that seemed to have left the faithful without a leader?

For most Ismailis, the answer was simple. Arguing that the Imamate continued through Ismail’s lineage, they acknowledge one of his sons, Muhammad ibn Ismail (740-813) as the new Imam. For a small minority of Ismailis later known as Qarmatians, however, that answer to the apparent paradox inherent in Jafar al-Sadiq’s decision to choose a successor who predeceased him was unsatisfying. Over time, they arrived at a different and novel explanation. Ismail had not died, they maintained, but had instead gone into Occultation (ghayba), or spiritual hiding, as the Hidden Imam, and would return at the end of days as the Mahdi, or messiah, to restore God’s rule for all time.

Among the Shiʿa, the Ismailis proved most effective at opposing the Abbasids. As we shall see in more detail in Chapter Five, an Ismaili group seized control of modern- day Tunisia in 909 and proclaimed the establishment of a dynastic rival to Abbasid rule known as the Fatimid Caliphate. Far from the center of the empire, it at first posed little threat to the government in Baghdad. Over time, however, the Fatimids expanded to the point that they became a serious rival to the Abbasids. For much of the tenth through twelfth centuries, in fact, Fatimid rulers would enjoy more power and influence in the Muslim world than did the Abbasid caliphs.

Even following the collapse of the Fatimid Caliphate in 1171, the Ismailis continued to constitute a serious challenge to Abbasid rule. The new Ismaili threat came in the form of the Nizari Ismailis, or, as their enemies called them, the Assassins, who had broken away from the Fatimid Caliphate in the late-eleventh century over another disputed succession. Establishing a chain of nearly impregnable fortresses in modern- day Iran, Iraq, and Syria, including the famous Alamut Castle, they waged highly effective, low-intensity, terror campaigns against the Abbasids, Seljuq Turks, and European Crusaders during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These operations were so successful, in fact, that the Nizaris managed to maintain an independent, non- contiguous state that, though surrounded by enemies, thrived for nearly two centuries. Indeed, only with the coming of the Mongols to the Middle East in the 1250s were the powerful Assassins finally brought to heel.

The Ismailis later evolved into a very different sect. Having long since abandoned violence, Ismailism’s 15 million adherents now live peacefully under the leadership of the 50^th Imam, the wealthy and influential Shah Rahim al-Hussaini (r. 2025- ). As they have for centuries, most reside in Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. However, many Ismaili merchants took advantage of their membership in the British Empire to pursue opportunities in other colonies. As a result, Ismaili communities exist today in Africa, the Middle East, North America, Asia, and Europe.

As noted earlier, adherents of the largest variant of Shiʿism, Ithna Ishari, or Twelver Shiʿism, did not acknowledge Ismail as the seventh Imam. Instead, they accepted his brother Musa as Jafar’s rightful successor to the imamate. However, they, too, eventually ran into a theological conundrum. In their case, the problem stemmed from the disappearance of the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi (870-?). His disappearance before he could designate an heir compelled them to confront the same essential dilemma that the Ismaili’s had faced at the time of Jafar’s death: how could they reconcile their belief that the Imams were infallible with the apparent end of the Imamate? The answer came through the appropriation and elaboration of the Qarmatian concept of Occultation. Twelver ulema started claiming that Muhammad al- Mahdi was not dead but was instead in Occultation as the Hidden Imam. Eventually, they continued, the Mahdi, meaning “the expected one,” would reappear as the Messiah alongside Jesus and together they would bring peace and justice to the earth. In the meantime, the Shiʿa ulema would direct the spiritual and legal life of the Twelver community as the representatives of the Hidden Imam. Today, the vast majority of Shiʿa, about 85 percent, are Twelvers. They constitute a minority of Arabs living along the Gulf Coast, a substantial plurality of the Arabs of Iraq, and an overwhelming majority of Iranians.

Similarities and Differences Between Shiʿism and Sunnism

In a number of ways, the beliefs of Shiʿa sects such as the Twelvers stand in sharp contrast to the tenets of Sunnism. Four differences are particularly stark. First, Sunnism vigorously maintains that no intermediaries, human or divine, stand between Muslims and God. Shiʿa, in sharp contrast, hold that believers can be redeemed only through the intercession of the Shiʿa Imams. Second, while Sunnism has no religious establishment and argues that all adherents are equally capable of understanding the beliefs of Islam, Shiʿism, especially its Twelver variant, instead has a formal priesthood that establishes and upholds religious doctrine and that claims to represent the Hidden Imam until his return. Third, Shiʿa adhere to their own version of the shariʿa law, the Jafari School, established in the mid-seventh century by the Sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq. Moreover, in contrast to the Sunni legal tradition’s rejection of independent reasoning in the thirteenth century, a topic we shall cover presently, Shiʿa ulema continue to view ijtihad as a legitimate tool for rendering legal decisions. Finally, and most importantly, the early Sunnis and Shiʿa split dramatically over the question of who should rule and what powers they should wield. As we have seen, Sunnis asserted that the empire should be headed by a fundamentally secular caliph whose primary responsibility was the maintenance of order; Shiʿa, in contrast, claimed that the infallible Imams who descended from Muhammad through the line of Fatima and Ali were the rightful leaders of the umma and that they exercised both political and religious authority.

It is easy to overstate the differences between Sunnism and Shiʿism. However, in many ways their contrasts are largely surface ones that mask the degree to which their social customs and religious beliefs are fundamentally similar. For example, the Shiʿi legal tradition’s origins in the distinct Jafar School and its continued embrace of ijtihad suggest at first blush that it diverges dramatically from the Sunni tradition; in reality, those differences were more ones of process than of function, and the Shiʿa and Sunni versions of shariʿa law ended up looking remarkably similar. Likewise, Sunnis and Shiʿa frequently hold similar beliefs, typically practice the same social customs, and largely adhere to common rituals such as the Five Pillars of Islam, albeit in slightly different forms. Indeed, much of the all-too-real contemporary strife between members of the two sects is not the product of genuine religious differences but is instead a function of what Sigmund Freud called the Narcissism of Small Differences: the phenomenon wherein similar groups magnify minor dissimilarities to accentuate their distinct identities.

The Kharijites

The final significant movement to take shape during the seventh century, Kharijism, did not constitute a distinct sect in the way the Shiʿa and Sunni did. Outwardly, the Kharijites appeared to be conventional Sunnis who adhered to the same beliefs and followed the same customs and shariʿa law as did the majority of Muslims. In certain critical ways, however, they differed dramatically from both Shiʿa and Sunnis. Most notably, their unforgiving interpretation of how Muslims should live and their equally strict perspective regarding who should serve as caliph constituted a construction of Islam that not only differed sharply from the views of other Muslims but importantly, also established a template for puritanical opposition that remains influential through the present day.

