In ad 661 Ali, the last of the Rashidun, was assassinated – the third to meet a violent end. To his supporters, however, Ali was the first Imam, the lawful successor of the Prophet.
The new ruler was Muawiyya, of the Umayyad clan, one of the families that had originally opposed Muhammad when Islam had first begun. Muawiyya was the Governor of Syria, and moved his capital to Damascus from Mecca, where it remained as long as his family retained the Caliphal title. Although from the same family as the Caliph Uthman, he was not a relation of Muhammad, which would soon become very important.
The new Caliph used many Christians both in his army, and in his administration. But the Umayyads in general showed strong favouritism to their fellow Arabs, and most have not been well regarded by traditional Islamic historians.
When Muawiyya died in 680, war broke out again. Ali’s elder son Hassan had never made a serious play for power, but the second son, Hussein, was determined to seize the Caliphate that he believed was rightly his. However, his attempt proved short-lived. Unable to garner more than a small following when his meagre army and a much larger opposition loyal to the Umayyads met at Karbala in that same year, Hussein and his followers were all killed.
Thus 680 is one of the most important dates in Islamic history, since it marks the beginning of a split that has lasted to this day. Hussein – reckoned to be the third Imam by his followers – was the leader of the Ali faction. This in Arabic is the Shia’t Ali, now known as the Shia, and its adherents as Shiites. Today Shiite Islam is thought of as predominantly Iranian, but historically this is false, since the original group was Arabic, and remains so in majority Shiite Iraq today.
Hussein’s death was a source of great sorrow for his disciples, and, ever since, the martyrdom of Hussein has been one of the major festivals in the Shiite world. Today, when men are seen flagellating themselves through the streets, it should be remembered that this is a ceremony endorsed by only 15 per cent of contemporary Muslims, the proportion of the Islamic world today that is Shiite. Martyrdom has been a major part of Shiite thinking throughout history, and the mentality of an oppressed minority still pervades Shiite Islam. To the majority of Shia there were nine further Imams (specially anointed successors of the Prophet), the last of whom disappeared in the early Middle Ages, and whose return is still awaited by Shiites even still. (Three plus nine is twelve, making up Twelver Shiite Islam, in which Iran is the major country.) Other Shiites recognized different successors from the same family, the best-known group today being the Ismailis, who follow the Agha Khan, and who recognize five Imams in the line of descent.
To the Shia, the Imams were perfect in their interpretation of the Quran. After the last Imam disappeared, legal scholars emerged who could interpret the sacred texts correctly. As a result, while there are formally no clergy in Shia Islam, those who do interpret the law have a greater prestige and role in Shiite thinking than their equivalents do with the Sunni majority. There is thus no equivalent in Sunni Islam of an Ayatollah or ‘person of veneration’ to use the literal term. This means that when we refer to Islamic clergy, we are wrong in many senses to use the word when applied to Sunni Muslims, for whom an Imam is simply the legal scholar at the local mosque. But while it is technically also inaccurate in Shiite Islam, their scholars are far closer to the role of the clergy that we have in the West.
Furthermore, while ijtihad remains discouraged or even outlawed among the 85 per cent Sunni majority, this is not the case in Shiite Islam. Thus writers such as Milton Viorst, author of In the Shadow of the Prophet, argue that Shiites, who await the return of the twelfth Imam, are more forward-looking and open to change. On the other hand, Viorst thinks the Sunni majority, for whom things are immutable, are more stuck in the past. While it is not possible to generalize, there is enough that is correct in such an interpretation to make a difference in the two forms of Islam today.
The late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran tried to present himself as simply a Muslim, in order that the radical Islamic version of revolution would spill over into predominantly Sunni Muslim countries. There is a case for saying that further doctrinal differences between Sunni and Shiite Islam, other than the key one just mentioned, are in fact small. But perhaps the key difference is that because Shiite Islam was mainly a minority version for so long – except under the Fatimid Caliphs in Cairo – its mentality was therefore different because Shiites often had to hide their faith. (The idea of keeping Shiite Islam private in fact became legitimate in Shiite doctrine.) In addition the cult of martyrdom, so powerful in countries such as Iraq and Iran today, is unknown in mainstream Sunni Islam. So while the doctrinal differences may indeed not be profound, there is a very good case for saying that the mentality of Shiites and Sunnis is therefore subtly different.