The Kharijites emerged in the 650s as proponents of a fundamentalist, rigid, and strongly egalitarian understanding of Islam. They held that every Muslim was equal before God and that each one was obligated to scrupulously obey every injunction and prohibition outlined in the Qurʾan and the sunna of Muhammad at all times. They also interpreted the Qurʾanic commandment to “enjoin what is good and forbid what is evil” to mean that sinning was not merely a moral failure but also an act of apostasy (Qurʾan, 3:110). By extension, they believed fervently that the community was strictly obliged to deal with sinners through takfir or excommunication: the formal declaration that a person was an unbeliever and thus no longer a Muslim. A declaration of takfir was a serious charge to the Kharijites. Indeed, in their eyes, one subject to takfir faced the penalty of death unless they could demonstrate that they had genuinely repented.

Stressing Islam’s egalitarian roots, they made no exceptions for the powerful. In contrast to both the Sunni position that any male member of the Quraysh tribe could rule so long as he maintained order and to the Shiʿa belief that only the infallible Imams could legitimately head the umma, the Kharijites argued that leadership of the community should fall to the most pious Muslim regardless of lineage. Those who ruled had to remain scrupulously devout if they wished to remain in power, for the Kharijites maintained not only that the caliph was subject to the same laws and punishments as any other Muslim but that the community was required to depose or even kill him if he sinned. They remained unwavering in their commitment to this position. As we saw in Chapter Three, they assassinated Ali in response to his willingness to enter into arbitration with Muawiyah, an action that they viewed as the usurpation of God’s will and thus an act of apostasy punishable by death.

Despite their success in deposing Ali, the Kharijites proved almost completely incapable of imposing their conception of Islam on their coreligionists. Their extreme views remained highly unpopular, and they never managed to win more than a tiny fraction of Muslims to their cause. As a result, Kharijism remained a marginal movement confined largely to isolated communities in North Africa and the fringes of Arabia. Nonetheless, it has had an influence in the Muslim world wildly out of scale with its modest numbers. As we shall see, Kharijite ideas would shape later puritanical movements like the Wahhabi of eighteenth-century Arabia, the views of twentieth- century jihadi thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), and the actions of contemporary terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.

Sufism

While the early Kharijites, Shiʿa, and Sunnis argued about Islam’s outward attributes, other Muslims, the Sufis, instead explored the religion’s inner, spiritual element. Named for the simple, unrefined woolen clothing called tasawwuf that they favored, the Sufis eschewed politics and even Islam’s traditional emphasis on the community in favor of an emotional and mystical focus on the individual’s relationship with the divine. In the process, they developed a powerful and popular new conception of Islam that proved peculiarly capable of attracting converts.

Sufism emerged in reaction to two powerful trends in the Muslim world of the eighth century: surging materialism and the development of the shariʿa code. To many believers, it seemed that worldly affairs had come increasingly to dominate the umma. Indeed, the latter decades of the Umayyad Dynasty had coincided with a growing emphasis in the Arab Empire on material concerns such as wealth and power—a shift that the ruling dynasty’s increasing use of extravagant court rituals and embrace of luxury exemplified. Pious Muslims recoiled at the growth of materialism. Many responded by embracing the movement to codify the outward manifestation of Islam through the development of shariʿa law. However, not all spiritually-minded Muslims supported that effort. On the contrary, the early Sufis found the religious scholars’ emphasis on external behavior and legalism every bit as objectionable as the Umayyads’ embrace of wealth and opulence. In their view, the shariʿa code was stiflingly rigid and formalistic, and its narrow focus on correct behavior left no room for a personal relationship with God.

Early Sufi masters responded this by developing tariqa or “the Way”: the different methods through which people could connect directly to the divine. They started with the premise that rationalism and legalism were of no use in helping believers attain personal contact with God; after all, how could one experience the divine through the study of law or knowledge of philosophy? Instead, they believed that the embrace of the divine was a fundamentally intimate act that could only be achieved through intense emotional expression and through scrupulous adherence to proper techniques. It was not a task for the uninitiated. On the contrary, navigating the tariqa was a challenging venture that required the guidance of a Sufi saint who had already attained union with God. Known as shaykhs or, in Persian, pirs, saints guided those seeking communion with God on an emotional, inner, spiritual journey that involved passing through a series of stages designed to strip away their sense of self. Eventually, with perseverance and discipline, those seeking God’s embrace would achieve fana: the annihilation of the ego and, with it, direct union with the divine.

From the start, Sufism was divided into a multiplicity of schools, each of which followed a distinct tariqa created by a different master. These orders shared a number of commonalities. All held that fana required the intercession of a Sufi master who had already attained union with God and all revered the saints as intercessors between the individual and the divine. All Sufi schools also began with the belief that material temptations prevented people from maintaining the discipline needed to attain union with God; they consequently pursued asceticism, or the rejection of worldly comforts and pleasures, as the essential first step toward fana. Simple clothing, the embrace of poverty, and the practice of celibacy were the rule for the Sufis. All Sufis likewise practiced dhikr, the remembrance of God through ritual physical action. Here, however, the various Sufi orders followed very different tariqa. Most engaged in some form of vocal dhikr, which involved rhythmically and repetitively chanting God’s name while simultaneously undertaking careful breathing exercises designed to break down the individual’s sense of self. Others instead relied on music or, in the case of the famous Whirling Dervishes, on a rapid, spinning dance through which they sought to strip away their egos and to induce the proper state in which they could experience the presence of God.

While the numerous Sufi orders were heterogeneous, they had, by the ninth century, divided into two broad approaches. Championed by al-Junayd (834-910), so- called sober or conservative Sufism embraced customary Sufi approaches such as asceticism and dhikr, but also adhered to traditional Muslim beliefs and practices such as observance of the shariʿa law. In contrast, drunken Sufism, whose name derives from the concept of sukr, or intoxication, rejected orthodox Islamic traditions as impediments to the attainment of fana. Here drunkenness is a metaphor for being overwhelmed by divine love, leading to a state of spiritual ecstasy. These Sufis viewed Islam as little more than the starting point on their journey to the annihilation of the ego and readily incorporated popular local customs and religious beliefs into their canon. Some even went so far as to argue that the world’s great religions were merely different manifestations of a common search for unity with the divine.

Unsurprisingly, neither the caliphal government nor the ulema approved of these views. Indeed, from their perspective, drunken Sufism was a serious menace. Its rejection of the laws not only imperiled the social order but also threatened the religious scholars’ authority and prestige. Accordingly, the ulema and the caliphs joined together at different times to persecute drunken Sufis for apostasy. In the early tenth century, for example, the Sufi mystic Mansur al-Hallaj (c. 858-922) ran afoul of the religious scholars by claiming that the devout could complete the hajj without actually traveling to Mecca and by elevating Jesus’s stature to such a degree that some accused him of being a Christian. The religious scholars publicly condemned him for these declarations but did not take action against him. However, when he declared in the markets of Baghdad that “‘I am God!’”, by which he meant that he had attained union with the divine, he crossed the line. At the behest of the ulema, caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908-932) responded by first imprisoning al-Hallaj and then, after he refused to disavow his statements, by declaring him guilty of heresy and ordering his execution. To make an example of him, the caliph had him tortured, crucified, beheaded, dismembered, and, finally, cremated.

Despite al-Hallaj’s grisly fate, Sufism steadily gained new adherents among those who found the legal scholars’ emphasis on formalism off-putting. Indeed, the movement not only continued to grow, but, thanks to its embrace of syncretism, meaning its willingness to adopt religious practices from other faiths, it also came to play a vital role in Islam’s expansion. It was particularly important in winning converts in India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Africa. People in those regions saw Sufism as a way to continue to practice the religion into which they were born while simultaneously adopting elements of Islam that they found attractive. Later, they, or more typically, their descendants, gradually converted to orthodox Sunnism. Sufism thus constituted a religious way station for many people who were otherwise unlikely to embrace orthodox Islam.

Islamic Society

Meanwhile, even as Sunnis, Shiʿa, and Kharijites debated questions of politics and Sufi saints and initiates sought communion with God, a new, urban-centered, Islamic society took form in the Middle East. Though it emerged out of the movement that Muhammad had led in the early-seventh century, it was not patterned along the egalitarian lines that the Prophet had championed. Instead, like many other Medieval societies, this new civilization was organized along starkly hierarchical lines of class, religion, and sex.

The Elite

While the primary social and political fault line lay, at least initially, between the Arab Muslims and the people they had conquered, even the ruling elite would come to be highly stratified. At the very pinnacle of the social hierarchy stood the Abbasid caliph and his court. This tiny elite was unmatched in terms of political power, social status, cultural gravity, and economic pull. Just under them were the religious scholars. Through their control of the shariʿa law, they constituted a decentralized, alternate elite that sometimes rivaled and sometimes collaborated with the caliph’s government. Below them, were the rich merchants of the major commercial cities and a class of politically influential large landowners to whom the court had, in exchange for service, given the estates of the Byzantine nobles who had fled during the conquest. Rounding out the elite were those Arabs who received military pensions from the diwan either because they had fought in the conquest or, as was more frequently the case as the years passed, because one of their ancestors had. Having one’s name on the register was highly prized. Not only did it entitle one to receive an annual pension, but it also carried with it a great deal of prestige.

Ultimately, however, this last group’s membership in the elite proved to be transitory. For a combination of reasons both fiscal and political, the Abbasids gradually struck different categories from the diwan register. As a consequence, over the years thousands lost their pensions, their prestige, and their status as members of the elite. Still, like all Muslims, they continued to enjoy a relatively privileged social position in the caliphate and, of obvious practical benefit, exemption from certain taxes.

Dhimmi

The dhimmi were the non-Muslims who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population through the end of the tenth century. They held an ambiguous position in the caliphate. On the one hand, as we have seen, they possessed certain rights, particularly the freedom to practice their faith, that religious minorities in other Medieval societies typically did not enjoy. Educated Christians and Jews also had the opportunity to serve in the bureaucracy. On the other, the dhimmi were obligated to pay the jizya tax and had to endure a number of restrictions designed to make clear that they were second-class members of the caliphate. State and religious authorities barred them from riding horses, denied them the right to give testimony against Muslims in court, prohibited them from organizing Easter parades, compelled them to show deference to Muslims, and enforced a series of sartorial laws that required them to wear clothing that marked their confessional identity..

Conversion to Islam increased over time thanks in part to these restrictions. Initially, as we have seen, the Arabs had discouraged conversion in hopes that Muslims could remain a separate, ruling caste; as a result, during the first few centuries after the conquest, only a relatively small number of elite dhimmi who perceived practical benefits in converting chose to adopt the religion of the conquerors. Even after Umar II (r. 717-720) threw open the door to conversion, the vast majority of the population in the Middle East remained Christian or Zoroastrian. Around 900, however, a second, larger wave of conversion started. Thanks to the collapse of non-Islamic social structures in Iraq and to growing Muslim hostility to Christianity, particularly after the start of the Crusades, the rate of conversion increased dramatically. Within a few centuries, as a result, Islam had become the dominant religion in the Middle East, achieving majority status in Iraq by 1200 and in Syria and Egypt by 1400.

Enslaved People

As was the case elsewhere in the world, enslaved people occupied the lowest rung in the social hierarchy. Slaves were commonplace in the Arab Middle East—just as they had been in the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires. Like slave owners in those states, the Arabs at first used enslaved people to work large, cash-crop estates. However, a massive and difficult-to-subdue revolt in southern Iraq by East African slaves known as the Zanj spurred a change in that practice in the ninth century. Concluding from the rebellion that maintaining large concentrations of enslaved people was too risky, the Arabs thereafter relied on peasants for agricultural labor and shifted enslaved people to domestic service and manual labor in the cities. Despite this change, slavery itself remained a vast enterprise in the empire.

Frequent manumission and Islamic prohibitions on enslaving Muslims meant that the caliphate could not meet the demand for slaves domestically. As a result, an expansive, long-distance trade in enslaved people from Europe, Central Asia, and Africa took shape over the course of the seventh and eighth centuries. Increasingly, those purchased from Central Asia were not destined for domestic service or manual labor in the cities. Instead, as we shall see in Chapter fFve, the caliphate began purchasing a steadily growing share of them for the purpose of serving as slave soldiers or, as they were later known, Mamluks.

Women

Like those who were enslaved, Muslim women also found themselves in a subordinate legal and social position during much of this period. That they were in such a situation marked a significant change from their circumstances during the early years of the umma and was contrary to Muhammad’s wishes. As we saw in Chapter Two, the Prophet had secured a substantial degree of legal emancipation for women. Most notably, he granted them control over their dowries and accorded them inheritance and divorce rights. Their improved legal and social standing did not merely endure while he was alive, moreover, but persisted through the early decades of the Rashidun. For a time, as a result, Muslim women enjoyed a degree of autonomy and legal standing that had little parallel in other parts of the globe.