The case of Iran, however, reveals the distinctiveness of Shiite Islam. Some would argue that the Shia denomination of Islam enables the very nationalistic Iranians to be genuinely Islamic and also thoroughly Persian at the same time. Though the current regime would deny this, it is a historically respectable position.
As the American expert on Iran, William Polk, has written in his book Understanding Iran (2009), where
Shiism most fundamentally differs from Sunnism is in the assertion that God chose to continue the mission of Muhammad … [and that one effect was that …] in reaction to the rule of the Ummayad Caliphate that a sort of rebirth of what we can term Iranian cultural and religious nationalism began. It found its voice not in a return to the old regime or even to the old religion, but in the appropriation and conversion of Arab and Muslim events and causes.
Orthodox Shiite Muslims – not all of whom are Iranian – would disagree with Polk’s distinction. Orthodox interpretation would prioritize an understanding of events in exclusively spiritual terms – that of the correct interpretation of Islam and of the lawful succession to the Prophet. Polk, however, suggests that there is a correspondence between some of the facets of Shiite Islam and the earlier Zoroastrian faith. The ‘weeping of the Magi’, for example, over failures to act righteously (the Magi are also known as the Wise Men who visited the infant Jesus) parallels the weeping on Ashura, the day of mourning and self-flagellation each year for the failure of the followers of Ali to defend his son, Hussein, the Prophet’s grandson, at the Battle of Karbala in 680.
We have also seen that Shiite Islam believes in the twelve Imams (fewer in the case of the Ismailis), including the last Imam, who vanished centuries ago and who is due, as Christians believe about Jesus, one day to return. This, as Polk notes, means that:
Iranian Shiism treats the result of the withdrawal … in a special way that colors the history and politics of Islam. Between the occultation of the Imam nearly twelve hundred years ago and his reappearance on the last day, there can be no legitimate guide or ruler for humankind. Even the most holy and learned man of religion cannot speak infallibly on the most fundamental issues of life on earth.
As historian Bernard Lewis reminds us, the notion behind Ayatollah Khomeini (1900–89), that there can be a kind of substitute figure – an interim ‘Supreme Leader’ – is thus a highly controversial one. If there is no one legitimate authority from the Twelfth Imam in 724 down to his reappearance sometime in the future, then whatever powers Khomeini gave himself cannot be truly legitimate according to Shiite theology. Khomeini’s title in the Iranian constitution, Vali-ye faqih, is variously translated as ‘Supreme Jurist’ or ‘Supreme Interpreter’. It is upon such an exalted titular rank that Khomeini’s power – and thus that of his successors as Supreme Leaders – derives.
As we shall see, no equivalent for Khomeini exists in the majority, Sunni, form of Islam. Moreover, as strict interpretations would argue, there is no precedent in Shiite Islam for the post Khomeini invented for himself after 1979. Many Iranian rulers – notably Shah Abbas and those of the Safavid dynasty – have cloaked themselves in Islamic authority and mystique, but none of them has ever given himself quite the degree of combined spiritual/political authority as is implicit in the title Khomeini has bestowed upon himself.
This uniquely Iranian interpretation of Islam once again demonstrates a degree of Persian distinctiveness that marks the practice and theory of that faith in Iran as distinct from its various forms elsewhere, from the Arab heartland through to India and to Indonesia. The old Zoroastrian religion may now be limited to a small number of Parsees mainly found in India, but Iran remains as religiously distinct as it has always been.
With the defeat of Hussein, the Umayyad Caliphate became hereditary. This was never officially decreed as Islamic doctrine, but it remained the case until the Caliphate was abolished in 1924. Since the first four Caliphs had been chosen by consensus, this was a major break and proof that the Muslims were becoming more like the hereditary monarchs in neighbouring states and the dynasty of the Sassanian shahs, which they had removed by 651 in Iran.