However, those gains proved to be short lived. Over the ensuing decades, men gradually reasserted traditional patriarchal values and rolled back Muhammad’s reforms. The ulema led the way. While they had felt compelled to include in shariʿa law some of the improvements he had instituted for women, they also reinterpreted Qur’anic decrees to water those reforms down and to restore the social-and-legal dominance that men had previously enjoyed over women. Likewise, they steadily incorporated into the shariʿa code pre-Islamic customary laws that made divorce easier for men and more difficult for women, despite the fact that those changes clearly violated both Qurʾanic injunctions and Muhammad’s wishes. In similar fashion, the right that women had won to determine whom they married was soon ignored, and fathers returned to the pre-Islamic custom of arranging their daughters’ marriages. Finally, the ulema also reinterpreted the Qurʾan to accord Islamic sanction to longstanding Byzantine and Persian customs such as veiling and female seclusion in the harem, the private part of the home into which only close male relatives could enter. Often rigidly enforced to ensure female honor, meaning sexual faithfulness, the practice of seclusion in the Muslim world differed on the basis of class status. The results were ironic. Often compelled by economic necessity to work outside the home, lower-class women were far-less likely to be confined to the harem than were their upper-class counterparts.

It is important to keep in mind that that the position of women varied dramatically and that not all were powerless. For example, a number of queen mothers parlayed their influence over their sons who served as caliph into significant political authority. Most notably, al-Khayzuran bint Atta (c. 789) dominated politics during the reigns of her husband and sons and served as de facto co-caliph during her son al-Hadi’s (r. 785- 786) tenure and during the first three years of the caliphate of her younger son, Harun al-Rashid (r. 786-809). These cases, of course, were very much the exception rather than the rule. During the century-and-a-half that followed Muhammad’s death, most women instead endured the gradual reassertion of patriarchal values and the concomitant reduction of the rights and liberties that the Prophet had granted them until, by the late-eighth century, they had lost nearly all of the legal and social gains that they had made during Islam’s first few decades.

Science

Beginning in the ninth century, the caliphate experienced an flourishing of scientific achievement that stood in stark contrast to the intellectual poverty of contemporary Europe. It began when a multicultural school of loosely affiliated Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars called faylasuf, derived from the Ancient Greek word philosophia, launched a concerted effort to translate ancient works of science, math, philosophy, and geography into Arabic. However, they quickly moved beyond mere translation. Building on the works of classical antiquity, those thinkers soon began to contribute vast new knowledge and to make enormous and lasting breakthroughs in a wide variety of fields. Indeed, between the tenth and twelfth centuries, the Muslim world’s scientists, geographers, doctors, mathematicians, and linguists would not merely surpass the achievements of the ancients but also lay the groundwork for the intellectual breakthroughs of the Early Modern Period.

Syriac-speaking Christians began the process of translating the works of the ancient Greeks into Arabic in the ninth century. Led by the greatest of the translators, the Nestorian Christian Hunayn ibn Ishaq (809-873), these scholars developed highly refined methods of producing Arabic versions of existing Greek, and, in some cases, Persian works. They copied the writings of mathematicians such as Pythagoras (c. 570- 495 BCE) and Euclid (c. 325-265 BCE), the books of doctors such as Galen (129-c. 210 CE), Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE), and Shushustra (c. 800-c. 700 BCE), the charts of astronomers like Ptolemy (c. 100-170 CE), the thinking of philosophers such as Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and Plato (c. 427-347 BCE), and the theories of philologists such as John Philiponus (c. 490-570 CE). In the process, the translators developed new idioms and vocabulary that rendered Arabic suitable for the discussion of the concepts and methods of the different scientific disciplines.

From nearly the beginning of this effort, moreover, they did not confine themselves to merely creating Arabic copies of existing works or repeating the ideas of the ancients. Instead, as their approach and knowledge became more sophisticated, they increasingly found errors and flawed reasoning in the sources that they translated. In response, they started to gloss their works, meaning that they began to make marginal comments that corrected and expanded on the manuscripts they translated.

The Bayt al-Hikma

Perceiving the practical benefits of the translation movement, particularly in the realms of geographic and medical knowledge, the Abbasid Dynasty threw its support behind the scholars beginning in the early-ninth century. Its backing was critical. The dynasty not only lavished substantial financial patronage on the movement but also ensured its continuation by protecting it from its numerous religious critics. Of perhaps greatest importance, under Caliph al-Mamun (r. 813-833), the Abbasid government constructed the Bayt al-Hikma, or House of Wisdom, for the growing community of faylasuf. Over the next two centuries, this combination of library and school would be the most important center of learning in the world, a place where scholars could translate ancient works, undertake research, conduct experiments, and synthesize knowledge. Thinkers working there not only benefited from the ability to interact with other leading scientists, but, thanks to the steady acquisition of new manuscripts from India, Persia, and the Byzantine Empire, also drew on what was, for several centuries, the most expansive collection of books on earth.

By that point, faylasuf affiliated with the House of Wisdom had begun to move beyond the Classical Greek thinkers who had originally inspired them. Building on the practice of glossing, Arab scientists, doctors, geographers, and astronomers had begun producing original works of enormous creativity and lasting influence. Ibn al-Hataym

(c. 969-1040) did pioneering work in optics, for example, while Abu Zayd al-Balhki (850- 934) established a school of cartography and developed new methods that produced vastly more-accurate maps. Known as Avicenna in the West, Ibn Sina (c. 980-1037) wrote the Canon of Medicine, a work so pathbreaking that it remained the standard medical text in Europe and the Middle East until the nineteenth century. Muslim intellectuals also developed astronomical tables using an observatory that the Caliph Mamun had ordered built in 828.

Scholars affiliated with the House of Wisdom had perhaps their greatest influence in the field of mathematics. Arab and Persian mathematicians such as Umar Khayyam (1048-1131), al-Karaji (953-1029), al-Haytham (965-1040), and others produced major advances in areas including linear and quadratic equations, geometry, and the use of fractional place notation. None was more significant than al-Khwarazmi (c. 800-847). The leading mathematician of his day, he made major contributions to the study of trigonometry and to the development of algorithms and was instrumental in the adoption of Indian numerals, later passed on to the West where they are known today as Arabic numerals. Most importantly, he thoroughly revolutionized the study of algebra. A thinker of the first rank, his contributions to the development of mathematics were pivotal and played an outsized part in laying the groundwork for the achievements of later Western mathematicians such as Isaac Newton (1642-1726). Indeed, his impact on Western thinking was so enormous that the word algorithm comes from the Latinized version of his name, Algoritmi, while the term algebra derives from the title of his most influential book, Hisob al-Jabr wal’ Mugabalah. Al-jabr means restoration, as in to add equal terms to both sides. of an equation to eliminate negative terms.

While many of the faylasufs connected to the House of Wisdom were non- Muslims, the knowledge that they created and the larger project to which they contributed fit comfortably within the structure of the emerging Islamic society. The close relationship between the House of Wisdom and Islam is most evident in the fields of mathematics and astronomy. Astronomic research frequently centered on practical questions related to religion such as the maintenance of religious calendars or the establishment of the correct time for daily prayer. Math likewise often served religious purposes. For example, mathematicians affiliated with the Bayt al-Hikma such as Abu al-Wafa (940-998) learned to use all six trigonometric functions in part so that Muslims could accurately determine the qibla, the direction of the Kaʿba and thus the point on the horizon to which they should pray, from any point on earth.

The knowledge that the faylasuf created spread quickly to thinkers in other parts of the Islamic World and even to those living in nearby states. That it did so owed in no small part to the growing availability of paper, a technology of Chinese origin that had spread to Central Asia in the centuries prior to the arrival of the Arabs in that region. Significantly cheaper to produce than the parchment that it replaced, paper soon created an explosion in the quantity of titles produced in the caliphate and a concomitant growth in the number of bookstores in the cities of the caliphate. More pertinently, it permitted thinkers working at the Bayt al-Hikma to inexpensively share their ideas with scientists and other intellectuals throughout the caliphate, including those who lived in other important centers of learning such as Cairo, Bukhara, and Damascus.

Al-Andalus

Baghdad’s only intellectual peers at that time were the multicultural cities of Cordoba, Seville, and Toledo in Muslim-controlled al-Andalus. Indeed, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, those cities were home to a disproportionate share of the world’s leading thinkers. Hailing from Toledo, for example, the Muslim scholar al Zarqali (1029-1087) revolutionized the field of astronomy. Originally trained as a metalsmith, he developed an improved astrolabe that greatly aided navigation, and he showed that the planets followed elliptical rather than perfectly circular paths when they traveled through the night sky. Even more influential was the Muslim polymath Ibn Rushd (1126-1198), or, as he was known in Western Europe, Averroes. Born in Cordoba, he made pathbreaking contributions in fields including physics, philosophy, math, jurisprudence, and medicine. His contemporary, the Jewish intellectual and bureaucrat Moses ben Maimon, commonly known as Maimonides, (c. 1136-1204) was a similarly towering figure. Also born in Cordoba, he developed groundbreaking new ideas in a wide variety of fields including medicine, philosophy, logic, and astronomy.

While the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish intellectuals of Spain constituted an integral part of the broader scholarly community of the Islamic world, they also played a vital role in reintroducing to Western Europe critical works of classical antiquity that had been lost to the people of that region since the demise of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. This process of intercultural exchange originated in the twelfth century when a multicultural group of scholars in Toledo began translating works like Ptolemy’s Almagest, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and Euclid’s Elements of Geometry from Arabic to Latin. Importantly, they did not merely provide verbatim copies of those works. On the contrary, their translations also included the annotations and commentaries of major Arab thinkers updating, correcting, and challenging those manuscripts. Over time, moreover, they moved beyond the lost works of classical antiquity and began translating many books written by Medieval Arab and Persian scholars including, most notably, al- Khwarazmi’s Algebra, al-Kindi’s (801-873) On Optics, and Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine.

These translated works were transformational to Western Europe Their powerful challenge to the prevailing Christian understanding of natural science produced a firestorm of controversy that sharply divided scholars in Europe’s fledgling universities. By far the most divisive works were those produced by the Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Put simply, he posed a serious dilemma for European scholars at that time. On the one hand, his thinking appeared to challenge the prevailing Christian idea that the physical universe operated as a function of God’s will; on the other, no educated person could ignore the brilliance of what Aristotle had written or the practical benefits that his method of study promised to bring. As a result, scholars at Europe’s fledgling universities quickly divided between radicals who wished to use Aristotelian methods in their studies and conservatives who hoped to banish what they believed to be subversive and highly dangerous ideas. Intense as it was, the fight did not last long. Western European thinkers would resolve the seeming contradiction between Aristotle and received theological views by reframing his ideas in Christian terms through Scholasticism. Safely domesticated, his works, and the other books translated into Latin in Spain, would thereafter help to spark the Renaissance of the twelfth century and, more broadly, set the stage for the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Islamic Philosophy

The Problem of Aristotle

Aristotle had created a not-dissimilar controversy in the Middle East a few centuries earlier; there, however, the debate had a decidedly different outcome. One of the greatest thinkers of ancient Greece, Aristotle had articulated a comprehensive and persuasive system for investigating and explaining the physical world. According to him, the universe had begun when a distant, creator deity had first constructed it and set it in motion. Thereafter, it operated according to a series of internal laws that determined the behavior of all matter, all life, and all people. This understanding had far-reaching implications. If, as Aristotle believed, a set of rules governed the operation of the universe, then people could, through careful study, experimentation, and classification, understand how it functioned. In other words, properly structured and grounded in logic, human reason could be relied upon to fathom the workings of all creation.

The faylasufs found Aristotle’s way of understanding the world electrifying. Almost from the start, they had made fruitful use of his thinking in their study of science, math, politics, society, and culture. In fact, his ideas were so powerful that, over time, the faylasufs’ even applied them to more explicitly religious topics. Here, however, differences between Aristotle and contemporary Islam would make the going far-more difficult. For instance, Aristotle’s central scientific idea that a set of laws governed the operations of the universe seemed to leave no room for God to perform miracles or to otherwise affect the workings of creation as both Muhammad and the Qurʾan maintained He did on a regular basis. Early faylasufs consequently took great care in applying Aristotelian logic to the study of religion. For example, al-Kindi contended that scholars and theologians could make profitable use of it to explore religious questions that the Qurʾan and the sunna did not explicitly address, but he also maintained that the Qurʾan was the literal word of God, and that, as such, it lay beyond the realm of rational inquiry.