The one Umayyad Caliph who has earned the respect of Arab historians was Abd al-Malik, who reigned from 685 to 705. It was he who made Arabic the formal language of the Caliphate, introduced a proper Islamic currency, and reorganized the tax system, all major contributions to the stability of the new and ever growing regime. He spread the lands of the Caliphate yet further still. In this instance, Islamic forces slowly but surely were able to take what is now north-west Africa, the Maghreb, including the lands lived in by the Berber peoples, a non-Arab group. Eventually between the late seventh and early eighth centuries they reached the Atlantic. The Berbers, who converted over time to Islam, were to become the shock troops of the Islamic conquest and subsequent retention of Spain, just to their north. An empire thus came into being which stretched from what is now Morocco in the West to Pakistan in the East, and as far as Central Asia to the borders of Tang dynasty China, thus making the Umayyad territory one of the largest single domains in history.
Six years after Abd al-Malik’s death in 711, the Muslim commander Tariq (after whom Gibraltar – the mountain of Tariq – is named) invaded Spain, notionally to help a Vandal commander defeat his local enemies. Spain had been ruled for just under three centuries by the originally Germanic Vandals after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, but the regime was swiftly conquered by the invading Muslim armies. By the 730s, nearly all of Spain had been conquered. The Islamic armies then ventured, this time with less success, into southern France. Narbonne and the surrounding region were briefly under Muslim rule, but this was not to prove permanent.
The Islamic incursions continued until 732. That year, a Frankish army under Charles Martel was finally able to stop them at the Battle of Tours, which took place somewhere between Poitiers and Tours. In retrospect, this proved to be one of the most important battles in history, since it prevented further Islamic expansion into Frankish territory, and what might well otherwise have been a Muslim conquest of Western Europe.
Spain became Andalus, the land of the Vandals – now Andalucia. This part of the empire soon gained independence, and would become, under its branch of the Umayyads (founded by Abd’al-Rahman, who escaped the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in 750) and the Almohad and Almoravid Berber dynasties, the most enlightened of all the Arab territories.
(The contemplation of how history might have been different is now called counter-factual history, and usually involves discussion of what would have happened, say, if Hitler had won the Second World War, or if the Confederates had managed to beat the Federal forces in the American Civil War. Such thinking goes back centuries, and one of the first people to propose alternative endings was the eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon. In writing of the Battle of Tours he reflected as an Oxford man that the dreaming spires and churches of his own time could well have been the minarets of Oxford instead. Had that been the case, Gibbon wrote, it would have been the Quran that was studied in the halls of the University rather than the Bible.)
By the late 740s, the Umayyads were losing their hold on the Caliphate. Different groups arose, some of them Shiite, and others from the east, from present-day Iran. In 750 there was a coup, which resulted in one of the descendants of Muhammad’s uncle, Abu’l Abbas as-Saffah, ascending the Caliphal throne. The dynasty he founded was called the Abbasids, and was to prove more long lasting, reigning in the new capital, Baghdad, until 1258, and then, notionally, in Cairo until 1517.
The new Caliph, Abu Jafar al-Mansur, immediately executed the general who helped him to gain power – there were to be no rivals. Despite the dominance of the Abbasids there is a famous Umayyad monument that resonates with us still – the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem, where the 2000 Intifada began with the provocative walk taken there by the Israeli politician Ariel Sharon. The site, revered by both Muslims and Jews, is where Jews believe that Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, and Muslims believe that Ishmael was nearly the sacrificial victim instead. As a result the whole area remains a major source of contention between Muslims, who want to keep it, and ultra-religious Jews, who want the space back since it is next door to the original site of King Solomon’s temple.