Muʿtazilism

While the ulema viewed even this fairly conservative position with suspicion, they found the ideas of another group of thinkers, the Muʿtazilites, to be significantly more alarming. Influenced by Aristotelian philosophy, the Muʿtazilite School first emerged as a challenge to the traditionalist religious scholars in the eighth century. Rooted in Greek rationalism, it rejected outright the orthodox assertion that religious study began and ended with the sunna of Muhammad and the revealed text of the Qurʾan. Instead, arguing that God was rational and that humans could understand Him using the methods pioneered by classical Greek philosophy, the Muʿtazilites maintained that reason, and not revelation, was the correct basis for theological inquiry.

Starting from such dramatically different positions, the rationalist Muʿtazilites and the orthodox ulema advanced sharply different understandings of Islam. Indeed, they disagreed about nearly everything. They differed about issues such as the origins of the universe, the nature of physical reality, and even human psychology. Above all, they clashed over three pivotal questions: whether humans enjoyed free will, whether the Qurʾan was eternal or created, and whether its references to God’s attributes, its descriptions of him that appear to render him in anthropomorphic terms, must be taken literally.

Based on their embrace of moral absolutes, the religious scholars maintained an uncompromising position on these issues. They argued that revelation fundamentally trumped reason, that the Qurʾan was uncreated and had existed for all time, and that, as the literal word of God, it could not be subject to interpretation, though, more accurately, as we have seen, what they were really contending was that their understanding of the Qurʾan could not be challenged. By extension, they also asserted that while the Qurʾan was emphatic in maintaining that God was in no way anthropomorphic or even graspable in human terms, its description of His attributes, references to His hands, speech, face, and so forth, nonetheless had to be understood in literal terms. Finally, taking at face value both the Qurʾan’s declaration that God is omnipotent and its apparent embrace of determinism, “God sends astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills”, they concluded that humans did not have free will and that God instead predestined their actions (Quran, 35:8).

On the basis of their understanding of Greek rationalism and their Islamic faith, the Muʿtazilites found these positions to be intellectually and theologically untenable and offered a stinging, point-by-point rebuttal. First, emphasizing tawhid, or the unity of God, they criticized the religious scholars’ position that the Qurʾan was uncreated and eternal. In their eyes, this argument was shirk, or idolatrous, because it separated the Qurʾan from God and thus treated it as a second deity. Accordingly, they countered not only that the Qurʾan had been created but that it was best understood in metaphorical rather than literal terms. Second, the Muʿtazilites rejected the religious scholars’ argument that references to God’s attributes had to be understood literally. Maintaining that God was not anthropomorphic and could not be interpreted in such terms, they argued that references to His speech or face in the Qurʾan were meant to be understood allegorically rather than literally. Finally, the Muʿtazilites disputed the religious scholars’ view that God predestined all human actions. To the Muʿtazilites, that interpretation was inconsistent with Islam’s emphasis on divine judgement. How could a just God judge people if they are not responsible for their actions? More troublingly for the Muʿtazilites, such thinking appeared to make God not merely the basis for all that is good but also the source of evil. Accordingly, noting that the Qurʾan explicitly held that people have free will, they argued that God had given people the power to embrace or reject salvation through their actions.

For the ulema, the emergence of Muʿtazilism in the eighth century constituted a mortal peril. The rationalists’ contention that reason was a better guide to religion than either a literal reading of the Qurʾan or knowledge of the sunna threatened to render irrelevant the twin bases of their power: their success in rendering their interpretation as the only legitimate understanding of the Qurʾan and their assumption of control over the sunna through Hadith scholarship. In response, they launched an aggressive campaign against the Muʿtazilites in the late-eighth century. Initially, their effort was enormously successful. Using their control of the courts and mosques and their dominant position in education, they waged a relentless and effective drive against rationalist ideas. Its impact was substantial and immediate. Indeed, having never commanded much in the way of popular support, the Muʿtazilites withered in the face of this sustained assault.

The situation reversed dramatically with the accession of al-Mamun to the caliphate. From the start, the new caliph embraced Muʿtazilism. He lavished support on the movement, accorded it official status, and, most importantly, made adherence to its doctrines a requirement for teachers and religious scholars. Why did he choose to throw his support behind the rationalists? After all, Muʿtazilism enjoyed negligible public support and thus seemed to provide him with little advantage. Al-Mamun did so in part because he found its rationalist arguments about free will and the uncreated nature of the Qurʾan to be persuasive; that is, he genuinely believed that the Muʿtazilites were correct. He had another, more practical reason to support the movement, however. He believed that he could use Muʿtazilism to assert caliphal authority over the increasingly autonomous ulema and to challenge their control of shariʾa law.

Muted at first, al-Mamun’s effort to rein in the ulema accelerated dramatically in 833. Seeking to bring the religious scholars to heel, he initiated a campaign of persecution that year called the mihna designed to enforce acceptance of the rationalist position on the Qurʾan. During the mihna, ulema were summoned to the court and compelled to declare whether they believed that the Qurʾan was created. Those who affirmed the Muʿtazilite position that it was a divine creation were free to go; those who instead clung to the view that it was eternal and uncreated were arrested and subjected to torture. Faced with the prospect of spending time in the caliph’s dungeons, many ulema declared that they had undergone a change of heart and publicly attested that the Qurʾan was created. However, a small number stood fast in their beliefs. Most prominent among them was the founder of the Hanbali School of jurisprudence, the influential religious scholar ibn Hanbal. Though he endured years of isolation and brutal torture in prison, he refused to crack and remained steadfast in his belief that the Qurʾan was uncreated.

Ultimately, the mihna proved unsuccessful either in bringing the ulema to heel or in institutionalizing Muʿtazilism. Ironically, it was Ibn Hanbal’s imprisonment that marked the turning point in the campaign. Rather than compelling him to change his views, his time in jail transformed him into a popular hero and helped to galvanize mass support for the traditionalist position. Ibn Hanbal’s growing appeal was not lost on the court. Indeed, within a few years, fear of civil unrest impelled al-Mamun’s successor, al- Mutasim (r. 833-842), to free ibn Hanbal. The enormous size and enthusiasm of the crowd that greeted him upon his release was a wake-up call for the Abbasids that suggested strongly that the persecution of the traditionalists had become a political liability. That was certainly the conclusion that Caliph al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-861) drew. Seeking to bolster the Abbasids’ sagging public approval, he moved to realign the dynasty’s religious position early in his reign by ending the mihna. He went much further a few years later. Abandoning the effort to control the religious scholars, he formally withdrew support for the Muʿtazilites and publicly endorsed the orthodox ulema position that the Qurʾan is uncreated.