As Arthur Goldschmidt Jr in his A Concise History of the Middle East puts it, such grand architecture was a sign that the Muslims were here to stay. Mansur’s influence can be seen in the building of the new capital, Baghdad, effectively from scratch – while it was near ancient cities such as Babylon, it had been a small town before the Abbasids turned it into a major imperial metropolis, nearer the heartland of Abbasid power towards the East. Although Arabic was the official language, the ethnic advantage that Arabs had enjoyed now disappeared, with Persians becoming increasingly important both in running the Empire, and culturally.
The best known of Mansur’s successors was Harun al-Rashid, or Aaron the Wise, in translation, the legendary Caliph of the 1001 Nights, and one of the ablest of the Abbasids. Paradoxically, under him, the Caliphs themselves became less powerful as they began to rely increasingly on bureaucratic dynasties, often of Persian origin. Among these were the Barmakids, the wazirs, or more familiarly the viziers, a term which came to mean a senior official in Muslim countries. Persian influence increased still further when, after a civil war, Harun’s half-Persian son, Mamun, became Caliph, reigning from 813–33. Mamun was one of the major patrons of learning, when he established the Bayt al-Hikmah, the House of Wisdom. It is for discoveries in the realm of science, medicine and philosophy that the Abbasid Caliphate is rightly known as the Golden Age of Islam.
Many eminent Arab physicians and philosophers (with the two categories often overlapping) became well known in the West. The Arabs not only preserved much ancient Greek knowledge but, crucially, improved upon it. At this stage in Islamic history, enormous amounts of Western works were translated, and then used and updated by Islamic scholars.
To take a few examples from medicine: Rhazes (more correctly al-Razi, 865–923), Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980–1037), and the two Andalusians, Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr, c. 1091–1162) and Averröes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1204) not only translated Greek works, but came up with innovative medical discoveries. As a result of what they found, these innovations, when in turn introduced to Europe, transformed medicine. Not only that, they led the way until the much later discoveries of the seventeenth century.
Furthermore, as Ahmad Dallal points out in his chapter on science and medicine in The Oxford History of Islam, many of the original documents are no longer extant, so the actual discoveries of these physician philosophers were almost certainly greater than we realize. Al-Razi’s known magnum opus, the al-Hawi fi al-Tibb (The Comprehensive Book on Medicine) runs to no fewer than twenty-three volumes, and this is an incomplete edition. He was an expert on therapeutics, and was able to criticize the ancient authority, Galen, on several clinical issues. Al-Razi in turn was superseded by Ibn Sina, whose masterwork was al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), a definitive text on anatomy, physiology, pathology, and the treatment of disease. Another specialist, al-Nafis from Syria (d. 1288) discovered the minor circulation of the blood, again long before it became established knowledge in the West.
As well as medicine, Islamic mathematics was also both vital and permanent in its effect. As mentioned in the introduction, we refer to Arabic numerals; although these actually originate in India, it was through the Arabs that we received them, thereby transforming Western mathematics as well with a system of numbers far superior to that used by the ancient Romans. In particular, because the Islamic world spread so far, from Spain to Central Asia, it was easier for knowledge to spread widely and be discussed by experts over great geographical distances.
In astronomy, Francis Robinson shows (in The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World), that the Arabs soon realized that the Ptolemaic calculations dominant in the West (and with which Galileo also disagreed, centuries later, to his cost) were seriously flawed. As early as the twelfth century Islamic scientists in Al-Andalus and northern Africa had already established that the earth goes around the sun, and not the other way around as was still believed in Europe. While many of the names of constellations that we use are from Greek or Roman times, the star names, such as Aldebaran, are Arabic.
The Arabs, Robinson points out, were experts in computation and number theory, one of the leading experts being from Central Asia, al-Biruni, who died in 1046. He was able to solve the so-called chessboard problem. A ruler asked him the amount of grain which would equal the number of grains arranged on a chessboard, placed in such a way that there would be one on the first square, two in the second, four in the third, and so on, up to the full sixty-four squares. To the ruler’s astonishment, he realized, when al-Biruni explained the answer, that there would not be enough grains left in his entire kingdom! (The answer is 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains!)
A major breakthrough in calculation was made by al-Uqlidisi in 950, when he invented the fraction, making precise mathematical solutions much more attainable. As mentioned in the introduction, algebra is an Arabic discipline, the word itself derived from al-jabr (restoration). The inventor of this subject was the great ninth-century mathematician, al-Khwarazmi, from whose name the word algorithm is derived.
One of the great mysteries Robinson raises is why the golden age of Islamic discovery came to an end. Like other writers, he concludes that the kind of knowledge they were discovering was, ultimately, incompatible with a Quranic world view around which everything had to revolve. He also reminds us that the Chinese similarly spent many centuries far in advance of the West, and then went backwards. It is therefore inaccurate to call it a uniquely Islamic problem, since culturally and spiritually the Arabs and Chinese were and are completely different. Perhaps, as Robinson suggests, the real mystery is why the Europeans, once they finally established their lead centuries later, were able to go on and maintain it. This is a continuing debate – even in newspapers, with an article appearing in the Guardian on 26 May 2006 by the eminent European scholar Timothy Garton Ash that discussed this very issue – but without a consensus being reached. As Garton Ash mentions, the smaller scale of West European states, in comparison to the large Caliphate, and then Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, and Balkans (in the latter case), might be a key cause. But as he admits, even then we cannot be certain.
By the middle of the tenth century the actual as opposed to nominal power of the Abbasids themselves was beginning to fade. In 945 a Turkic family, the Buyids, seized power in Baghdad, and retained it for many years. The Buyids were Shiite, but allowed the Sunni Abbasid dynasty to remain in titular authority, thereby not disrupting the delicate balance of power within the empire.
The Buyids, however, did not control as much territory as the Abbasids did at the height of their rule. Egypt moved in and out of their direct sovereignty, with the rise of the Mamluks, slave soldiers (literally ‘owned people’) taken initially from what is now the Caucasus in the late ninth century by the Abbasid Caliphs with the idea that such soldiers would be more loyal to their overlords than ordinary troops.
The emergence of the Mamluks in Egypt found a parallel in the onset of a new Arabic power in North Africa. This was the Fatimid dynasty, a Shiite family notionally at least descended from Muhammad’s daughter, Fatima. Starting from what is now Tunisia, they worked their way eastwards across northern Africa, and took Egypt in 969. Here they moved the capital from Fustat to the new city of Al-Qahirah, known to us today as Cairo.
While they were strongly Shiite, and active in evangelizing the Shia version of Islam, they did not try forcibly to convert their subjects, who remained – as today – overwhelmingly Sunni, with a substantial Coptic Christian minority. The Fatimids built the Al-Azhar Mosque in 972, which, along with the university, remains one of the most revered centres of Muslim faith in the Middle East, albeit now Sunni not Shiite.
In parallel with the rise of the Fatimids came increasing incursions by the Turks. Originally a fringe people on the outskirts of the Caliphate, as time progressed they began to edge ever nearer to the heartland. While some – notably the Khazars, who converted to Judaism – were of varying religions, the main bulk of the Turkic peoples converted to Islam, an event that would in time alter for ever the nature of Islamic rule. In around 1040 one group, the Seljuk Turks, named after an able Turkish chieftain who converted to Islam in 956, successfully invaded Syria and Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). In 1045 they captured Baghdad, but once again the Abbasid Caliphs were permitted to stay on as nominal heads of state. The Seljuk rulers called themselves Sultans, and when their Turkic cousins, the Ottomans, came to power in later centuries, that was the title they used for themselves. And after 1517 they also used the title of Caliph.
It was this internal conflict – the Seljuk occupation of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Fatimid occupation of Egypt – that would form the backdrop to the Crusades. Between then and the arrival of the Crusaders 130 years later, the area we now call Palestine was in contention between the Fatimid Caliphate and the various Seljuk states to the north, with their power bases in Syria and Anatolia. This rivalry between Sunni Seljuks and Shiite Fatimids, which no side fully won until Saladin’s conquest of the 1170s, effectively created a power vacuum into which the Crusaders were able to move, especially since neither Muslim side (Seljuk or Fatimid) wanted their Islamic rival to control the territory.