This turnabout was a huge victory for the traditionalists. Not only did the Muʿtazilite threat rapidly dissipate after al-Mutawakkil ended state support for it, but, more importantly, the religious scholars’ success in resisting the minha had institutionalized their political autonomy. Indeed, the episode marked the last time that the dynasty would mount a meaningful effort to control the ulema.

The Faylasuf Challenge

The traditionalists may have beaten back the immediate threat of Muʿtazilism, but they soon confronted another, more enduring challenge in the form of the increasingly bold faylasufs. While early faylasufs like al-Kindi had been circumspect and careful in their application of Aristotelian rationalism to religious inquiry, later ones were willing to employ such thinking much more aggressively in their examination of Islam. For example, al-Farabi (872-951) explicitly argued that philosophy offered a superior path to salvation than did religion. Known as the “‘second teacher’” of philosophy, Aristotle being the first, he maintained that God had endowed people with reason so that they would have the ability to cleanse themselves of sin and thus ready themselves for union with the divine. However, only a small minority had the education and intellect to understand God in this way. For all others, the Qurʾan and the teachings of Islam provided a simplified, symbolic means of accessing the truth.

The brilliant ibn Sina built on and extended al-Farabi’s ideas. Fitting Islam into Greek philosophy rather than the reverse, he contended that the prophets were people whose superior minds gave them the insight needed to fully understand God and His plan. They, in turn, created simplified, accessible rituals for the masses, not because those practices were derived from the literal word of God but instead because they presented the ideas in a way that the uneducated common people could grasp.

From the late-ninth through the late-eleventh centuries, the faylasuf and, to a lesser extent, the reinvigorated Muʿtazilites, posed a serious challenge to the orthodox ulema. Their command of Greek-derived rationalism, their rejection of received-but- logically untenable religious views such as the idea that the world was created ex nihilo, from nothing, and their ability to offer a persuasive, natural-science based model of the physical operation of the universe lent them great credibility. As a result, they attracted the support of a small but growing number of educated and influential urban Muslims.

The rising appeal of the faylasufs troubled many ulema. One of them, the religious scholar Abu al-Ashari, (c. 873-935), responded by developing a new approach known as the Asharite School. Designed to establish a compromise position between the rationalists and the traditionalists in order to coopt the arguments of the faylasufs and Muʿtazilites, this new approach articulated a limited acceptance of human reason. Rationalism, al-Ashari and his supporters argued, was a valid tool that could be used to better understand Islam. At the same time, however, they also maintained that it had only limited applicability to questions of religion. Most notably, while it could be used to support and defend understandings of revealed truths, it could not supplant, contradict, or challenge the path to salvation outlined in the Qurʾan and the sunna.

Asharism quickly gained a large following and soon became the dominant theological school within Sunni Islam. However, it failed to make inroads among the faylasuf and Muʿtazilites. Instead, finding Asharism to be entirely unpersuasive, they criticized it and challenged its proponents in a series of public arguments during the late-tenth and early-eleventh centuries. These debates ended up being embarrassingly one sided. Using their command of Greek logic and rational inquiry, the faylasufs and Muʿtazilites regularly ran rings around their flustered Asharite opponents. Their success against the traditionalists attracted little mass support, but, to the consternation of the Asharites, it did make significant inroads among the influential, educated urbans classes.

Al-Ghazali

That the rationalists failed to solidify that support owed largely to the efforts of one adherent of the Asharite School: al-Ghazali (c. 1058-1111). Deeply troubled by the growing influence of the faylasufs and Muʿtazilites, he moved in the late-eleventh century to rebut their views. Doing so promised to be a difficult task. As the Asharites had so painfully discovered, the faylasufs were highly skilled at using Greek logic and rationalism to undermine their opponents. Al-Ghazali was unfazed, however. Shrewdly concluding that he could best refute the faylasufs’ arguments by employing against them the very rationalism on which their philosophical and theological views rested, he first produced a summation of Classical philosophy called The Aims of the Philosophers. It was a powerful distillation of Greek rationalism. Indeed, The Aims of the Philosophers was so clear and balanced that many contemporary Europeans who read translated copies of it assumed that the author was a supporter rather than a critic of Aristotelian inquiry.

Having mastered philosophy, al-Ghazali set out to destroy it in his next book, The Incoherence of the Philosophers. In it, he first identified the ideas that collectively constituted the foundation of the faylasufs’ reason-based views. Using the logic and methods of the rationalists against them, he then offered a devastating critique of those premises.

The core argument in the Incoherence of the Philosophers was his attack on causality. At heart, Aristotelian natural science and philosophy were rooted in the belief that the world operated according to a series of immutable laws. That idea, in turn, rested on the concept of causality, a concept that maintains that a given effect is the consequence of a particular cause, and that a certain cause will, all other things being equal, always produce the same effect. For example, since flame is always present when cotton burns, fire, the cause, will result in cotton bursting into flame, the effect, any time the two come into contact.

Al-Ghazali completely rejected cause and effect. Instead, using Greek rationalism, he articulated a refined version of a competing idea called Occasionalism. In direct contrast to causality, Occasionalism holds that natural laws do not govern the physical universe; instead, the world exists as a series of discrete moments bound together only by God’s will. Cotton burns when it comes into contact with fire not because of causality, but instead because God, for reasons that mere humans cannot fathom, wills that it would burn. Occasionalism thus maintains that the fire had nothing whatsoever to do with the cotton burning, and its proximity to the cotton at the point that it burst into flame was merely a matter of correlation rather than one of causation. To argue otherwise, al-Ghazali concluded, was to deprive God of agency and to render Him as something less than the all-powerful figure described in the Qurʾan.

Al-Ghazali’s takedown of Aristotelian rationalism was persuasive, effective, and enormously far-reaching. Using the concept of Occasionalism with devastating effectiveness, he undermined the idea that the universe operated according to a set of immutable laws; by extension, he also discredited the foundation on which all rational, Aristotelian theology rested. As a result, educated Muslims not only began to dismiss causality as an illusion, but, more importantly, increasingly rejected the entire basis of the faylasufs’ rationalist theology.

Al-Ghazali’s critique also offered a successful rejoinder to the Muʿtazilite argument that people enjoyed free will. In direct contrast to the rationalist position, Occasionalism held that since God was all powerful, He determined all actions, including those that appeared to be the product of human agency. Free will thus did not exist. Importantly, however, al-Ghazali rejected the idea that people were mere moral bystanders who were not accountable for what they did. Instead he adhered to the Asharite position that individuals became responsible for their choices through a theory of ‘acquisition,’ which maintained that people acquire responsibility and thus accountability for their actions. In other words, though God predestined all actions, individuals nonetheless assumed responsibility for them.

Ibn Rushd

The Incoherence of the Philosophers did not go unchallenged. Most notably, the faylasuf Ibn Rushd, from al-Andalus, offered a powerful, point-by-point response in his twelfth-century rebuttal, The Incoherence of the Incoherence. Building on the work of earlier scholars such as Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, he argued in it that as “‘truth does not oppose truth but accords with it,’” the revealed knowledge of the Qurʾan and the reasoned findings of philosophical inquiry cannot be in opposition. Any apparent conflict between them does not reflect genuine contradiction but instead indicates that the prevailing understanding of the Qurʾan is inaccurate and should be changed. Like the Muʿtazilites, ibn Rushd thus believed that educated people needed to comprehend the Qurʾan in allegoric rather than literal terms. However, not everyone had the intellect to understand it metaphorically. Accordingly, he maintained that while the khassa, the educated elite, should interpret the Qurʾan using philosophy, the amm, or masses, should instead continue to approach it on a simpler, literal level.

Ibn Rushd’s riposte was brilliant, sharply reasoned, and convincing. It came, however, at an extremely inauspicious moment for arguments of such subtlety and sophistication. As we shall see in Chapter Five, by ibn Rushd’s time, the Caliphate was no longer the power it had once been. Instead, fractured into warring principalities, it confronted a significant external challenge beginning in the late eleventh century in the form of Western European crusaders, and an existential one in the thirteenth century in the shape of the Mongols. Simply put, it was a time of catastrophe, one that left the umma unreceptive to the sophisticated positions that ibn Rushd had developed. As a result, however brilliantly argued it may have been, The Incoherence of the Incoherence proved unable either to gain purchase or to arrest philosophy’s declining influence in the umma.

The Closing of the Gates of Ijtihad

The climate worsened considerably for the faylasufs and their allies in the decades following ibn Rushd’s death. To a degree, this change was the product of a longstanding effort by traditionalist religious scholars to limit the use of reason in the analysis of questions related to theology and shariʿa law. Beginning in late-tenth century, they had responded to the caliphate’s growing problems by calling for taqlid, or the uncritical acceptance of received views. As part of that effort, some had started to argue that since the shariʿa code had been perfected, the use of ijtihad, or independent reasoning, was no longer a necessary or even appropriate tool for the articulation of religious law or the study of Islam. Known as the ‘closing of the gates of ijtihad,’ this turn away from independent reasoning made comparatively limited headway at first. However, it began to gain wide acceptance in the Muslim world after the Mongols sacked Baghdad and ended the Abbasid Dynasty in 1258. Indeed, that event marked a critical watershed for independent thinking in the Muslim world.

The consequences of the closing of the gates of ijtihad were as enormous as they were adverse. While the Muslim Middle East had led the world in the study of science and philosophy during the Abbasid Dynasty, it would make comparatively negligible intellectual contributions thereafter. Instead, it would be the umma’s former pupils in Christian Europe who, using, the Islamic scientific and philosophic texts they had acquired from the Muslims, would vault ahead intellectually and materially In the process setting the stage for the enormously consequential scientific and technological breakthroughs of the modern era.

Ibn Taymiyyah

Still, though support for the use of ijtihad declined precipitously after 1258, a minority continued to insist that it remained a valid and necessary tool of jurisprudence. The most prominent such person was the religious scholar ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328). Forced to flee his home while a child to escape the Mongols, he had come to conclude that the umma’s failure to live as God had intended had led directly to the catastrophes that had befallen the Muslim world. Accordingly, like many others at that time, he argued that the community of believers needed to purify itself by returning to the practices and customs of the Salaf. In this regard, ibn Taymiyyah agreed with the traditionalists that innovations in religion and social practices ran counter to God’s will. In other ways, however, he was anything but backward looking. Most notably, while nearly all of his fellow ulema maintained that the shariʿa was timeless and perfect, he argued instead that Islamic law needed to be continuously modified through independent reasoning so that it could better accord with the times. In other words, he believed that the shariʿa code should not adhere dogmatically to laws that had been drafted in a bygone era but should instead reflect the spirit of God’s vision for the umma in the context of present-day circumstances.

At the same time, however, he strongly opposed innovations in the practice of Islam that he believed violated the religion’s basic tenets. Here, ibn Taymiyyah advanced an argument that while framed in conservative terms was in fact a highly innovative one. He contended that certain Muslims, the Shiʿa, those Mongols who had converted but still followed their traditional laws, and members of syncretic religious groups such as the Alawites and Druze, had strayed so far from the vision of Islam laid out in the Qurʾan and the hadith that they had become kafirs, or apostates. What should the community of believers do with such Muslims? Contending that the umma needed to purify itself in order to please God, he asserted that Muslims not only should but were indeed obligated to takfir, or excommunicate, and kill apostates. Thus, for the first time, a mainstream religious scholar had joined the Kharijites in articulating a legal justification for using violence against people conventionally understood to be Muslims.

This idea would have only limited appeal during ibn Taymiyyah’s lifetime. Indeed, his views were so frequently at odds with those of his fellow religious scholars and the civil authorities that they resulted in him spending substantial periods of time in jail. Beginning in the eighteenth century, however, many of his ideas would win a new following among important puritanical reformist groups. Most notably, the stern Wahhabi ulema of central Arabia would revisit ibn Taymiyyah’s conception of takfir to justify attacking Muslims deemed to have committed apostasy through their actions or beliefs. In more recent times, his thinking would also inform the ideology of Islamist organization like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Conclusion

By the end of the thirteenth century, Muslims had answered the questions that they had confronted in the decades after the Prophet’s death. They had come up with criteria for determining who could serve as Muhammad’s successor and had outlined the extent of their powers. They had also established how Muslims were to live and how they were to practice the religion. They had even identified how human reason was to be used in exploring God’s plan. What they had not done, however, was come to a consensus in addressing those questions; instead, they had arrived at a multiplicity of conflicting answers. In the process, they had divided along a variety of fault lines: between behaviorally minded Sunnis and devotional Shiʿa, between Sufi mystics and legal traditionalists, and between ulema literalists and intellectual faylasufs. At times, those divisions undoubtedly weakened the caliphate. On balance, however, their impact was overwhelmingly positive. Indeed, the divisions that emerged among Muslims during this pivotal era would play an enormous part in ensuring that the umma developed into a rich, complex, and heterogeneous civilization, one that continued to thrive even as the caliphate was crumbling around it. It is to the gradual weakening and eventual collapse of the empire that we shall next turn.